15 January 2010
Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) has entered into a new partnership with Web18, the Internet and Mobile arm of Network 18. The website publishes RNWs international news on the homepage of Indias leading horizontal portal, In.com. Also RNW players with live radio and music programmes, such as the Euro Hit 40, European Jazz Stage and Live at the Concertgebouw are now available online.
RNW is the Dutch international public broadcaster. Through radio, television, mobile platforms and the internet, it keeps millions of people worldwide informed. RNW works together with over 3,300 partner radio stations over the world. In.com brings the latest and the best of news, songs, videos and products.
RNW Director-General Jan Hoek says: We want to strengthen our position as one of the five most influential international broadcasters in the world. One of the means to sustain that position is through investing in new digital technologies. This partnership in India is a big step for RNW, as it gives us access to the country’s enormous and important online market.
Commenting on the partnership with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Lakshmi Narsimhan, CEO of Web18 says, In.com has always attempted to break new ground, and innovations are our forte. We at Web18 are extremely enthused with the collaborative initiative being launched with RNW. We hope this partnership will further the cross-cultural understanding among the music enthusiasts from both countries while strengthening media ties on a more global level. In.com welcomes more than 500,000 visitors daily.
15 January 2010
RT is now broadcasting live from a new studio complex in Washington D.C. with a dedicated service for our U.S. audience. In prime-time, U.S. viewers will be able to watch news of interest to them, from an angle that differs from mainstream U.S. media..
RT will broadcast from its Washington D.C. studios on weekdays from 4:00 to10:00 p.m. ET (00:00 to 6:00 a.m. Moscow time). The new complex was built in just four months and includes two studios: one will be used for news, with the other for The Alyona Show, which broadcasts daily. Correspondents from New York and elsewhere in the U.S. will also contribute to our in-depth coverage.
RT is now broadcasting from different countries to target viewers in a specific region, like other leading news channels CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera English. This means U.S. viewers will receive news that is particularly relevant to them, with coverage also helping present Russias position on various international issues. The six-hour broadcast from the Washington complex will include some shows aired from Moscow for our general international audience.
According to a Nielsen Media Research study, RTs daily audience in Washington was 6.5 times greater than that of Al Jazeera English in 2009, while RTs monthly audience was five times greater than that of Deutsche Welle.
We show U.S. viewers news they cannot see elsewhere. Now that we have started broadcasting from Washington, there is no doubt our audience will increase dramatically, said Margarita Simonyan, RT Editor-in-Chief.
14 January 2010
Haitians, cut off from the world by a devastating earthquake, tuned in to special shortwave and satellite radio broadcasts from the Voice of America’s (VOA) Creole Service to learn the latest news and information.
Hours after Tuesday’s earthquake struck near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, VOA broadcast a 90-minute special program to the people of Haiti. The program included statements of support from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; updates from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Red Cross, the United Nations and Haitian geologists; and interviews from Haiti. Up-to-date information is also available around the clock on www.VOANews.com/creole.
VOA also set up a special call-in number 1-202-205-9942, mailbox 42 for people to leave messages that will be broadcast to Haiti. Facebook and Twitter accounts are also being created.
Today, the service broadcast 30 minutes of news, including an interview with Haitian Ambassador Raymond Joseph. Another show is scheduled for 12:30pm EST/17300 UTC.
“In times of crises, VOA is a lifeline of information,” said VOA Director Danforth Austin. “Because of our technologies, we are able to reach people in their own languages when disasters strike. Our hearts go out to the people of Haiti, and we’ll continue to give them the latest, accurate news.”
Ronald Cesar, chief of VOA’s Creole Service, said it was difficult for people to get telephone lines out of Haiti. In addition, damage was severe to one of the VOA’s FM affiliates, Radio Guinen. I talked with the manager and he said his tower was down, Cesar said.
VOA is the leading international broadcaster in Haiti, with a weekly audience reach of 50%.
7 January 2010
Baraem TV, the Pan Arabic pre-school channel won the CINE Golden Eagle Award for its educational animation series “Nan and Lili”. The Council on International Nontheatrical Events (CINE) in the United States awarded Nan & Lili in the category of Professional Non-Fiction educational programs for the remarkable content and production quality of this series.
The CINE Golden Eagle Award is a prestigious milestone for Baraem TV for the long history that this consortium has in recognizing worlds pioneers in the field of innovative TV and cinema like Steven Spielberg, Georges Lucas, and Nan & Lili’s Executive Producer Canadian Firdaus Kharas.
Director of Programming at Al Jazeera Children’s Channel and Baraem TV, Malika Alouane said: “This award gives the programming and content team at our channels a rewarding feeling and a sense of pride, as it demonstrates the genuine and innovative content production strategy that we all strive to implement at best”.
The CINE Golden Eagle Award comes to highlight an exceptional international reach of the high standards and top-shelf content that we present on Baraem screen for our little viewers, Alouane added.
