10 October 2007
BBC World Service will receive £70million of extra funding from the UK Government for the three-year period from 2008/2009 to 2010/2011.
The announcement was made by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling during his Comprehensive Spending Review announcement in Parliament today. The announcement formally confirmed £15m per annum funding for a BBC news and information television channel in the Farsi (Persian) language for Iran which will be launched next year. The go-ahead for the service was announced in October 2006 by then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
BBC World Service also received funding to enhance its forthcoming Arabic language television news and information channel. The services in Arabic and Farsi will be the first television news services to be launched by the BBC in a decade. They will be the first television services to be publicly-funded by Grant-in-aid from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
The new BBC Arabic Television Service is due to launch around the turn of the year, initially as a 12-hour a day news and information service, at a cost of £19m per annum. This initial service was funded through reprioritisation of the BBC World Service’s language portfolio and self-help efficiencies.
The extra funding announced today means the new channel would be able to broadcast 24 hours a day from an appropriate point during the next financial year. A full year’s operational cost of the additional 12 hours of television broadcasting in Arabic will be an extra £6m per annum. The overall settlement also includes £1m per annum from 2009/10 to enhance BBC World Service’s multi-media operations in languages relevant to ethnic communities resident in the UK. In common with other public organisations, BBC World Service plans to meet its rising costs from within its existing budget through a vigorous programme of efficiency savings.
BBC World Service Director Nigel Chapman said: “As we mark the 75th birthday of the BBC’s service to the world this December, this settlement strengthens BBC World Service’s future as a multi-media provider of high quality independent and impartial news and information around the world. “It specifically means that audiences in the Middle East and Iran will have multi-media access through television, radio, and online to trusted journalism of the highest standing and increased opportunity for dialogue and debate. We believe this will be a popular and valuable asset for audiences in this troubled region. This is a good settlement for BBC World Service. We are grateful for the support we have received from our stakeholders in Parliament and across Whitehall in these discussions and, in particular, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Treasury.”
2 October 2007
VOA Korean launches three new programs and transforms its Seoul bureau into multimedia News Center
The Voice of Americas (VOA) Korean Service today launches three new programs and transforms its Seoul bureau into a multimedia News Center. The initiatives expand VOAs reach to North Koreans.
North Korea is one of the most closed societies in the world, said VOA Director Danforth Austin. It is imperative that we make every effort to provide North Koreans with accurate news and information about U.S. and world events that they dont receive in their domestic media.
VOAs three new Korean-language programsAmerica Today, News Panorama, and VOA News Paradewill increase its radio broadcasts to five hours daily from three and half.
America Today ( 11:00 p.m. Korean time , 1400 UTC) is a daily 30-minute evening program highlighting all walks of American society, people, and culture.
VOA News Parade ( 4:00 a.m. Korean time, 2000 UTC) is a one-hour news program focusing on Washingtons responses to the days major news through discussions with experts in international affairs and foreign policy.
News Panorama ( 9:00 p.m. Korean time, 1200 UTC) covers the main news around the Korean peninsula with live reports from Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, and other parts of the world.
With an expanded staff and equipped for independent production, VOAs Seoul News Center will provide a steady stream of reports for use throughout VOA with enhanced coverage of events in North and South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia.
2 October 2007
The Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) are now broadcasting a total of seven hours a day to Burma in response the Burmese government’s crackdown, doubling the pre-crisis airtime. Starting Sept. 26, VOA increased Burmese language broadcasts from one hour and a half to three hours daily and RFA from two to four hours daily.
In an exclusive interview on the first day of VOA’s expanded airtime, First Lady Laura Bush urged Burma’s military government to remember that innocent lives are at stake. “I want to say to the armed guards and to the soldiers: Don’t fire on your people. Don’t fire on your neighbors. Join this movement.”
“The Burmese people are starving for accurate information, both about the world’s reaction to their struggle for democracy and also about what is happening in their own land. Our expanded Burmese-language broadcasts are more important than ever in satisfying this hunger,” said James K. Glassman, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal government agency that oversees both VOA and RFA.
A bystander to the demonstrations in Rangoon who was shot by soldiers remarked in an RFA interview, “The Burmese state media announced today that eight were wounded and one had died in the clashes. We can never know the true figure. They will cover up whatever death toll they can to hide the truth.”
