MBC GROUP expands anime partnerships to add titles to Shahid

1 December 2022

MBC GROUP expands anime partnerships to add titles to Shahid

Group has secured rights to various series, including TV Tokyo’s “Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War,” the 52-episode Japanese anime television series based on the “Bleach” manga series by Tite Kubo

MBC GROUP – the largest and leading media company in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) – has announced the expansion of its partnerships with key anime studios and production houses in Japan and beyond to bring more anime content to its streaming platform, Shahid.

At present, Shahid boasts hundreds of anime titles on its platform, including “Bleach”, “One Piece” “Attack on Titan”, “Tokyo Ghoul”, “Initial D”, “Gin Tama”, “Hunter x Hunter”, “Legend of the Galactic Heroes”, “Belle”, as well as the Japanese–Saudi Arabian animated action fantasy film, “The Journey”.

Building on these partnerships, MBC GROUP has secured exclusive rights in MENA to TV Tokyo’s “Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War,” the 52-episode Japanese anime television series based on the “Bleach” manga series by Tite Kubo, and a direct sequel to the “Bleach” anime series. The title returns following an eight-year hiatus, is streaming on Shahid at the same time as Japan and the United States.

The entire box set of previously aired series’ of “Bleach” is also available on Shahid for streaming.

MBC GROUP has additionally extended a partnership with TOEI Animation to add more episodes of the renowned show, “ONE PIECE”, one of anime’s longest-running programmes, based on Eiichiro Oda’s manga series of the same name.

Following the success of the anime adaptation of “Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai” on Shahid, MBC GROUP has also expanded on its partnership with its production company, Aniplex. The expansion will see the addition of more than 200 hours of Aniplex content on Shahid, including “Fate/Stay Night”, “Sword Art Online”, and “Gurren Lagann”.

Tareq Al-Ibrahim, Director of Content for SVOD at Shahid, commented: “Anime is extremely popular in the Middle East region – particularly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – so needless to say, we are incredibly excited to be making new additions to our ever-expanding anime catalogue on Shahid, bringing new and hit titles that audiences will love exploring.”

All titles mentioned above will be available on Shahid before the end of 2022.

Often aimed at adults, Anime refers to the wide range of Japanese animation that reflects multiple genres and features a distinctly recognisable visual aesthetic and storytelling approach.

Shahid is the world’s leading Arabic streaming platform by MBC GROUP.

[Source: MBC press release]

DW launches English language vodcast Global Eyes

26 November 2022

DW launches English language vodcast Global Eyes

‘Will the war in Ukraine make your Chapatis cheaper?’ – DW vodcast looks at security policy issues from the Western and Asian perspective

Global Eyes, the latest English-language DW vodcast, is launching on November 26. Two hosts get to the bottom of global security policy issues. With their guests, they explore how these issues affect people’s daily lives.

The creators of Global Eyes are dedicated to the idea that security policy and geopolitics are important for everyone, everywhere. The two hosts examine the very real effects security policy issues have on every individual person – from food prices to health, all the way to armed conflicts.

The vodcast not only deals with security policy issues from a western point of view, but also opens Asian perspectives. Global Eyes offers a broad range of information, expertise and personal stories from their guests, who come predominantly from the global South.

Getting out of the ivory tower

“The Global Eyes vodcast aims to draw the discussions about security policy issues out of government buildings, think tanks and academic institutions,” said Nadja Scholz, Acting Managing Director of Programming. “The hosts break down complex, global subject matters into comprehensible facts while exploring connections with their guests that are often forgotten.”

Host Isha Bhatia, from DW Programs for Asia, wants to prove with the vodcast that young people are interested in more than just TikTok and Instagram. Her goal is to discuss serious, complex topics so that they are interesting and do not sound like intellectual lectures. “From the G7 to the G20, from BRICS to OPEC, from Quad to SCO. What do these groups really mean? What implications do their decisions have? Global Eyes endeavors to answer these questions,” says Bhatia.

Host Kate Brady, from DW’s Analysis and Reports department: “It is easy to get bogged down in details when you are dealing with complicated security policy issues. We want to change that and, with support by experts, decipher how the big global topics affect our daily lives.”

Controversial core questions to guide the debate

Each episode is centered on a provocative question that connects a security policy issue and the lives of users. The first episode examines the how the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions on Russia are affecting the lives of people in India. The opening question is “Will the war in Ukraine make your Chapatis cheaper?”

Energy expert Nandikesh Sivalingam, from Bangalore and foreign policy expert Seema Sirohi, from Washington, help answer that question. By the end of the episode, it’s not only Kate Brady and Isha Bhatia who will better understand the question, but also the listeners.

They are already planning further questions such as “Will the conflict in Taiwan create IT jobs in India?” or “What does India’s G20 presidency have to do with antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains?”

Video and Audio, YouTube and Spotify

The format was developed by editors working together with Digital Format Development at DW. The English-language vodcast is produced by DW and will appear monthly as both an audio and video production. The first season consists of ten episodes with a run time of between 40 and 45 minutes. The video versions will appear on a monthly basis on YouTube and Facebook with the audio versions on all major podcast platforms including Spotify and iTunes as well as on the India-based platform Jiosaavn.

