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.
20 June 2019
Two U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) networks-Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Radio Free Asia (RFA)-have been named winners of the prestigious 2019 National Murrow Awards. This is the first time the two networks have received this honor, presented by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) for excellence in electronic journalism.
“I am thrilled that the RTDNA’s Edward R. Murrow Awards have recognized the high-caliber reporting that RFE/RL and RFA produce,” said USAGM CEO John F. Lansing. “My heartfelt congratulations go to the skillful journalists and storytellers who offer our global audiences accurate and professional journalism-the bedrock of what we do at USAGM.”
CEO Lansing added, “Edward R. Murrow, who in the early 1960s led the U.S. Information Agency, a predecessor to USAGM, would be proud of our modern media organization’s wide-reaching impact.”
Daisy Sindelar, Acting President of RFE/RL, and Libby Liu, President of RFA, offered praise for their award-winning networks, which provide compelling, uncensored and locally-oriented news and information to audiences in some of the harshest media environments around the world.
“We are honored to receive this recognition for providing our audiences with unique stories, powerfully told, on the most influential formats in our coverage area,” said Sindelar.
RFE/RL received the National Murrow Awards’ top honor for Multimedia in the Television Network category. Judges reviewed eleven examples of RFE/RL’s impressive domestic news coverage ranging from Armenia to Uzbekistan.
RFA Mandarin’s “The Women Against the State” won in the juried contest’s Excellence in Video category. The piece focuses on the aftermath of China’s “709 crackdown”- a nationwide roundup of lawyers and legal activists that began in July 2015 – and the wives of those still held in custody today.
“RFA Mandarin’s digital team deserves full credit for this prestigious award. Their hard work to spotlight these brave individuals and share their stories speaks to Radio Free Asia’s critical journalistic mission,” said Liu.
Although this marks the first time that RFA has won a National Murrow Award, the network won several Regional Murrow Awards in years past.
(Source: USAGM press release)
18 June 2019
International news platform TRT Arabi is expanding its global distribution with Bosnia’s IPTV network of BH Telecom. TRT Arabi is now available to 200.000 BH Telecom’s subscribers, airing on channel 11 in the news channel category.
BH Telecom is the leading telecom operator in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has provided high quality and the most up-to-date services in the field of telecommunications. The uniqueness, tradition, comprehensive service offer, fast business development and social responsibility has made BH Telecom recognizable in the telecommunications market.
TRT Arabi HD, part of the Turkish Broadcasting Corporation (TRT), is an official organization broadcasting locally and internationally, from Turkey to the world, and includes several stations and channels covering all areas and interests.
Furkan Han, TRT World’s Head of Global Digital & Satellite Distribution & Partnership, stated that “TRT Arabi will be our second channel to be launched on BH Telecom after our first, TRT World. Our partnership with BH Telecom is an important step in growing our footprint, not only have we managed to increase the distribution of TRT Arabi but we are happy to have managed to add BH Telecom as one of our partners around the globe. Our distribution is still expanding and soon TRT Arabi will be available worldwide”
Elvedin Kanafija, BH Telecom’s Acting Executive Director of Business Development, stated: “We are pleased to have expanded our cooperation with TRT World and enriched our TV lineup with another quality news content offered by TRT Arabi.”
(Source: TRT World press release)
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.”
10 June 2019
Vatican Radio has launched a weekly five-minute news bulletin – in Latin. Harnessing the resources of the Vatican’s Latin Letters Office – a department of the Secretariat of State where Church documents are written in or translated into Latin – the programme is described by Vatican Radio’s Editorial Director Andrea Tornielli as “a real, informative news bulletin”/ According to Tornielli, the programme was not conceived “with a nostalgic look to the past, but as a challenge for the future”.
The weekly bulletin is titled Hebdomada Papae, notitiae vaticanae latine redditae or The Pope’s week – Vatican news in Latin. There are very real challenges, however, in using a dead language to report on modern day life. According to a report in the UK Daily Telegraph, Vatican translators have had to come up with some ingenious ways of communicating contemporary concepts into Latin. A suicide bomber, for instance, is rendered as voluntarius suis interromptor while xenofobia is exterarum gentium odium. Latin equivalents of modern terms are often tongue-twisters, such as Certaminibus Mundialibus Sphaeromachiae for the football World Cup, or follis canistrīque ludus for basketball. Much of the Latin in use today has been invented by contemporary scholars and would not have been known to the Romans. There is a word, for instance, for popcorn – máizae grana tosta, or toasted maize grains.
Despite the fanfare for the new weekly programme that went to air on 8m June, Vatican Radio is not the only – nor the first – broadcaster to air programmes in Latin. Finland’s public broadcaster YLE has aired a weekly news bulletin in Latin for many years, under the title Nuntii Latini.
