20 December 2006
Harris Corporation has announced that MediaCorp, the largest broadcaster in Singapore, has deployed the Harris H-Class D-Series Playout Automation application to control the terrestrial platform for Southeast Asia’s first high-definition (HD) trial channel.
The D-Series Playout Automation application, with its flexible, scalable design, provides a solid base for MediaCorp’s current HD trial channel and any future broadcast environment.
“As part of the Media Development Authority’s initiatives to speed up the deployment and adoption of HD technology, MediaCorp decided to launch the terrestrial HD trial channel to offer better quality and a wider choice of services to viewers while exploring viable business opportunities harnessing digital technology,” said Mr. Chang Long Jong, MediaCorp Deputy Group CEO (Television). “The main purpose of the trial is to gauge the television audience’s level of interest in HDTV programming. A secondary objective is to test the performance of the latest MPEG 4 AVC/H.264 encoding technology employed for the trial. The data obtained will help us at MediaCorp crystallize our HDTV migration strategy.”
“Redundancy, reliability and flexibility were key factors in the decision to deploy D-Series Playout Automation application for this high-profile project,” said Mr. Joe Khodeir, president of Harris Software Systems, Asia Pacific. “From ingest to transmission, D-Series provides MediaCorp with a solid HD automation solution for the future.”
19 December 2006
EuroNews is now available in the “News & International” section of Sky EPG in Italy.
Sky Italia, Italy’s leading pay-TV platform, has boosted its news offer with the addition of EuroNews for their viewers on channel 508.
Nearly four million households in Italy subscribing to Sky Italia now have easy access to EuroNews in all seven language versions: in Italian, in English, French, in German, in Portuguese, in Russian and in Spanish.
Philippe Cayla, Chairman and CEO of EuroNews said: “I am delighted that Sky Italia has added EuroNews to their news line up and we are confident that subscribers will take advantage of our multi-lingual service to watch the channel in either their own language or in the 6 other versions of the channel. EuroNews is the leading PETV News channels, according to the EMS Survey Summer 2006, amongst the Italian upmarket population and thanks to Sky, I am positive the channel will have greater success in Italy”.
19 December 2006
French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has called on the UN Security Council to “unanimously” pass a draft
resolution aiming to protect journalists in conflict zones.
“The time has now come to count the votes,” Mr Douste-Blazy said during a
press conference in the presence of well-known journalists, including the
television news presenter Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and the former Iraq hostage
Florence Aubenas.
The minister said he wanted the text, which was tabled by France and Greece
at the beginning of December, to be passed “in a few hours’ or a few days’
time” and “unanimously”.
The draft resolution “condemns all attacks targeting journalists, media
workers and associated staff in situations of armed conflict and calls on
all parties to put an end to these practices”. “I fail to see who could not
vote for it,” Mr Douste-Blazy said.
Robert Menard, the general secretary of Reporters Without Borders (RWB), for
his part stressed that “in Iraq, in less than four years, 139 journalists
and media workers have been killed, twice as many as during the Vietnam war,
which lasted 20 years”. “These figures justify the urgency of the move” at
the UN, he said.
18 December 2006
Romanian President Traian Basescu, in a major speech to the Romanian parliament today, paid official tribute to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty for keeping Romanians informed about developments in their country and in the world during the days of communism.
Basescu said “Radio Free Europe… was the spoken newspaper of all Romanians. I pay homage to former Romanian Service directors Ghita Ionescu, Mihai Cismarescu, Noel Bernard and Vlad Georgescu — men who fought selflessly and passionately for the truth, to uncover it, tell it and make it known.”
Basescu also named former broadcasters Monika Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca, saying, “they awakened the Romanian people with their unforgettable programs and through Radio Free Europe became the moral conscience of all Romanians.”
He made the statement in an address to a special session of both chambers of the Romanian parliament, convened to adopt the report of a presidential commission on the communist dictatorship in Romania. The commission, led by University of Maryland professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, spent more than a year compiling the report, which condemns the communist regime as “criminal and illegitimate.” It is the first official condemnation of 44 years of communism in Romania, which lasted until 1989. Former Polish president Lech Walesa and Romania’s King Michael attended the parliamentary session.
Ghita Ionescu, who was named in Basescu’s speech, was the first director of RFE broadcasting to Romania when it began in May, 1951. The other named broadcast directors — Mihai Cismarescu, Noel Bernard and Vlad Georgescu — led the service in the 1970s and 1980s, and all died of brain cancer in succession. Allegations have surfaced that all three were targeted by Romanian communist agents.
Today, RFE/RL’s Romania-Moldova Service broadcasts one and one half hours of programming a day Monday through Friday to Moldova and Romania, produced in Prague and in the service’s Chisinau bureau and transmitted to listeners via satellite and shortwave signals and UKV, FM and cable (“tochka”) frequencies provided by local affiliate stations.
8 December 2006
The International News Safety Institute has welcomed a move by the UN Security Council to provide greater protection to journalists and other news media staff in conflict zones.
French UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, who introduced a resolution on journalist safety on 5 December on behalf of France, Britain, Denmark, Greece and Slovakia, said it was “very important” that journalists can do their job independently and freely and are not attacked.
The measure would condemn all attacks targeting journalists, media professionals and associated personnel covering armed conflicts or otherwise caught up in war. It would urge governments “and all other parties to an armed conflict” to do all they can to prevent crimes against journalists, investigate any crimes that occur and bring the perpetrators to justice.
“Almost 1,000 journalists and other news media staff have died trying to cover dangerous stories around the world over the past 10 years,” said INSI Director Rodney Pinder.
“Most are murdered and few of the perpetrators ever face justice. Press freedom, a cornerstone of democracy, is not possible wherever journalists are killed trying to do their job.
“I hope and trust this resolution will be passed by the Security Council and that all those who have a responsibility for the lives of journalists will take it to heart.”
Concerned by the rising number of news media deaths around the globe, INSI, the International Federation of Journalists and the European Broadcasting Union joined forces more than a year ago to push for the adoption of such a resolution by the Security Council.
“It is extremely heartening that major nations have now taken up the campaign,” Pinder said. “We thank them and wish them all speed in securing passage of the resolution.”
Ambassador de la Sabliere said he hoped the 15-nation Security Council would act swiftly to approve the text.
