NBC Europe
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| TV station ( private law ) | |
| Program type | Full program |
| reception | Cable & Satellite ( Hotbird ) |
| business | January 30, 1987 to September 29, 2005 |
| owner | NBC Universal |
| executive Director | Olaf Castritius |
| List of TV channels | |
NBC Europe and NBC Super Channel was a television station in Europe from 1987 to 2005. Legally, the station broadcast until February 1, 2008.
history
On January 30, 1987, Super Channel started its program instead of the 24-hour music channel Music Box . At the time, Super Channel was part of the ITV television company with a UK license.
Originally, NBC Europe was just a sub-program of the US television station NBC . In the fall of 1994 NBC took over the pan-European broadcaster Super Channel. An information and infotainment program with news, business and talk shows was broadcast under the name NBC Super Channel . These were content-related takeovers of the American channels NBC, CNBC and America's Talking (from which MSNBC later emerged).
In 1998 the station was taken over by the German TV News Agency (DFA, today: German TV News Agency Production, DFA P). The name of the station remained unchanged, and the offer was subsequently expanded to include the NBC GIGA program , an interactive youth program that dealt with digital media. The concept was based on plans that were published in 1995, but could not be implemented due to the lack of a slot on German cable television.
At the end of 2004, NBC acquired a majority stake in the station in the form of NBC Universal , through its shares in DFA and NBC Europe. The DFA had run into financial problems so that NBC Universal was able to buy back its shares. The request of the new owners was to use the associated cable channels for the program Das Vierte . The station GIGA from the same channel package was largely to be moved to Astra digital . NBC Universal sold two thirds of the shares in GIGA Digital Television , the company responsible for programming , to Cuneo AG and Turtle Entertainment in November 2005, due to a lack of interest; a month later, the shares held were reduced to just 12.8%. From January 2008 this GmbH belonged 100% to the pay-TV channel Premiere .
As a result, a renovation was carried out, which should result in NBC Europe being broadcast as a television station on September 29, 2005. Only GIGA programs were still produced for a certain time beyond this end point, as they were obviously necessary for the legal protection of the cable channels. As a result, GIGA broadcast times were cut in order to allow better integration into the program of cable channels and to reduce costs. Furthermore the production moved to Berlin. After negotiations with the cable network operators, however, the existing requirement for the presence of GIGA was also dropped, so that the program item was canceled by those responsible. The last GIGA broadcast was broadcast on March 31, 2006. However, the show SPAM Deluxe, which started at GIGA in January 2007, once again focused on the interaction with the audience, albeit in a different form.
Some former Moderators and other staff of NBC Europe work today in North Rhine-Westphalia regional station NRW.TV . The station has been operated since 2005 by the DFA production company and Karl-Ulrich Kuhlo ( n-tv ), who took over DFA in January 2005. The presenters of the popular GIGA program, on the other hand, were mostly hired by numerous competing broadcasters.
As of September 30, 2005, numerous technical changes occurred in the wake of the suspension of broadcasts of NBC Europe and NBC SuperChannel. On the previous distribution channel of NBC Europe, a variant of the program Das Vierte was initially broadcast, with the program of the business news channel CNBC Europe from Monday to Friday from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. to March 31, 2006 GIGA was broadcast. After the discontinuation of NBC GIGA , the regular program of Das Vierte has been running from 10:00 to 05:00. Until February 1, 2008 Das Vierte was distributed in this way on the cable networks and on Hotbird. Since then, Das Vierte has been fed in directly and the Hotbird broadcast has been discontinued; NBC Europe is practically non-existent.
Teletext / blanking interval
With r@dio.mp3 , a radio station used NBC Europe's blanking interval from March 2000 by transmitting music in the form of MP3 as well as title and cover information instead of teletext . These could be decoded by PCs with a TV card . The data rate of this service was sufficient to transmit the MP3 files to the recipients in real time at 128 kbit / s. Many users built music collections with additional plugins. The broadcasting operation was stopped in June 2001 after the operator Musicplay GmbH had to file for bankruptcy due to the failure of the necessary follow-up investments in the context of the stock market crash. From April 2002 to April 2003, another broadcaster, Megaradio.mp3 , used this technology in NBC Europe's blanking interval. The transmission technology is called TV radio cast .
In mid-April 2001, a company tried to start the sex channel Video.mp4 at night on the r@dio.mp3 slot . The technique should be exactly the same as with Sexxxcast.TV . After the project became known, NBC Europe defended itself and thus it did not start broadcasting.
literature
- From today: Super Channel . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna January 30, 1987, p. 35 , column 1 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).