18 September 2009
AFP reports:
Al Jazeera broke a long established taboo on Arab TV – the satellite channel which has obtained the rights to broadcast Champions League matches in Arabic-speaking countries showed a football match featuring an Israeli team. This was a first on Arab television.
The UEFA Champions League match between Israeli champions Maccabi Haifa and German Bundesliga team Bayern Munich was broadcast with a commentary in English.
Previously Saudi-owned ART held the rights to broadcast Europe’s premier club football competition but ART never showed a game featuring an Israeli team.
18 September 2009
New Zealands TV public service broadcaster TVNZ and German systems and consulting company S4M Solutions for Media have successfully concluded the implementation of S4Ms S4AdSales system.
S4AdSales is a sophisticated airtime sales system that supports both local as well as global advertising campaigns, thereby connecting different channels, countries, languages, currencies and media. As TVNZs business system to sell and manage the broadcasters advertising inventory, either directly or through advertising agencies, S4AdSales is responsible for a core process within the enterprise. It is the engine room for the business, analogous to airline inventory management or hotel inventory (room) management. It is the guts of how we manage our $300 million revenue stream, says Damian Swaffield, TVNZs General Manager Technology.
Dr. Manfred Heinen, S4Ms CEO, adds: Long distance projects of course are always a challenge. It is especially important to establish channels that enable real team play. This was possible with TVNZ and we are happy that S4M was able to support TVNZ in such an important area as media sales.
S4AdSales is used by private and public service broadcasters in Europe, Asia and North America.
18 September 2009
From the ABU website:
Indias national television service, Doordarshan (DDI), has turned 50 with a call to win a bigger share of the cable and satellite market, Indiantelevision.com reports.
Its Director General, Aruna Sharma, said the 50th anniversary was a time for introspection to examine the role of the public broadcaster.
It was also a time to consider how DDI could penetrate the cable and satellite sector in a big way, as it had done in terrestrial TV, she said.
DDI was established on 15 September 1959 with an hour-long daily telecast from a studio in Delhi but began regular telecasts only in the 1970s.
It now operates 19 channels, accessible to more than 90 percent of people in India via more than 1,400 transmitters.
On the eve of its anniversary, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said the government was contemplating using ex-servicemen from the army and former policemen for the work of running television transmitters in the border areas.
She said it was important that Indian broadcasting signals should be stronger than those coming from China or Pakistan.
18 September 2009
The BBC Trust today announced a series of changes to the governance arrangements for BBC Worldwide. As part of its review of the BBCs commercial activities the Trust has agreed a revised governance framework within which the BBC must operate its commercial activities.
These changes are designed to strengthen the oversight of the BBCs commercial operation and ensure even greater clarity and confidence in the separation of the BBCs public service and commercial activities.
Among the changes agreed are: – the BBC Worldwide Board, which is a subsidiary board of the BBCs Executive Board, will become smaller and more focussed on the delivery of a rolling three year commercial strategy agreed by the Trust; – the new chairman of the BBC Worldwide board must be a non-executive director from the BBCs Executive Board thereby strengthening the link between the two boards and the role of the BBCs public service arm as the shareholder in the company; – there will be changes to the membership of both the BBCs Executive Board and the Worldwide Board in order to reduce the potential for conflicts of interest. Specifically, the Chief Executive Officer of BBC Worldwide will no longer be a member of the BBCs Executive Board and staff from BBC Vision (who produce most of the BBC content subsequently sold by Worldwide) will not be eligible to be members of the Worldwide Board. This will result in Jana Bennett stepping down from the BBC Worldwide Board.
These changes will bring the business further in line with the Combined Code on Corporate Governance. The Trust has also stipulated that it expects BBC Worldwide to operate as far as possible within the principles set by the Code, and any deviation from it needs to be agreed by the BBC Trust.
This new governance framework for BBC Worldwide, proposed by the Executive Board, will be stipulated in the Trusts protocols. The BBCs Executive Board, led by Director-General Mark Thompson, will be responsible for ensuring compliance with it. The changes will come into effect from 1 October 2009.
In addition to the above changes, the Trust has decided that the financial threshold for referral of transactions for Trust approval should be lowered from £50m to £30m and the Trust will retain the ability to scrutinise any activity that it believes is not consistent with the strategy it has agreed.
Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said:
“The BBC Trust believes that these changes will strengthen the ability of BBC Worldwide to deliver value to licence fee payers through the return it makes on content owned and paid for by licence fee payers. The changes also respond to concerns raised by commercial competitors and others.
“These changes build on the principles set out in the interim conclusions of the Trusts commercial review, in which we set out our vision for a focussed BBC Worldwide that is more closely aligned with the BBCs public purposes. There will be no delay in progressing that objective although we must await the outcome of Governments Digital Britain review.
“Mark Thompson is right to say that in the longer term the BBC will look at whether Worldwide needs to be 100 per cent owned by the Corporation. However, the Trust wont contemplate any loss of direct control over BBC rights created as result of investment from the licence fee payer.”
The appointment of a new Chairman of the BBC Worldwide Board will be for the BBCs Executive Board to make; the current Chairmans term ends on 30 September.
This concludes the governance aspects of the Trusts review. The Trust aims to report on the remaining elements of the review following clarification of the outcome of the Digital Britain consultations.
18 September 2009
EJC Media News reports:
European journalists are producing an increasing amount of original content for online-only publications – but teach themselves the digital skills to produce it, a new survey has suggested. PR agency network Oriella PR Network, polled 354 journalists from national, trade, regional and broadcast media from Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Sweden and the UK, for the 2009 European Digital Journalism Survey, and results suggested a significant rise in the amount of original content being produced for online from 2008.
According to the survey, 43 per cent of those polled said at least 60 per cent of the material produced for online is original content. But 67 per cent of respondents said they had taught themselves digital skills, such as video editing and formatting for online. Only one in nine per cent of participants said they had received presenting to video training, for example.
Blogging was now part of the day job for 46 per cent of respondents, while 47 per cent said they were required to produce online video clips.
This year’s research also explored the impact of Twitter on European journalists. More than a third of European publications have Twitter channels, with the UK and Netherlands being the earliest adopters. (Journalism.co.uk)
