12 January 2006
January 6th proved to be the dawning of a new era for FM radio in India. In a bid process covering around 58 radio stations in 13 cities, including the four metros and fast-expanding cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad, a range of would-be radio operators jockeyed for position.
The bid process follows the relaxation of the Indian government control of FM radio broadcasting. For the government, the new bids have yielded dividends in the form of a healthy licence fee while listeners gain a wider variety of radio entertainment options and, in all likelihood, greater sophistication in programming.
25 companies won stations by forking out Rs 568 crore (thats around £72million or US$178million) for 53 frequencies. HT Music won frequencies in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore. Radio Mirchi gained licences for all seven FM stations that it had bid for in the first leg of the Phase II FM radio bidding held by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
Apurva Purohit, CEO of Music Broadcast (Radio City), said: “This is good news for the industry. The whole sector will grow. The process was handled brilliantly and this means great news for consumers. Hopefully, the industry will segment its offering and give a wider choice to listeners.”
Anil Mehra, group finance director, Living Media, said, “Even though the bids varied, we believe that the total revenue accruing to the government is as per
their expectations.”
According to A P Parigi, MD and CEO, Entertainment Network (India) Ltd, which owns the Radio Mirchi brand, “Government policy does not allow for players
to be present in two stations and hence the company was not eligible to bid for the other stations. The bids have been extremely rational. The shift from
fixed licence fee to revenue share model in Phase II policy will result in more viable radio business models and the bid values are favourable enough to
drive growth for the FM industry.”
Radio Mid-Day West, a new venture in association with BBC Worldwide, won six frequencies out of the nine it had bid for.
The AIB is holding a Regional Media Leaders Forum in New Delhi, India, on 14 February.
12 January 2006
The latest edition of the AIB’s quarterly magazine, The Channel has been published.
This new edition – supported by Hellas Sat – is packed with the latest news from across the international broadcasting industry as well as feature articles.
As new international television channels launch, The Channel looks at the chances they have for success and analyses what their strengths and weaknesses are. We also examine the plans for pan-African TV where at least two separate groups are looking at launching services.
Plus there’s full information about the AIB Regional Media Leaders Forum in New Delhi on 14 February and the first announcement of the AIB International Broadcasting Awards 2006.
To subscribe to the magazine, click
here.
21 December 2005
Al Arabiya News Channel has joined the AIB as a Platinum Member.
Part of MBC based in Dubai Media City in the United Arab Emirates, Al Arabiya has been on the air to the Middle East with its Arabic-language news service since 2003.
“The AIB is delighted that Al Arabiya has chosen to join the Association, demonstrating its commitment to the international broadcasting industry through Platinum membership,” says Simon Spanswick, AIB Chief Executive. “We will be working closely with Al Arabiya to provide the complete range of member services, and look forward to encouraging considerable interaction with our other members in the region and throughout the world.”
A full profile of Al Arabiya appears in the new edition of The Channel
13 December 2005
The AIB extends its sympathies to everyone caught up in the terrorist attacks in London on Thursday 7 July.
The AIB confirms that its Regional Media Leaders Forum on Friday 15 July will take place as planned.
The AIB Regional Media Leaders Forum will take place in London on Friday 15 July 2005.
More than 70 people are already registered for this half-day conference, including broadcasters, politicians, regulators and consultants from across Europe.
See who is registered: download the latest delegate list
here.
This half-day conference will include in-depth discussion and debate between the keynote speakers and delegates and there will also be excellent networking opportunities ensuring a thoroughly worthwhile event.
Keynote speakers are Mr K S Sarma, Chief Executive of India’s Prasar Bharati – which runs Doordarshan television and All India Radio – and Nigel Parsons, Managing Director of Al Jazeera International.
With additional input from high level speakers and video inserts plus expert
moderation from ITV News Channel journalist and anchor Andrew Harvey, the AIB Regional Media Leaders Forum is an event not to be
missed.
Broadcast partner
Taking place in central London at the Geological Society, Piccadilly, the
half-day conference includes the presentation of the inaugural AIB
International Broadcasting Awards and a networking lunch.
Reserve your place today – the cost is just £25 plus VAT for AIB members, and only £75 plus VAT for non-members.
See who is registered: download the list
here.
Download the event brochure
here, or book online by clicking
here.
