2 October 2007
The Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) are now broadcasting a total of seven hours a day to Burma in response the Burmese government’s crackdown, doubling the pre-crisis airtime. Starting Sept. 26, VOA increased Burmese language broadcasts from one hour and a half to three hours daily and RFA from two to four hours daily.
In an exclusive interview on the first day of VOA’s expanded airtime, First Lady Laura Bush urged Burma’s military government to remember that innocent lives are at stake. “I want to say to the armed guards and to the soldiers: Don’t fire on your people. Don’t fire on your neighbors. Join this movement.”
“The Burmese people are starving for accurate information, both about the world’s reaction to their struggle for democracy and also about what is happening in their own land. Our expanded Burmese-language broadcasts are more important than ever in satisfying this hunger,” said James K. Glassman, Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the federal government agency that oversees both VOA and RFA.
A bystander to the demonstrations in Rangoon who was shot by soldiers remarked in an RFA interview, “The Burmese state media announced today that eight were wounded and one had died in the clashes. We can never know the true figure. They will cover up whatever death toll they can to hide the truth.”
VOA and RFA have a measured audience of some 20% of adults weekly in cities across Burma. In times of crisis, listening often spikes to levels twice the weekly rate. Programs can be heard on shortwave and medium wave in Burma, are rebroadcast on satellite and are available through the Internet at www.VOANews.com/Burmese and www.rfa.org/burmese.
2 October 2007
BBC Learning English has become the first international content provider to officially launch on Mobiledu.cn, Nokias new mobile English Language Teaching (ELT) platform in China. Hundreds of millions of English-learners in China will now be able to use their mobile phones to take authentic and modern English learning courses provided by the BBC, including Take Away English, Real English and Quizzes.
Mobiledu.cn is a new learning application software specifically developed by Nokia for mobile devices. Nokia Director of Mobiledu.cn, Peter Zhang, said: As a new interactive learning tool, Mobiledu.cn makes learning possible anywhere and any time, and that is why it has been very popular in the market. As more users install Mobiledu.cn on their Nokia phones, more people can access and enjoy the convenience and value brought by Mobiledu.cn.
Commenting on the significance of the partnership, BBC World Service Business Development Manager for China and North Asia, Raymond Li, said: China is a very special market. It has the largest number of English learners and is the worlds largest mobile market with more than 460 million users of mobile phones. We have been keen to establish ourselves in China, and this partnership with Nokia and its mobile learning platform, Mobiledu.cn, is a real milestone in bringing our world-class content to learners of English.
Nokia Sales and Marketing Manager of Mobieldu.cn, Angela Long, added: Mobiledu.cn provides content which meets the various demands of users on learning, work, entertainment and life in general. The BBC is one of the best-known and authoritative brands in the industry, and, by bringing its Learning English content into our service, we are hoping to provide our users with a better learning experience – in addition to the BBC brand image which is strong among English-learners in China.
Andrew Thompson, Head of BBC Learning English, welcomed the new partnership: BBC ELT has been popular in China for a long time and already has a huge number of fans right across the traditional media platforms of radio and online. This launch on mobile devices offers our audience a convenient new way of learning English interactively anywhere and any time and also expands the BBCs English Learning offer in China.
2 October 2007
LA-based post house, Digital Jungle Post Production recently used its new Quantel Pablo suite to help tell a story of international adventure in providing post services for the Discovery/Travel Channel series 1000 Places to See Before You Die.
Produced by Stone Productions, the 13-episode series follows the journeys of newlywed couple, Albin and Melanie Ulle, who put their lives on hold to travel the world for 14 weeks. The series is based on the best-selling travel book of the same name written by Patricia Schultz.
Digital Jungle served as full-service post house on the project. Facing a tight two-month deadline to finish the series, online editor Alison Andoos employed the companys Pablo suite for online editorial and auto assembly work. Senior colorist Greg Hamlin color corrected the show, while Kim Ho handled titling. Russel Johnson and Lisa Baro served as audio mixers.
Because the schedule was tight, I designed a workflow that was economical for the client and efficient for us, explained Digital Jungle vice president, Kassi Crews.
The series was shot on a mix of formats including DVCPRO 720P, DVCAM, HDVCAM, BetaSP and Digibeta. In addition, Andoos was given QuickTime files and still images in tiff and jpeg format. All of it had to be assembled in the Pablo.
The editors who off-lined the show cut 29.97 DVCAM, without regard to the frame-rate or resolution requirements for the final, said Crews. But with Pablo, that didnt present a problem. It allows media of differing frame rates and resolutions to be assembled on the same time-line. When the show is ready for delivery, everything is output at the correct frame-rate and resolution.
Crews explained that the company recently built a digital intermediate theater around its Pablo, equipped with Barco DLP-90 and 35mm film projectors.
Pablo serves as the central hub of the theater because we can do so many different things on it color grading, restoration, compositing, editing. It has every toolset that we need, said Crews. We can take anything in, and we can put anything out. The Pablo gives us the opportunity to do it all, without having to have three or four different boxes.
With technology changing on a daily basis, I think its important for us as a company to sit down and analyze each job that comes in and see what workflow works best, said Andoos. Every job is different.
Using a high-end piece of equipment like the Pablo helped us get the show out on time. Its an all-in-one system, she added.
Pablos ability to load four HD episodes at once was another key benefit, Andoos said. She explained that this enabled her to start a new episode, while previous episodes were still on the system, awaiting final QC and approval.
