The Pakistan Television Corporation is shortly to expand its transmission to 157 countries by connecting its two channels to satellite, said Managing Director PTV Akhtar Waqar Azeem.
He also announced a number of developments in Pakistan TV, noting that efforts were being made to enter into an agreement with a foreign network for improving sports reporting with new equipment being purchased for the purpose.
BBC World Service has started broadcasting on FM in Dubai, the latest in a network of FM operations in Gulf Co-operation Council States bringing BBC Arabic to its listeners in high quality sound.
The new service follows the launch in July of BBC Arabic’s FM transmission to listeners in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital Abu Dhabi on 90.3 MHz.
BBC Arabic is now available to listeners in the Gulf region in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, as well as in the United Arab Emirates. It can also be heard on FM in Amman, northern Jordan and neighbouring areas, as well as in Khartoum and Wad Madani in Sudan.
BBC Arabic broadcasts news and current affairs programmes to the region as well as several interactive discussion programmes which enable listeners and users of bbcarabic.com to take part in the discussions. BBC Arabic also broadcasts throughout the Arab world on shortwave and medium wave frequencies.
For some time, the US has been alleging that Cuba is interfering deliberately with transmissions from the United States to Iran.
This brought a vituperative comment from the Cuban Foreign Ministry, saying We reject this new campaign of defamation against Cuba. Cuba has never engaged in, neither does it engage in carrying out this type of disruption of US satellite television broadcasts.
Cuba, by its own right, has interfered, interferes and it will only continue interfering with the illegal radio and television broadcasts that the US Government airs against our country. We are entitled to do so by our sovereign right to defend our radio-electronic space from the subversive radio and television aggression that, violating international law, the US Government has been carrying out since the first years of the Revolution.
The affair has since become somewhat more friendly, with an exchange of diplomatic notes, with the US offering technical chapter and verse, and Cuba promising to investigate.
India’s latest communication satellite, INSAT-3E, has been flown out for an end-August launch aboard an Ariane launch vehicle from the French Guyanese spaceport of Kourou in South America.
INSAT-3E is the fourth satellite to be launched in the INSAT-3 series. INSAT-3E carries 24 C-band transponders and 12 extended C-band transponders. When commissioned, the satellite will substantially enhance the INSAT system capacity, which now provides about 120 transponders in C-band, extended C-band, Ku-band and S-band.
Flight 162 from Kourou is slated to launch INSAT-3E, meant for telecom and TV coverage, and two other payloads – Eutelsat’s e-BIRD and European Space Agency’s SMART-1, Arianespace sources said. INSAT-3E’s scheduled launch comes around four-and-half months after the successful launch of INSAT-3A on 10 April.
The Pakistan government is to lift the ban on print media owners and other groups which barred them from setting up satellite channels. The lifting of the ban will help establish nearly a dozen new Pakistani-owned satellite channels.
The ban has been preventing a group of entrepreneurs with the requisite background and experience from entering this sector, which has seen a tremendous growth elsewhere in the world and in South Asia. The print media groups, more than any other, already have the necessary know-how, skill and talent that any TV and radio networks require.
The decision paves the way for some healthy competition to take place between the state-owned PTV and new private channels.
The difficult political situation in Liberia has forced the abandonment of plans by High Adventure Ministries (part of AIB member NASB) to set up a short wave station there.
But now permission has been received from the Ugandan government to set up the station in Uganda instead. This will enable High Adventure Ministries to resume short wave broadcasts to the Middle East. Three years ago, the organization was forced out of its station on the Israeli/Lebanese border, which had been operating for 30 years, when Israeli troops who had been protecting the area were pulled out.
(BBC Monitoring)