30 January 2008
London-based transmission company WRN has finalised an agreement with a major FM network in Turkey to broker airtime on its behalf to international broadcasters and programme makers wishing to reach listeners across the country.
The network offers 28 relays in the west and south of the country with a major presence in four of Turkey’s five largest cities; Istanbul, Izmir, Bursa and Adana.
The FM network can broadcast programmes in Turkish, English, French and German and already hosts regular shows from Deutsche Welle and US religious broadcaster Family Radio. Broadcasters are able to specify coverage across the entire network, regionally and even locally.
Marina Lois, WRN’s product development and distribution manager, says: “Our agreement with this FM network opens it up to any international broadcasters seeking to reach a substantial population in Turkey and is part of WRN’s strategy to develop FM and AM relay opportunities for international broadcasters in key global locations. These already include relays in Afghanistan, Israel, Argentina and several major American cities.”
18 January 2008
Radio New Zealand will provide extensive coverage of the state funeral for Sir Edmund Hillary from St. Marys Church in Auckland on Tuesday 22nd January.
Radio
New Zealand will provide extensive coverage of the state funeral for Sir
Edmund Hillary (left) from St. Marys Church in Auckland on Tuesday 22nd January
and is offering the coverage to broadcasters around the world on a
non-commercial free-of-charge basis (see below).
As the official radio broadcaster Radio New Zealand will also ensure New
Zealanders all over the world have the opportunity to be part of a very
significant time of national reflection and commemoration. Radio New Zealand
will broadcast the entire service live and will live-stream via the Radio New
Zealand website www.radionz.co.nz for
international audiences, allowing New Zealanders living or holidaying overseas
to share this important occasion with their friends and families back home.
People in the Pacific and parts of South East Asia listening on short wave will
be able to tune in to Radio New Zealand International on the frequencies of
15,720 kHz for the analogue service, and 17,675 kHz for DRM.
For those unable to listen to Radio New Zealands live coverage, a recording of
the service will be available on the website to be replayed as audio-on-demand
and as a podcast.
Radio New Zealand coverage will begin from 6.00 am on Tuesday morning (NZ time).
Morning Report and Nine to Noon will use respected senior
broadcasters including Geoff Robinson and Jack Perkins and a team of news
reporters in the lead up to live coverage of the funeral service which will
commence at 10.30 am.
The Radio New Zealand website is featuring several audio on demand programmes
covering the life and times of Sir Edmund Hillary, including an obituary by
Morning Reports Geoff Robinson and two special documentaries produced by
Jack Perkins for Radio New Zealand National.
Everest And Beyond, a tribute to the extraordinary life and
achievements of Sir Edmund Hillary was first broadcast on Friday 11th January
and Its One Thing To Climb A Mountain is a special three-part series
tracing the late Sir Edmund Hillarys extraordinary life from the conquest of
Everest onwards. The programmes highlight the largely untold stories of those
who were shoulder-to-shoulder with Sir Ed on his expeditions to remote corners
of the world and during his humanitarian activities with Nepals Sherpa people.
Broadcasters
wishing to carry the Radio New Zealand coverage or run the documentaries should
contact Matthew Finn, Broadcast Infrastructure Manager, or John Barr,
Communications Manager. The e-mail address system at RNZ is firstname.lastname @
radionz.co.nz.
10 January 2008
Radioscape has entered the fast-growing world of internet radio, partnering with CSR to develop a complete internet radio design that’s being deployed in UK manufacturer Intempo’s internet radio products.
Intempo’s Daisy radio has been designed around RadioPro, CSR’s Wi-Fi internet radio example design. RadioPro provides Intempo with the benefits of a quick time to market, a flexible design and the lowest power internet radio platform in the industry. In partnership with Radioscape, CSR jointly developed the combined internet and FM radio to bring Intempo’s radio quickly to the market.
RadioPro is based on two low power chips from CSR: UniFi and its Multimedia Application Processor (MAP), a highly integrated chip with a RISC processor, a DSP and a stereo codec. The low power design of RadioPro has allowed Intempo’s internet radio to deliver 20 hours of continuous music streaming.
Tracy Hopkins Vice President of CSR’s Consumer Business Unit, commented, “CSR is committed to making the adoption and integration of wireless technology easier for designers and manufacturers. CSR’s RadioPro was designed with the intention of enabling OEMs such as Intempo to quickly produce internet radio devices for the mass market.”
Kevin Parslow, Intempo Design added, “CSR’s UniFi Wi-Fi silicon and software has enabled us to produce an internet radio that offers high quality and performance to a wide audience. The CSR RadioPro example design allowed us to bring the Daisy radio to mass production within a very short space of time.”
Andrew Dewhurst, Product Manager at RadioScape, added: “We have decided to jump straight past the conventional module approach and have provided our first complete Internet radio design. Firmware updates can be sent to all or specific receivers over the Internet and the receivers have a fail-safe backup in case of failed or interrupted downloads.”
The Intempo internet radio will be in UK shops in Q2 2008 with a price tag of GBP149.
