27 January 2015
#iamabroadcaster will be held at London’s spectacular RIBA
CNN and Reuters will join the roster of high-end speakers at AIB’s #iamabroadcaster Global Media Summit next month.
Greg Beitchman, VP Content and Partnerships at CNN will participate in a conference session called “Where’s the cash?” The panel discussion will look at the challenges to current funding models and will also look at the issue of piracy and the need to have robust revenus protection systems.
Reuters’ Tim Santhouse, Global Head of Video Products, will take part in a session called “Individualisation – the ultimate engagement”, which will delve into the art and science of getting the right content to the right individuals at the right price point.
A PDF of the full summit agenda can be downloaded here.
The #iamabroadcaster Summit will be two days of networking and education by and for some of the top broadcast decision-makers in the world.
With extracts of programmes showcasing the very best in TV broadcasting globally, audience insights from key market research studies, and unexpected extras, #iamabroadcaster is designed to challenge preconceptions and expand creative and strategic thinking.
#iamabroadcaster takes place on 18-19 February at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects. Tickets are still available from the AIB online store.
Conference sponsors include African mega-broadcaster Channels TV. Further sponsorship and advertising opportunities are available. For more info, contact AIB’s Business Development Director, Ed Wilkinson, at +44 20 7993 2557 or edward.wilkinson@aib.org.uk.
26 January 2015
Russian state broadcaster RT has made strong objections to a statement made last week by incoming BBG CEO Andy Lack in a New York Times interview.
The New York Times article, “U.S. Seeking a Stronger World Media Voice”, quotes Lack:
“We are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram, “ he said. “But I firmly believe that this agency has a role to play in facing those challenges.”
The New York Times piece also went on to say:
“But I’m less concerned about where the agency is at and more focused on where we are going,” he said. “My hope is that if we are behind Russia and China, and that’s a big if, that will change.”
RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan responded in an open letter, saying that Lack was trying to “implicitly equate RT, an international news network, with terrorist organisations like Islamic State and Boko Haram.”
Simonyan went on to say: “RT is outraged that the new head of the BBG, which in essence represents the US Department of State and thus the United States Government, expressed such views, and that the US’ ‘newspaper of record’ published these remarks without any challenge or attempt to provide balance in their report”.
RT has official requested a retraction and apology to BBG, the US State Department and the New York Times.
Andy Lack was sworn in last week as the first ever CEO of the US government funded Broadcasting Board of Governors. BBG oversees US government-funded media entities Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Lack was previously chairman of Bloomberg Media Group. Some have hailed Lack’s appointment as a strategic turning point for the BBG.
BBG and RT are AIB members, as are BBG entities Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Alhurra TV/Radio Sawa.
In a press briefing last week US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki responded to reporter questions about Lack’s statement:
QUESTION: The newly appointed chief executive of the BBG said his agency faces a number of, quote-un-quote, challenges – Russia Today, the Islamic State, and Boko Haram – all in one sentence. Would you call those remarks appropriate or inappropriate?
MS. PSAKI: Well, I think, one, let me note that the Broadcasting Board of Governors is an independent federal agency supervising all U.S. Government-supported civilian international media. I’d certainly point you to them for specifics. I think the broad point is the U.S. Government – would the U.S. Government put those three in the same category? No, we wouldn’t. However, there are concerns, I think, that our – we agree with in terms of the fact that the – Russia’s own independent media space is shrinking and the Kremlin continues to apply pressure on the few remaining outlets. And while RT is available to many viewers in the United States – you’re here in the briefing room today – many Russian authorities have curtailed the ability of BBG broadcasters to broadcast there. So those are challenges and certainly concerns that I think the new head of BBG was expressing.
QUESTION: Do you have – just to clarify, do you have any problem with the way he put it?
MS. PSAKI: I think I’d point you to them, and I just stated that wouldn’t be the way that we would state it from here…
QUESTION: How would you state it?
MS. PSAKI: We wouldn’t state it in those terms.
QUESTION: Well, the Secretary of State is a member of the BBG.
MS. PSAKI: Sure. I just stated the concerns we have, which we agree with.
BBG has not yet publicly responded to the RT letter.
23 January 2015
Tom Roope, Founder and Creative Director of award-winning design firm The Rumpus Room, has been a creative pioneer since the early years of digital content. Brands from Google to the International Olympic Committee have sought out the innovation and engagment that The Rumpus Room has become renowned for.
