15 November 2006
Al Jazeera International, the English language news and current affairs channel that’s sister channel to Al Jazeera Arabic (celebrating its 10th anniversary this month), launched on Wednesday 15 November at 1200 GMT. The new channel says that it is available in over 80 million cable and satellite households across the globe.
The channel was launched from its headquarters in Doha, with Shiulie Ghosh and Sami Zeidan the first news anchors to appear. The channel will move around the world moving to its broadcast centres strategically placed around the world in Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC where presenters Veronica Pedrosa & Teymoor Nabili, Felicity Barr & Stephen Cole, Ghida Fakhry & Dave Marash will present the news respectively. There will be two integrated news hours with input from all four centres.
On day one, the channels news teams are deployed doing stories in over 20 countries around the world in addition to their 60 news bureaux. In the Middle East, Al Jazeera has five correspondents deployed in Israel and the Palestinian territories; unprecedented Africa coverage with feeds from Darfur, Somalia, Harare and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while in Latin America the channels correspondents will report live from Brazil and Venezuela. This reflects the emphasis the channel places on reporting from the South to the North.
Nigel Parsons Managing Director of Al Jazeera English said: “I am absolutely delighted to have launched Al Jazeera English. I firmly believe there is a gap in the market which we will exploit, and that the world needs Al Jazeera in English to bring a new perspective and understanding to world events. I would like to thank everyone involved in the project including all those distributors who are carrying the channel from day one.”
Al Jazeeras English language website, aljazeera.net/english also re-launched at 1200GMT on the same day to reflect the channel’s look and feel and editorial content. It showcases Al Jazeera English’s agenda setting editorial mission and will provide constantly updated coverage of news events from around the world, along with in-depth analysis and background. It will provide RSS feeds, live streams and downloadable clips from the Al Jazeera English channel, as well as interactive discussions and polling. Programme and presenter information as well as weather reports, live business data and sport will also be available via the website.
15 November 2006
NHK World Radio Japan, the overseas broadcasting service of Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation) has started broadcasting its daily Arabic programme to listeners in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe via Sawt Al Alam, the Arabic satellite radio network from WRN, the London-based broadcast and transmission service company, that brings together daily programmes from the Arabic departments of many of the worlds leading public radio broadcasters.
The daily broadcast includes news and programmes that depict the full variety of life in Japan and covers politics and the economy, science, art and music, as well as news from Asia and the world. NHK World Radio Japans Arabic programme is broadcast daily at 1600 UTC on Sawt Al Alam which is available to millions of people on the most popular regional digital satellites: Eurobird 2/Arabsat for the Middle East, Nilesat for North Africa and Hot Bird for Europe.
Mr Yuki Sakagami, Head of South Asia and Middle East Division of NHK World Radio Japan, says, The commencement of the satellite radio transmission of our programmes via WRNs Sawt al Alam reflects one of our strategies to provide information using the most effective media to our target areas.
Gary Edgerton, WRNs Managing Director, adds, WRN is very honoured that NHK has made the historic decision to contract with us for the satellite transmission of its daily Arabic programme that was previously only available to listeners on short wave. Sawt Al Alam, WRNs Arabic language satellite radio station, is part of our strategy to continuously work with our valued international public service clients and provide them with new broadcast service solutions. In turn this allows them to remain at the edge of technological change and to reach ever growing numbers of listeners with their content.
15 November 2006
Broadcasting on the BADR-3 satellite will allow the new Iraqi Bouquet to immediately reach an audience of 130 Million viewers, from Morocco to the Gulf.
Arabsat, the leading satellite operator in the Middle East and North Africa region, announces the new broadcast of an 11 TV channels Iraqi Bouquet on the BADR-3 satellite of the Arabsat fleet.
The digital distribution platform in Ku-band will allow the Iraqi Bouquet to directly access Arabsats extensive Middle Eastern and North African audience of a 130 Million viewers via its constellation of 4 BADR satellites @ 26°East. The new bouquet includes: Al-Blad, Ashour, Al-Dyar, Nahrain, Rafedain, Al-Bagdadia, Ashtar, Al-Masar, Al-Salam, Turkomania, Kordistan.
Mr. Khalid Balkheyour, Arabsat President & CEO, welcomed the launch of the Iraqi Bouquet as part of the Arabsat rapidly expanding offering of channels, wishing them every success. Confirming Arabsats strong commitment to help its customers succeed and steadily support their growth throughout the region, “We are very proud to have earned their trust in our system and honoured by their confidence in the extensive penetration of Arabsat’s constellation of BADR satellites at our 26° East primary fast growing DTH neighbourhood he concluded.
13 November 2006
Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel announced today their team of news presenters based at their Doha headquarters ahead of their worldwide launch on 15th November 2006.
Al Jazeera Englishs Director of News and Programmes, Steve Clark has assembled a team of experienced presenters from diverse backgrounds: Mariam Nemazee formerly of Russia Today, So Rahman from Granada TV, Kamahl Santamaria formerly of Sky News Australia and Sami Zeidan previously of CNBC.*
They join the following presenters who were previously announced to the press: Jane Dutton who most recently worked as presenter/reporter on The Business of Development for CNBC Europe/US, David Foster who joined from Sky News, Shiulie Ghosh formerly of ITV News, Darren Jordon who was one of the main presenters at the BBC and Lauren Taylor former Economics Correspondent of ITV News.
13 November 2006
Arqiva to uplink worlds first wedding channel
Wedding TV to launch on Sky in December this year
5-year deal includes space segment on Eurobird satellite
Arqiva today announced that it has secured a contract to enable UK direct-to-home distribution for Wedding TV. Due to launch in December, Wedding TV is the worlds first entertainment channel dedicated to the emotion and drama of relationships and weddings. Arqiva will uplink the channel onto the Sky platform via space segment on the Eurobird satellite.
Mirek Grabiec, COO, Wedding TV, said, Alongside enabling our direct-to-home distribution in the UK, Arqiva has also provided us with digital archiving facilities to store our content, making our planned roll-out across Europe much simpler and more cost-efficient. Arqiva has considerable experience in helping new channels to launch and weve found their solution comprehensive and tailored to our needs.
John Bozza, head of broadcast sales at Arqivas Satellite Media Solutions division, added: Arqiva works closely with new channels to ensure that the launch process is as straightforward as possible. We are delighted to add the worlds first wedding channel to our list of customers and look forward to continuing to work with Wedding TV to extend its reach out across Europe.
13 November 2006
For the first time in the three-year history of Deutsche Welle’s Best of the Blogs awards, an American blog, the Sunlight Foundation, received the competition’s Best Weblog honours. ‘The Sunlight Foundation blog is a group of people who are not only writing about transparency in American politics,’ said US jury member Mark Glaser. Recently the group’s ‘Is Congress a Family Business?’ project uncovered 19 members of the US Congress who paid their spouses a total of USD 636,000 (EUR 495,250) in 2006.
The Reporters Without Borders Award, which has become an integral part of the BOBS, was shared by two Persian-language bloggers. The first blog, ‘Kosoof,’ is a photoblog that proves that pictures sometimes do more for freedom of expression than words by publishing photos of Iranian dissidents with their families after release from prison. The second, ‘Tanine Sokut’ by Hamed Mottaghi, denounces human rights violations in Iran and reports on issues that aren’t covered by the national media.
The Jury Award for the best English-language Weblog in 2006 was given to paidContent.org. The jury said it respected the blog’s ability to move quickly in breaking news stories and commenting on developments in the digital media industry.
