3 April 2013
Vizrt Ltd. and Zeebox announced today a partnership that allows broadcasters and program makers to integrate interactive second screen experiences into live TV shows.
The partnerships allows votes, polls, audience metrics and other real-time audience participation within zeebox to be fed in real time into the broadcast stream for participating shows, allowing broadcasters to create dynamic new forms of interactive broadcast entertainment.
Zeebox provides viewers a unique social user experience on their mobile device to enhance programs they are viewing on television. With tools to help manage program guides, interface with social media and find out quick information about virtually anything talked about on television, Zeebox becomes a powerful source for broadcasters to interact with their audience.
Vizrt’s Social TV solution, the interactive social media visualization solution from Vizrt, brings in user generated content from Zeebox – live. This data is then visualized based on multiple parameters that give media houses a new source of content for their broadcast. Location, social media interactions including Facebook and Twitter, polls and viewing preferences can all be visualized to create a unique story.
“Our integration with Zeebox places the social interaction between the media house and the viewer directly in the hands of the viewers at home in a controlled workflow,” said Håvard Myklebust, Executive VP Products and Marketing. “With the additional integration to the Vizrt Online Suite, broadcasters have a powerful tool to maintain their content on every platform while giving the end user the best possible user experience supported by a cost-effective workflow which makes 2nd screen production affordable.”
“People have always wanted to participate in TV shows. Once upon a time viewers’ letters would be read on screen, then you could text in messages, then you could tweet at the show” said Anthony Rose, Co-founder & CTO at Zeebox. “The Zeebox – Vizrt integration takes that to the next level, providing broadcasters and program makers with a wide range of creative ways to incorporate audience participation in TV shows. From talent and games shows to news and comedy programs, broadcasters can now engage with their viewers and bring audience participation directly into the show in a way that wasn’t previously practical.”
28 March 2013
Eurosport has today marked the -100 day countdown to the start of the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan by announcing details of the first ever multi-screen coverage of a Universiade event.
Viewers can follow the competition from Kazan on the move via Eurosport’s online streaming service for mobile, tablet, and connected TV’s, the Eurosport Player – bringing a truly multi-screen experience to a Summer Universiade for the first time.
The leading Pan-European sports entrainment group will broadcast over 120 hours of live TV coverage from the multi-sport event between 6-17 July 2013, as the first activation in the six-year agreement signed with FISU in September 2012 to cover all Summer and Winter Universiades until 2017.
Live coverage of the Summer Universiade in Kazan will be shared across Eurosport and Eurosport 2 with action from up to nine different sports being showcased across the 12 days of broadcast. Evening and afternoon highlights will also be shown from selected events.
Eurosport will also have reporters and film crew on-site in Kazanto report breaking news and record athlete interviews. Results and news reports will also be posted on Eurosoport’s dedicated University sports section on Eurosport.com.
The 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan is expected to host over 10,500 athletes, aged 17-28, from 170 countries who will compete across the 10 compulsory disciplines each host city has to stage – athletics, basketball, fencing, football, gymnastics, judo, aquatics, table tennis and volleyball – alongside optional sports chosen by the local organisers.
Host city Kazan has also opted to include: badminton, beach volleyball, belt wrestling, boxing, chess, canoe sprint, field hockey, rugby 7’s, sambo, sport shooting, synchronised swimming, rowing, weightlifting and wrestling.
Many of the gold medal winning performances at the Summer Universiade events are close in timing/scores to the Olympic Gold medal winning standard and several Olympic Champions first achieved their taste for victory at the SU events.
At the London 2012 Olympic Games, no less than 154 former Universiade medallists – 75 men and 79 women – achieved 174 Olympic medals: 48 gold, 56 silver and 70 bronze, in 21 of the 26 sports.
Eurosport is currently broadcasting a monthly magazine show entitled CAMPUS which is counting down to the Kazan Summer Universiade and profiling four athletes who will be competing. The show also features the latest news from the world of University sports as students work towards qualifying for Kazan.
Eurosport Chairman & CEO Laurent-Eric Le Lay said: “Eurosport has considerable expertise of broadcasting large-scale, international events and the ability to unite million of fans around them. The 2013 Summer Universiade promises to be an inspiring, and highly competitive sporting event, and one that perfectly demonstrates Eurosport’s capacity to deliver an event to the fan, wherever they are on TV, mobile, tablet or PC. I look forward to watching the world-class performances from Kazan in July.”
FISU President Claude-Louis Gallien said: “With Eurosport as a partner FISU will be able to bring the Universiade to the homes of everybody who cannot be present in Kazan. Especially the parents, siblings and friends of our student-athletes will be thrilled. As well as also the FISU Family. Never in FISU history will the Universiade be so extensively covered by broadcasting and available on multi-media platforms for everybody to witness. Our student-athletes will without doubt excel in front of the TV cameras and I’m pretty confident the crews from Eurosport will do the same behind those cameras sharing some exhilarating moments of international university sport with millions of viewers.”
