15 August 2019
BBC World Service has extended output on shortwave radio in Indian-administered Kashmir to provide reliable news and information.
Director of the BBC World Service, Jamie Angus (pictured), said: “The provision of independent and trusted news in places of conflict and tension is one of the core purposes of the World Service. Given the shutdown of digital services and phone lines in the region, it’s right for us to try and increase the provision of news on our short wave radio services. Audiences in both India and Pakistan trust the BBC to speak with an independent voice, and we know that our reporting through several moments of crisis this year has been popular and valued by audiences who turn to us when tensions are highest.”
BBC News Hindi radio output (9515 and 11995kHz) will be extended by 30 minutes from Friday 16 August. The full one hour news programme will be on air from 19:30 to 20:30 local time.
On Monday 19 August, BBC News Urdu will launch a 15-minute daily programme, Neemroz. Broadcast at 12.30 local time on 15310kHz and 13650kHz, the programme will focus on news coming from Kashmir and the developments around the issue, and include global news roundup tailored for audiences in Kashmir.
BBC World Service English broadcasts (11795kHz, 9670kHz, 9580kHz, 7345kHz, 6040kHz) will be expanded, with the morning programming extended by an hour, ending at 08.30 local time; and the afternoon and evening programming starting an hour earlier, at 16.30 local time.
The shutdown has left people with very few options for accessing news at this time. However, news services from the BBC continue to be available in the region – through shortwave radio transmissions in English, Urdu, Hindi, Dari and Pashto. As well as providing an important source of news to the region, the South Asian language services have brought added depth to the BBC’s coverage of the Kashmir story.
The recent introduction of four new languages services for India – Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Telugu, following additional investment from the UK Government – has enabled the BBC to offer a wider portfolio of languages and distribution methods to a region that is geographically diverse as well as politically tense. This year’s Global Audience Measure for the BBC showed that India is now the World Service’s largest market, with a weekly audience of 50m.
2 August 2019
The Voice of America’s Bangla language service has launched a five-day-a-week radio show in Rohingya, the language spoken by Muslim refugees who have fled Myanmar. More than 800,000 people have taken refuge at the Kutupalong camp, one of the world’s largest refugee camps at the Myanmar-Bangladesh border.
Titled Lifeline, the 30-minute radio show is transmitted via short and medium wave. The programme focuses on the lives and needs of the refugees, providing them with valuable information on security, family reunification, food rations, available shelter, education and health including vaccinations and water purification. In addition, a daily segment of the programme offers the refugees the opportunity to share their stories, extend greetings to their families and learn about the hazards of joining extremists groups. One overarching objective of the broadcast is to counter Muslim extremists’ narratives and recruitment efforts in the camps and inform the Rohingya about the US and the international community’s involvement in the crisis.
“After visiting Cox’s Bazaar and the Kutupalong refugee camp last year, it became obvious to me that we needed to address the informational needs of these people caught in the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world today,” said VOA Director Amanda Bennett. “Providing them with a reliable and authoritative source of news, as well as practical information that will improve their lives, is what the Voice of America does well in various hotspots around the world.”
Prior to launching the Rohingya language programme, a VOA Learning English team travelled to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in March of this year at the invitation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The VOA instructors offered six days of intensive training on teaching techniques and methods for 100 selected English teachers. The teachers, in turn, will use their new skills to train a further 5,000 of their colleagues in the camps.
25 July 2019
Ruptly, the award-winning global multimedia agency, has announced the launch of a dedicated Spanish version of its content platform.
Speaking about the launch, Dinara Toktosunova, CEO of Ruptly, said: “Ruptly’s new Spanish-language platform is another step forward as we strive to best meet the needs of our clients. This is the latest in our long list of product and service innovations, including the introduction of live streams accessible in just three clicks, and transformative pricing plans that are democratising content for media and individuals. We will continue to evolve our offering to reflect our growing international client base.”
This announcement follows another in March, made during a panel session at Cabsat Content Congress, that Ruptly will also be launching an Arabic version of its platform later this summer.
Carolina Velasco, Ruptly’s Iberia and LATAM Territory Manager, said:
“This is a fully-localised, Spanish website and live platform that will enable us to be more accessible to our Spanish language client base, as well as enabling us to provide more stories that are specific to the Iberian and LATAM regions.”
Amongst the clients to benefit from Ruptly’s Spanish platform are Jorge del Villar, Chief Content Officer at Cultura Colectiva, who looks to the agency for: “stories with value to stand out in a saturated media landscape”, and Sebastián Morales, Director of Digital at Publimetro, who said: “Ruptly has become an important partner within our ecosystem, providing ready-to-use material and increasing our video production.”
Mauro Torres, Ruptly’s Deputy Head of Planning and Head of Sports, discussed the new Spanish-language service, as part of a panel exploring how to engage users and audiences in a saturated media landscape at SIPConnect, an annual digital media and services conference in Miami, Florida. The panel was moderated by multimedia journalist, TV personality and author, Cathy Areu.
26 June 2019
Text and video content from the BBC News Chinese website bbc.com/chinese now features on the popular Hong Kong news portal, Yahoo Hong Kong, and its mobile apps, Yahoo Hong Kong News and Yahoo TV.
Thanks to an agreement between BBC News and Yahoo Hong Kong, the BBC News Chinese content will be published as top stories on the Yahoo site. The Yahoo Hong Kong homepage now features a BBC News Chinese index.
Business Development Director, BBC World Service, Simon Kendall, says: “This is a great development for the BBC in Hong Kong where our news services in English, Cantonese and Mandarin reach a million people weekly. We have a strong and loyal audience on the audio platform, and with this partnership we will look to further enhance our engagement with digital audiences.”
