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TV-Loonland shuts Family Harbour

In Germany, TV-Loonland is pulling the plug on its Hamburg-based internet subsidiary Family Harbour, effective immediately.

Instead, the German media giant will concentrate its future online activities in Germany on its subsidiary Loonland Online GmbH, which distributes online rights to cartoons and characters from the parent company's rights catalogue.

The subsidiary is also lining up a number of online games and webisodes based on TV-Loonland's cartoon characters.

{Family Harbour business model has not proven to be acceptable in Germany due to the difficult infrastructure,{ said Dr Carl Woebcken, TV-Loonland's director of finance.

This decision will have a positive effect on TV-Loonland's year-end results, added Woebcken. The investment in Family Harbour had already been completely written off in 2000.

TV-Loonland's ceo Peter Völkle added: {Until there is better broadband coverage and lower transmission costs in Germany, TV-Loonland is not willing to make any further investments. We are in a position to resume broadband activities with our comprehensive rights catalogue as soon as the situation improves.{

{Family Harbour did not turn out the way we had imagined, but we are all the more proud of the excellent development of our online activities in Asia,{ he said.

Over in Korea, TV-Loonland's online activities have been rather better. The German company has a 65% stake in Saerom/SRE Corporation, currently leading the Korean market with its online VoD service Koolmovie. The service has some 600k subscribers.

{With 10% of all households and 25% of all Internet users, Korea has the highest broadband penetration world-wide and, as a consequence of stiff competition among the telecoms providers, low transmission costs,{ said Völkle.

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