14 November 2005
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s longest-serving President, Thomas A. Dine departed the US government-funded international broadcaster on October 31. Dine, who served as RFE/RL’s chief executive for more than eight years, will now take up new responsibilities as the Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. The U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has appointed Jeffrey N. Trimble as Acting President of RFE/RL. Mr. Trimble has served as Director of Policy and Strategic Planning at RFE/RL for the last three years.
Mr. Dine became the President of RFE/RL in August 1997 and shaped the radios into a multiple media company with the ability to reach its audiences on the radio, via email and the Internet. RFE/RL’s total weekly audience has more than doubled during Dine’s eight years as president.
RFE/RL now broadcasts to 19 countries in 28 languages and most of these broadcasts are directed at majority-Muslim populations. With a mandate from the U.S. Congress, Dine expanded RFE/RL’s broadcasts beyond its traditional focus, the former Soviet Union to Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, demonstrating the effectiveness of U.S. surrogate broadcasting in conducting the war on terrorism.
In earlier remarks to RFE/RL staff informing them of his decision to leave RFE/RL, Dine said: “I know that the company I am leaving is healthier and stronger than the one I took over in 1997 — and I derive great comfort from knowing that its fate going forward rests in the hands of the most talented, motivated, and creative staff I have ever had the pleasure of working with… and, it will be better positioned than ever to fulfill its crucial role in the spread of freedom and democracy around the world.”
Jeffrey Trimble took over on November 1 as Acting President of RFE/RL. He joined RFE/RL in May 1997, first as Associate Director of Broadcasting, but soon thereafter was appointed Director of Broadcasting. From 2002 until this week, he has served as RFE/RL’s Director of Policy and Strategic Planning. Before coming to RFE/RL, Trimble worked for 15 years at U.S. News & World Report magazine in a variety of positions, including Assistant Managing Editor, Foreign Editor, and Moscow Bureau chief (from 1986 until 1991). As Mediterranean Bureau Chief, based in Rome, Italy (1983-1986), Trimble reported on developments in more than 20 countries in the Middle East and Africa, as well as the Mediterranean region. Earlier, he was a diplomatic correspondent in Washington (1983) and a regional corrrespondent in New York (1982-1983), where his duties included covering the United Nations.
In accepting his new appointment, Trimble said “It is an honor to serve as Acting President of RFE/RL, and I look forward to supporting the work of RFE/RL’s dedicated staff to promote freedom and democracy with information products that are balanced, accurate and comprehensive.”
8 November 2005
The Canadian broadcasting Corporation has joined the satellite radio revolution as satellite operator SIRIUS Canada unveiled its channel line-up for its soon-to-launch satellite radio service for the Canadian marketplace on 2 November.
Almost two years in the making, CBC/Radio-Canada is a key part of what promises to be an unbeatable channel line-up and Canadian offering.
With a full 100 channels of the best music, news, sports, and entertainment available, SIRIUS Canada will provide the most comprehensive satellite radio service in the country. Of the ten Canadian channels on offer, six of them are ours, including CBC Radio One , CBC Radio 3, Première Plus and Bandeapart .
For AIB member Radio Canada International, the international service operated by CBC from its Montreal studios, the big news is that Radio Canada International Plus (RCI Plus) is being added to the line-up, providing RCI a marvellous opportunity to reach new Canadian audiences with RCI’s diverse and content-rich multilingual programming, to be augmented by additional content from other Canadian and international partners.
Similarly important is the addition of Infoplus, which is an innovative new offering – 24/7 news radio taken from all of Radio-Canada’s existing radio and television sources, as well as Radios francophones publiques and Radio France Internationale (RFI).
This announcement means an exciting time for radio at CBC/Radio-Canada: a new platform thatll cover every corner of the country – on the road, a boat, at home, etc. – and vastly enhanced reach for our radio services, which so many listeners at home and abroad have already come to know, trust and love.
8 November 2005
At the Rory Peck Awards for freelance news workers in London on 8 November, Al Jazeera International announced its support of the Rory Peck Trust. The Trust provides assistance to freelancers who have been injured in the course of their work as well as supporting the families of freelancers who have been killed through their work.
Al Jazeera International, the English-language news channel, will launch in the Spring of 2006 from four news centres in Doha, London, Kuala Lumpur and Washington DC. The channel will make extensive use of freelance news teams from camera crews to journalists throughout the world.
3 November 2005
The British Forces Broadcast Service (BFBS) is to use Arqivas Satellite Media Solutions division and Scanners OB unit to broadcast the Combined Forces rugby teams clash with the Barbarians in Newbury in November. Arqiva is to deliver Occasional Video services (SNG) with six cameras and effects facilities, plus satellite space segment and uplink services from its Chalfont site.