Li Na, 2011 Roland Garros winner and 2013 Australian Open finalist told Eurosport about her experience at the 2001 Beijing Summer Universiade: “The Universiade gives university tennis players a chance to experience world level competition and meet different people. On my side I was pretty excited because I was playing in Beijing, in front of all these local fans and I said to myself ‘ok, that was pretty good tennis!’ I won singles, doubles and mixed doubles! Not bad?”
Notes to editors:
About FISU FISU stands for Federation Internationale du Sport Universitaire (International University Sports Federation), founded in 1949. FISU’s main responsibility is the supervision of both Summer and Winter Universiades as well as the World University Championships. The Universiade is an international sporting and cultural festival which is staged every two years in a different city. The Summer Universiade consists of 13 compulsory sports (Athletics – Basketball – Fencing – Football – Artistic & Rhythmic Gymnastics – Swimming – Diving – Water Polo – Tennis – Table Tennis – Judo – Volleyball) as well as a number of optional sports chosen by the host country. The record figures are 10,622 participants in Shenzhen, China in 2011 and 174 countries in Daegu, Korea in 2003. The Winter Universiade consists of 7 compulsory sports (Alpine Skiing – Nordic Skiing composed of Ski Jump, Cross Country & Combined – Biathlon – Ice Hockey – Short-Track Speed Skating – Figure Skating (including Synchronised Skating) – Curling) and one or two optional sports also chosen by the host country. The Winter Universiade gathered a record 2,511 participants in Torino in 2007 and a record number of 52 countries in Erzurum, Turkey. Around 30 World University Championships are organized every even-numbered year in sports which do not figure on the compulsory Universiade program. More info can be found on www.fisu.net
27 March 2013
Survey finds tablets complement TV viewing and finds 25-34 age demographic the biggest news enthusiasts
BBC World News and BBC.com/news have today released the results of the largest global study to date on the consumption of news in the digital age. The study, which was conducted by InSites Consulting, surveyed more than 3,600 owners of digital devices in Australia, Singapore, India, UAE, South Africa, Poland, Germany, France and the US in order to determine the growing impact of TV, smartphones, tablets and laptops on people’s news consumption habits. Survey participants were top income earners and owners of at least three devices amongst television, tablet, smartphone and laptop/desktop.
Key findings include:
- Tablet owners watch more TV news, not less, with 43% of tablet users saying they consume more TV than they did five years ago, and most saying they use tablets alongside TV.
- Young professionals, the 25-34 year old demographic are the biggest news enthusiasts.
- Second screening for news is becoming commonplace, with users often using devices in tandem. 83% of tablet users say they have used their tablets while watching television.
- TV still dominates overall usage, taking 42% of people’s news consumption time compared with laptops (29%), smartphones (18%) and tablets (10%).
- News audiences expect to see advertising nearly as much on mobile (79% tablet, 84% smartphone) as they do on TV (87%) and online (84%).
- People respond to advertising across all the screens, with 1 in 7 users indicating they responded to a mobile ad in the last four weeks whilst responses to TV and desktop are 1 in 5 and 1 in 4 respectively.
The survey found that, rather than competing, different platforms complement one another allowing people to layer their device usage throughout the day. Smartphones and laptops are most popular throughout the working day, peaking at around 1pm. TV usage spikes dramatically from 5pm onwards, and at its peak time of 7pm TV use is 50% higher than for any other device.
The survey also found that, in breaking news situations, users turn to television as their primary and first device (42%), with the majority (66%) then turning to the internet to investigate stories further. Users rated national and international news of most importance (84%, 82%), closely followed by local news (79%). Financial and business news (61%) were more highly valued than news about sports (56%) and arts/entertainment news (43%).
Jim Egan, CEO of BBC Global News Ltd said: “Avid news consumers are hungry for information wherever they are and expect to stay in touch on all the devices they now own. There’s been speculation for years that mainstream uptake of smartphones, laptops and tablets will have a negative impact on television viewing, but this study has found that the four devices actually work well together, resulting in greater overall consumption rather than having a cannibalising effect.”
26 March 2013
My-HD Media, the secure and affordable television platform that offers a single viewing card solution for High Definition (HD) channels in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions, announced at CABSAT 2013 its long term strategic partnership with Arabsat, one of the world’s top satellite operators and the leading satellite services provider in the Arab world.
