Posts from ‘February, 2006’

TiVo Inc, the television recording technology company that is facing increasing competition, today said it is considering giving away TiVo set-top boxes as part of plans to win subscribers.
Chief Executive Tom Rogers said the company, whose name has become synonymous with the ability to pause live television and skip commercials, was close to offering a [...]

Journalist Alberto Stegeman managed to enter the Hilversum Media Park, adjacent to Radio Netherlands, this morning with a bag containing illegal weapons without being stopped. Stegeman, who works for commercial TV station SBS6, was guest on a 3FM radio show to promote the programme “Undercover in the Netherlands”, and wanted to prove that security in [...]

Talpa TV, owned by media magnate John de Mol, is the first Dutch commercial station to begin Vodcasting (the video equivalent of podcasting). Initially, two programmes will be available for free download from its website: NSE Nieuws, and the late-night discussion programme Barend en van Dorp. The NSE promises more news (and an improved website) [...]

Text of report by Ivorian newspaper L’Inter on 23 February
The overall cost of a plan aimed at ensuring the immediate coverage of the national territory through RTI [Radiodiffusion Television Ivoirienne] programmes stands at 486,516,000 CFA francs [880,000 US dollars]. This plan was presented yesterday by the minister in charge of this institution, Mrs Martine [...]

Indonesian Communication and Information Minister Sofyan Djalil said today that the country will trial a number of different digital broadcasting platforms for six months, and a team of experts will recommend the most suitable system(s) to the government late this year. The Minister told members of the House of Representatives that the trial will include [...]

A report published today by the UK’s Commercial Radio Companies Association says that the BBC’s market dominance is threatening the existence of many smaller commercial radio stations. The report, compiled for the CRCA by research company Indepen, suggests that one option for scaling back the impact of the BBC on commercial radio would be to [...]

Walt Disney Co has restructured its programming deal with Britain’s BSkyB pay-TV service, adding one new channel featuring its library of animated films and another with historic sporting events. Financial terms were not disclosed in the announcement made by both companies today. The deal gives BSkyB, which is facing tougher competitive threats, additional fare with [...]

The Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has announced the allocation of a total of €11m in funding for programming in the first round of Sound & Vision, the Broadcasting Funding Scheme. This first funding round will allocate €10.5m to thirty-seven television projects and €0.5m to forty-five radio initiatives. €6.5m or 62% of the total budget allocation [...]

Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat) and Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR) have announced that RTR’s international television station RTR-Planeta has commenced broadcasting on AsiaSat 2, offering Russian speaking viewers in Asia and Australasia prime time news, sports, feature films, documentary movies and general cultural programming.
This Russian language channel joins the [...]

SES Astra has signed a second capacity agreement with GlobeCast, an international content management and delivery enterprise. The new transmission capacity subcontracted by SES Astra at the orbital position 28.2°/ 28.5° East will be used by GlobeCast to serve the UK and will support the development of new services such as high-definition TV. The first [...]

Today’s International Herald Tribune online includes a well-written piece by Doreen Carvajal about how the public broadcasters in Europe are taking a lead in using new technology to reach their listeners. It includes quotes from interviews with Radio Netherlands Director General Jan Hoek and former Radio Netherlands Creative Director Jonathan Marks.
Read the article
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The Independent Online says that ITV has delayed the launch of its “Freesat” free-to-air satellite service with the BBC. The commercial broadcaster announced in September that the Freesat service aimed to be operational by June. But continued high sales of digital terrestrial Freeview boxes is understood to have prompted a rethink by ITV executives in [...]

Text of report entitled “Govt jams Monitor radio, site” published by Ugandan newspaper Sunday Monitor website on 26 February
The government has jammed the signal of 93.3 KFM, a sister media outlet of Daily/Sunday Monitor, for independently relaying results from Thursday’s elections.
Monitor Publications Ltd (MPL), owners of KFM and publishers of Daily/Sunday Monitor, independently [...]

The Toronto Globe and Mail reports that Radio Canada, the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) could be heading for more industrial action as employees rejected fresh contract demands yesterday. The current collective agreement ends in a couple of months’ time, and the newspaper says that with salary issues not even on the [...]

Its target audience may only be 2400 strong, but “Calling the Falklands”, the twice weekly 15-minute programme that the BBC plans to axe on 31 March, has a lot of support. In a long article for MercoPress, the South Atlantic’s news agency, Harold Briley (BBC Latin America Correspondent 1979-1983) writes: “The news that the BBC [...]