Global Eyes will premiere on November 26 on the DW News YouTube channel, on the DW Asia Facebook account and on various podcast platforms.

Global Eyes website:

https://www.dw.com/en/global-eyes-security-policy-and-what-it-means-for-you/program-63538048

YouTube:

https://youtu.be/xBSSGjUeEmM

iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/global-eyes-security-policy-and-what-it-means-for-you/id1653609075

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/22RwqvNOHRaV48cfxcZj9L?si=7a8b7687d3124c73

[Source: DW press release]

Guests on France 24’s ‘Talking Europe’

25 November 2022

Guests on France 24’s ‘Talking Europe’

On Saturday 26 November at 1:15 pm Paris time Armen Georgian’s guests on France 24’s ‘Talking Europe’ are:

Péter SZIJJÁRTÓ, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade

and

Paolo BORCHIA, Member of European Parliament (Italy – Identity and Democracy Group)

and

Juan Fernando LÓPEZ AGUILAR, Member of European Parliament (Spain – Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats)

[Source: France 24 press release]

DW opens Asia Pacific Bureau in Jakarta

19 November 2022

DW opens Asia Pacific Bureau in Jakarta

DW Director General Peter Limbourg: “The opening of our office in Jakarta is an important step for DW to get closer to our target groups in one of the most important regions of the world. We have a motivated and highly qualified team here. It is important that we also increasingly produce our digital offerings worldwide.”

For many people in South East Asia DW already is a trusted source for news and information. With Indonesia being the region’s largest economy and a key political player the new bureau is in a strategic location to cover events across several countries.

DW is building a team of correspondents in the region who will contribute to the Indonesian language service as well as the network’s global journalistic output. In depth coverage of events in South East Asia and Australia will be just as important as speed in covering breaking news. With a network of reporters and video journalists across the region, all coordinated from the Asia Pacific Bureau in Jakarta, DW will be able to boost its output of exclusive stories. Reports will not only come in faster but crucially contain the local perspective of journalists who know their surroundings.

DW Jakarta Bureau Chief Georg Matthes: “Reporting from the Asia-Pacific region is not nearly as comprehensive as it should be given the geopolitical importance of this part of the world. Our team does not just report on Indonesia, but on a large region facing economic and environmental changes that will have a global impact. The editorial team provides news and background to all of DW’s linear and especially digital channels in multiple languages.”

[Source: DW press release]

The Trusted News Initiative creates Asia-Pacific network

9 November 2022

The Trusted News Initiative creates Asia-Pacific network

Partners in the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) have agreed to further expand its global representation by creating a regional Asia-Pacific network.

The media organisations that now make up TNI’s new Asia-Pacific network have received training, funded by the Google News Initiative, to help their journalists navigate the disinformation environment.

The TNI is an industry collaboration of major news and global tech organisations, led by the BBC, working together to stop the spread of disinformation where it poses risk of real-world harm. The creation of the Asia-Pacific network will enable the TNI’s regional partners to share their insights about tackling disinformation and discuss trends in the region. They will draw on their expertise to share best practices and findings with the wider TNI and alert each other to the most dangerous forms of disinformation through the TNI cooperative framework.

The TNI is expanding its Asia-Pacific presence with the addition of the following group of independent news organisations:

ABC (Australia)
Dawn (Pakistan)
Indian Express (India)
Kompas (Indonesia)
NDTV (India)
NHK (Japan)
SBS (Australia)

Senior Controller of BBC News International Services and BBC World Service Director, Liliane Landor (pictured), says: “With the creation of TNI’s first regional network, we are bringing together trusted Asia-Pacific news-publishing organisations to further reinforce our collaboration and to make it even more efficient and productive.”

Head of Google News Lab, Matt Cooke, says: “As part of the Google News Initiative’s ongoing efforts to strengthen journalism and fight misinformation, we’ve worked with a range of academics, news organisations and nonprofits across the globe for several years. Now, we’re supporting the Trusted News Initiative to deliver targeted, expert training workshops on a variety of digital tools to help journalists as they seek to continue day-to-day verification and fact-checking in newsrooms across the region.”

Current TNI partners include AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, Information Futures Lab, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft, The Nation Media Group, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, and The Washington Post.

The TNI partnership works collectively in four main areas:

Fast Alert: creating a system so organisations can alert each other rapidly when they discover disinformation which threatens human life or disrupts democracy
Intelligence sharing: real-time conversation of equals between news organisations and tech platforms about the evolving nature of harmful disinformation
Media education: sharing insights and research on how audiences and users react to disinformation, thus informing best practice and supporting better digital literacy
Engineering solutions: sharing information on engineering solutions for authentication of trusted news sources and improving the information environment.

This is entirely separate from, and does not in any way affect, the editorial stance of any partner organisation.

[Source: BBC press release]