Earlier in November, Nan & Lili has won INTERCOM’s Certificate of Merit” in the educational children audience category 2009, at the Chicago International Film Festival 2009. The CINE Golden Eagle Award is the second major international recognition of Baraem’s content in less than 3 months.
Nan & Lili”, a 2D / 3D animation series, revolves around two main lovely, funny child-like characters Nan and Lili who like to play and have a good time with their friends. Each episode introduces the young audience to a new educational topic that teaches them new things every day. The program nourishes imagination, creative skills and sense of determination, accomplishment, good manners, sharing, self-esteem, respect and perseverance.
7 January 2010
RT news TV channel has begun broadcasting 24 hours a day in Spanish. On Monday, December 28 the first news bulletins went out.
The TV programme considers the difference in time in broadcasting zones and all news bulletins are run at morning or evening prime-time in New-York, Miami, Los-Angeles, Mexico, Buenos-Aires and Madrid. Every day RT reports on sports news, life in the Russian regions and conducts important interviews.
The channel has already taken exclusive interviews from Ecuadors president Rafael Correa, Mexicos Energy Minister Georgina Kessel Martinez, flamenco celebrity Mercedes Ruiz, Cubas jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca, human rights activist Eva Golinger and other well-known people.
The channel broadcasts from Moscow via satellites IS9, Hispasat 1D and the satellite television system Digital+. Millions of viewers across Europe, North and South America have access to its open signal. While decorating the studio light panels were used for the first time on Russian TV. They can change the design of studios and a newsroom in a few seconds. Besides, the Spanish Channel will use all the resources of already operating English and Arabic channels. In November of 2009 a correspondent bureau was opened in Miami, a correspondent bureau in Buenos-Aires is scheduled to be open in the near future.
At present about 200 employees work in Spanish RT, including 35 foreign journalists from Argentina, Spain, Chili, Ecuador, Mexico, the USA and Bolivia. Among them there are well-known correspondents and presenters who worked for the largest European and Latin-American Channels such as TVE in Spain, TVN and Canal 13 in Chili, TV Azteca in Mexico and also CNN Espanol and Telemundo.
The official Internet site of the Spanish RT TV channel is located on actualidad.rt.com Its a fully-fledged multimedia resource. The site users can not only watch the latest international news on video and read them, and gain substantial information about Russia. The button en vivo provides access to RT live broadcast with as high quality as on air.
Earlier, in May of 2007 the Arabic Channel Rusia Al-Yaum began broadcasting and in December 2005 the English RT TV Channel went on air. Recently the Eurocommission named English RT in its report, saying that this channel has a true international impact along with BBC World è CNN International*. While in 2008 Rusia Al-Yaum and Al-Jazeera **were recognized to be most objective in their covering the war in Gaza.
We have no doubt that the Spanish Channel will reach its viewers and will be as much in demand from the Spanish speaking audience as our English and Arabic projects. We make absolutely different news from the international mainstream. Therefore, for example, in Washington we surpassed Al-Jazeera English *** by six and a half fold in viewers and Deutche Welle by five fold despite their high budgets. Viewers want to watch different stories, which no one else tells them about. Im sure that Latin America will take to us, and if we join the US cabel network, then Spanish speaking residents will benifit.” said RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
*According to research by the European Audiovisual Observatory at the European Commission.
** According to telephone poll of the Iraqi TV channel Ap-Rai, 40 thousand people will be questioned.
***On the research: the research was carried out in Washington and its suburbs by Nielsen Media Research. 4574 respondents had been questioned by phone from May to July in 2009 among subscribers of the biggest operators of commercial TV (Comcast, RCN, Cox, DirecTV, Dish Networks), who know about RT and have access to it along with other channels. Men and women older than 18 years old participated in the poll.
6 January 2010
“This new application gives Iranians a unique opportunity to get the latest news on their mobile devices and to share with the world the news as it happens in their country,” said Acting PNN Director Alex Belida. “It is a groundbreaking way to expand our reach inside Iran and deepen our relationship with a key VOA audience.”
The application will enable users of Apple iPhones and Android phones to get the latest news from PNN and, with a single click, to send links to VOA stories via Facebook and Twitter pages and email accounts. The application will be available shortly in Apples online store, PNNs Web site (http://www1.voanews.com/persian/news/) and on PNNs Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The application, designed by the Washington-based company Intridea, also gives Irans citizen journalists the opportunity to use their iPhones and Android phones to send video and still pictures taken on their devices to a secure Web site where VOAs PNN editors can download the images and review them for possible broadcast use and Web posting.
This Web application empowers Iranians at a time when the government is staging a crackdown against opposition protesters, Belida said. As with the disputed elections earlier this year, VOAs Persian service continues to be a leading source of news and information for Iranians.
VOA has the largest combined radio and television audience in Iran of all international broadcasters, with one in four adult Iranians tuning in to a VOA program once a week. PNN broadcasts seven hours of television daily, repeated in a 24 hour format, and five hours of radio. Programming is also available around the clock on the Internet.
