Posts from ‘April, 2009’

Portugal Telecom (PT) today launched a free-of-charge digital terrestrial television service (DTT) covering 40 percent of the population and is analysing a paid DTT service, CEO Zeinal Bava said.  Besides offering digital-quality broadcasts, DTT also provides services such as a TV guide and digital recording. Five European countries offer a DTT service. The DTT rollout is [...]

Four out of five UN prizes for humanitarian reporting in Somalia have gone to IRIN’s radio correspondents based in Mogadishu and three other cities. Their individual entries on child rights, FGM/C, health in IDP camps and vulnerable children, were all programmes broadcast on IRIN’s shortwave radio service for Somalia.
The names of the winners are not [...]

BBC News reports that bad weather has prevented a team of Belgian radio enthusiasts from landing safely on the North Atlantic islet of Rockall. The skipper of their chartered yacht has decided to head for the islands of St Kilda to seek shelter from the poor conditions.
The Belgians are planning to make thousands of contacts [...]

Swedish Radio’s Stockholm channels are changing schedules on 11 May. For SR International’s Stockholm listeners, this means that all programming in minority and immigrant languages that is currently broadcast on the P2 network will be moving to P6 on 89.6 MHz.
P6 will be the channel for programmes in languages other than Swedish while P2 in Stockholm [...]

The independent trade union of International Radio Serbia has published a statement on the Serbian Home Page of the station’s website, informing the public about the seriousness of financial problems at the station, including the payment of salaries.
Under the adopted budget for 2009, the monthly means of International Radio Serbia have been reduced by 12 [...]

Roj TV, a satellite television station that the Turkish government says is a mouthpiece for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), stopped broadcasting yesterday due to technical difficulties.                   
 
The TV station has long been a cause of tension between Denmark and Turkey. Ankara believes it is broadcasting propaganda for the PKK and has called for the [...]

Thailand’s National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) sees illegal community radio as a security threat, prompting a need to regulate and control the stations. There are more than 5,000 community radio stations in the country and all are broadcasting without licences, said Col Natee Sukolrat, chairman of the NTC’s working group on community radio.
The stations fall into [...]

Starting tomorrow, which is Queen’s Day in the Netherlands, listeners to the Dutch domestic network Radio 5 (audible in surrounding countries on mediumwave 747 kHz) will hear the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus, every day immediately after the news at 6 am (0400 UTC).  The broadcaster MAX, which caters for Radio 5’s key target group of [...]

The Supreme Court has upheld a US government crackdown on profanity on television, a policy that subjects broadcasters to fines for airing a single expletive blurted out on a live show. In its first ruling on broadcast indecency standards in more than 30 years, the high court handed a victory yesterday to the Federal Communications Commission [...]

Arrow Classic Rock has dropped all its presenters and will continue as a non-stop music station. The station’s website has not been updated at the time of this post, and it continues to list some presented programmes.
The station, which lost its FM terrestrial licence a couple of months ago for non-payment of fees to the [...]

The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and SuncasTV have announced the launch of the Nigerian Channel, an IPTV channel that will carry news and programmes of interest to the Nigerian communities around the United States. The Nigerian Channel will become a voice for Nigerians in America to tell their true story to the world, and convey news [...]

A Batam-based radio station has accused the Indonesian government of rejecting its broadcasting licence because of an intervention by the Chinese Embassy, a lawyer for the station said yesterday. The embassy had sent a letter to the Communication Ministry and the Indonesian Broadcasting Committee in April 2007, requesting the termination of Radio Era Baru’s broadcasting activity, “because [...]

Serbia’s Telecommunications Minister Jasna Matic has announced plans for a 100 million euro reform plan in the country for a technological shift to digital television broadcasting, in line with EU standards. The process should be wrapped up by 2012. In addition to providing better service to viewers, the change would also help conform with the [...]

The Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) has agreed to provide a daily half-hour English-language newscast for inclusion on MHz Networks’ nationally distributed channel MHz Worldview in the US. The newscast airs live in Israel at 7 PM daily and will air on MHz Worldview at 4:30 PM EDT, beginning the first week of June.
The IBA weekly [...]

Libya’s government has taken control of independent television channel Al Libia, officials and local journalists said on yesterday. One of the liveliest sources of news in a tightly controlled country where most stations are deferential, the channel is linked to one of the sons of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al Islam.
He is widely credited [...]