Posts from ‘February, 2005’

US broadcaster XM Satellite Radio has announced that it will raise the monthly fee for its nationwide radio services by about $3, or 30 percent, and will fold some premium features into its basic plan. At $12.95 per month for the basic plan, XM’s new monthly fee matches that of its rival, Sirius Satellite Radio. [...]

The BBC has appointed Tim Davie, currently Vice President, Marketing and Franchise, PepsiCo Europe, to be Director of the BBC’s Marketing, Communications and Audiences division. Tim, who is 37, joins the BBC’s Executive Board, and will take up his post in the near future. In his new role, he will be responsible for all the [...]

After a year of bureaucratic hold ups, the joint Israeli/Palestinian All For Peace radio station has started broadcasting in English, Hebrew and Arabic on 107.2 MHz on the FM band. The transmitter is placed in Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority area and the broadcasts are 100% legal. The station put out test transmissions of non-stop [...]

The audio portion of our special Web feature Hotel journalism, bloggers and death, produced by Mindy Ran, is now online. It features interviews with freelance journalist Lee Gordon and “Baghdad Blogger” Salman Pax. Links to the Real Audio and Windows Media files have been added.
iBeginShare.attachButton(’share-tool-33184910659′, {title: ‘Hotel journalism, bloggers and death: audio added’, link: ‘http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/hotel-journalism-bloggers-and-death-audio-added’, [...]

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Deutsche Welle Director-General Erik Bettermann are in Kuwait to officially launch Deutsche Welle’s new Arabic TV programme later today. The three-hour-long programme is based on two daily news shows of 26 minutes each, with the latest from politics, business, the arts and sport.
“This strengthens the position of Deutsche Welle in [...]

The Bush administration plans to begin Arab-language satellite-television broadcasts to Europe later this year in a new escalation of its information war against Islamic extremism, officials say. Three-and-a-half years after Islamic militants based in Germany helped mount the 11 Sept, 2001, attacks, US-backed TV channel Alhurra expects to transmit 24-hour programming to European Muslim communities [...]

Our colleagues at UK Radio.com have published a long interview with Eric Wiltsher, the main man behind the new pan-European radio station RTI that lauches on 9 April. Despite the fact that the full name of the station is the subject of a pre-launch competition, the interview reveals that it’s Radio Tatras International. It will [...]

Russian-language programmes of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) will be broadcast 18 hours daily on Radio Baltika, a local UKV (”Eastern-Band FM,” 66 to 74 MHz) station in St. Petersburg, Russia, beginning March 1, 2005.
The unprecedented availability of US-sponsored radio programming in Russia’s second-largest media market comes as the result of an agreement signed [...]

The Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) has made a proposal for radio amateurs in the UK to have access to frequencies between 501 and 504, or 508 and 515kHz, at a transmit level of 10W EIRP. The allocation, if accepted, would extend amateurs’ experimental work on other low and medium frequencies and thus aid [...]

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has been visiting India this week, and reports of his visit mention some of the ways in which India is helping to upgrade the electronic media in Afghanistan. India completed work on a TV satellite uplink in Kabul and downlink in 10 provincial capitals of Afghanistan, at a cost of $4.9 [...]

Harris Corporation has announced that it has entered into a teaming agreement with NTL Broadcast, a major UK broadcast transmission provider, as the exclusive supplier of broadcast transmitters for a mobile TV trial using the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld) standard. The trial, mounted by NTL Broadcast and mobile operator O2, will cover 120 square kilometers [...]

The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) has changed the name of its overseas service “Radio Korea International” to “KBS World Radio”. The station is also launching another foreign language broadcast, targeting Vietnamese audiences. Listeners in Vietnam will be able to tune into KBS World Radio on 9640 kHz at 10am local time [0300 UTC] beginning 2 [...]

The state broadcast regulator in Kyrgyzstan has shuttered the popular Kyrgyz Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, known as Radio Azattyk, just three days ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections, according to local and international press reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the government to overturn the decision immediately and allow the [...]

Michael Buerk, one of the most recognizable faces on the BBC, will speak about The
Trivialization of the Media in a lecture on Monday at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. Former anchor of the BBC’s flagship news program, the Nine O’Clock News, Buerk has won major international broadcast awards and has earned a reputation for intelligent [...]

The New Straits Times reports that Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) is to rebrand its 32 radio stations, probably on 1 April when it celebrates its 59th anniversary. Last year RTM successfully re-branded its two television stations, TV1 and TV2, and has attracted more viewers.
Information Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir told the newspaper [...]