Posts from ‘June, 2006’

Confirming a report we carried on 22 June, the website of the Library of Congress has published the full text of the recommendations by the Committee on Appropriations of the US Congress concerning US government international broadcasting. The Committee recommendation provides $172,897,000 for the Voice of America (VOA). The Committee recommendation restores proposed reductions to [...]

UK commercial radio station Big L has confirmed it plans to return to mediumwave 1395 kHz shortly. An E-mail has been sent out to those registered with its online forum, which states:
“We have upgraded the forums today and are sending this email out as a security test and also ready for our AM system returning. As [...]

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will tomorrow sign a decree providing for a digital television system in the country, the presidential office announced. It is widely expected the government will adopt the Japanese system. The government has spent months negotiating with US, European and Japanese business officials about the digital system that would be adopted by [...]

Today Nokia announced a new commercial DVB-H pilot in Stockholm with Teracom in Sweden. Nokia is supplying the Nokia Mobile Broadcast System 3.0 and Nokia N92 mobile TV devices to the pilot which will last from October to December 2006 and includes 400 consumers. The project is a co-operation between ATG, Boxer, Nokia, Sveriges Radio, [...]

Merida is a city of 250,000 people in a beautiful Andean valley at the foot of Venezuela’s highest mountain, Pico Bolivar. It is the capital and commercial center of the mountainous state of Merida, population about 750,000. In March 2002 the mass media was utilised to create huge demonstrations in Caracas to demand that President Hugo Chavez [...]

BBC Worldwide Ltd has today published its Annual Review for 2005/06 and announced record profits of £89.4m for 2005/06, a year on year increase of 62%, and sales up by 11% to £784.4m. The underlying profit, excluding one-offs, disposals, restructuring and legal costs, is £92.1m, up from £53.3m in 2004/05, and an increase of 73% [...]

London-based SW Radio Africa says that it believes the Zimbabwean government is interfering with its mediumwave broadcasts. SWRA says it has no official confirmation yet, but reports on the ground clearly indicate the jamming of its mediumwave signal. One report said: “I checked for your programming this morning Monday 27 June at 5am local and exactly on the [...]

We removed the old Media Network pages from Blogspot.com at the weekend. When a site is deleted, Blogger makes the name/URL immediately available for re-use. We did not announce when we were going to remove the old site in order not to encourage mischief-makers to grab the URL. As it turns out, the URL has been taken over [...]

Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has acquired a 25-percent stake in Catholic television station TV Puls in Poland, the Franciscan monks who run the station said today. ”The order of Friars Minor… has invited a new strategic investor to  collaborate with it to run Television Puls,” they said in a statement, without giving details [...]

Russian state television will launch the country’s first national 24-hour news channel this weekend with an accent on  political coverage and news from the regions, the head of the state company in  charge of the project said today. ”Russia is the only big country which does not have a news channel and now we have the chance to [...]

Text of report by Indian news agency PTI
Kuala Lumpur, 27 June: An internet-based news service, seen as an alternative source of information to western media reports, was launched here Tuesday [27 June] by news providers of non-aligned countries.
“Earlier, people believed in CNN and BBC. Now it has changed, especially after the Iraq war, these agencies [...]

Reporters Without Borders has condemned Chinese proposals to step up censorship of the media’s coverage of natural catastrophes, public health crises and industrial accidents contained in a crisis management bill that came before the standing committee of the National People’s Congress on 24 June 2006. The bill envisages fines of 50,000 to 100,000 yuan (5,000 to [...]

Sirius Satellite Radio has announced that broadcasting icon Barbara Walters’ interviews will be featured in an exclusive weekly Sirius show, entitled Barbara Walters’ Best of the Very Best, presenting a selection of her compelling interviews over the past 30 years with great entertainers and world leaders. Walters will also host four times a year a [...]

If you’ve ever fancied running your own radio station, legally, the Cayman Islands is the place to be. The population is only 55,000 but already there are thirteen stations on the air, and more are on the way after the lifting of the moratorium on licences by the Information & Communications Technology Authority (ICTA). If all applications are granted, [...]

Text of report by Emmanuel Mulondo entitled “UBC lays off over 200, closes Butebo section ” published by Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor website on 26 June
The Uganda Broadcasting Corporation [UBC] has laid off over 200 employees leaving only less than 50 employees to run UBC Television and Radio Uganda. The lay off has also seen [...]