14 August 2009
Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, reaching the largest combined audience of any radio broadcaster in Afghanistan, are helping Afghans engage with presidential candidates in the lead up to the August 20 presidential election.
VOA and RFE/RL, overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, both air in Dari and Pashto and will give audiences unprecedented access to the candidates. RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan is hosting call-in shows where presidential candidates take questions from the audience, and is airing interviews with each of the 41 contenders. VOA’s Radio/TV Ashna will also interview the three top prospects, as well as Shahla Atta, one of two women in the running. The BBG broadcasters both produce programming in Dari and Pashto, the most widely spoken languages in Afghanistan.
On August 16, RFE/RL plans to co-host with Afghan State TV a debate among presidential candidates including current president and leading contender Hamid Karzai, who has declined to appear in other debates. Radio Free Afghanistan Director Akbar Ayazi will moderate the debate, which will be seen and heard nationwide.
Three days of live TV shows from Kabul will cap off VOA’s extensive coverage, which also includes live radio shows, while RFE/RL plans 12 hours of live programming around the election, keeping voters informed of the latest developments and analyzing them as they happen.
Broadcast media are critical sources of information for the largely rural and illiterate people of Afghanistan. TV has expanded dramatically since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but radio remains the nationwide medium of choice for daily news. Only word of mouth, with Afghans turning to friends, family, and tribal elders, rivals radio as a source of information.
VOA and RFE/RL are also highlighting the views and opinions of ordinary Afghans both within and outside the country. VOA will host a series of six talk shows broadcast from Kabul University and from a camp for internally displaced Afghans, and will feature reports from remote locations throughout Afghanistan. In-depth coverage has been examining topics from the role of religious leaders to the effect of young voters.
In addition, VOA’s Deewa Radio, targeted at the Afghan-Pakistan border region, will report the attitudes of the two million Afghan refugees in Pakistan who are ineligible to vote, as well as the perspectives of Afghans living in the United States.
VOA’s Persian News Network and Arabic-language Alhurra TV have sent reporters to Kabul to cover the election for viewers in the Middle East, and broadcasts in many other languages will also focus on the election.
VOA and RFE/RL broadcast to Afghanistan a combined 24 hours a day on radio in Dari, Pashto and Special English, and VOA broadcasts an additional 6 hours a week on television. The programs are also available online. VOA and RFE/RL broadcasts reach over 56% of Afghans each week, almost 10 million people.
VOA also operates Deewa Radio with nine hours daily of live Pashto-language programming targeted at the Afghan-Pakistan border region.
14 August 2009
Vizrt announces that Viz Multichannel 2.5the lastest version of its powerful channel branding softwarewill be unveiled during the companys invitation-only Amsterdam Sessions, held from September 10th-15th in the Hotel Okura in Amsterdam. Viz Multichannel integrates Vizrts realtime 2D/3D graphics and effects with industry-leading broadcast automation, traffic, and delivery systems, giving broadcasters an effective, hands-off workflow for presenting tickers, banners, snipes and program schedule graphics for more dynamic channel branding.
This new version makes the creation, scheduling, and delivery of channel branding an automated, cost-effective process that will benefit broadcasters in todays demanding, multi-channel business environment, said Ran Yakir, head of R&D Israel, Vizrt. Creating and delivering effective, visually compelling channel branding is essential to attract and retain loyal TV viewers.
Multichannel 2.5 provides many new user-friendly features and operational capabilities that further streamline and automate the operational workflow, including full integration with Viz Ticker3Dan advanced, flexible, creative tool for designing and building graphics-rich tickers. With this integration, Ticker3D elements can be positioned on-screen with their buttons in a pane, which allows the tickers to be triggered either manually or automatically, timed or by automation. Users may also define the import and update rules for these Ticker 3D graphics to be scheduled either by Multichannel or according to traffic/automation system.
Multichannel 2.5 also adds a new settings user interface. It is more channel-based, and enables users to: import and export settings, save to/restore from default on a per-channel basis; and utilize multi-language support.
The import/update mechanism in Multichannel 2.5 was improved, resulting in dramatic performance enhancements and the ability to work with all traffic and automation systems available.
Multichannel 2.5 includes an improved interface with Viz Video Hub, Vizrts video clips database. Using this interface, video clips can be displayed as part of the graphic or the main video. The new version also includes: the ability to automatically send editable templates from the scheduling station to a defined channel in the master control room; cross-channel promotion; GMT offset as required for traffic and automation scheduling; and automatic deletion of old, edited templates.
One example of a customer whos experienced a dramatically improved workflow and channel branding is VC Studios, a television company handling the technical operations at A&E, History, BIO and E! Entertainment Television in Caracas, Venezuela. VC Studios distributes channels via cable television, mobile and web site for all Latin-American countries. VC Studios selected Viz Multichannel to control the order of the television networks overlay graphics on air. VC Studios inserts graphics and station IDs over a total of ten channels five A&E channels and five from History. Viz Multichannel is run from two master control rooms, one in Caracas and another in Sunrise-FL.
