| 1992 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
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Cultural highlights | Predictions made this year |
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| January 6 |
UK retail chain W H Smith announces that it will stop selling vinyl LPs from March. |
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| March 10 |
In the Budget speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announces tax concessions for the British film industry: immediate 100 per cent write-off of pre-production investment and writing down of production costs over three years after completion. The measures are valued at £5m in the first year, £15m in 1993/94. |
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| March 27 |
French decree bans television advertising by book publishers, the periodical press, cinemas and film distributors. |
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| April 1 |
Icelandic television service Omega begins transmissions. [0066] |
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| April 2 |
UK Radio Authority awards a second national commercial radio franchise to Independent Music Radio, jointly owned by Virgin and TV-am. |
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| April 8 |
Last consecutive weekly edition of British humorous magazine
Punch after more than 150 years. |
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| April |
French culture channel La Cinq is forced by bankruptcy to close down. |
> September |
| April |
BBC World Service Television sets up a joint venture with South Africa’s M-Net to transmit throughout Africa. |
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| April |
Philips launches CD-i in UK with a £599 player. |
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| June 2 |
BBC begins radio broadcasting to Ukraine in Ukrainian, the first non-Russian service to a former Soviet state. |
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| June |
Thorn EMI buys Virgin Records from its founder Richard Branson for about £560m. |
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| June |
M-Net launches a pay TV service in Kenya. |
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| July 14 |
BBC announces that it will launch a 24-hour radio news channel within 18 months. |
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| July |
UK cable operators are allowed to apply for a licence modification permitting them to offer cable telephony services in their own right. |
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| August 10 |
First South Korean satellite, Kitsat A, is launched. |
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| September 7 |
Classic FM radio station begins transmissions, broadcasting classical music. The first UK commercial station not devoted to pop music, it rapidly finds an audience and expands the radio advertising, sponsorship and merchandising market. |
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| September |
France allocates terrestrial transmission frequencies formerly used by La Cinq to the new Franco-German culture channel Arte. |
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| September |
Eastman Kodak launches Photo CD in US, Europe and Japan. |
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| October 1 |
Cartoon Network, a cable channel devoted to round-the-clock cartoons, is launched in the US by Turner Broadcasting. |
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| November 24 |
Global launch of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 breaks all records for computer games software shipments. |
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| December 21 |
ITC rejects the sole bid for UK’s Channel Five television contract, from a consortium of Thames Television and CityTV of Toronto. |
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| December 29 |
Parliament in Poland approves a new Broadcasting Act. [0049] |
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| December 31 |
ITV's Oracle teletext service ends and at midnight is replaced by Teletext Ltd, a consortium of Philips Electronics, Associated Newspapers and Media Ventures International, the franchise having gone to the highest bidder. |
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| December |
European Audiovisual Observatory is founded with offices in Strasbourg, France to collect and distribute information about the Euroepan audiovisual industries. |
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| December |
First Virgin Megastore media outlet opens on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California. |
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| • |
BBC sells Ealing studios to the BBRK Group, which intends to revert the facility to use for film production. |
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| • |
US Congress renews the National Film Preservation Act for four more years. |
> 1996 |
| • |
Australian Broadcasting Services Act classifies six types of radio service: national, commercial, community, subscription broadcast, subscription narrowcast and open narrowcast. |
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| • |
The World Series baseball games are shown in the Jumbotron video screen at the Toronto Skydome in a 10:3 format, two and half times wider than the original transmission. |
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