29 September 2003
Chris Cramer becomes the new Managing Director of CNN International, as part of a move to bring together the programming and newsgathering parts of the organisation.
Cramer will continue to oversee the international editorial and programming side, with extra responsibility for the worldwide newsgathering operation of 28 bureaus outside the USA.
The new CNN International directorate now includes the five flagship CNN International services: in English, CNN en Espanol, CNNj (Japan) and joint ventures such as n-tv, CNN+ and CNN Turk, in addition to the international newsgathering operation
29 September 2003
China Telecommunications is in talks with AIB member British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom with a view to buying undersea optical cables to the value of $1 billion.
And Lucent Technologies has signed for more than $230 million of network contracts with China Unicom, Chinas mobile carrier.
29 September 2003
AIB member Radio New Zealand Internationals shortwave transmitter has been off-air since Saturday 30 August. But its hoped that it will be operational again in the first week in October.
RNZI has continued on the Internet, and has been leasing just over four hours of time on one of Radio Australia’s transmitters to broadcast the RNZI breakfast session each morning, on 9580 kHz.
A lightning strike is the probable cause of the transmitter faults.
26 September 2003
Vivendi Universal, in half-yearly figures, is showing progress in its battle to turn the business around as net losses and debt narrow, but revealed little further detail of the $40bn merger of its US entertainment assets with NBC.
The French media and telecommunications group said net losses in the first half of 2003 narrowed to 632m ($724m) compared with 12.3bn last year, while net debt dropped to 13.7bn from 35bn. The figures were slightly better than expected.
Vivendi repeated its guidance for the full year saying it expected further growth in operating income and cash flow and predicted a return to profit excluding non-recurring items and goodwill. It added that following the NBC merger, net debt at the end of 2003 would be about 13bn, falling to below 5bn at the end of 2004.
26 September 2003
Its not exactly broadcasting, but many larger broadcasters and companies should find it interesting.
20,000 BBC staff in London no longer have to key in numbers on their phones, they just have to say the name of the person they want to talk to. Telephonetics has set up one of their ContactPortal systems at the BBCs Television Centre, and the advanced telephony speech
recognition business solution should soon be available to BBC staff nationwide.
ContactPortals 98% accuracy on speech recognition and its ease of use and scalability has impressed BBc management. Feedback from staff so far has been excellent, with employees enjoying improved communications
