31 January 2017
The Association for International Broadcasting has confirmed its commitment to supporting the .radio top level domain at the Salon de la Radio in Paris. The new .radio top level domain is a community-based domain that the AIB has supported throughout the application process, along with other broadcasting unions. ICANN granted the .radio domain last year, with the EBU as the principal organiser.
The first World .Radio Advisory Board meeting took place in Paris on 30 January where a range of issues concerning the launch of the top level domain were discussed. At the meeting, the President and Vice-Presidents of the Advisory Board were elected.
The AIB’s chief executive, Simon Spanswick, was elected President (centre in picture above); Nawaaz Doohkee, Head of Legal Affairs at the ABU (third from right) and Vincent Sneed, Director of Regulatory Affairs at the AER (third from left) were elected Vice Presidents.
“It is a great honour to be elected to lead the work of the World .Radio Advisory Board,” commented Simon Spanswick. “Along with my colleagues from other broadcasting unions and associations, we will be working to make the .radio top level domain a tremendous success across the radio industry. There has already been interest from broadcasters and from other organisations involved in the ever growing radio industry in making effective and creative use of this new top level domain. In the coming months as we move closer to the opening of registrations, we will be working to ensure that everyone involved in radio around the world has the opportunity to harness the power of .radio addresses on the Internet.”
For more information on the .radio top level domain, visit register.radio.
21 December 2016
In 2017, a new top level domain (TLD) will be launched on the Internet for the global radio industry.
.radio is a Community TLD, led by a community of interest for the benefit of the entire radio community. The Association for International Broadcasting joined with other organisations around the world to support the .radio application to the Internet’s controlling body.
ICANN accepted .radio as a TLD to be administered by the world’s radio industry, administered by the EBU and supported by an advisory board. The board will convene at the end of January at which time its membership will be confirmed and the chair and deputy chair will be elected.
“The Association for International Broadcasting is delighted to be closely involved with the radio industry’s new top level domain,” says Simon Spanswick, AIB chief executive. “The Association will be working closely with the EBU and other partners involved in this exciting project that will offer radio broadcasters, web radio stations, radio amateurs and radio equipment manufacturers the ability to demonstrate their commitment to radio through their web address.”
More information for the AIB’s Members will be published over the coming weeks.
16 December 2016
If you attended the AIBs in November 2016, you might like to watch a short video with highlights from the event. And if you weren’t there, but want to know what the annual awards for factual TV, radio and online productions are like, here’s your chance!
Watch our highlights video here
We would love you to get involved in the AIBs 2017. Entries open in April, judging takes place in September, and the awards will be presented at our gala awards night on 1 November 2017 in London.
You can also sponsor the AIBs 2017. Full information in our partnership document, available here.
23 November 2016
20 years after the tragic and untimely death of Mohamed Amin, founder of Nairobi-based Camerapix, the Association for International Broadcasting pays tribute to the renowned cameraman.
Mohamed Amin was born on 29 August 1943 in Nairobi where he developed an interest in photography at school. He founded Camerapix company in 1963 in Dar es Salaam and moved the company to Nairobi three years later. During the 1970s, he became one of the most relied-upon African news photographers, reporting on wars and coups all through the continent. His pictures were often used by Western news media.
Amin’s most influential moment came when his photos, along with the reporting of the BBC’s Michael Buerk of the 1984 Ethiopian famine brought international attention to the crisis and eventually helped start the charity wave that resulted in Live Aid concerts.
Amin contributed exclusive photos of the fall of Idi Amin and of Mengistu Haile Mariam and was author of numerous books, including Journey Through Pakistan, Pilgrimage to Mecca and covered various themes such as East African wildlife and the Uganda railway.
A short film looking back on Amin’s life has been produced by A24 Media – run by Amin’s son, Salim – and Reuters. It will be screened at Newsxchange taking place in Copenhagen at the start of December.
18 November 2016
The AIB is pleased to announce its first #iamabroadcaster Technology Masterclass in association with IABM.
This new event, taking place immediately before the IABM’s Annual Conference, aims to highlight the use of technology in creating, producing and delivering programming to consumers. It will also explore the mission-critical issue of cyber security in broadcasting, and look at the important work being done in digitising media archives to protect nations’ audio-visual history.
The event venue is the Radisson Blu Edwardian at London Heathrow. The half-day Masterclass is open to Members and non-members of both the AIB and IABM.
The cost for Members of either organisation is £55 per person. For non-members the charge is £80 per person.
AGENDA
0900 Registration
0930 Welcome and introduction
0940 Keeping the lights on
The threat of cyber-attacks against high value targets in the media industry has never been greater. In addition to the high profile attacks on Sony and TV5 Monde, broadcasters and other companies playing a vital role in the production and distribution of content throughout the world continue to be targeted by criminal gangs and rogue states.