Roope will be a speaker at AIB’s #iamabroadcaster Global Media Summit, hosted by the AIB on 18-19 February at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects.
How did The Rumpus Room start?
We’ve all seen that music and publishing was all radically changed by digital. But TV hasn’t yet. So we started the Rumpus Room based on what’s going to happen to TV.
Our process started by making interactive films – and we realised that nobody cared. Then we started making content with the audience and that started feeling like a really interesting area of activity, because it had social value. It generated value both in the creation and in the content that you were accessing. And it also had a kind of different spirit compared to how content is usually created for those spaces.
It’s a transactional relationship. You must be giving people back more than they’re putting in. That has to be. You can do that with prizes, or maybe you get on TV if you’re good, but if the idea is good enough, it should be generating enough value for people socially for them to participate.
There’s an idea that almost anyone with access to a camera and a web connection is in some sense a broadcaster. Is it true? Are we all broadcasters?
We are in the same way that we all became graphic designers when desktop publishing came out. There were suddenly lots of bad graphic designers around! But technology throws up all sorts of things, doesn’t it? It makes you realise how television is such a construct. Why must everything be a half-hour or sixty or ninety minutes? I think it is interesting how people’s ability to create something, people’s passion to create something, is really greater than we all expected.
At the Rumpus Room we talk about the ‘Ikea Effect’. People value things that they have made more than other people might value those things. If you participate in creating something, you perceive its value as higher than other people do. A lot of the work we do at The Rumpus Room is based on the idea that if we get some people in to create some content, then they’re more likely to share it. They’re a participate in this creation.
The key brand for most people is themselves. And a lot of the work that we do is helping them promote themselves. Or helping brands help people promote themselves.
What place does storytelling have in a media world where we’re always talking about experiences and things happening in real time?
Did you see the Stefan Sagmeister critique of storytelling? Basically, every concert you go to, everybody’s talking about storytelling. Sagmeister met someone who designed a rollercoaster, and the designer said he was a storyteller. And he replied, “If you’re a storyteller, it’s a pretty stupid story that you’re telling.”
We definitely design experiences. We do lots of experiences that we hope are engaging and fun. I wouldn’t class them as stories, but a lot of them manifest thmeselves in stories. A lot of our work is a kind of game that manifests itself in stories. We’re not totally obsessed with this story thing. There’s a nice piece we did for X Factor where a cat is playing the guitar. Is a cat playing a guitar a story? I don’t know. I don’t dwell too much on it. but it’s quite funny.
Tickets are still available for AIB’s #iamabroadcaster Global Media Summit. Featuring two days of conversation by top figures from the global media industry, and the inaugural David Frost Memorial Lecture, #iamabroadcaster will be held at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects on 18-19 February.
In addition to Tom Roope, other speakers include, Peter Limbourg, Director General of Deutsche Welle; Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk; and John Momoh, Director of Nigeria’s Channels TV. Download the conference agenda here.
(read this article in full in the next issue of AIB’s print magazine, The Channel)
22 January 2015
SES S.A. (NYSE Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG) announced today that the company has selected Arianespace to launch the powerful new hybrid communications satellite, SES-12, on board an Ariane 5 booster from the European Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, during Q4 2017. This will be the 40th launch of an SES spacecraft on board an European Ariane launch vehicle.
The new satellite will expand SES’s capabilities to provide direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting, VSAT, Mobility and High Throughput Satellite (HTS) data connectivity services in the fast growing Asia-Pacific region, including rapidly growing markets such as India and Indonesia.
The spacecraft will be positioned at the well-established SES orbital slot of 95 degrees East, providing incremental as well as replacement capacity with excellent view angles across the Asia-Pacific region. SES-12 will replace SES’s existing NSS-6 satellite and will be co-located with SES-8. Today, SES serves close to 20 million DTH households in India and Indochina from this orbital slot.
SES-12 is being built by Airbus Defence and Space based on the highly reliable Eurostar E3000 platform. The satellite is designed to operate for 15 years, with a payload comprised of 68 high-power physical Ku-band transponders and 8 physical Ka-band transponders. The spacecraft will be equipped with an electric plasma propulsion system for orbit raising and on-orbit manoeuvres.
