To: Stoctrash who wrote (32944 ) 5/5/1998 5:34:00 PM From: John Rieman Respond to of 50808
Kirch. The EU really does hate the Beta Research/ C-Cube boxes.............................................dailynews.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Monday May 4 6:32 PM EDT EU Still Unhappy With Kirch, Bertelsmann BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) - The European Commission will propose to antitrust experts from the 15 European Union states Wednesday to block a television alliance between Bertelsmann AG and Leo Kirch unless the companies meet the body's competition concerns, a commission source said Monday. The source said proposals offered by the two German media firms last week were "not enough" to alleviate the commission's fears about creation of a dominant position in the German-speaking pay-TV market. German public television broadcaster ARD Monday also sharply criticized the proposed digital TV alliance, saying it could undermine its own digital platform plans. Kirch has offered to sell off 25 percent of "output" rights to Hollywood films and to licence the manufacturing of its key digital decoder technology. But the film concessions were insufficient, Verena Wiedemann, head of ARD's Brussels EU affairs office, told Reuters and The Financial Times. She added that "killer applications" such as exclusive film and sports rights were essential for the success of competing operations. ARD's head of international relations, Andreas Weiss, also said the only way to prevent Kirch and Bertelsmann from achieving a gatekeeping position through their decoder technology advance was for them "to give up control of BetaResearch." BetaResearch is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kirch, which owns exclusive and unlimited licences for the set-top decoder boxes.