20 November 2003
CNBC Europe, the leading pan-European financial and business television channel and a member of the AIB, has signed an exclusive agreement with Giorgio Armani to dress and style its team of 11 on-air presenters.
The new wardrobe will be debuted during November and is drawn from the Armani Collezioni mens and womens collections for Autumn/Winter 2003 and Spring/Summer 2004, and for the female presenters complemented by Giorgio Armani Cosmetics.
Rick Cotton, President and Managing Director of CNBC Europe, said:
“This is a unique partnership in the broadcasting world. CNBC Europe is recognised for the quality and breadth of its financial and business news service, while Giorgio Armani is seen as the arbiter of style. A powerful combination that will resonate perfectly with our sophisticated and influential audience.”
Giorgio Armani, President and Chief Executive of the Armani Group, said: “I have always designed Armani Collezioni with todays business woman and man in mind. Now with 24 Hour Business News Television, pioneered by CNBC Europe, journalists and presenters are more visible than ever before. An appropriate image helps to create an identity for the channel itself. Through this new collaboration I am delighted to reach the viewers of CNBC Europe.”
17 November 2003
Then join 29 international media companies, including the UKs BBC World Service and Independent Television News in competing for control of Iraq Media Network. In spite of wartime devastation, IMN is still reckoned to be worth over $100 million.
Up for new ownership is the whole package used by Saddam Hussein for nationwide propaganda – 18 television stations, the government radio station, and the national newspaper Al-Sabbah, with a circulation of 60,000.
The BBC bid is via the World Service Trust, which aims to set up media projects in countries torn apart by war. ITN is interested in taking over part of the network.
The Coalition Provisional Authority wants to turn the network into a world class radio and television and broadcasting authority and newspaper publisher.
17 November 2003
Head of Radio Kontynent, a private Kiev-based FM station, Serhiy Sholokh, has sent an open letter to Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, asking him not to allow Kontynent’s broadcasts to be stopped. The letter has been published on the web site of Ukrainian human-rights organisation the Institute of Mass Information.
Sholokh says he has learnt from reliable sources that the leadership of the presidential administration “has issued a secret instruction to uniformed agencies, the State Committee for Communications and Information Technology and tax authorities to take urgent steps to stop the broadcasting of Radio Kontynent”.
Because Kontynent rebroadcasts foreign news services – the Voice of America, the BBC, Deutsche Welle and Polish Radio – Sholokh believes that any actions against his radio station can also be considered as aimed against the presence of these stations in Ukrainian information space.
17 November 2003
Representatives of staff at Canal France International (CFI), which supplies French-language programmes to TV stations worldwide, fear their company could close down, largely because of plans for the international French news channel (CFII or CII).
“The latest developments concerning the CFII project, in which CFI is no longer involved, and the current budgetary uncertainties give us grounds for fearing that ultimately our company will, quite simply, just close down,” the CFDT, FO and CFE-CGC inter-union committee, staff delegates and elected representatives of the CFI works council said in a statement.
In May, CFI staff representatives approved proposals by the National Assembly, which included CFI in an alliance with private groups to create CFII. However in the end the government reneged on this and came out in favour of an equal partnership comprising the public group France Televisions and TF1.
17 November 2003
Merging French know-how with Chinese mass-scale manufacturing capability, consumer electronics group Thomson has agreed a deal with China’s TCL to create a joint company that could become the world’s leader in the television and video manufacturing industry.
The company will be called TCL-Thomson. The French group will initially hold a 33 per cent stake in the company while its Chinese partner will hold a 67 per cent stake. TCL International Holdings Limited (TCL International) is the leading manufacturer of multimedia and consumer electronic goods in China.