The Pablo is a frame-based system not a clip-based system, so every time I needed to do a new version of the show, it didnt take up more storage, she said. I only changed or stored the new frames that were needed.
28 September 2007
Al Jazeera Sport Channel (JSC Sport +1/ JSC Sport +2) announced today that it has reached more than one million subscribers, an unprecedented figure in Arab television subscriber history.
I and the entire Al Jazeera Sport Channel staff are delighted by this achievement which we have accomplished in only a few years since the Channels launch in 2003. This is a testament to the Channels superb content which our subscribers recognize and value, said Ayman Jada, the Managing Director of the Sports Channel.
The Channel has acquired a long list of TV rights for top quality regional and global sporting events including the Qatari, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Argentinean, Portuguese and Japanese leagues. In addition, Al Jazeera Sport has the TV rights to some of the most important European football competitions such as the English, Spanish, French and German Cup, not to mention the European League Cup, the competition that Al Jazeera Sport has had the exclusive rights to since last season.
On September 1, 2007, three subscribers (Ibrahim Yousef, Naser Al-Qahtani, Muftah Al-Hajiri) who had entered the Channels One Million Subscriber Competition were announced as the lucky winners of the draw and will drive home with their prizes from Ford: Focus, the new Escape and Edge.
The cars will be given to the winners today at a celebration held in Dubai, UAE, to mark the one million subscriber figure. The celebration will be attended by the Channels senior management and stars including Ayman Jada, Rabeh Madjer, Tarek Dhiab, Said Aouita, Karim Alami, Hichem Khalsi and Yousef Saif.
Hussein Murad, Sales and Marketing director of Ford Middle East said: “We are proud to support Al Jazeera Sport Channel and congratulate them on their unprecedented accomplishment, surpassing the one million subscriber mark. Ford Middle East and Al Jazeera Sport Channel are one in reaching out to the youth. While Al Jazeera Sport provides quality programming through its premier sports programs, Ford is relentless in its commitment to provide cutting-edge products that connect well with the youth, complementing their lifestyles and giving them the total ownership experience.”
28 September 2007
TV One Pakistan has selected ENPS – Associated Press news production system to expand its broadcasting operation with a new 24-hour news channel called News One.
Based in Karachi, TV One is a popular entertainment channel that brings top-rated dramas, soaps and lifestyle programmes to the people of Pakistan, as well as to the Urdu-speaking community across the world. In the past, five-minute news bulletins every hour have kept its audience up-to-date with current affairs, but now a dedicated news channel will offer viewers greater choice.
With ENPS newsroom technology at its heart and WASP 3D providing real time on-air graphics, the channel has an ambitious output in mind. Over the next year, News One will provide top-quality up-to-the-minute coverage of events such as the presidential, national and local elections – as well as the yearly budgets.
When asked about the selection of ENPS, Jan Nizamani, technical General Manager of TV One said: We turned to ENPS because we felt secure in the professional expertise of AP and because we were aware of its reputation as being widely used by the worlds leading broadcasters.
TV One and News One are part of Airwaves Media, owned by Interflow Communications, one of Pakistans leading advertising agencies. Interflow Communications launched the first privately owned TV channel in Pakistan in the early 1990s as well as launching TV ASIA in the UK.
News Ones reporters join over 4500 journalists already using ENPS across Asia and the Asia Pacific. This impressive stable of clients includes Indias leading national broadcaster and the largest terrestrial network in the world, Doordarshan; Mediacorp Singapore; TVB Hong Kong and CNBC Pakistan.
“We are delighted to welcome TV One as our second ENPS customer in Pakistan, said Eric Bowman, APs Director of International Business Development, Newsroom Systems. TV One is taking on an impressive challenge in establishing a 24 hour news channel in a matter of months, and we hope that ENPS will form the backbone of this channel. We look forward to a long and fruitful working relationship with Mr. Nizamani and his colleagues, he added.
28 September 2007
Autocue, the leading provider of newsroom automation and prompting solutions, is today announcing a new range of prompting solutions designed to meet the requirements of smaller and non-traditional broadcast segments. The new Starter Series Prompters (SSP) and QStart software will be demonstrated on Autocues stand 7.229 throughout IBC2007.
The Starter Series offers users the opportunity to benefit from renowned Autocue design and build quality at entry-level prices. The range comprises 10 and 17 prompters. The Starter Series will be bundled with Autocues new entry-level software, QStart, part of the QNxt product suite.
Autocue is a versatile company that prides itself on providing prompting solutions for all customers regardless of their size. There are many people in Education, Religious and Corporate institutions, and in developing markets, that want to purchase prompting solutions from a trusted Broadcasting brand but are currently inhibited by our prices. By trading off some of the features of our more professional systems, Autocue can offer these customers a solution that cant be beaten in terms of quality or price, commented Frank Hyman, Autocue CEO.
The Starter Series and QStart packages provide users with their first taste of Autocue solutions and service. As their needs become more demanding, Autocue offers simple and affordable upgrade paths.
These entry-level packages have been specifically designed to allow easy upgrade if our customers needs change. The Starter Series uses the same hood, mounting and bracket systems as our Professional and Master Series prompters. Consequently, when the customer decides to upgrade, they need only pay for a replacement monitor, rather than a complete new system. Special pricing will be offered to our customers wishing to upgrade their software. A move from QStart to QPro is delivered via a simple download from our website. This modular upgrade path provides customers with significant lifetime value, concluded Hyman.
