Posts from ‘August, 2006’

US authorities have arrested a New York man for broadcasting Hizbollah television station al-Manar. Javed Iqbal, 42, was arrested on Wednesday because his Brooklyn-based company HDTV Ltd. was providing New York-area customers with the Hizbollah-operated channel, federal prosecutors said in a statement. It did not say how long Iqbal’s company had been providing satellite broadcasts [...]

Harris Corporation has announced a turnkey radio transmission sale to Radio Ethiopia, a segment of the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency (ERTA). Harris will deliver high-power AM transmitters to stations in Harar (3DXâ„¢-D100, 100 kW) and Mekele (DX®-D200, 200 kW) this fall. The transmitters, which are ready for DRM and HD Radioâ„¢ conversion, will deliver [...]

UK commercial TV broadcaster Five announced this morrning that its two new digital channels, Five US and Five Life, will launch in October. Five Life will launch on Sunday, October 15th and will air daily between 6am and 11pm. Five US launches on Monday, October 16th and will air daily between 4pm and 1am. The [...]

The Dutch Government has announced that the public broadcasters will be available free-to-air on the digital terrestrial platform. That means viewers will not require a smartcard to receive the signals. However, it will still be necessary to purchase a decoder which costs in the region of 30-50 euro. The analogue TV transmitters will be switched off [...]

Regional Dutch public broadcaster RTV Noord, based in Groningen, says that its TV service, and those of other regional public broadcasters in the Netherlands, will be available on satellite by the end of 2006, when the terrestrial analogue service ends. The regional stations had expressed their concern about losing viewers, and after discussions with the [...]

Hans Knot writes: “[Dutch] Internet radio station Radio Mi Amigo 192 will be ‘on air’ from a radioship, MS Fortuna, remembering the days of Offshore Radio. The station claims to be a follow up to the offshore radio station Mi Amigo. It is this year 32 years since the Dutch law against the offshore stations came [...]

Digital TV will be watched in a greater percentage of homes in the UK than any other country by 2010, a report says. Around 95 percent of UK households will have digital TV, compared with 66 percent in the US and 50 percent in Germany, according to market analyst Datamonitor.
The report also predicts that Europe [...]

The Federal Government of Nigeria has given the go-ahead to the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) to establish a National Language channel at its headquarters in Abuja. The channel would strictly transmit government programmes in local languages. This was revealed to journalists by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Frank Nweke jnr. He said [...]

Nigerian.TV, which describes itself as the first ever online TV network that allows you to watch in real time local programmes straight from Nigeria, officially launches tomorrow. Lagos Television Service, the television service of Lagos State, is a partner in the project. Nigerian.TV promises a wide variety of TV programmes, including music, talk shows, short films, animations, action, [...]

Deutsche Welle and Radio Television Afghanistan have teamed up to launch a new TV studio in the Afghan capital. The German Foreign Minister and DW’s Director met this week at the media center. The studio will allow state-run Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) to produce international broadcasts themselves, instead of borrowing material from DW-TV in Berlin.
Read [...]

A correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan is to be put on trial after spending more than two months in prison incommunicado. RFE/RL has learned that security authorities in Turkmenistan have sent the case of Ogulsapar Muradova to the municipal court in Ashgabat to be scheduled for trial. The case of co-defendant [...]

Jonathan Marks drew my attention to this Dutch scanning website where you can listen to a 12 minuted edited version of the conversation between the pilot of NW42 and Schiphol Air Traffic Control yesterday. The Dutch military police have arrested 12 passengers of this Northwest Airlines flight that was escorted back to Amsterdam Schiphol airport by [...]

The BBC celebrates Moldovan Independence Day on Sunday, 27 August with the launch of multilingual broadcasts and a new current affairs programme for its Moldovan audiences, Actualitatea în Republica Moldova (Moldova Today) all on a new frequency - 97.2 FM.
Actualitatea în Republica Moldova is a new 15 minute news and current affairs programme from BBC [...]

Danish commercial TV broadcaster TV2 has won the licence to take over the Danish FM frequency package vacated by Sky Radio last year, known as the Fifth Channel. TV2 will pay 23 million Danish kroner to broadcast on the frequencies for the next eight years. There were five competitors for the licence, which was auctioned at 1500 UTC [...]

An estimated 13.9 million households (57 per cent) in Great Britain could access the Internet from home between January and April 2006. This is an increase of 2.9 million households (26 per cent) since 2002, and 0.6 million (5 per cent) over the last year. Including Northern Ireland, the number of households with Internet access [...]