Page 14 - AIB | The Chanel | Issue 2 2011

IN BRIEF
SMARTLABS FOR
RUSSIAN IPTV
As reported by Broadband
TV News, Russian telco
Rostelecom has chosen US
firm SmartLabs to develop a
common platform for its
federal IPTV service. The $50m
contract will run for five
years. Rostelecom currently
operates three different
IPTV services with a total of
over 400,000 subscribers.
The advantage of using
SmartLabs is that its
solutions are already used by
subsidiaries of Svyazinvest.
Although IPTV is the fastest
growing segment in Russian
pay-TV, its market share is
still only around 3%.
6NEWSDISCUSSING
TRENDS
Turkey-based network
6News, which offers local
bi-lingual news, broadcasting
every half hour in both
Turkish and English around
the clock, is building a rapidly
growing global audience via
DigiTurk, satellite, and
internet video streaming.
New this season are
programmes which bring
together great minds in
economics and international
relations to discuss trends
shaping the changing
business and geopolitical
landscapes – programmes
to watch are 'Point of View',
'Corridor39', and 'Diplomats'.
ABUNEWSSAFETY
At its recent annual meeting
in Kathmandu, the ABU
News Group approved news
safety guidelines drawn up
by members of Asiavision.
The guidelines call for news
organisations to put safety
above all other considerations
for news crews working in
any environment. The News
Group also decided to set up
a task group to look at its
future direction and at ways
of improving Asiavision.
NHK-Japan, MCOT-Thailand
and CCTV-China were
named as winners of the
Asiavision Annual Awards for
2011 for their contributions
to the news exchange.
AP video usage rises steeply
Non-profit news with
ideological bent
THE CHANNEL | MEDIA MARKETS
Sony Europe has taken a further
step along the 3D road with “3D
Experience”, a new free of
charge on-demand streaming
service offering a range of
promotional video clips and trial
content in 3D available to owners
of 3D capable Sony “BRAVIA”
LCD TVs immediately after
purchase and without
registration.
The service launched in July
in the UK, Germany, France, the
US and Canada, with initially 30
titles available from a variety of
genres, including movies, music,
sports - including this year’s
Wimbledon - and documentaries.
Sony plans to further expand the
content line-up and promote “3D
Experience” among content
holders as a forum through
which to showcase their 3D
offerings.
Sony3D
OnDemand
AP Deputy Director of News
Mark Davies said the first half of
2011 will go down on record as
being the busiest news period of
recent times, with massive
global news - the Japanese
tsunami, the Arab Spring and
more light-hearted events like
the Royal Wedding – providing a
logistical challenge for all news
organisations.
Electronic tracking of video
footage provided by APTN to 350
major broadcasters shows that
the broadcasters’ use of video
from AP has risen from an
average 150,000 times a month
in 2010 to 250,000 times a month
in 2011. At the peak periods of
February and March this year,
video usage topped 300,000
single edits.
In July, with the IAAF World
championships in Daegu, South
Korea and the 2012 London
Olympics in mind, AP launched a
new digital sports product that
provides text stories linked to
photos and video clips from
Sports News Television.
Customers are able to access
the text, photo and video via a
single AP platform, making it
quicker and easier to publish
with minimal editorial effort.
Andrew Shaw (pictured) has
been appointed as AP's VP
Commercial for EMEA and Asia.
He oversees product licensing to
broadcasters, print and digital
media, and is responsible for
customising content to meet
customer and market needs.
As traditional newsrooms are
shrinking, a group of institutions
and funders motivated by
something other than profit are
entering the journalism arena. A
new study by the Pew Research
Center's Project for Excellence in
Journalism reveals that a large
number of these new non-profit
sites – in fact roughly half - are
offering news reporting that is
clearly ideological or partisan in
nature. The study examined 46
news websites across the US
and an additional 68 institutions
and individuals that provide the
primary financial support for
those sites. In general, the more
ideological sites tended to be
funded mostly or entirely by one
parent organization – though that
parent group may have various
contributors. They tended to be
less transparent about who they
are and where their funding
comes from. And they tended to
produce less content - in some
cases generating one or two
stories per week produced by a
single staffer.
Beyond the revolutions
UK-based Islam Channel has
produced remarkable programming
since the start of 2011, following
the events of the Arab Spring and
delving deeper and looking
beyond the revolutions.
Among the programmes aired
were 'Syria at the Crossroads',
an examination of the Assad
regime and its relationship with
the West; 'Who’s Afraid of the
Arab Revolutions?'; and 'Libya: A
History of Intervention' which
examines the motives for
Western involvement.
The channel also re-launched
its news programming which
now covers current local and
national news, bringing
audiences up-to-date alternative
insight into events as they happen.
14 | ISSUE 2 2011 | THE CHANNEL