Posts from ‘January, 2006’

The Voice of America will offer extensive live multimedia coverage of President Bush’s State of the Union address in several languages, followed by the Democratic Party response. Reports will be broadcast on radio, television, and the Internet. All coverage begins at 0200 UTC on 1 February. Check www.VOANews.com/affiliates/satellite_schedules.cfm for satellite information. Wednesday’s Talk to America [...]

Stibat, the Dutch battery foundation, has this week launched a major campaign to stimulate an increase in the number of used batteries collected each year for recycling in the Netherlands. Since 1992, the Dutch have delivered about a billion batteries a year for recycling, but in line with new EU guidelines the aim is to [...]

The two principal problems which have for the past two years prevented the move of Radiodiffusion Télévision Guinéene (RTG) to its new home are on their way to being solved. Secretary-General of the Ministry of Information, Mohamed Condé, told Guinéenews that a progressive move will take place this year. The problems have been the lack [...]

Minivan Radio, which broadcasts independent programmes to the Maldive Islands, has issued an announcement appealing for donations “to help sustain our broadcasts to the Maldives.” The station, which broadcast daily on shortwave until 31 December 2005, suspended its shortwave transmissions after a police raid on its offices in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Broadcasts on shortwave resumed [...]

In Finland, the Ministry of Transport and Communications will grant a fifth digital TV network licence. The fifth licence is intended for broadcasting Swedish TV programmes in Finland. Applicants are requested to report to the Ministry by mid February 2006. Applications must be submitted by 1 May 2006. The licence will be granted for a [...]

WRN, the London-based international transmission service company, today announced the launch of its two Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) services. The first service is a London-wide 24 hour a day DRM trial broadcast at 26 MHz. The second service offers DRM transmissions that can target any major European radio market via directional antennas. Initially this second [...]

Text of report by Algerian newspaper Liberte website on 31 January
Amazigh TV is a private channel set up by a group of [Moroccan] Rif region natives living in Tilburg, in the Netherlands, from which location it will broadcast its programmes starting in January 2007. The goal of this new channel, which is of an [...]

Arqiva’s Satellite Media Solutions division and the European TV Guild are to provide a free month-long test platform to those considering launching their own new digital TV channels. New Start TV is a digital channel designed to power the introduction of more broadcast services with the free trial to help broadcasters achieve final funding for [...]

News and information provider Reuters Group Plc said today its 24-hour news and current affairs television channel venture with the Times of India group will begin broadcasting tomorrow. The English-language channel, which was announced last April, aims to take advantage of growth in India’s cable television market, which has 61 million subscribers and is the [...]

Aramiska, a Dutch company that offered satellite access to the Internet for users in remote locations across Europe, went into liquidation and shut down all its services on Friday. The move appears to have taken the industry by surprise, and left users - including some whose business depends on online orders - without Internet access. [...]

The Radio Netherlands Webcam (linked in the left hand margin of this Weblog) is temporarily out of action. I’m not sure of the exact cause - I think it’s a problem with the modem. My colleague Pepijn Kalis, who has just been up the KPN tower to collect the ailing Webcam, says it will be [...]

Text of report by Bolivian newspaper La Razon website on 25 January
To stamp out illiteracy over a three-year period. This is the main goal of a network of radio stations - some 109 stations - that the government plans to set up in all of the country’s provinces, with the help of the Venezuelan government. [...]

Radio New Zealand International will be testing uts new DRM transmission tomorrow, 31 January, at 0115-0215 UTC as follows:
0115-0130 UTC 15720 kHz 16Q 11.48 kbps
0130-0145 UTC 15720 kHz 64Q 14.5 kbps
0145-0200 UTC 17675 kHz 16Q 11.48 kbps
0200-0215 UTC 17675 kHz 64Q 14.5 kbps
(Source: RNZI via Chris Mackerell, DRM Software Radio Forum)
iBeginShare.attachButton(’share-tool-27113455860′, {title: ‘More DRM tests [...]

China’s Beijing Television has joined forces with Seven Network Asia Limited - the Asian subsidiary of the Seven Network of Australia - to provide television facilities and broadcast services in China specifically for foreign broadcasters and producers.
The two media groups have established a joint venture company, The Beijing International Media Services Company (BMC), which is [...]

A new edition of the Global Crisis Watch podcast is now online. This edition looks at perceptions in the Middle East following Hamas’s victory in Palestine with Simon Barrett of International Media Intelligence Analysis in London, US efforts to break Castro’s information blockade with George of TheRealCuba.com, and broadcasting to North Korea with Open Radio [...]