10 July 2006
The EBU’s members have elected a new presidency during the organisation’s General Assembly.
Fritz Pleitgen of Germany’s ARD is the new president and succeeds Arne Wessberg (of Finland’s YLE) who has held the position for the last six years.
Vice-presidents are Boris Bergant of Slovenia’s RTVSLO, Richard Sambrook, of the UK’s BBC, Patrick de Carolis, from France Télévisons, and John G. Bernander of Norway’s NRK.
Each of the newly-elected members of the EBU’s presidency serve for a two-year period, starting in September 2006.
Fritz Pleitgen commented: “I am confident that the new presidency, elected today, will be able to guide
the EBU along the path of reform necessary to ensure it can respond to the challenges of our continent’s digital broadcasting environment.”
6 July 2006
Autocue, a leading provider of newsroom automation and teleprompting solutions, is launching and showcasing a number of new products at IBC 2006:
* WINCUE IP – This network-based prompting system introduces radical new operation and control features that deliver significant benefits to both the presenter and operator alike. It brings to the prompting world considerable improvements in flexibility and reliability through the introduction of intelligent hardware and innovative connection mechanisms.
* AFFORDABLE, TURNKEY BROADCAST STUDIO – Opening up new market opportunities, this provides the ability to produce professional broadcast output at an affordable price. Targeted at businesses, religious groups, educational facilities and AV Professionals, this bundle of products has at its core QNet, Autocue’s multi-user scripting, production management and scheduling application.
Also on display:
MASTER SERIES AND PROFESSIONAL SERIES PROMPTERS: Launched earlier this year, the Master Series line of prompters is designed for the exacting requirements of the live broadcast customer. The Professional Series line of prompters is an affordable range of prompters designed for the AV professional and emerging non-traditional broadcast markets, including smaller stations as well as corporate, religious and educational broadcasters.
Qsmart: An affordable newsroom system, QSmart is designed to provide a robust and expandable solution to meet the specific NRCS requirements of smaller market and non-traditional broadcasters. It is priced to match the budget of even the smallest news operation yet provides an enormous range of functionality already proven in much larger organisations around the world.
6 July 2006
Audiences across the Middle East and North Africa will soon be tuning into a unique, new Arabic language radio station that brings together programmes and content from around the world, following the signing of an agreement between WRN and leading satellite operator Arabsat.
The new radio station development by WRN, the London-based leading international broadcaster and transmission service provider, will bring together daily programmes produced by the Arabic departments of many of the worlds leading public radio broadcasters. Listeners will be able to hear daily perspectives from Montreal with Radio Canada International, Seoul from KBS World Radio, Moscow with Voice of Russia, Bucharest with Radio Romania International and from the Vatican City with Vatican Radio. More international stations are lined up to join this new station providing listeners with a unique tour of the worlds capitals without leaving their home or needing their passports.
Tim Ayris, WRNs Marketing Manager, who has project managed the stations development says When looking for a satellite partner in the Middle East that was able to deliver our new station directly to millions of households, we naturally turned to Arabsat. The launch of our 24/7 Arabic language station, Sawt Al Alam or “Voice of the World”, will let listeners tune into fresh global perspectives from different nations.
Eng. Khalid Balkheyour, Arabsat President & CEO, welcomed this new highly innovative radio programme as an original and complementary addition to Arabsat’s extensive Free-to-Air offering, wishing them every success. “We are committed to actively support WRN’s development and success in the Arab world. By bringing them our established audience of 130 million individuals across the entire Middle East North Africa region and way beyond towards sub-Saharan Africa, we believe they will soon become a well established station in the MENA media landscape.”
The station will be launched on Arabsat as part of a global deployment on other digital satellite platforms in Europe and North Africa on July 1st.
6 July 2006
GlobeCast, a global provider of satellite broadcast and content management services and a subsidiary of France Telecom, announced that it will supply France Télévisions and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) with satellite coverage of the 2006 Tour de France. GlobeCast will deploy up to nine SNGs and mobile microwave units at each stage of the race supported by 30 technical professionals from July 1-23, 2006.
Footage shot via motorcycle and helicopter by SFP (Société Française de Production) will be transmitted over Telecom 2C back to France Télévisions production trucks at the finish line via GlobeCast mobile units stationed at various points along the course. In all, GlobeCast’s solution will support up to 20 simultaneous video signals for complete live coverage. GlobeCast will also distribute EBU’s international rights holder feed via satellite.
6 July 2006
SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company, has announced that the German-French public channel Arte will broadcast for the first time in High Definition (HD) quality in Germany. Arte will show Georges Bizets famous opera Carmen from the national opera-house in Berlin today at 7 pm.
We are very pleased that our partner Arte has chosen SES ASTRA to broadcast its first HD programme in German, said Alexander Oudendijk, Chief Commercial Officer of SES ASTRA. We have played a major role in the creation and the development of HDTV and we will keep on promoting and supporting our partners for the great benefit of the TV viewers. Today, SES ASTRA is the leading delivery platform for HDTV in Europe.
We recently succeeded in showing some important HDTV events in France, but it is the first time that Arte provides the German TV viewers with such a high quality programme, explains Dr. Gottfried Langenstein, Vice-President of Arte. We are very happy to share this exciting moment with our long-term partner SES ASTRA and we hope to be able to provide more HD programmes to our viewers in the near future.
27 June 2006
Arqiva today announced it has secured another contract from Cellcast to provide the uplinking facilities for the interactive channel Majestic TV. The deal is further demonstration of the strong relationship between the two companies and brings to five the total number of managed or owned channels uplinked for Cellcast by Arqiva. All channels are broadcast via Eurobird space segment onto the BSkyB platform and include Get Lucky TV, You TV, You TV3, Game Network and most recently Majestic TV.
Majestic TV is an aspirational lifestyle channel for people who plan to move to a place in the sun. It broadcasts a range of programmes including an independent guide to living in Spain and shows giving financial and legal advice on buying a home abroad.
John Bozza, head of broadcast sales at Arqiva Satellite Media Solutions, said: Were delighted to be able to support all these interactive channels for Cellcast. Its a great example of the facilities we can provide for channel operators who rely on us to take them onto the BSkyB platform, while keeping the cost of satellite services as low as possible.
Andrew Wilson, CEO of Cellcast plc, added: Arqiva has an impressive track record in providing broadcast services and an excellent reputation for reliability and customer service. This, combined with its understanding of what was required for these channels, was an important factor in our choice of Arqiva as our technical partner.
