Posts from ‘June, 2007’

RTL Nederland has purchased Dutch TV channel Tien and the radio stations of John de Mol’s Talpa Media. RTL News says that the takeover means the end of Tien, and that all its staff are being made redundant. John de Mol says that’s regrettable and painful. However, some of Tien’s most successful programmes will transfer [...]

At a press conference held in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, the Court’s President Jean-Paul Costa and Irish Ambassador to the Council of Europe James Sharkey gave journalists a preview of a future webcast which will enable journalists and the public to view the Court’s hearings from anywhere in the world and to download extracts [...]

Dutch Public Broadcasting has heard some encouraging words from the Minister of Education, Culture and Science Roland Plasterk, whose culture portfolio includes the media. In contrast to his predecessor in the last government, Medy van der Laan, Minister Plasterk has told the Dutch parliament that he thinks the public broadcasters should get more funding, not less. The Minister [...]

UK communications regulator Ofcom announced today that it will conduct a public consultation on proposals from BSkyB (Sky) and National Grid Wireless Ltd (NGW) to replace Sky’s free channels with pay TV services on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform.
Following Sky’s indicative announcement of these plans on 8 February 2007, Ofcom has been supplied with [...]

Text of report in English by Thai newspaper Bangkok Post website on 26 June
[Report by Komsan Tortermvasana: "YouTube access to be restored"]
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom is seeking the revocation of a coup-makers’ announcement that empowers him to close websites at will. He wants the process to be handled by a [...]

A regional expert on digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) stressed the importance of content in developing the potential of digital radio broadcasting and attracting more listeners. Jeff Astle, the Asia Pacific Advisor of WorldDMB, said that the content was the key factor broadcasters needed to focus on to make the new technology more acceptable to the public. [...]

Closing down Venezuela’s last remaining  opposition television station would be “the beginning of the end” of President Hugo Chávez’s rule, the channel’s head said in comments published today. ”It would be the beginning of the end because it would close the escape valve available to Venezuelans. Globovision is the only media where the opposition can take [...]

Efforts to clinch a long-sought international broadcasting treaty have suffered a setback from lingering disagreements over signal piracy and the Internet, a top U.N. official said today. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) had planned to wrap up decade-long negotiations over the pact at a diplomatic conference at the end of 2007. But divisions over [...]

Twenty five years ago European public service broadcasters realised that ‘High Definition Television’, HDTV, would have a major impact on the future of the media and society. Demonstrations, the first ever in Europe, given to the EBU General Assembly on 25-28 June 1982, in Killarney, Ireland, were a major milestone in the development of HDTV. [...]

Thousands of US webcasters plan to turn off the music and go silent tomorrow, 26 June, to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that, if implemented, would lead to the virtual shutdown of this country’s Internet radio industry.
“The arbitrary and drastic rate increases set by the Copyright Royalty Board on March 2nd threaten [...]

James K Glassman has become Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the agency supervising US government international broadcasting. Answering questions from our colleagues at followthemedia.com via email this weekend, he offered a candid and optimistic appraisal of the agency and its mission.
Read the Q&A
iBeginShare.attachButton(’share-tool-7728686137′, {title: ‘New US broadcasting chief knows his way around a [...]

In Jamaica, the Broadcasting Commission is promising to get tougher in carrying out its regulatory functions, and has warned at least one broadcaster, which it refused to name, for possible suspension of its operating licence. RJR Communications Group has acknowledged, however, that it has been notified that its licence could be suspended and is awaiting [...]

UK broadcaster Chrysalis Group PLC today announces that it has conditionally agreed to sell its radio operations, comprising Chrysalis Radio Holdings Limited, its subsidiaries, and Chrysalis’s shareholding in MXR Holdings Limited, a leading regional DAB digital radio multiplex operator, to Global Radio, a newly-formed investment vehicle, for an aggregate cash consideration of £170 million, subject to [...]

Britain’s commercial radio companies are lobbying for the FM and AM radio signals to be switched off, leaving listeners forced to tune in via digital radio sets or the Internet. The nation’s network of [analogue] terrestrial TV transmitters is due to be shut down in just four years’ time. Now, the radio companies want the AM [...]

Radio Free Asia (RFA) has appointed award-winning South Korean radio and television anchor Kwang Chool Lee as director of RFA’s Korean-language service, which broadcasts four hours daily to North Korea. Mr Lee succeeds RFA-Korean founding director Jaehoon Ahn, who is retiring. Mr. Lee joined RFA as Seoul bureau chief in June 2007. He will take [...]