Deutsche Welle: Cooperation agreements with Chinese partners

5 September 2014

Deutsche Welle (DW) Director General Peter Limbourg has held talks on bilateral cooperation with senior representatives of Chinese broadcasters during his visit to Beijing.

From August 27 to 29, 2014, Limbourg met in the Chinese capital with, among others, the vice president of the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) as well as the presidents of the state educational broadcaster, China Education Television (CETV) and CCTV’s nationwide digital platform (CDP). Talks with the director general of China Radio International were also on the agenda.
 
Limbourg said the goal was “to present the journalistic offerings of Germany’s international broadcaster and to examine possibilities for an extended cooperation.” He said the discussions took place in “a good atmosphere and were very constructive.”

Various collaborative projects have been agreed upon with CCTV with the aim of building further cultural ties between the two countries. Both sides are looking into possible co-productions in the fields of music and business. A contract was signed with the cultural broadcaster SHTV, for the sale of more than 100 hours of DW Transtel programs. The cooperation will be expanded through a Chinese edition of DW’s weekly cultural magazine Arts.21. CDP will continue to broadcast the Chinese adaptation of DW’s lifestyle magazine Euromaxx for another three years. The program is available in 140 million Chinese households, via the Chinese World Geographic Channel, and is also accessible as video-on-demand at www.tv.cn.

Limbourg discussed, with Beijing TV, DW’s possible participation in the Beijing International Documentary Festival. The station recently acquired the license for the purchase of DW Transtel programs. Since June 2014, the educational broadcaster CETV has also taken 150 hours of DW Transtel programs. The programs are among the most popular documentaries in Beijing.

On September 4, Limbourg addressed representatives of both German and Chinese media at the 5th Sino-German Media Forum of the Robert Bosch Stiftung. In his speech under the title “Fight or Cooperate? The Global TV Networks and Their Roles in the World,” Limbourg called for the lifting of the Chinese blockade of DW and firmly rejected all censorship measures. Earlier he had held extensive talks with Chinese officials on the theme of press freedom. (Source: DW press release)

CCTV works with Globecast to deliver French-language channel to West African viewers

20 November 2013

Globecast today announced that it has signed a new contract with longtime customer China Central Television (CCTV), the state broadcaster of China. Under the latest agreement, Globecast will deliver CCTV-français, the network’s French-language channel, on the SES-4 platform to West African viewers as part of Canalsat, a package of more than 130 channels, radio stations, and services. Canalsat is operated by CANAL+ Afrique, the leading pay-TV bouquet for the region. Globecast is providing a complete solution to bring the CCTV channels to the point of uplink, including contribution, encryption, and encoding.

“SES-4 and the Canalsat bouquet are the ideal vehicles for CCTV to reach a large new audience of African viewers in more than 20 countries,” said Philippe Fort, Chief Operating Officer of Globecast. “The new contract builds on our strong and ongoing relationship with CCTV to offer French-speaking viewers in Africa the best in high-quality international content.”

With a global reach of more than a billion viewers, CCTV currently delivers seven of its 30 channels throughout Europe and Africa via Globecast platforms. In addition to CCTV-français, CCTV recently moved four free-to-air channels for the African market to Globecast’s SES-5 platform.