Posts from ‘October, 2008’

Deutsche Welle is increasing the Arabic programming on DW-TV once again. Starting November 3, 2008, Germany’s international broadcaster will offer 12 hours of programming in Arabic – instead of the eight hours that were offered up until now.
The expansion of the programming volume is accompanied by more regionalized content. “By tailoring our content for Northern [...]

UK communications regulator Ofcom has again called on the BBC to provide more details about its plans to help rival Public Service (PSB) broadcasters. Last month the BBC suggested it could help commercial PSBs such as ITV by working in partnership with them. Ofcom says the current system of funding PSB programmes is failing and [...]

US technology giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and a coalition of human rights and other groups today unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy. The “Global Network Initiative,” bringing together leading companies, human rights organizations, academics and investors, commits the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and [...]

Afro, an English language radio station in Ethiopia, is to start test transmissions on FM from the end of November with music and programs for 18 hours a day. The new station will beam on FM 105.3 and is established by Addis Alemayehu and his wife, Martha Wondimu, with capital of 3 million birr (US$306,000). [...]

The Voice of Nigeria (VON) transmitting station in Abuja will be completed by the first quarter of 2009, according to Alhaji Abubakar Jijiwa, the station’s Director-General. Jijiwa told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja that construction work at the project site had reached 80 percent completion while the civil works were 100 percent ready. In [...]

The New Zealand Labour Party is promising to work on getting a free-to-air Pacific Island television channel up and running if it wins the forthcoming election - a prospect that major broadcasters have been investigating for some time.
Prime Minister Helen Clark backed the idea today during campaigning in Auckland and said the channel would be “prioritised” [...]

An Egyptian court fined the head of a broadcasting company yesterday for operating without a licence, judicial sources said, after the firm aired shots of protesters stamping on a picture of the country’s president. The court ordered Nader Gowher, chairman of Cairo News Company, to pay 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($27,000) for possessing satellite communications equipment and [...]

The Australian online has published an article highly critical of the international broadcasting efforts of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Malcolm Colless writes that “Australia Network [the international TV service] is the vehicle with the most potential to project a dynamic image of Australia in the Asia-Pacific region, but not under its present structure, which smothers its [...]

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has inaugurated an upgraded Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) radio station and a media centre in Qal-i-Naw in the western province of Badghis. With funding from the Spanish government, IOM’s Literacy Campaign and Radio Broadcasting Programme installed an AM transmitter and a fully equipped studio, allowing the new station to broadcast [...]

Radio Netherlands Worldwide is today launching a daily Arabic radio programme called ‘Huna Amsterdam’ (Here’s Amsterdam.  This young-sounding news and current affairs programme is aimed at a progressive audience looking for independent information. The radio broadcasts can be heard from now on throughout the Middle East and the Maghreb via shortwave, satellite and www.rnw.nl/hunaamsterdam.
The radio broadcasts [...]

The Liberia Assembly of God (LAG) Church has broken grounds for the construction of a US$125,000 radio project. The ground breaking for the radio station was performed by Rev Edwin Gbelly Assistant Superintendent of LAG. Performing the ceremony, he said the station upon completion, would be used to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the [...]

South Africans living in rural areas, who have never watched television or listened to the radio in their lives, will soon have access to these services over the next few years. Government and its stakeholders have jointly committed themselves to make sure that every South African citizen has access to information via these services.
According to [...]

Text of report by French news agency AFP
Paris, 27 October 2008: Radio France Internationale is considering ending its broadcasts in six languages (German, Albanian, Polish, Serbo-Croat, Turkish and Lao) because of a shortage of listeners, a plan affecting around 60 members of staff, a trade union source told AFP on Monday [27 October].
The plan was [...]

Mohammad Hoseyn Saffar-Harandi, the Iranian minister of culture and Islamic guidance, has said: “The BBC Persian TV Channel will not operate in Iran because it does not have a license.” Asked by Fars News Agency correspondent why the English website and TV channel of the BBC are permitted to work in Iran while its Persian [...]

A reminder that from tomorrow, 26 October, most international broadcasters using shortwave will switch over to a new schedule, known as B08, for the next five months, corresponding to winter in the northern hemisphere. The full schedule of RNW, including transmissions of other broadcasters via our relay stations in Bonaire and Madagascar, is now online.
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