Komla Dumor Award
honoursAfrican journalism
The BBC has launched the BBC
World News Komla Dumor
Award in honour of presenter
Komla Dumor, who passed away
in February 2014, aged 41.
Dumor was a Ghanaian
broadcaster who in his short life
made an extraordinary impact
and worked to bring a more
sophisticated African narrative to
the world. In November of 2014,
Komla Dumor was the recipient
of an AIB Founders award. The
award was accepted by his
widow, Kwansema Dumor, at the
tenth annual AIB Awards ceremony.
The BBC World News Komla
Dumor Award will be given to an
outstanding individual living and
working in Africa, who combines
strong journalism skills and an
exceptional talent in telling
African stories, with the ambition
and potential to become a star of
the future.
The winner will be awarded
the opportunity to gain skills and
experience, working with teams
across BBC News during a three
month placement in London.
They will have the chance to
broadcast on TV, radio and online
to the BBC’s audiences of 265
million across the world.
Vizrt will join other companies in
participating in the Digital
Production Partnership (DPP)
development of a new standard
for media asset management
metadata for the UK. Vizrt is now
an official member of the DPP
programme and will be participating
in the development of AS-11 DPP
compliance. Initially, this involves
providing details of completed
tests, sample files produced, and
evidence of the results obtained
on file delivery or processing
products that are in development
or being marketed.
“We are encouraged by
manufacturers' engagement
with the development of industry
standards and delighted that
Vizrt is taking part in our
Compliance Programme,” said
Kevin Burrows, DPP Technical
Standards Lead and CTO
Broadcast & Distribution at the
UK’s Channel 4. “An increasingly
important role of the Partnership
is to monitor products that claim
to deliver ‘DPP compliance’ and to
take responsibility for clarifying
to the industry which products
are capable of delivering or
processing compliant files for
the broadcasters onward
transmission."
Viz One, Vizrt’s MAM system,
uses AS-11 DPP as a metadata
schema for file data delivery for
customers in the UK. Viz One has
an open architecture and can
read and write to any metadata
fields in an MXF file. Vizrt’s
membership in the Advanced
Media Workflow Association
ensures that Viz One meets a
high level of quality and
consistency dealing with
supported formats.
Newstag in
Cairo
Newstag, the Stockholm-based
crowd-curated news service, is
opening a subsidiary in Cairo,
Egypt to handle all its incoming
video news content.
The six-strong Cairo-based
team will be responsible for
handling, verifying and tagging
stories as they arrive in one
central location from all over the
world. The multilingual team will
operate round-the-clock
handling thousands of stories
each week.
The team is made up of
editors from around the world
who have chosen to be based in
Cairo for their work in
journalism and media. They will
also provide bespoke production
and post-production services in
Egypt and the region as a whole.
“Cairo is booming again:
Egypt is at the crossroads of
East and West and there are so
many talented individuals in this
city. This megalopolis with its
tens of millions of inhabitants is
a great centre from which to
understand the world in a more
nuanced way. This is at the heart
of Newstag’s philosophy,” says
CEO and Founder, Henrik Eklund.
The opening of the Cairo
bureau follows a $1.3m investment
into Newstag from a group of
private and institutional investors.
In recent months, the company’s
rapidly expanded its network of
commercial and content partners
as it gears up to launch its
application. Newstag’s ‘mobile-
first’ service will enable users to
create their own personalised
‘tagstream’ – or TV Channel –
sharing the stories that they
care about among their social
networks. In an attempt to
rebalance the traditional
relationships between industry
stakeholders, Newstag also
offers users an opportunity to
have a real impact on the world
around them through the
tagging of brands and NGOs.
Vizrt DPP Compliance
IN BRIEF
GLOBECAST TO
DISTRIBUTE HGTV
MEASAT Satellite Systems
and Globecast have
partnered to distribute US
Network HGTV on MEASAT-
3. HGTV, wholly owned by
Scripps Networks Interactive,
debuted in December as the
first regional channel
dedicated to the growing
home and lifestyle category
in Asia. Under the terms of
the agreement, HGTV will be
carried in HD by MEASAT-
3’s global C-band, which
covers more than 100
countries in Asia and EMEA.
GREECE’S OTE
CHOOSES
EUTELSAT
Greek telco OTE SA has
announced it has selected
the KA-SAT satellite
operated by Eutelsat
Communications to deliver
its new satellite broadband
service to homes across
Greece. The OTE Satellite
Internet Service, delivering
download speeds of up to
22Mbps and upload speeds
of up to 6Mbps, will offer
services across Greece to
users who until now have
lacked high-quality broadband
connection. OTE’s new
satellite service requires a
small dish and modem and
operates without the need
for a fixed telephone line.
Using the same dish, OTE’s
satellite-based internet
service can be bundled with
its satellite TV service to
provide more than 80 digital
and 25 HD channels.
HARMONIC
INVESTS IN THE
CLOUD
Harmonic has made invest-
ments in Encoding.com, the
world's largest video
transcoding service, and
VJU, one of the first companies
to provide cloud-enabled
playout solutions to the
broadcast and pay-TV
industries. Harmonic hopes
that its financial stake in
Encoding.com and VJU will
help it offer more flexible and
scalable cloud-based services.
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 1 2015
|
09
MEDIA MARKETS
|
THE CHANNEL
