Page 12 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

THE CHANNEL | MEDIA MARKETS

Russia's erosion of independent media

According to a report recently unveiled at RFE/RL's Washington DC office, independent media have declined significantly across the former Soviet Union during the past decade. "What good is a protest if there's nobody to cover it?" asked Oleg Kozlovsky (pictured right, under arrest in Moscow in 2008), a popular Russian blogger and human rights activist who participated in a panel to discuss the release of Freedom House's “Nations in Transit 2010.” The report documents a deterioration of democratic institutions in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe in 2009. The findings cap

a decade in which all of the former Soviet countries (except the Baltic states) suffered declines in democratic accountability, with the steepest drop occurring in Russia. The report particularly cited the troubling murders of independent Russian journalists Staneslov Markelov, Anastasia Baburova, Sergey Protazanov, Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, and Natalya Estemirova, among others.

Africa digital deadline

Research from Balancing Act shows that 29 of all African countries have no strategy in place to meet the deadline set by the International Telecommuni-cation Union for a full digital switchover by 2015. To date, only Mauritius has set a date to switch from

analogue to digital.

Five countries have had public launches for DTT broadcasts while ten countries are piloting the switch. The cost of purchasing the equipment is the biggest obstacle facing countries who need to encourage consumer uptake.

12 | ISSUE 2 2010 | THE CHANNEL

IN BRIEF

CANVAS APPROVED

The UK's Project Canvas – the proposed joint venture between the BBC, ITV, BT, Channel 4, Talk Talk and Arqiva to build a standards based, open Internet-connected TV environment - has appointed Kip Meek as the chairman of the board to lead the venture forward. He will also oversee the appointment of a new CEO. The BBC Trust approved the BBC’s involvement in the venture in late June.

KBSWORLD ON BADA

KBS World Radio has launched its “Let’s Learn Korean with KBS” application that is operated using Samsung Electronics’ bada platform. The “Let’s Learn Korean with KBS” application is currently available on Samsung Wave phones in Europe in five languages - English, French, Spanish, Russian and German. The materials include useful Korean phrases for a variety of situations – airport, hotel, restaurant, hospital and tourist attractions.

CANBERRA GOES DIGITAL

Ten new digital radio stations started broadcasting in the Australian capital Canberra at the end of July. The DAB+ trial is the first outside the metropolitan capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. Offering trial services are commercial radio stations, plus multicultural and multilingual stations from SBS. Canberra listeners can also hear for the first time four extra commercial digital only radio services. Commercial Radio Australia’s CEO Joan Warner said the trial was the next step in making digital radio services available to all Australians.

VON's DG honoured

BBC World Service has expanded its use of the Pharos Mediator content management platform at its UK headquarters. An auxiliary system has been established to provide production and playout support in the event of an interruption to normal operations.

The new configuration can be operated on a push-from-main or pull-from-auxiliary basis. Both the new and the existing Mediator installations are based on an enterprise architecture providing user-access from PC workstations running standard web browsers. Task-specific Web-based display screens guide operators through

More Mediator at BBC

The Director General of the Voice of Nigeria (VON) and Chairman of the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), Abubakar Bobboyi Jijiwa (above), is one of the recipients of the 2010 National Honours Awards in Nigeria. He was decorated with the Member of the Order of the Federal Republic medal by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in July at a ceremony in Abuja. Jijiwa has become something of an icon of broadcasting in Nigeria. For the past six years, he has led VON – Nigeria’s external radio broadcaster – and BON – a voluntary union of over 150 publicly- and privately-owned broadcasting stations. At VON, his second five-year term of office was approved by the government in March of this year. Jijiwa stepped down as President of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association at the 2010 CBA General Conference in South Africa after two consecutive and highly successful terms.

workflow and allow desktop search and browse of any material. Pharos Mediator is a complete broadcast content management and workflow platform capable of handling studio control, post-production and multichannel playout. It manages content efficiently for media logistics, streamlining library management, ingest and quality assessment, right through to compliance, promotions management and approvals. Pharos solutions handle millions of media assets across hundreds of TV channels and an increasing number of new media distribution networks.