Spize TV, the DTH company owned by the Pyramid Saimira group, has acquired WorldTV Europe, the European operations of GlobeCast World TV. Globecast is owned by France Telecom, and also has operations in USA. Spize TV, in which Pyramid Saimira has 51 percent stake, runs a DTH network called RootsGlobal. Group Chairman PS Saminathan has told the Economic Times that they’ll be investing $15 million in the short term to integrate the operations of Spize TV and WorldTV Europe, and invest $50 million in the European operations over the next 2-3 years. Spize is targeting a total subscriber base of 30,000.

WorldTV was launched in 2007 with a South Asia focus – with a channel bouquet that included Sony Entertainment TV Asia, Star Plus, Star One, Max, Star Gold and Filmy, and the services were priced at EUR 299 per year. Since then, they have since expanded their channel bouquet to include Aaj Tak, Sahara One, NDTV 24×7, and Pakistani channels PTV and Geo News. That’s still a fairly limited list of channels.

Saimira and Spize really needs to be careful here – the South Asian piece has been attempted before, at least on the Internet, by a rather adventurous Jump TV, which then decided to focus primarily on the Sports TV business; perhaps the regional content business didn’t find many takers. However, the DTH business is different from the online TV business (wouldn’t you rather watch content on television?) so it’s perhaps not right to compare the two.

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