In an era where most companies look to consolidate themselves and/or take other other companies, Sky has done both, in a move that unites Sky with Sky and Sky for one giant Sky.

More specifically, it is the British ‘BSkyB’ who are making the moves, taking over Sky Italia and taking on a controlling stake in Sky Deutschland for a unified company, with their first act after doing so being to remove the two Bs from their official name for the first time in 24 years of operation.

A move planned in July but delayed due to pan-continental legal problems, the company will now officially run under the overall guise of Sky, “Europe’s largest entertainment company”.

Taking over primary running operations from 21st Century Fox (who now have a 39.1% stake in the merged company), it is unclear as to whether satellite TV subscribers in those markets will see any changes such as collaborated or shared content, but it is believed that the sharing of executives and ideas will result in the ‘accelerated technological innovation‘ for the group as a whole.

James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox’s ‘co-chief operating officer’ summarised of the deal: “We have always believed that a combination of the European Skys would create enormous benefits for the combined business and for our shareholders. Ultimately, a pan-European Sky is good for customers, who will benefit from the accelerated technological innovation and enhanced customer experience made possible by a fully integrated business.”

Now claiming a total customer base of over 20 million across UK, Ireland (UK), Germany, Austria (Deutschland), and Italy (Italia) rather than ‘x million’ in an individual market, will Sky’s unified front see them build an even greater presence in their fully-controlled markets in Europe? Amongst other operations, for complete self-control, they still need to take Brasil, México, New Zealand…

The BBC‘s decision to move their BBC Three TV channel into an online slot beginning next year is an innovative one regardless of whether it turns out to be sensible, but in the months preceding this switch the broadcaster are doing what they can to try and turn skeptics around on the idea.

The latest person to attempt to do this is the leader of the BBC Trust Rona Fairhead, who called the upcoming move, which will see the youth-oriented channel come off traditional airwaves and only be available through streaming and on-demand content, as something that is “in and of itself good”.

Speaking to the ‘Culture, Media and Sport Committee’ at a hearing on the matter, Fairhead claims that the final review of the new BBC Three concept is yet to be complete, but that the idea as a whole should not be dismissed by the public considering that the role of ‘television’ in the entertainment market is changing.

She stated: “We haven’t done our final review of BBC Three. It’s a really difficult challenge. If you look at the statistics, it will show that a group of the public are watching less, they are certainly watching very differently, although sometimes they view by appointment, typically they eat or watch on the go through devices that they have.”

The Trust have previously claimed that the move to online-only is not yet a certainty, and will only make a formal announcement at an official public conference regarding the channel’s future, the results of which are published and implemented afterwards.

However, it is also reported that the BBC have rejected a number of appeals and suggestions regarding keeping BBC Three on the EPG, as relatively last-ditch attempts to rescue the channel in its current form continue as those in charge look to set the wheels in motion for their vision to be realised at around this time next year. Whether it makes it that far could still be changed but appears unlikely, so will audiences eventually warm to the idea, or are the people that are doing the complaining not in the target demographic for the channel?

The latest in a long line of BBC projects undertaken, the public broadcaster, with the history, funds, and freedom to do a little more than their commercial competitors (rightly or wrongly), have launched the ‘Genome Project‘, which aims to archive every single TV and radio broadcast that has ever been made in the UK under the BBC banner.

Whilst that is a huge ask considering the BBC’s legacy (with even their best known shows being sacrificed or going missing before an improvement in archiving a few decades ago), the venture aims to go from 1923 onwards with support of the online community in the ‘curation and chronicling’ of every BBC broadcast… ever.

Currently on the official website, while without much content-wise, have put up ‘digital editions’ of each issue of the Radio Times magazine that has been published between 1923-2009, meaning that aside from late schedule changes, users can see what was on and when at various points in modern history.

Aiming to have a Wikipedia-style operation in which suggestions and changes can be made by its readers, the BBC have opened up the project to users with ‘Genome’ keeping moderation on the contributions, whilst official audio/video clips are to be added in relevant places over time by the broadcaster and by public users, as they aim to find what was previously lost where possible.

An official blog post on the matter stated:

“Genome – the BBC project to digitise the Radio Times magazines between 1923 and 2009 is now live. On the site you can find BBC broadcast information – ‘listings’ – extracted from those editions. You can also search individual programme titles, contributors and synopsis information.

Our aim on this project is to curate a comprehensive history of every radio and TV programme ever broadcast by the corporation, and make that available to the public. Our first step has been this digitisation of the BBC radio and TV programme schedules from the Radio Times magazine; the next phase of the project is to incorporate what was actually broadcast, as well as the regional and national variations. It’s one of the most important steps we’re taking to begin unlocking the BBC’s archive, as Genome is the closest we currently have to a comprehensive broadcast history of the BBC.

We’re really pleased to get the site live, not least because so many of you have been asking “when”, “how soon” and telling us “how useful it would be”. The challenges in making available the 4.42 million programme records so far have been significant – you can read about some of the recent ones on the Internet blog.

We need your help too though. We’re looking to you to help us to clean up the data. The scanning process – known as ‘Optical Character Recognition’ – has produced plenty of errors: punctuation in the wrong places, spaces where there shouldn’t be any or no spaces where there should, as well as fundamental misunderstandings about who did what.

We’ve made it possible for you to submit an edit to us, as you use the site. We’ll validate your suggested changes and publish the ones which are approved.

We’ve also included a ‘Tell Us More’ form, at the bottom of each programme listing, so we can tap into the collective memory, insight and knowledge of our users, making use of the wealth of experience out there about our programmes, something we’d like to capture.