The payload of the hybrid SES-12 satellite consists of two distinct but complementary missions: first, traditional wide beam coverage, and second, a high-powered Ku-band multi spot beam payload (HTS).
The traditional wide-beam mission consists of 54 (36 MHz equivalent) transponders that will provide state-of-the-art replacement and growth capacity for SES’s existing DTH, Government and VSAT customers, allowing for a seamless transition from NSS-6 to SES-12. In addition, the design provides incremental growth capacity to support new DTH platforms and other services targeting the Asia-Pacific region.
The second mission consists of 70 Ku-band spot beams and 11 Ka-band spot beams delivering over 14 GHz for VSAT, Enterprise, Mobility and Government applications. This mission also includes a Digital Transparent Processor (DTP) which provides anti-jamming capabilities as well as increased payload flexibility in order to provide customized bandwidth solutions to SES customers.
21 January 2015
Text content from the BBC Ukrainian website bbc.ua is now available on Zik.ua, the online portal of the Ukrainian news agency and TV channel, Zik. Thanks to a syndication agreement between BBC World Service and Zik.ua portal, visitors to Zik.ua now see news stories in Ukrainian and Russian from the BBC Ukrainian website.
Users of Zik.ua will be able to view a wide range of the BBC Ukrainian news coverage: from international and regional news reporting relevant to Ukrainian audiences, to entertainment, sport, economics and art. The BBC stories are accompanied by three links leading directly to the core BBC Ukrainian online offer.
BBC Ukrainian Editor, Nina Kuryata says: “We are keen to extend the reach of our content in Ukraine and provide audiences there with the best of the BBC’s international reporting and analysis. This collaboration with Zik.ua is an excellent development for bbc.ua.”
Editor-in-Chief of Zik.ua, Taras Smakula, adds: “For us, the cooperation with an authoritative, highly professional organisation such as BBC Ukrainian is an excellent opportunity to deliver, through our site, to Ukrainian users more high-quality information, broadening the understanding of the events that make up today’s world.”
Frederick Durman, Business Development Manager, BBC World Service, comments: “We are delighted to be expanding the availability of the BBC news content on Ukrainian media thanks to this collaboration with Zik.ua. It will allow even more news seekers across Ukraine to benefit from our Ukrainian- and Russian-language offer.”
BBC Ukrainian is part of BBC World Service.
20 January 2015
Respected journalist and media executive Andrew Lack was sworn-in today as the Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal agency that oversees the five networks and broadcasting operations of U.S. international media. Those networks include the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Lack is the first-ever CEO of U.S. international media. Creating the position of a CEO has been a key objective of the agency’s governing board and the Administration.
“We are at a unique time in the extraordinary history of this agency. The 21st Century’s global war on information is increasingly threatening to our country and our values,” said Lack. “I am lucky to join a great group of journalists and news professionals spread across the globe who care so deeply about our critical role in that battle.”
Lack’s selection follows an almost year-long search process that began in October 2013.
“To say we are fortunate that Andy has agreed to accept this challenge is a huge understatement,” said Jeff Shell, Chairman of the BBG. “He is an experienced media executive, a respected journalist, and an energetic and inspirational leader. We are grateful that Andy has decided to serve his country and lead the BBG at this critical juncture.”
Prior to being selected by the BBG, Lack served as the Chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group. He joined Bloomberg in October 2008 as CEO of its Global Media Group and was responsible for expanding television, radio, magazine, conference and digital businesses.
Previous to joining Bloomberg, Lack was Chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, where he led the company’s roster of prominent international artists and vast catalog of recorded music from around the world. Before joining Sony Music Entertainment, he was president and chief operating officer of NBC, where he oversaw entertainment, news (including MSNBC and CNBC), NBC stations, sales and broadcast and network operations. He was responsible for expanding the Today show to three hours and creating the show’s street-side studio in New York’s Rockefeller Center.
From 1993 to 2001, Lack was president of NBC News, which he transformed into America’s most-watched news organization through NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, Today and Dateline NBC.
Before going to NBC, Lack spent much of his television career at CBS News. After joining in 1976, within a year, he became a prominent producer for 60 Minutes and subsequently, senior executive producer of CBS Reports. Lack’s broadcasts at CBS earned numerous honors, including 16 Emmy Awards and 4 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards.
Lack received a bachelor’s degree from the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, where he is currently a trustee. (Source: BBG press release)
