| 1989 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
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Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year |
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| January 17 |
French broadcasting regulatory body Commission Nationale de la Communication et des Libertés is replaced by the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA). |
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| January 26 |
UK government licenses four Telepoint services: BYPS Consortium (Philips, Barclays Bank and Shell), Ferranti, Mercury Callpoint (Mercuty, Motorola and Shaye) and Phonepoint (STC, British Telecom, France Télécom and Nynex). Two handsets are available, manufactured by Ferranti and Shaye. |
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| February 5 |
Sky Television launches a UK direct-to-home satellite service via the Astra 1A satellite. Instead of using MAC encoding, it uses PAL, arguing that this is not a direct broadcasting by satellite (DBS) service. Four channels are offered: Sky Channel, Eurosport, Sky Movies and Sky News. |
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| April |
UK cable channel The Arts Channel closes. |
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| April 20 17:00 GMT |
Discovery Channel launches in Europe, transmitting for six hours a day from Intelsat V to cable systems in UK and Scandinavia. |
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| June 3 |
Regular Hi-Vision high definition television transmissions by satellite begin in Japan. |
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| June 21 |
Herman J Mankiewicz’s scripts for Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, and The American sell at Christie’s auction house in New York for $231,000. |
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| June |
US consumer CD-i launch rescheduled for June/July 1990. |
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| June |
Polygram has spent a cumulative total of $24m developing CD-i software. |
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| July |
Sony and Taiyo Yuden form a joint venture to develop recordable CD technology. |
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| July |
Clandestine radio station Burasi Bizim Radyo (Our Radio) goes off the air. |
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| July |
Nintendo launches the Game Boy hand-held computer games unit in the US. |
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| August 27 |
British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) launches the Marcopolo 1 satellite, ready for its DBS service. |
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| August 30 |
Warner Home Video releases Rain Man on video direct to retail, without a previous rental release. [The film had won four Oscars earlier in the year.] |
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| October 2 |
Eureka Audiovisual programme established by 26 European countries, brought together by the European Commission, to provide a framework for initiatives in stimulating European film and television production. |
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| October |
First demonstration of full-motion full-screen video from a CD-i disc is given at a meeting of the format's licensees in Tokyo. |
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| October |
Sony completes acquisition of Columbia Pictures. |
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| October |
Pioneer buys DiscoVision Associates, the company holding the key optical disc patent portfolio, from MCA and IBM. |
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| November 7 |
BBC Television transmits the first programme bought form an ITV company: Granada Television’s What the Papers Say had been on ITV for 26 years and then Channel Four for eight years. |
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| December 1 |
Turner Broadcasting System licenses 1,000 feature films from Columbia Pictures Television, largest ever package for basic cable screening (on TNT). |
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| December 25 |
Television service starts in Cook Island, the network of main transmitter and seven repeater stations of CITV having been installed in two months. |
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| • |
British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) introduces the 12 certificate. |
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| • |
US Library of Congress establishes the National Film Registry under the National Film Preservation Act to protect films deemed to be'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant'. |
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First (and so far only) film produced by the Cape Verde Islands: a Portuguese co-production, Os Flagelados do Vento Leste, directed by Antonio Faria. |
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A survey by the US Office of Technology reports that 70 per cent of adults who made videocassette recordings intended to keep them. The source recording was acquired from a store in 23 per cent of cases and 42 per cent from friends. |
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Warner Cable and Time Inc's subsidiary American Television and Communications Corporation merge their cable assets to form Time Warner Cable |
> 2006 July 31 |
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Tele-Communications Inc establishes its TCI Education Project to offer free cable connections, commercial-free educational programming and teacher training to schools in its service areas. |
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Golden Channels cable TV operation established in Israel. |
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Thorn EMI acquires a 50 per cent stake in UK record company Chrysalis Records. |
> 1991 |
