12 June 2018
Berlin, Germany – Ruptly provided original multi-camera live transmission of the pre – World Cup match with FIFA and Russian football legends in five different languages.
The friendly game took place in Kaliningrad on June 3 and featured Brazil’s double World Cup winning captain Cafu, as well as Nwankwo Kanu, Nuno Gomes, Wes Brown, Niko Kranjcar and Pascal Zuberbuehler. The team was up against Ruslan Nigmatulin, Dmitry Sennikov, Andrey Fedkov,Dmitry Khlestov, Andrey Tikhonov and Aleksandr Panov.
A 4K OB van, equipped with Riedel’s Mediornet video router, Bolero wireless intercom and Arri’s Amira cameras has been utilised for an hour of uninterrupted multi-camera live broadcast, delivered to international clients and social media platforms in five languages by professional sports commentators.
Throughout the World Cup, Ruptly is offering broadcast services with three outdoor multi-camera studios in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Sochi, in addition to live stand-up positions in 11 host cities.
Ruptly’s extensive coverage includes all World Cup events, pre-match trainings, exclusive interviews, fan zones, and viral videos from every host city in Russia. Using “Ruptly Stringer”, a UGC app, the agency is able to source and provide the best user-generated videos in real time.
Ruptly expects a minimum of four World Cup live transmissions a day via the “Ruptly LIVE” platform, which enables users to broadcast up to nine simultaneous events to multiple destinations, including direct to social media. Direct social media streams require no additional specialist technology on the user side, making it possible to gain access to lives in as little as three clicks.
Along with state-of-the-art live solutions, Ruptly’s team operates drones and uses 360-degree cameras for video and live coverage.
A complete overview of the World Cup coverage and the technology used will be presented at the IBC Show in Amsterdam in September.
Ruptly is a global multimedia agency launched in 2013. Today its materials are used by more than 1,000 media companies from 89 countries — from major TV channels to online projects and mobile platforms. Ruptly videos have appeared on air and online for news outlets such as CNN, NBC, CBS, and VICE. Ruptly was awarded the Drum Online Media award for “Best B2B News Site” in 2017, “Commercial Team of the Year” in 2018 and its project Ruptly LIVE became a finalist of both The Drum Online Media Awards and Global Media Innovator.
11 June 2018
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the independent agency, which supervises the five government-funded US international broadcasting and multimedia organizations, held its latest meeting on 06 June.
The BBG 2018 Action Plan was unveiled on 14 March.
A number of personnel changes were announced and a wide-ranging overview of recent initiatives was given by BBG networks’ senior leaders.
The board meeting highlighted also the risks faced by its journalists around the world.
BBG Board Chairman Kenneth Weinstein first welcomed Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Heather Nauert to her first board meeting. Nauert, who represents Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as BBG ex officio board member, expressed support for Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Uyghur journalists, whose families are held in Chinese reeducation camps, and sympathies for those affected by the double suicide bombing that killed 25, including three Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) journalists, in Kabul on 30 April.
Personnel changes
Weinstein announced the following personnel changes:
The appointment of veteran journalist Tomás P. Regalado as Director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), Regalado was sworn in by BBG CEO John Lansing.
The departure of BBG Deputy Director Jeffrey Trimble, who will join Ohio State University after 21 years in US international broadcasting. Trimble, a fluent Russian speaker, joined the BBG as Director of Programming in 2007 after a 10-year career at RFE/RL.
On 04 June the White House announced that it had sent to the Senate, for confirmation, the nomination of conservative filmmaker and documentarian Michael Pack to succeed John Lansing as BBG Chief Executive Officer for the term of three years.
Key initiatives and collaborative activities
Leaders of the BBG networks, known as the International Media Coordinating Council (ICC), who meet twice a month, presented key initiatives and collaborative activities aimed at maximizing their operations in today’s challenging media environment.
Yolanda Lopez, director Voice of America (VOA) News Center, presented “The Dragon’s Reach”, a project coordinating resources from the five networks to highlight Chinese construction and energy projects worth more than a trillion dollars in 70 countries.
VOA Director Amanda Bennett announced that the five networks would cooperate for joint coverage of the Singapore meeting between the US president and the North Korean leader on 12 June.