The Association for International Broadcasting has been working to ensure that its Members are able to share information and expertise in a confidential forum to help minimise risk and ensure that networks remain on the air.
Taking part in a discussion that will explore the challenges and the way that technology suppliers can help ensure that programmes remain on air will be Jonathan Farrell, Head of Information Security at Arqiva and James Stubbs, Business Development Manager at Babcock MSS. Both have first-hand experience of how to make broadcast infrastructure resilient against attack and the need for all parts of the industry to act together to make sure that the attempts to take broadcasters off air, or to infiltrate their playout systems and online services, are stopped in their tracks.
1030 Coffee
1100 Content worth keeping
Preserving the past for the future – Private Engineering Office, Qatar
Although it’s a relatively young country, Qatar has an extensive analogue library of TV programming and film. In its original format, the content is inaccessible. That’s why the Qatari government has implemented what may be the world’s most concentrated and comprehensive digitisation project. It aims not only to preserve the content but also to analyse the material, employing historians to tag the programming and then to make it easily accessible for citizens and scholars, now and in the future.
In this session, we’ll learn about the project and how it has been implemented. We’ll find out whether the systems developed in Qatar can be replicated elsewhere as the world’s audio-visual history cries out for preservation against a backdrop of obsolescent formats and rapidly deteriorating archives.
Sanjay Salil, Managing Director of global media services company MediaGuru will explain the work that has gone into the Qatar project.
1140 Enabling story-telling
How is technology enabling story-telling? Is the equipment that’s available today meeting all the editorial requirements of programme makers? In an environment where consumers are always on and want content delivered anytime, anywhere, can technology companies deliver what’s demanded by journalists, editors, producers and directors? In a wide-ranging discussion involving key players working at the sharp end of live broadcasting, we’ll also hear from consumers in Europe, North America and the Middle East about the way they choose content and the means of consumption. Expect some surprises along the way.
Martin Davies, Founder of Between the Posts Productions will be in conversation with Wesley Dodd, CEO of Celebro Studios.
1240 Close
1300 Networking lunch
10 November 2016
The Association for International Broadcasting has presented its Founders Award to Abdul Rahman Ramadhan
Abdul Rahman Ramadhan (centre) receives the AIB Founders Award from Alexey Nikolov, Chairman of the AIB Executive Committee and Managing Director, RT (left) and Simon Spanswick, Chief Executive, AIB (right)
Abdul Rahman Ramadhan started work in 1980. It wasn’t a typical career for someone living in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. He graduated from the local madrasa and chose the profession of sound, landing a job at the Camerapix news agency run by Mohamed Amin in the Kenyan capital.
He honed his skills on the job, working with the standard location sound kit of the time – a Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder. Those skills, which would be developed over the following three and a half decades, have brought the world sound from across Africa.
For Abdul has recorded the sound that has accompanied TV news reports from many of Africa’s most troubled places and challenging events. His first truly dangerous assignment was the civil war in Sudan in 1992. This was the first war zone that the young sound man had experienced. Along with the other Camerapix team members, Abdul dodged bullets from soldiers and bombs dropped from Antonov planes. He slept among the dead to avoid detection – a certain route to death.
Soon after, he accompanied Mo Amin to Ethiopia which was in the grip of the worst famine to hit the country in a century. It was the pictures and sound captured by Mo Amin and Abdul for the BBC and other organisations of the plight of tens of thousands of starving people led to the establishment of Live Aid. Bob Geldof saw the report that Michael Buerk filed for the BBC and was so moved that he organised Band Aid that recorded the global hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, followed in 1985 by Live Aid.
In 1994, with his wife pregnant with their second child, Abdul was sent by Mo Amin to Rwanda where the genocide had started. There Abdul and the Camerapix team witnessed many of the atrocities that occurred during the 100 days of the genocide. It was the first time that Abdul had seen tens of people being killed at the same time. In Somalia, it was just one killing a day, he recounts. In Rwanda, Abdul saw gangs killing ten people or more at a time, all in the most horrific ways.
He’s covered stories in his native Kenya, too, including the election violence in 2008. The two main tribes in the country fought running battles and up to 1,500 people died in the violence, with half a million or more displaced. Abdul was on hand, recording the sounds of battle on his own home turf.
Abdul is sanguine about the risks to his own life, saying that when his time is up, that’s just the way it is, however his life should end.
His wife supports him, despite not knowing if Abdul will come back from his latest assignment. She knows that capturing the sound that tells the most important stories is in Abdul’s blood, and that it is far more than just a job.
Sound is Abdul’s passion. Over the past 35 years, he has brought us some of the most momentous moments from Africa’s recent history.
Abdul shows no sign of hanging up his microphone. The Association for International Broadcasting is proud to recognise the work that Abdul has undertaken to help bring us the stories from Africa that need to be told. The AIB Founders Award pays tribute to a remarkable man – the Sound Man Abdul Rahman Ramadhan.