We also know that the schedule changed considerably on occasion, because of events in the real world and we need that information too.

Additionally, during the process of building Genome, we’ve identified a few ‘chunks’ of data that are missing from the database, but due to the way in which OCR works, didn’t get picked up in the original scans. So, we will be adding this in.

The Radio Times has been published with regional variations since 1926. The magazines we scanned and the data sets which have been included in Genome are not exhaustive, rather they represent the ones which we could access and which covered the greatest areas and variations. In the future, we will look into the implications of attempting provide a more complete set of regional data.

We won’t be able to reflect what you send us straight away, but as we build on BBC’s Genome, it will come in to its own.

Now that we have published the planned broadcast schedule, our next step is to match the records in our archive catalogue (the programmes that we have a copy of in our physical archives) with the Genome programme listings. This helps us identify what proportion of the broadcasts exist in a potentially ‘playable’ form, and highlights the gaps in our archive.

It is highly likely that somewhere out there, in lofts, sheds and basements across the world, many of these ‘missing’ programmes will have been recorded and kept by generations of TV and radio fans. So we’re hoping to use Genome as a way of bringing copies of those lost programmes back in to the BBC archives too.

But, even if we don’t have an actual copy of the programme, we’ll also look to publish related items in our archives, such as scripts, photographs and associated paper-work. We’re looking in to the logistics of making some of these items available via Genome. Clearly, this will in some cases be a long and painstaking task. The BBC’s various archives contain millions of items spread over 23 archive centres across the UK, most of them in analogue form. It’s a big job, one we’re looking forward to reporting back on in the future.

What happens after 2009 when the Genome data “stops”? Well the information held at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes starts in 2007 (the birth of the iPlayer) and as the Genome data is improved and corrected (by you!), we expect to start ‘backfilling’ the bbc.co.uk/programme pages with the Genome data.”

A unique venture that will be unmatched around the world at least in sheer scale, will the BBC’s comprehensive content wiki be seen as another passing fancy by its critics, or will the Genome Project be able to put every piece of the broadcaster’s history (presumably with a 5-year buffer for new items) together  in an intriguing and well-presented manner?

October is considered a big time of year in the ‘big 4′ world of American professional sports, as with every year, is a month after the NFL begins another season, the month the MLB usually closes off theirs with the end of the World Series, and the remaining 2 (NBA & NHL) begin seasons that will end with their respective finals in June.

For the NBA, most of the talking right now is on how the league’s star player LeBron James has taken his talents away from South Beach and moved them back in with his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, and of the Los Angeles Clippers under new and enthusiastic ownership, though the place that does most of the reporting on such topics on TV have managed to sign a contract renewal, after the league agreed a 9-year extension to their deal with ESPN.

The sport network‘s new deal begins in the 2016-17 NBA season on a ‘multi-platform agreement’, ensuring the broadcaster’s presence with the league with increased focus on ‘television, digital, audio & international rights’, carrying over through to the 2024-25 season.

Financially, the deal (which also has TNT as a participating broadcaster) is believed to be worth a total of $24 billion over the 9-year period, increasing the league’s yearly ‘value’ from $930m to $2.6b, a figure which has led to them increasing each of the 30 teams’ seasonal salary cap from $63m to $88.8m.

Content-wise, TNT have claimed rights to a new post-season ‘player awards show’ format, amongst other things, whilst ESPN will continue their NBA on ESPN brand with a planned ‘extra 750 hours of NBA-focused programming’ across their different platforms in order to create a year-round presence and association between the NBA and the network. It is noted that ABC will still be broadcasters of the NBA Finals, but that post-season play will ‘begin and end’ on ESPN, with simulcasts expected for 44 play-off games a season.

ESPN’s network president John Skipper said of the arrangement: “The NBA has never been more popular and it continues to grow under Adam [Silver’s] leadership. By acquiring significantly more NBA content for both existing and yet-to-be created platforms, we will establish a vibrant, year-round NBA presence for fans. For ESPN, this agreement continues our fruitful, long-standing relationship with the NBA and bolsters what is already the sports industry’s most impressive and impactful collection of media rights.”

ESPN will certainly hope the amount listed is money well spent, they’ll need plenty of highlight reels from the courts in order to pay that off:

The internet TV industry in the USA was last week left to begin pondering how their potential futures might play out for better or worse, after the nation’s ‘Federal Communications Commission’ (FCC) have revealed that they are considering a new structure in which they would begin regulating internet TV services.

The new plans being… planned would see online broadcasting become placed on the same level as regular cable TV and satellite TV services.

Though the headline might initially worry the likes of Netflix and YouTube who have made their fame primarily through providing a service not regulated by the FCC, they will be pleased to hear the move is one to have the organisation cover subscription TV-style services rather than all internet video.

And for those cable-style multi-channel providers, such as Dish Network, Sony, and Verizon, the deal will probably be considered a beneficial one, with the internet services then on a level playing field when it comes to formerly prohibitive regulations such as those stopping the questionable Aereo service from operating as they would have liked, and in turn for content rights acquisition, with only tradition and quality of internet service being major stumbling blocks in their causes now.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler had confirmed that there are ideas in progress towards an official vote by the four FCC commissioners regarding an introduction of the plans and gaining public feedback on the matter. This vote could occur as soon as 17 October, but Wheeler is quick to note that nothing has yet been decided or confirmed regarding that potential decision.

Wheeler said of the proposals, which he claims the FCC believe can offer ‘fresh and tough’ competition in the TV market that will only serve to benefit consumers: “You want to make sure that you’re always keeping up with technology, you’re always keeping up with innovations in the marketplace. This falls into that kind of category.”