VOA and RFA have a measured audience of some 20% of adults weekly in cities across Burma. In times of crisis, listening often spikes to levels twice the weekly rate. Programs can be heard on shortwave and medium wave in Burma, are rebroadcast on satellite and are available through the Internet at www.VOANews.com/Burmese and www.rfa.org/burmese.
2 October 2007
BBC Learning English has become the first international content provider to officially launch on Mobiledu.cn, Nokias new mobile English Language Teaching (ELT) platform in China. Hundreds of millions of English-learners in China will now be able to use their mobile phones to take authentic and modern English learning courses provided by the BBC, including Take Away English, Real English and Quizzes.
Mobiledu.cn is a new learning application software specifically developed by Nokia for mobile devices. Nokia Director of Mobiledu.cn, Peter Zhang, said: As a new interactive learning tool, Mobiledu.cn makes learning possible anywhere and any time, and that is why it has been very popular in the market. As more users install Mobiledu.cn on their Nokia phones, more people can access and enjoy the convenience and value brought by Mobiledu.cn.
Commenting on the significance of the partnership, BBC World Service Business Development Manager for China and North Asia, Raymond Li, said: China is a very special market. It has the largest number of English learners and is the worlds largest mobile market with more than 460 million users of mobile phones. We have been keen to establish ourselves in China, and this partnership with Nokia and its mobile learning platform, Mobiledu.cn, is a real milestone in bringing our world-class content to learners of English.
Nokia Sales and Marketing Manager of Mobieldu.cn, Angela Long, added: Mobiledu.cn provides content which meets the various demands of users on learning, work, entertainment and life in general. The BBC is one of the best-known and authoritative brands in the industry, and, by bringing its Learning English content into our service, we are hoping to provide our users with a better learning experience – in addition to the BBC brand image which is strong among English-learners in China.
Andrew Thompson, Head of BBC Learning English, welcomed the new partnership: BBC ELT has been popular in China for a long time and already has a huge number of fans right across the traditional media platforms of radio and online. This launch on mobile devices offers our audience a convenient new way of learning English interactively anywhere and any time and also expands the BBCs English Learning offer in China.
2 October 2007
LA-based post house, Digital Jungle Post Production recently used its new Quantel Pablo suite to help tell a story of international adventure in providing post services for the Discovery/Travel Channel series 1000 Places to See Before You Die.
Produced by Stone Productions, the 13-episode series follows the journeys of newlywed couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, who put their lives on hold to travel the world for 14 weeks. The series is based on the best-selling travel book of the same name written by Patricia Schultz.
Digital Jungle served as full-service post house on the project. Facing a tight two-month deadline to finish the series, online editor Alison Andoos employed the companys Pablo suite for online editorial and auto assembly work. Senior colorist Greg Hamlin color corrected the show, while Kim Ho handled titling. Russel Johnson and Lisa Baro served as audio mixers.
Because the schedule was tight, I designed a workflow that was economical for the client and efficient for us, explained Digital Jungle vice president, Kassi Crews.
The series was shot on a mix of formats including DVCPRO 720P, DVCAM, HDVCAM, BetaSP and Digibeta. In addition, Andoos was given QuickTime files and still images in tiff and jpeg format. All of it had to be assembled in the Pablo.
The editors who off-lined the show cut 29.97 DVCAM, without regard to the frame-rate or resolution requirements for the final, said Crews. But with Pablo, that didnt present a problem. It allows media of differing frame rates and resolutions to be assembled on the same time-line. When the show is ready for delivery, everything is output at the correct frame-rate and resolution.
Crews explained that the company recently built a digital intermediate theater around its Pablo, equipped with Barco DLP-90 and 35mm film projectors.
Pablo serves as the central hub of the theater because we can do so many different things on it color grading, restoration, compositing, editing. It has every toolset that we need, said Crews. We can take anything in, and we can put anything out. The Pablo gives us the opportunity to do it all, without having to have three or four different boxes.
With technology changing on a daily basis, I think its important for us as a company to sit down and analyze each job that comes in and see what workflow works best, said Andoos. Every job is different.
Using a high-end piece of equipment like the Pablo helped us get the show out on time. Its an all-in-one system, she added.
Pablos ability to load four HD episodes at once was another key benefit, Andoos said. She explained that this enabled her to start a new episode, while previous episodes were still on the system, awaiting final QC and approval.
The Pablo is a frame-based system not a clip-based system, so every time I needed to do a new version of the show, it didnt take up more storage, she said. I only changed or stored the new frames that were needed.
