Sky high for cable TV.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Sky Latin America venture launches satellite to be used by US and Latin America cable industry - Brief Article

A four-way venture involving Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and two of Latin America's biggest media conglomerates hopes to bring direct-to-home (DTH) satellite broadcasting to millions of television viewers south of the Rio Grande.

In the wee hours of last August 8, executives from Arianespace, PanAmSat Corporation, and several other multinationals swatted mosquitoes as they watched an Ariane 44P rocket fitted with four solid-propellant boosters lift off from its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, flawlessly carrying into orbit PanAmSat's PAS-6 satellite. The bird, manufactured by Space Systems/Loral, is capable of delivering more than 360 digital television channels via transponders leased by the venture known as Sky Latin America.

"This satellite is dedicated to a DTH broadcasting project for South America that's been in the works for three or four years," says Fred Landman, PanAmSat's president and chief executive officer. "DTH overall is playing an increasingly large role in Latin America."

In addition to News Corporation, the Sky Latin America venture includes Brazil's TV Globo and Mexico's Televisa, the world's largest Spanish-language media company; each of the three companies has a 30 percent share. A fourth conglomerate, TCI International, has a 10 percent stake.

Sky Latin America's chief rival in the DTH market is Galaxy Latin America, a spin-off of Hughes Electronics' DirecTV venture that also includes Venezuela's Grupo Cisneros, Brazil's Televisao Abril, and MVS Multivision of Mexico.

The PanAmSat launch marked the twenty-seventh consecutive successful launch for an Ariane-4 rocket, further consolidating the French company's hold on the satellite-launching market, despite the explosion of an Ariane-5 rocket seconds after takeoff on its maiden voyage in June 1996.

Douglas A. Heydon, president of Arianespace Inc., in Washington, estimates that launches at Kourou cost anywhere from $40 million to $140 million, depending on the size of the satellite. Landman says PanAmSat could have launched PAS-6 from Florida's Kennedy Space Center, but that the Connecticut-based company chose French Guiana because of "the availability of Arianespace, and the fact that it delivers on time and with a high degree of reliability."

PanAmSat already...