Launched in 1999, Yahoo Hong Kong is one of the territory’s leading news portals. Rico Chan, Director of Yahoo Hong Kong, says: “Deeply rooted in Hong Kong, we have been serving it for two decades, and it is our ultimate goal to establish a high standard and trusted content platform by partnering with forward-thinking and pioneering media to catalyse the development of media industry. BBC News is one of the most valuable media brands globally, with positive and sharp ambitions. Our collaboration with BBC News Chinese strengthens our commitment to our users, allowing us to offer more abundant, premium, reliable content to millions in Hong Kong.”
The BBC’s recently launched Hong Kong bureau is home to journalists working on news in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, as well as to the commercial news operation, BBC Global News. The BBC also has an office for BBC Studios in Hong Kong, bringing world-class drama and entertainment programmes to Chinese audiences.
BBC News is available in Hong Kong on TV, via the BBC World News channel; online in English via bbc.com/news, and in simplified and traditional Chinese script, along with audio content in Cantonese and Mandarin, onbbc.com/chinese. The BBC News Chinese weekly hour-long radio programme in Cantonese, Newsweek, is broadcast on RTHK, along with the daily overnight broadcasts of BBC World Service radio in English. BBC Minute, a 60-second news bulletin in English, is carried by Hong Kong’s Metro Radio.
BBC News Chinese is part of BBC World Service which delivers news content around the world in English and 41 other language services, on radio, TV and digital. BBC World Service reaches a weekly audience of 319m. As part of BBC World Service, BBC Learning English teaches English to global audiences. BBC News attracts a weekly global audience of 394m people to its international services including BBC World Service, BBC World News television channel and bbc.com/news.
18 June 2019
More people around the world are tuning into the BBC than ever before, reaching a new high of 426m a week – an increase of 50m (13 percent) over the year, according to new figures released on 18 June 2019.
The Global Audience Measure (GAM) shows BBC News has an audience of 394m globally, a rise of 47m. The BBC World Service in English, and 42 languages, account for 319m of that figure – with an increase of 41m.
BBC World Service in English and the BBC World News TV channel have both achieved all-time record audiences of 97m and 101m respectively. BBC World Service’s 42 language services have climbed to 259m. BBC Global News, the commercial subsidiary of BBC News which operates the BBC World News channel and bbc.com, makes up most of the remainder and has seen increases across TV and digital of 6m, to 121m – another record high. Overall, BBC News has seen increases of 23m for TV (to 214m), 12m for audio (to 178m) and 18m for online (to 95m).
BBC Director-General Tony Hall (pictured) says: “Every day our teams do an amazing job bringing independent, impartial news to audiences around the world, and today we can see just how much the BBC is valued. Thanks to Government investment we’ve been able to launch the biggest expansion of the World Service since the Second World War, and this shows how much the BBC can do for the UK.”
Jamie Angus, Director of the BBC World Service Group, says: “The BBC is on track to reach its audience target of 500m weekly, and has posted all-time record audiences for both World Service Radio and BBC World News. But most importantly we’re continuing to produce groundbreaking journalism that is attracting growing audiences, and making huge impact. From investigative journalism like Africa Eye to our work countering fake news and disinformation, the BBC is showing why it remains the world’s most trusted source of news.”
Three countries – India, Kenya and the USA – have seen the most impressive gains since 2018.
India, where BBC News now operates in nine languages, has seen a rise of 20m to 50m to become the top overseas market for BBC News. The USA becomes the third largest market overall with 38m, up 5m. The audience in Kenya has increased from 6m to 15m in the last year reaching 50 percent of the population. In Afghanistan, the BBC reaches 59 percent of the population. BBC News websites (World Service and bbc.com) have increased their combined reach by 6m to 51m globally, bucking wider trends for news sites.
The top 10 countries by BBC News audience are:
- India 50m
- Nigeria 41m
- USA 38m
- Kenya 15m
- Afghanistan 12m
- Bangladesh 12m
- Egypt 11m
- Iran 11m
- Tanzania 10m
- Pakistan 9m
Syndication of BBC content via partner television and radio stations around the world, and distribution via digital platforms like YouTube and Facebook, now add up to over 60 percent of audience reach.
Audio continues to be a major platform for the World Service, rising by 12.9m to 173m listeners worldwide. On all platforms, 30 percent of the audience is aged between 15-24 years.
Over the past two years new BBC News bureaux were opened in India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Korea, and 12 new language services were launched as part the largest expansion of the BBC World Service since the 1940s, funded by the UK government. The expansion has taken place against a background of rapid growth of rival international news services from Russia, China and the Middle East.
10 June 2019
Hit Filipino movies from broadcaster ABS-CBN will soon make their debut in China for the first time via Phoenix Movie Channel, after the network successfully concluded a milestone deal with Phoenix Satellite Television, a leading entertainment group that aims to provide Chinese everywhere with high quality content.
16 ABS-CBN titles that will premiere starting September this year include Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo’s 2016 box office hit, “Barcelona: A Love Untold.”
Dramas and rom-coms that are also well recognised overseas given their international theatrical and OTT releases such as “Four Sisters and a Wedding”, “My Ex and Whys”, “You’re My Boss”, “Everything About Her” and “Can’t Help Falling In Love” are part of the lineup that will soon be seen on Phoenix Movie Channel.
Phoenix is also bringing other rom-coms that have made a mark in Filipino pop culture to China for their relevant themes, like “Love You To The Stars and Back,” “Dear Other Self,” “My Perfect You,” “To Love Some Buddy,” “Can We Still Be Friends,” “Always Be My Maybe,” “The Achy Breaky Hearts,” and “First Love.”
Completing the list are restored Filipino classics, “Kasal” and “Hihintaying Kita sa Langit.”