OCB Director Emilio Vasquez introduced a short video highlighting the work and programmes of the network and the challenges faced by its journalists.
RFE/RL President Thomas Kent presented video reports describing the network’s coverage of recent events in Armenia that led to a peaceful change of government and of the brutal repression by Russian security forces of demonstrations in Moscow as President Putin was inaugurated. Video reports were screened to the BBG meeting. Kent said that international news networks like the BBC, CNN or France 24 used RFE/RL reports as the network, (with 19 staff in Armenia) was the only outlet to have exclusive footage of these events.
RFA Director Libby Liu described the six-part RFA series “How the West was won: The making of a police state on China’s New Frontier’”. Liu listed the measures taken by the Chinese authorities to control ethnic Uyghurs, their “staggering scope” and harshness. RFA has the world’s only Uyghur broadcast and multimedia service and some of its journalists say dozens of their relatives have been detained or sent to reeducation camps to put pressure on them.
Weinstein adjourned the meeting and announced that the next BBG board would convene at the Middle East Broadcasting Network (MBN) headquarters in Springfield Virginia, on 29 August.
6 June 2018
New awards for the best coverage of sustainability issues across the Asia-Pacific region make debut in the 14th annual competition
As the issue of sustainability continues to attract the attention of programme-makers, the Association for International Broadcasting has introduced new awards for productions covering the subject in Asia and the Pacific region.
Home to more than two-thirds of our planet’s population, the Asia-Pacific region is at the centre of challenges brought about by humankind’s actions and through the effects of climate change. In its 2018 competition, the AIBs are searching for the most compelling and engaging TV and radio productions that are telling stories around the issues of sustainability from climate change to poverty reduction, and everything in between.
“It’s one of the media industry’s responsibilities to ensure that audiences are aware of the issues around sustainability,” says Simon Spanswick, Chief Executive of the Association for International Broadcasting. “Media companies are in a unique and privileged position to help lead the conversation and ensure that people engage on key issues around sustainability. That’s why we’ll be rewarding the best programmes that cover this vital subject in this immense region.”
The AIBs 2018 Asia-Pacific Sustainability Award is open to all television, radio and independent production companies, wherever they are based in the world; programmes entered must focus on issues within the Asia-Pacific region.
These two new awards – one for radio, the other for television – form part of this year’s AIBs, the 14th annual competition for the world’s best factual productions. All entries must be submitted by 30 June 2018. The two Asia-Pacific Sustainability Awards will be presented at a gala dinner on 28 September, hosted in Taipei by the sponsor of these two awards, Radio Taiwan International. This is the 90th anniversary of Radio Taiwan International which broadcasts to the world in 13 languages.
Full information on the AIBs 2018 and the Asia-Pacific Sustainability Awards is available online at www.theaibs.tv
4 June 2018
Qatari pay-TV operator claims widespread Saudi-backed piracy harming its services
Subscription TV services are often targeted by individuals and rogue operators eager to access content for free, sometimes to redistribute it for profit. Subscription-only sports and film channels are victims of choice for pirates. The Qatar-based beIN Media Group claims that its content has been pirated and distributed across the Middle East region by a Saudi-based piracy network since October 2017. Loss of subscriptions and revenues is of serious concern for the operator less than a fortnight before the start of the FIFA Football World Cup. beIN owns exclusive rights to the World Cup, but damage and losses are likely to extend after and beyond it. The attack looks to be clearly politically motivated.
Why beIN Media?
Relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been quite strained over many years. Saudi Arabia, opposes the Muslim Brotherhood a political Islamist group founded in 1928, which it sees as a threat to the kingdom’s institutions and declared as a terrorist organisation in March 2014.
Saudi Arabia blames Qatar for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which openly supported uprisings in Arab countries from 2011, and other Islamist movements, such as Hamas, which it labelled an extremist organisation in June 2017.
Following an alleged hacking incident of Qatari news and social media websites on which false and incendiary quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, were posted in late May 2017, Saudi Arabia, several Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Egypt severed relations with Qatar. Some countries shut down all broadcasts of Qatari media inside their borders, including Al Jazeera, and expelled journalists working for the network.