Viz Multichannel gives us the opportunity to insert more graphics on air via an automated workflow, said Fernando Campagnoli Master Control Technical Supervisor at VC Studios. We now have automated control on air instead of having to manually control it. We coordinate the transmission plan in the logging department before play out. It has dynamically changed the image of our channels on air, offering more promo capabilities during the shows instead of just during the breaks. The branding of our channels has greatly improved since we started using Viz Multichannel.”
12 August 2009
The Times reports:
The host of a Brazilian TV crime show has been accused of ordering a series of execution-style murders to snuff out rival drug traffickers and boost his own ratings. Police say that Wallace Souza, a former policeman who built a political career as the scourge of crime in the lawless Amazonas state, would feature their killings on his Canal Livre show.
For years the show had an uncanny knack for being the first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victims. Mr. Souza says it relied on good old-fashioned journalism: its staff had well-placed sources and constantly monitored police scanners for murder alerts.
The order to execute always came from the politician and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police, Thomaz Vasconcelos, head of intelligence for the state police force, told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr. Souza denied all the criminal allegations and called them absurd.
23 July 2009
From the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty web site:
Azerbaijan marks National Press Day today, but with three journalists in jail and two bloggers awaiting trial there is perhaps not too much to celebrate.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says a Baku court’s rejection of an appeal to release two jailed Azerbaijani bloggers is “unacceptable,” RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports.
Clotilde Le Coz, of RSF’s Internet Freedom Desk, said the pretrial jailing of Adnan Hajizade and Emin Milli on charges of hooliganism is “confirmation” of the lack of freedom of expression in Azerbaijan.
“Those bloggers will be forced to stay in detention for two months for something they didnt commit, awaiting their trial that they even dont know the date of,” Le Coz said. “They were just writing on the Internet about what is going on in Azerbaijan. What has hooliganism got to do with that?”
Le Coz said that RSF has sent two letters to the Azerbaijani government asking for the journalists to be released but has received no response.
She said it also asked that the public be allowed to attend the hearing on July 20 at the appeals court, but it was held behind closed doors.
Le Coz said RSF will work to make “more and more people aware of [the bloggers’] situation.”
She called the bloggers’ case “broader…because it shows it can happen to anybody. You dont have to be a journalist to be threatened by the government or to be put in jail.”
Hajizade, a video blogger and member of the OL! opposition movement, was arrested with activist Milli at an internet cafe in Baku on July 8 and charged with hooliganism.
Rights groups say the charges were fabricated to punish the activists — who post their work on the social networking website Facebook — for their criticism of the government.
Le Coz said that they had become online leaders in Azerbaijan “and thats why they were silenced by the government.”
23 July 2009
Daily news from Voice of America’s (VOA) Swahili Service is available, starting this week, by text message for users of Safaricom’s “Get It 411” program in Kenya.
“We’re excited about this program, which is VOA’s first short message service (SMS) project in East Africa,” said VOA Executive Editor Steve Redisch. “We’re always looking for new ways to reach audiences with our news and information on the platforms of their choice and in the languages they speak.”
The Nairobi-based Safaricom already allows subscribers to their Safaricom Live service to download VOA-TV’s English language video and audio to their mobile phones. That program has proved to be popular, particularly with programs about President Obama, whose father was Kenyan.
The new SMS program, “Get It 411,” is a subscription service that provides breaking news alerts on a regular basis.
VOA’s Swahili Service (www.VOANews.com/swahili) broadcasts to Kenya and other countries in East Africa for 1.5 hours each weekday and one hour on weekends. Swahili, a common language in the region, is spoken by an estimated 90 million people.
Safaricom networks reach areas throughout Kenya, an East African country of nearly 38 million where mobile technology often has leap-frogged conventional landline telephones. Safaricom has over 14 million subscribers in Kenya.
23 July 2009
From the GSMA Mobile Business Briefing:
South Korean vendor LG Electronics claims it will continue to defy the general market slowdown after posting record-high quarterly net profit thanks in part to robust sales of mobile devices. It sold 29.8 million handsets in the three months to July, boosted by premium products such as the multimedia touch-screen phone Arena and steady sales of mid-range phones. In the second quarter LG’s total net profit rose 62 percent to KRW1.15 trillion (US$903 million) on revenues of KRW14.5 trillion (a 13.8 percent increase on the year-ago period). Its mobile division reported KRW5.14 trillion in sales, 25.8 percent higher than the previous year, and operating profit of KRW545 billion with a margin of 10.6 percent. Handset sales accounted for 95 percent of its mobile division revenues.
LG is the world’s third-largest handset manufacturer and aims to overtake number two rival Samsung by 2012. Although LG forecasts the global handset market to decline over 6 percent year-on-year to around 280 million units in the third quarter, it expects to enjoy its own “steady growth” with the introduction of future high-end devices.
LG – a contender in home entertainment, home appliances, air conditioning and business solutions, as well as mobile communications – said it expects total company sales “to grow over 10 percent YoY as demand for LCD TVs and mobile phones continues to expand, with profitability comparable to last year’s level.”
