27 March 2012
Al Jazeera Balkan, the newest addition to the Qatar-based broadcaster’s international portfolio, has gone live with the Mosart® newscasting system at its Sarajevo news studio. The first of Al Jazeera’s channels to base its news studio around Mosart, Al Jazeera Balkan broadcasts at least six hours of news per day, with a remit to provide objective coverage of events to audiences across the former Yugoslavia in their own languages.
Specified by project integrators Qvest Media for a news production facility that includes Sony cameras, a Snell video mixer, Vizrt graphics and an Avid iNews newsroom system, the Mosart newscasting system provides Al Jazeera with multifunctional studio control to streamline workflow, while enabling very high production quality. The all-new file-based studio infrastructure has been designed to facilitate speedy and efficient production processes, and the exceptional control and flexibility of the Mosart system will allow gallery staff to adapt easily to extended broadcasting hours when the station increases its on-air schedule.
“Using the Mosart system means we can run a very high quality news production with a small gallery team, while still being able to respond instantly to breaking news,” said Miljenko Logozar, chief technical officer for Al Jazeera Balkan. “Setting up for the launch with a completely new studio infrastructure meant our staff had a lot to learn, and the Mosart system has been invaluable in simplifying a major part of the workload. It also means that we can readily scale up our news schedule because we don’t have to train a lot of new staff for the extra hours on air.”
With its open-standards ability to integrate with the widest range of studio equipment, sophisticated device control, and ability to make powerful concurrent event triggering simple for the operator, Mosart has been adopted for newscast automation by many of Europe’s most prestigious broadcasters and news operators, including Sky, the BBC, YLE, N24, ARD-aktuell, and NRK.
“From a system integration perspective, the Mosart system offers substantial benefits,” said Johannes Friedel, project manager for Qvest Media. “The ability to provide advanced automated control of all the components used in newsroom operations from a configurable user interface makes Mosart a powerful tool for twenty-first century news broadcasting.”
Mosart is the only open newscast automation capable of working with all major video switchers (Snell, Grass Valley, Sony, and Ross), news production systems such as ENPS, iNEWS, Open Media, Dalet, Octopus, and NorCom, and most other widely adopted brands of vision mixer, video servers, graphics systems, and camera robotics systems. Mosart is based on open system IT standards and interfaces, and uses a story- and template-based architecture, which allows the broadcaster to change or add broadcast hardware devices without modifying rundowns, changing show configurations or replacing the automation. Mosart runs on commercially available high reliability client/server hardware, and a fully redundant architecture is achieved through server hot-switching and duplicated graphical user interface clients.
“As one of the world’s fastest-growing and most forward-looking TV networks, Al Jazeera sets the highest technical standards,” said John Kjellevold, managing director, Mosart Medialab. “By creating a state-of-the-art news facility based around the Mosart system, Al Jazeera Balkan has set the benchmark for productive, high quality news broadcasting, and we are delighted that they have joined the rapidly growing band of Mosart users.”
27 March 2012
Vizrt Ltd. announced today that the Company has signed a deal worth more than USD 1 million for the implementation of broadcast graphics, web and mobile products with a French television station.
Martin Burkhalter, Vizrt’s CEO, stated, “This deal is a very good example of a broadcaster signing up to our integrated technology philosophy, which is steeped in the economic realities of the media industry. Following implementation, the customer will have a cost efficient way to produce, store, repackage and reuse compelling, high quality and uniformly branded content. The station will also have multichannel and multiplatform distribution capabilities, thereby increasing their addressable audience, critical in today’s quest for advertising revenues, while at the same time protecting the bottom line.”
The deal provides the station with tools for news production, including Viz Content Pilot, Vizrt’s content management solution. Viz World is easily accessible in the newsroom, control room and design department, and will allow the broadcaster to display branded maps.
In Master Control, Viz Multichannel will handle all channel branding on multiple networks while being triggered by the stations automation system. Viz Ticker will also be in place to provide constant scrolling of news information. Real time, HD content will be handled by Viz Engine.
The company is also bolstering its online and mobile presence with an investment in the Vizrt Online Suite and Viz Media Engine. The Vizrt Online Suite will be driving web and mobile content by providing a sophisticated CMC and back-end web publishing platform. Viz Media Engine will provide transcoding for videos published to the web and mobile devices.
27 March 2012
Join the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and Gallup as they discuss how the worlds populations perceive media freedom within their countries. They will also share data on citizens confidence in their media.
A central part of the BBGs statutory mandate is to support freedom and democracy in a rapidly changing international environment. The ability of the media to communicate honestly and freely is critical in world affairs. Additionally, it is important for leaders and policy makers to understand how different populations around the globe view the quality, honesty, and accuracy of their media, as well as how free they perceive their media to be.