Later that month these countries issued 13 demands to end the diplomatic crisis. These included calling on Qatar to end its support for extremist organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and the closure of Al Jazeera.
Saudi Arabia sees Al-Jazeera Arabic as very partisan and close to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The beIN Media Group was created in January 2014 after Al Jazeera dissociated itself from all its sports activities. The holding expanded its portfolio to include movies, general entertainment, factual and kids content, it acquired the film and television studio MIRAMAX and the largest Turkish pay-TV platform, Digiturk, in 2016. The group has now a portfolio of some 60 channels distributed in 43 countries across five continents.
beIn channels are available in the Middle East via Qatar’s Es’hailSat (25.5° East) and Egypt’s Nilesat (7.3° W) satellites.
High stakes
beIn claims that a Saudi-based piracy network calling itself “beoutQ” has been pirating and selling subscriptions to ten satellite channels carrying premium live sports content stolen from beIN and other broadcasters since October 2017.
This is a very sophisticated and well-funded operation. Tom Keaveny, beIN’s managing director for the Middle East, told The New York Times that beoutQ’s operation “takes industrial scale knowledge and ability and multimillion dollar funding … This isn’t someone in their bedroom.”
Pirated beoutQ channels are available on set top boxes (STBs) openly sold in retail outlets across Saudi Arabia and other countries. However, Oman banned the importation and sale of beoutQ STBs in late May.
beoutQ channels are beamed from the Arabsat-operated Badr 4/5/6/7 satellites (at 26° East).
beIN called on Arabsat to cease making its facilities available to beoutQ, but the satellite operator has denied liability.
beIN general counsel Sophie Jordan told AFP “We have requested FIFA to take direct legal action against Arabsat and the indications we have, show that they are behind that.” Despite saying it supports beIN’s anti-piracy efforts, “FIFA has been reluctant to openly criticise Saudi Arabia,” according to The Independent, unsurprisingly since Saudi and UAE investors are backing a $25bn plan to create global football tournaments for FIFA.
Saudi Arabia officials told The Independent that neither Arabsat nor the Kingdom had any affiliation with beOutQ. Furthermore, they said, Arabsat does not control the content transmitted on its satellites.
It will be interesting to see if beIN will succeed in protecting its valuable content from what seems to be a hostile state-sponsored undertaking.
30 May 2018
Global multimedia news agency Ruptly wins Commercial Team of The Year at the annual Drum Online Media Awards. Ruptly LIVE, shortlisted for Technical Innovation of the Year, is highly commended by the judges. The awards ceremony took place on Tuesday 22 May at the Marriott in Grosvenor Square, London.
Going up against Minute Media and Quartz, Ruptly was able to demonstrate a solid effort in growing its international client base among broadcast and online content publishers, winning the award.
Ruptly Live, which enables publishers to license and instantly stream up to 9 simultaneous live events direct to social media, including 360 live video, was shortlisted for Technical Innovation of the Year along with projects by Facebook and Ubisoft, CNN, The Times, Telegraph Media Group, TRT World, Radio Mitre and Harrods. While the award went to The Times, Ruptly and Telegraph Media Group were both highly commended by the judges.
Chief Commercial Officer, Matthew Tabaccos, highlighted that Ruptly is able to provide a service not only to big broadcasters, but also to fuel the output of new voices across the world that do not necessarily have the “cash to spend”. “We are keen to be able to scale a global agency in a collaborative process, and we are proud that our team has been recognized for commercial awards which shows our daily hard work to provide news that expands views across multiple platforms,” he said. “The award gives Ruptly confirmation that we are growing the agency in the right way, by spending time with clients, listening across markets to their individual needs”.
Last year Ruptly received the Best B2B News Site Award by The Drum.
25 May 2018
The Association for International Broadcasting has published its latest industry briefing, highlighting a selection of the stories we’ve reported here on the AIB website and adding additional news items that will be of interest to our global audience.
You can receive the briefing directly to your inbox – sign up at http://cfb.d5c.myftpupload.com/sign-up-to-the-aib-industry-briefing/.