Conference location Geological Society, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG
28 November 2005
Media management remains the big issue for most broadcasters in
2005. Key buzzword at the industry’s largest annual exhibition, the
NAB Spring Convention in Las Vegas, was ‘workflow’. Roger Heath,
Sales & Marketing Director of Pharos Communications comments: “Workflow has always been a concern for broadcasters; the transition
from tape-based workflow to server-based programme archiving
sounds easy but has to be managed carefully or you can end up with
a system that keeps switching back to tape because there is a
comfort factor in having the physical asset. It is no longer good
enough just to build an effective library filing system. It needs to be
media centric and map the processes of a broadcast operation. Pharos
has the flexibility to operate on a customer by customer basis rather
than impose black-box solutions.”
“Pharos is continuing to focus on building its brand and reputation in
broadcast process management. Media asset management is central
to this and we have rolled out some significant systems that make the
handling of rich media files a far easier element of the broadcast
process. We see ourselves as a software systems provider for rich
media logistics.”
“In development terms Pharos has delivered systems that meet
broadcasters’ requirements in terms of deployment, management and
reliability. All three of these are important when considering solutions
in terms of ROI (return on investment) and SLAs (service-level
agreements). This infrastructure technology has been included with the systems delivered throughout 2005 including Advanced Broadcast Services,
Manchester United Television and TWI-SNTV.”
“Advanced Broadcast Services chose a combination of Sony Flexicart,
Sony PetaSite and Pharos Playtime for its expanded transmission
centre. Manchester United Television ordered Pharos Playtime as the
core of a new state-of-the-art technical gallery and transmission
suite. SNTV, the world’s only dedicated sports news television agency, began using Pharos Playtime as the heart of a highly versatile
production system delivering six daily bulletins of sports news.”
“On the exhibition front, IBC2005 was Pharos’ busiest show ever. We
launched Mediator on an enterprise architecture that allows it to be
scaled to many thousands of users. Mediator for broadcast process
management meets the demands of media asset management, integrating library management, media browsing and workflow control. Mediator’s web-based GUI is revolutionary in its simplicity of use, employing tasks that lead logically through each step of a
broadcast or pre-transmission operation. New operators find
Mediator’s control routine very easy to learn and enjoy the freedom it
offers to tackle non-urgent tasks in any order.”
“Mediator plays a central role at Technicolor Network Services UK
which selected Pharos for its new multi-channel playout facility.
Mediator provides Technicolor with workflow management which
integrates asset tracking, audio file uploads, processing, archive
management, reporting and status.”
“Media file exchange is becoming an increasingly popular technology
among broadcasters. We introduced three Pharos Rich Media Appliances: Rewrapper. Reflection and Transcoder. Pharos Rewrapper enables MPEG2 metadata to be matched precisely between different video servers. This eliminates the need for slow and lossy decompression and recompression processing of the video and audio data stream. Pharos Reflection is an MPEG4 browse proxy server enabling web based browse for any video server.”
“Pharos Transcoder allows video files to be converted between a wide
range of formats by dragging and dropping between source and
destination folders. Applications include downconverting broadcast-
quality content for internet-based distribution and upconverting
internet-delivered ENG feeds.”
“Outlook for 2006? Ongoing confusion in the world of file formats and the linking of different platforms together in the terms both of data
format and process workflow. We see a great opportunity for Pharos
as broadcasters will need to get systems in place fairly rapidly to
meet the accelerating demands of IPTV and HD delivery. The broadcast world will align itself increasingly to the publishing model, hence our emphasis on ‘Smarter Media Publishing’.”
28 November 2005
GlobeCast, the global content management and delivery company, has added BFM TV, Europe 2TV, NRJ12 and Gulli to the list of channels it delivers in France to Direct-to-Home viewers via satellite and to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) bouquet operators via fiber.
BFM TV, a financial news channel belonging to the Nextradio group, has launched on GlobeCasts digital distribution platforms on the Hot Bird (13°E) and Astra (19.2°E) satellites, for insertion into the TPS and CanalSat bouquets.
Music channels Europe 2TV, entertainment channel NRJ12 and childrens channel Gulli, have also joined GlobeCasts satellite platform on Hot Bird. The three television stations are carried on TPS.
GlobeCast is also pushing all four of these new channels to French Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), delivering the signals via fiber from their points of origination to multiplexes in Paris. GlobeCast is currently the leading provider of satellite and fiber services for operators of DTT in France, delivering broadcast content via satellite to transmitters of three of the countrys five DTT platforms and routing the majority of channels via fiber to all five DTT multiplexes.
BFM TV also called on GlobeCast to put together a global contribution and video distribution infrastructure for its launch, linking 6 sites to an automated mobile contribution network via satellite. The network, which allows uplinks of on-the-ground reports, is comprised of three digital SNG vehicles as well as a fixed satellite reception station.
