2 April 2009
Spanish private television broadcaster Telecinco, which like most media groups is struggling with falling advertising revenues due to the economic slowdown, is studying a merger with another broadcaster.
Another Spanish television broadcaster, La Sexta, also said it was open to a tie-up due to the dire advertising market.
Earlier this year, the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero passed a law which eliminated a 5.0 percent limit on cross shareholdings at TV broadcasters in a move intended to ease sector mergers.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s holding company Fininvest holds a 50 percent stake in Telecinco, which started broadcasting in 1990 as one of the first three private television channels in Spain. Telecinco was the market leader in terms of audience share in Spain in 2008 for the fifth year in a row but its ratings have slipped this year due to the rise of younger channels and a recovery by state broadcaster TVE.
2 April 2009
Radio Netherlands Worldwide wants to expand and intensify its collaborations with foreign media partners in the next few years.
Cooperation and the exchange of content, in the form of text, audio and video, fits into the stations multimedia policy. Visual content, particularly web video, will assume an increasingly prominent role. More intensive cooperation with international media offers a larger international audience and the opportunity to share its journalists specialist knowledge with third parties, as it did yesterday at the Afghanistan summit in The Hague.
Jan Hoek, General Director of RNW, says: The collaborations with stations like al-Jazeera and Indonesias Metro TV during the Afghanistan summit was highly successful. We will looking to see whether we can give this kind of cooperation a structural basis.
The collaboration with METRO TV, on eof the biggest television stations in Indonesia, meant that millions of Indonesians were well informed about the Afghanistan conference. Apart from METRO TV en al-Jazeera, Radio Sonora Jakarta, which has ten stations in Indonesia, also took its news and reports from RNWs specialists.
Jan Hoek: The potential is enormous. In the United States and Latin America, for instance, we reach millions of people through our partner stations media networks.
1 April 2009
Recent data from the MAVISE TV database, developed for the DG Communication of the European Commission by the European Audiovisual Observatory, shows the continued expansion of television channels in the European (EU 27 + Croatia and Turkey) television market. More than 200 new TV channels were launched in 2008. There are now a total of 5587 channels (plus 412 non-European channels) available in the 29 countries.
Digital terrestrial television (DTT) has experienced significant developments in the last year. Six of the 29 countries included in the MAVISE database have already ceased analogue terrestrial transmission. France, Italy, Spain and the UK (four markets with large use of terrestrial television) have reached very high levels of DTT penetration in households and two of these have started regional switch-off of the analogue signals (Group 2). The third group includes smaller countries with established DTT services. The market will see more rapid development this year with the expected launch of new services in Slovenia, Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Poland, Greece, and Slovakia. There are a number of channels on DTT line-ups in 16 countries. Currently the services in Malta are Pay-TV only, with FTA services to be launched in 2009.
DTT as a free to air platform plays an important role in the provision of universal service television. The presence of the public service channels (and their important role in the development of DTT) can be seen below in the breakdown between public and private channels on the DTT line-ups. On average the capacity used by public service channels on DTT platforms is approximately 25% as compared to 75% for private channels. In comparison, within the entire range of channels available in the 29 countries on all platforms, 7% are public while 93% are private. In Belgium, there are currently only public service offers.
When looking at the types of channels available on the DTT platforms (by genres) there are also some significant differences compared to the entire television market on all platforms. The DTT platforms have a significantly higher percentage of generalist, news, business and cultural channels. There is a lower channel capacity on DTT platforms in comparison to satellite or cable and this has probably led to a clearly higher focus on making available more public service, generalist and news and cultural content. Specialist channels such as sport, cinema and childrens channels are still significant, but other niche channels are much less prominent on the DTT platforms: home shopping, adult channels, weather, religious, minority interest etc. Adult channels are available on DTT platforms in Finland, Netherlands, Estonia, Italy and Lithuania (where pay-DTT services are available). Home shopping channels are included in the line-ups of Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
There is also a difference between smaller and larger markets regarding the number of national and international channels available. The larger countries such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK have significantly more national and regional channels. In contrast smaller countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Malta currently rely on international channels for almost 50% of their DTT content.
1 April 2009
At the 2009 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nev., STATS (booth SL5011) and Vizrt (SL5508) will host an exclusive in-booth demonstration of its holographic-effect technology for members of the media on Tuesday, April 21st at 8:30AM. STATS and Vizrt are exhibiting from neighboring locations at NAB and this special demonstration will be seen from both companies exhibit areas.
Since we announced our plans to conduct in-booth demonstrations for NAB attendees, members of the media have clamored for their own opportunity to see the holographic effect up close, said Bjarne Berg, CEO for Vizrt. “The press event is an exciting opportunity for us to demonstrate it and show broadcasters how they can use it to their advantage. “
The press demonstrations will provide a wonderful opportunity to display the versatility of this product both in term of potential uses as well as set up and size, said Brian Kopp, Vice President at STATS. We look forward to demonstrating the product and answering any questions about the technology.
The holographic effect proved very effective in drawing viewers to CNNs election night coverage, with an estimated 13 million viewers tuning in. It is poised to redefine the remote interview, creating the appearance of a face-to-face exchange. The transmission is seamless, provides high optical quality and eliminates the traditional split-screen view and production sequences of typical remote interviews.
This innovative video treatment is comprised of STATS video processing and tracking technology, along with Vizrts real-time tracking and rendering software. The impression of the holographic interview is completed in fractions of a second.
Multi-participant interviews are possible, changing the scale of the hologram subject or using the image in post-production to create intriguing promos.
Press interested in attending will need to pre-register with Nick Stamm from STATS, stamm@stats.com or Robin Hoffman from Pipeline Communications robinhoffman@pipecomm.com and will be required to show a special exhibit floor pass for entry. Representatives from STATS and Vizrt will distribute the passes at the LVCC Main South Lower Hall entrance on Tuesday, April 21 beginning at 8 AM.
31 March 2009
The founding conference of the National Bureau of Investigative Journalism (NBR) is taking place in Moscow on March 31, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.
The chief editors of Russia’s leading media outlets are gathering to discuss the organization’s goals and objectives.
The president of the Moscow-based Fund to Protect Glasnost, Aleksey Simonov, told RFE/RL that the NBR should become a sort of lobbyist for journalists’ interests in state entities, such as the State Duma and Interior Ministry.
According to Simonov, the increasing violence directed against journalists in Russia demands closer cooperation between journalists and police investigators.
He also said investigative journalism remains one of the most effective and necessary genres in Russia.