Under the agreement, Arabsat will expand the reach of My-HD Media’s bouquet of channels to over 170 million viewers in more than 80 countries across the Middle East,Africaand beyond. The My-HD Media offering includes besides many other attractive HD channels the top network in the region: the MBC Group. Commenting on the strategic agreement, Mr. Cliff Nelson, CEO of My-HD Media, said: “I am pleased to announce our exclusive partnership with Arabsat during our first participation at Cabsat 2013. Arabsat has always been a frontrunner in the region and a prime hotspot for HD in MENA, and our partnership is intended to give us a valuable platform to provide superior HD content to over 170 million viewers across the (MENA) region.”
“We aim to build a diversified bouquet of 40 HD family entertainment channels and we are confident that our association with Arabsat will be a long term profitable collaboration that will add significant value to both parties but most importantly to the end consumer” added Mr. Nelson.
Mr. Khalid Balkheyour, President and CEO of Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat), said: “My-HD Media has quickly grown into a major contender in the HD industry, where they currently carry an impressive bouquet of HD channels that will continue to evolve and develop. The main objective from our successful alliance with My-HD Media will provide a commercially viable, mass market ready, end-to-end distribution platform to the broadcasters on Arabsat. My-HD Media will allow broadcasters to capture additional HD business across MENA. At the same time we are further expanding Arabsat’s HD reach and HD leadership in the market. And I am confident that in addition to the exclusive carriage for Saudi League in HD and the already existing choice of attractive Free-to-Air HD channels our viewers will really enjoy the new HD channel bouquet carried on the My-HD Media platform.”
26 March 2013
Leaders of key global businesses are converging in Singapore on 26 March 2013 to share strategies at the first Channel NewsAsia Luminary Leadership Forum. The event is a meeting of minds of top industry and thought leaders and practitioners to share advice on innovative solutions to overcome complex market challenges.
They will be addressing an invitation-only delegation of international executives at the Fullerton Hotel. Teymoor Nabili, veteran journalist and host of Channel NewsAsia’s flagship programme, Business Central, will facilitate the two sessions with influential leaders on the panels.
Leadership Forum Panel Members
The Speakers will deliberate on Making the Case for Change. Eminent panellists include Mr Manoj Menon, Partner and Asia Pacific Managing Director of Frost and Sullivan, Mr Emirsyah Satar, President and CEO of Garuda Indonesia, Mr Johan Nyvene, Chief Executive Officer of Hochiminh City Securities Corporation, Mr Valerio Nannini, Managing Director of Nestle Singapore and Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President of the Singapore Management University.
The second session will look into Going Green: Innovative Solutions. The panellists are Ms Aida Greenbury, Managing Director of Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement of Asia Pulp & Paper Group, Mr Dean Draper, Managing Director of the Asean sub-region of BASF, Mr Joshua Soh, Managing Director of CISCO (Singapore and Brunei), Mr Budiarsa Sastrawinata, Managing Director of Ciputra Group and President of International Urban Development Association (INTA) and Mr Philippe Arsonneau, Senior Vice President of Schneider Electric (Asia Pacific and Japan).
Ms Debra Soon, Managing Director of Channel NewsAsia said, “We’re privileged to have these very experienced practitioners bring us up to date on best practices in an interactive and open discussion. Their valuable experiences make compelling case studies, whether it is about making changes or turning a business burden into profit. The channel’s forte is in presenting a better understanding of Asia, and this platform we provide is part of its contribution to raising the intellectual capital across industries and cultures in Asia.”
Luminary Awards Gala Dinner
The Leadership Forum is organised alongside the channel’s premier Luminary Awards Gala, held on the same evening on 26 March 2013 at the Fullerton Hotel. The Luminary Awards recognises the success stories in entrepreneurship, and this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award is conferred on Dr Hc. Ir. Ciputra, Founder and Chairman of the Ciputra Group in Indonesia. Dr Ciputra is a prominent tycoon in the country’s property business for more than 40 years. He will share his insights on entrepreneurship at the Awards Gala Dinner. The dialogue will be recorded for a special programme to be telecast later on Channel NewsAsia.
The honours in the other three categories – the Innovation, Green and Future Business Luminary Awards – are firms and individuals who represent the pillars of Asia’s economic development in the areas of innovation, environmental sustainability and entrepreneurial spirit and leadership. They were selected from a field of highly qualified potentials after being scrutinised by an illustrious jury panel.
A member of the jury, Mr Valerio Nannini, Managing Director of Nestle Singapore Pte Ltd, commented, “I think it should inspire other people that are looking to the Luminary Awards, to try to do their best and improve themselves.”
The Awards will be announced at the Gala Dinner attended by more than 200 business leaders and top executives from different quarters of society.
25 March 2013
Elections for the AIB’s Executive Committee, the six-member group that oversees the Association’s strategic direction and work plan, were held during March. Eleven candidates had been nominated from within the AIB’s international membership for the Executive Committee whose members hold their position for a two-year term.
The six member Executive Committee is now
