| 1993 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| |
Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year |
|
| January 1 |
First Russian independent commercial television channel launched jointly by Moscow Independent Broadcasting Company (MIBC) and Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), broadcasting for five hours a day on VHF under the name TV6 Moscow. |
|
| January 1 |
New Independent Television (ITV) contracts come into force in the UK. Thames is replaced by Carlton, TVS by Meridian, TWS by Westcountry and TV-am by GMTV. |
|
| April 30 |
Virgin 1215 (later Virgin Radio) radio station begins transmissions on the AM radio band. |
|
| July |
UK’s historic Elstree Film Studios closes. |
|
| July |
Action Plan for the Introduction of Advanced Television Services adopted by the Council of Ministers of the European Community, with ecu 228m budget over four years to stimulate wide-screen television activity. |
|
| July |
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation buys 63.6 per cent of Asian broadcaster Star TV from Li Ka-shing for $525m. |
> July 1995 |
| July |
The first UK cable franchises are modified to allow them to offer voice telephony in their own right. |
|
| July |
UK government sells off most of its remaining shares in British Telecom, retaining about 0.5 per cent and a 'golden share'. |
|
| August |
Italian government allows pay TV channels a period of 12 months to move from terrestrial broadcasting to cable and satellite but extends the period to four years. |
|
| September 25 |
First Portuguese satellite, Posat, is launched. |
|
| October |
Merger is proposed between Bell Atlantic Corporation, Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) and Liberty Media Corporation, valued at $33bn. |
> 1994 |
| October |
First Australian community cable television trial, run by Metro TV, begins on Telstra’s Centennial Park Residential Video Pilot project in Sydney, reaching about 400 households. |
> March 1995 |
| November |
Channel 2 television service starts in Israel. |
|
| November |
In an effort to block the proposed acquisition of Paramount by Viacom, shopping channel QVC wins an injunction forcing the latter to consider other offers. |
|
| December |
Paramount accepts a takeover offer from QVC but then reverts to favouring a revised offer from Viacom. |
|
| December 18 |
First Thai satellite, Thaicom 1, is launched. |
|
| December 21 |
Ukraine becomes the first former Soviet state to enact its own broadcast media legislation, creating the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council. |
National media organisations |
| • |
Director Stephen Spielberg films Jurassic Park in non-anamorphic 35mm format for screening in an aspect ratio not exceeding 1.85:1. It becomes the second highest grossing film of all time, after Spielberg’s ET—The Extraterrestrial, which was similarly formatted. |
|
| • |
Thames Television, no longer an ITV contractor but now an independent producer, makes 2,300 hours of original programmes, only 150 hours for the main channels (ITV, BBC, Channel Four), and sold 1,000 hours of repeats (including shows from its ITV days). It employs only 150 people and makes a profit of £16m on turnover of £80m. |
< 1990 |
| • |
National Digital Television Center is opened by Tele-Communications Inc (TCI) in Littleton, near Denver, Colorado to converts analogue signals to digital for nationwide distribution of digitally compressed programming to cable systems and DTH satellite receivers. |
|
| • |
A report by copy protection company Macrovision states that seven per cent of US households made a copy of a pre-recorded video in the past year, and 18 per cent had a copy made for them by others. [0081] |
> 2000 |
| • |
To combat theft of cable television signals, Time Warner runs an advertisement on its Staten Island cable network in New York offering a free T-shirt during a Holyfield v Bowe pay-per-view (PPV) boxing match transmission. The signal is scrambled on legitimate cable boxes, so is visible only by illegal reception. The 400 people who apply for T-shirts are sent bills for $2,000 and told to pay or confess where they acquired their boxes. [0081] |
|
| • |
Sony acquires Psygnosis computer games software development company. |
|
| • |
Sony releases model SL-HF2000, the last Betamax video recorder for the US market. |
> 2002 |
| • |
Mega CD launched. |
|