8 January 2008
The heads of five of the largest international broadcasters have called upon governments to honour the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and “end any and all practices that hamper the rights of people everywhere to receive and impart information.”
At their annual meeting in Hilversum, Netherlands, the directors of the BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, and theVoice of America issued an unprecedented joint resolution denouncing what they termed growing trends towards media restrictions and attacks on journalists in many of the countries to which they broadcast.
While acknowledging that each broadcaster has had different experiences, they spoke with one voice about a common concern, the “grave and rising threats to the right to gather information and communicate it across national borders.”
Jan Hoek, Director General of Radio Netherlands Worldwide who currently chairs the group of five broadcasters, said, “Our most important objective is to inform people without access to diverse media sources and viewpoints, who lack reliable and independent information. In a progressively polarised environment where the media in many countries are encountering fierce curbs on their freedom to publish, we need to stand together to meet the needs of those millions of audiences worldwide who have come to depend on us as a vital source of trustworthy information.”
According to several press monitoring organisations, press freedom has been on the decline in many countries in recent years. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has tracked an increase in the number of journalists killed at work each year since 2002.
The five international broadcasters reach hundreds of millions weekly by radio, television, and the Internet. Programs are produced in 60 languages and broadcast worldwide through thousands of affiliate radio stations, television channels, and cable systems.
7 January 2008
Vizrt has announced a new software breakthrough, Viz|Reporter 1.0. Viz|Reporter provides for easy upload of video from a mobile phone into an existing newsroom workflow without incurring any further degradation of the content quality for the purpose of transferring it over mobile networks.
Until now, television news producers and photojournalists with video images captured on mobile phones have faced a time-consuming process to put them on air. Images had to be converted first and then copied onto a PC. During this process, images were compressed and the quality greatly reduced. In the case of breaking news, such a time-intensive procedure could mean the difference between images making it to air in a timely manner or not.
As the sophistication of mobile phone technology increases, so does the potential of Viz|Reporter to impact the way breaking news is reported, said Petter Ole Jakobsen, CTO of Vizrt, Newsrooms that employ Viz|Reporter will not only be able to capitalize on citizen journalists; they will more efficiently use their staff in the field. The product is designed to evolve with the continual improvements implemented on new multimedia cell phones, and content can be uploaded from any location where cell phone coverage is available.
The Viz|Reporter application evolved in response to the needs of a news organization. Norwegian newsgroup, Adresseavisen, sought a way to better utilize uploaded content from field reporters as well as improve image quality and content management. Vizrt and Adresseavisen worked together to develop the Viz|Reporter application. Viz|Reporter is currently in use at Adresseavisens regional newspaper, television station and radio station, broadcasting to three counties in Norway. Around sixty photojournalists are using Viz|Reporter to upload content from the field directly into the newsroom workflow via their mobile phones.
Rolf Dyrnes Svendsen, Editor and Director of Digital Media at Adresseavisen explained, The system has improved productivity by a great deal. It allows us to process content uploads more quickly and get the images published right away. Our previous quality issues with mobile phone content have been resolved, and our multimedia content is now handled in an optimal manner.
Prior to installing Viz|Reporter on reporters mobile phones, video or stills captured via cell phone were uploaded using MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) technology. The compression required for video distribution over MMS resulted in severely compromised image quality. Once the content was received, the newsroom personnel were faced with a complex process of browsing their system to find the newly uploaded file. The company would also use email to transmit files but found that transmission became cumbersome because of the e-mails overhead information. Overhead information included in e-mail for the purpose of directing or controlling the transfer added extra information to the actual multimedia content. If the connection was dropped, email provided no means to reconstruct a transfer, which forced the journalist to start the transfer all over again.
Viz|Reporter makes it possible for media companies and broadcasters to produce up-to-the-minute visuals for breaking news stories. Viz|Reporter runs directly on a variety of mobile multimedia phones such as the Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola models. For added flexibility, the software has two methods of submitting video and stills. Users can employ a dedicated J2ME application or the phones own browser (WAP or XHTML) to upload content. The J2ME application utilizes functions available according to the security model on the device. As long as the journalist or passerby witnessing a news event has mobile network coverage, they can transmit those images on the air. The content is then immediately accessible for production and control room staff or use online. This allows the station to move quickly, which is vital to reporting breaking news and tracking developing stories.
Viz|Reporter creates an index of images on the mobile phone, sorted based on their time stamp. This helps the journalist access the latest images captured. After selecting the proper time period, the user sees previews of each image and can decide whether to include or omit certain shots.
Not only does Viz|Reporter optimize the process of capturing and uploading content, it also provides metadata templates that allow users to standardize and streamline video for media asset management purposes. Searches in MAM solutions such as Viz|Video Hub or Ardome are simplified through the addition of keywords describing location, date and subject. Metadata are prepared using standard metadata tags and can also be translated to conform to other metadata schemes. This metadata will be directly linked with the video and located on the Viz|Reporter server.