At this event, Gallup will present a new global analysis of such views. In addition, Gallup and the BBG will announce the details of a new global research project that advances the BBGs mission to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. This unprecedented relationship combines BBGs mission with Gallups global public opinion research. The event will take place on March 28, 2012 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Gallups headquarters in Washington, D.C.
26 March 2012
Sky News Arabia, the 24-hour Arabic language multi-platform breaking news service, today announced the names of ten more of its presenters, carefully selected from countries across the MENA region.
Sky News Arabia received over 1,300 applicants for the coveted presenter roles alone. Each presenter was chosen following a rigorous interview process and in-depth market research. Nart Bouran, Head of Sky News Arabia, commented: As the channel launch draws closer, we are delighted to announce our second batch of presenters. I believe the line-up is a good representation of the Arab region and I know each will play a vital role in the success of Sky News Arabia.
The presenter announcement coincides with the news that Sky News Arabia is ahead of schedule and is now in 24 hour rehearsal mode.
With all of our staff now in place, we are really gearing up to launch. This challenging move, ahead of schedule, will test our resources – technical and editorial – to the maximum as we prepare ourselves for the task of running a 24-hour news operation. Its a very exciting time, Bouran added.
With 16 of its presenters announced to date, Sky News Arabia will soon unveil the remaining names to its line-up, all of which have already been recruited.
The ten presenters unveiled today are:
Mohannad Al Khatib, News Presenter
Hassina Ouchene, News Presenter
Jarir Dababneh, News Presenter
Dalia Abdalla, News Presenter
Darwish Al Taweel, Business Presenter
Alma Intabli, News Presenter
Imane Lahrache, News Presenter
Osama Khamayseh, News Presenter
Seza Armenazi, News Presenter
Maya Raydan, Business Presenter
26 March 2012
At NAB 2012 arvato Systems (formerly S4M – Solutions for Media) presents its software solutions for the broadcast- and media industry. In booth N6419 the software experts showcase systems for Media Asset Management as well as Broadcast Management.
From April 16 to 19, 2012 the latest trends and technological developments around film and TV will be presented in Las Vegas. arvato Systems’ main focus on this year’s fair are different solutions to support the core processes of media companies and TV-Broadcasters:
This year the company presents the following solutions:
– AllAdOnce: The ad sales solution for Internet and mobile devices which supports the entire advertising workflow
– S4AdOpt: The advertising Optimization Engine which optimizes not only advertising inventory, spot placements, and customer satisfaction, but also a company`s revenue potential
– Dynamics Media: The “all-in-one” solution for all Broadcast Management needs, from scheduling, via license management, to air time sales. Now based on Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 with even more features!
– ClipJOCKEY: The studio production solution that enables customers to use the best features of their video server hardware and make it a real multi-channel production tool. The new software “ClipJOCKEY Server” provides an ActiveX component within newsroom control systems and allows customers to move clips to their rundown or see which clips are available on the video server.
– VPMS: The Media Asset Management System that serves all of a broadcaster’s video management needs – from acquisition through versatile production schemes to playout, distribution and archiving.
– OpenMedia: Arvato’s partner ANNOVAs flagship Newsroom System, which has more than 15,000 users worldwide – the leading independent news platform for production and rundown management
26 March 2012
Today in New York on behalf of the Board of Directors of the North American Broadcasters Association the NABA President, Robert Briskman, announced the appointment of Michael McEwen as its Director General.
Briskman noted McEwens broadcast experience including a distinguished career with CBC/Radio-Canada both in production and in the executive offices, a long association with NABA as a past Director, President and Secretary General and an innovator in implementing new technologies such as the introduction of Digital HD Television in Canada. Michael brings to NABA a depth of broadcast experience and understanding of the industry at a time our members are challenged by change in our markets, services, technologies and regulations. We look to him to use that experience and consensus making skills to help our members come to unified positions on the issues of the day and to take actions beneficial to our industry.
Over the past six years McEwen has been a Director and since 2010 the Chairman of the UK based Media Asset Capital, a consultancy for the industry. In resigning that role and taking up his new duties with NABA, McEwen welcomed the opportunity and privilege to again work with NABA members in developing broadcast leadership on the major industry questions which members are dealing with both in North America and around the world.
McEwen will begin his duties on March 26th and have a brief transition period with the retiring Secretary General, John Harding. The Board of Directors thanked John for his professional and tireless work as Secretary General of NABA. They also acknowledged the leadership role he played as Head of the World Broadcasting Unions on behalf of the seven member Unions including NABA. The Board wished him continued success and every good wish in his future endeavours.