Live coverage of this important rugby match is a first for BFBS and warrants the highest quality professional broadcast service for our troops around the world, says BFBS sports producer Jon Knighton. Arqivas flexible services are a critical part of delivering coverage of the game with a professional look and feel.
This multi-site operation demonstrates Arqivas adaptability to every broadcast demand, says Arqivas head of occasional video Andy Tweedley. For BFBS, our combination of production and transmission facilities is ideal for its special one-off rugby event.
Arqiva already provides studio, playout, transmission and satellite distribution services for BFBS’ six TV and twenty radio channels to its fixed bases including the Falklands, Iraq, Bosnia and Royal Navy vessels globally.
“BFBS’ television remit is highly specialised and its production requirements extensive,” says Andy. “Arqivas Occasional Video and satellite services make valuable additions to the facilities which make up its system.”
3 November 2005
SES ASTRA, an SES GLOBAL company has been chosen by the UKs leading South Asian cable and satellite TV provider Sony Entertainment Television (SET) Asia to transmit its newly launched TV channel MAX. MAX is a Premium subscription channel, which offers a mix of Indian Bollywood movies and international events on the ASTRA 2A satellite in the orbital position 28.2° East. Programme languages include Hindi, Urdu, and English. MAX is SET Asias second TV channel after SET Asia, launched by SET in 1998 on ASTRA 2A.
Alexander Oudendijk, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of SES ASTRA, said: We are delighted to strengthen our relationship with SET Asia and to welcome its second channel to the ASTRA broadcast family. We are very pleased that SET Asia considers SES ASTRA their natural first choice when launching a new channel in Europe.
Rajan Singh, Executive Vice President of SET Asia, said: Being on the right platform is crucial to our business and that’s why SES ASTRA was the obvious and best choice when we decided to launch our second channel. After the success of SET Asias flagship channel SET Asia, MAX will increase the networks appeal to its target audience in the UK.
2 November 2005
Teletrax has secured a multi-year contract with World Television PLC to monitor the usage of the video news service British Satellite News (BSN), it was announced today by the digital video watermarking firm. Teletrax, a subsidiary of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated, is based in London, has offices in New York and Hollywood, and maintains its operations hub in Norwalk, Connecticut.
The contract with World Television, a communication solutions company that distributes BSN for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) of the British Government, represents a longer-term commitment and further expands coverage of world media, as compared to Teletraxs earlier work on behalf of the FCO in 2003.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Teletrax will monitor usage of the enhanced BSN service, a daily news feed providing reports about events in the United Kingdom. Channels monitored by Teletrax include major broadcasters in countries such as Syria, Oman, Qatar, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and China.
Using its award-winning service, Teletrax will report via a dedicated web portal the down-to-the-second details of video usage by global broadcasters. This broadcast intelligence enables World Television to rapidly evaluate the respective performance of individual news segments across a wide range of TV channels and countries. Knowing which of its stories broadcasters are airing and, as importantly, not airing allows the World Television news team to continually refine its editorial offering to meet the needs of its 440 broadcast clients across the globe.
We are extremely pleased to renew our relationship with the FCO, said Andy Nobbs, president of Teletrax. This agreement further demonstrates how critical content management is for news providers. In an ever expanding and fragmenting global TV marketplace, the ability to target the right news information to the right audience at the right time is crucial. Teletrax will help World Television achieve that ambition.
Launched in 2002 as a service developed by a joint venture between Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands and Medialink, with an underlying technology that is patent protected both by Philips and Digimarc Corp., Teletraxs technology embeds an imperceptible digital watermark into video that is robust enough to survive strenuous editing, transmission, broadcast or duplication.
A global network of decoders, or detectors, captures every single broadcast occurrence of the embedded video, and that data is then presented in comprehensive reports to the original content providers as part of the Teletrax service. Reports of individual broadcast airings are delivered online in near real-time to each clients custom-designed portal or in data file transfers. Each clients broadcast activity is updated dynamically, 24 hours a day, enabling clients to respond immediately to reported results such as changes in end-user preferences or detections of unauthorized use.
Teletrax currently maintains a proprietary network of detectors that monitor the television broadcasts of over 1,000 channels worldwide. Its U.S. footprint includes more than 800 television stations and cable channels in more than the top 100 markets in the United States, representing more than 85% of all U.S. television households. Its international network monitors nearly 200 channels being broadcast from 50 nations and is comprised of 12 monitoring stations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South and Central America, and Canada.
World Television joins a growing list of leading news, entertainment and media organizations that have adopted Teletrax as the standard-bearer for tracking broadcast video content, including: The NBC Agency, Buena Vista Television, ABC Television Network, Tribune Entertainment, NBC Universal Television Distribution, NBC News Channel, Reuters Television, Mercury Media, Internet Broadcasting, Media Review International, and Medialink, Teletraxs parent company. A number of other entertainment, news and media companies are also currently testing the Teletrax service.
