Posts from ‘August, 2009’

A consortium of European television industry leaders announced today the launch of “Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV” or “HbbTV”, a major new pan-European initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of news, information and entertainment to the consumer through TVs and set-top boxes with an optional web connection.
The cross industry consortium includes broadcasters Canal+, [...]

Rwanda will fully start digital broadcasting by March next year, five years earlier than the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) deadline for all countries to adopt the terrestrial digital broadcasting. This means that Office Rwandais d’Information - Orinfor, a state owned information agency will have the capacity to host eight different channels.
The agency’s officials say that [...]

The BBC Archive is today launching a new online collection dating back to 1939, as part of the Corporation’s plans to mark the 70th anniversary of the Second World War. Documents, a new image gallery and 20 rare recordings dating back over 70 years have been made available online for the first time, giving a [...]

The UN Peacebuilding Fund may withhold some US$850,000 originally set aside to support the proposed Sierra Leone Broadcasting Cooperation. Parliament passed a bill earlier this month that would eventually turn the state-run Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service, SLBS into a public service broadcaster, but the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) said that President Koroma would still have [...]

Radio Taiwan International was also hit by the effects of Typhoon Morakot – but has also had an opportunity to play a part in relief efforts as well. Several of RTI’s branch stations [sic] in the south of Taiwan suffered damage in the storm, in particular transmitters in Tainan and Fangliao.
RTI President Wang Tan-ping paid [...]

Text of report in English by South Korean newspaper The Korea Herald website on 26 August
Special radio broadcasting goes on air next month for multicultural residents in Korea, whose number has surpassed 1.2 million and is rapidly growing. A non-profit foundation is airing an example of what public media can do to promote harmony in [...]

Israeli soldiers broke into the Radio Bethlehem 2000 station in Beit Jala, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Tuesday evening, and confiscated its equipment. Station manager George Qanawati stated that the soldiers confiscated all broadcast equipment, putting the station off-air. Mr Qanawati slammed the Israeli attack and considered it an attempt to silence [...]

The microphone used by Lord Haw-Haw to broadcast Nazi propaganda into British homes has been discovered after 64 years, along with a pile of scripts that he wrote and read out over the air. The items were seized by soldier Cyril Millwood when the Allies invaded Germany in 1945. Mr Millwood was a gunner with 258 [...]

North Korea is expanding its telecommunications networks nationwide and renovating its broadcasting sector, official media reported today. ”New mobile telecom networks are being built on a national scale,” the Korean Central Broadcasting Station said. It added that fibre-optic cables have been laid to link the capital to all provinces, laying the foundation for digitised telecommunications.
The modernisation of [...]

Bob Dylan is considering lending his voice to a SatNav system, raising the prospect of having the music legend growlingly tell you: “You have reached your destination,” spiritually or otherwise. The veteran singer - whose hits include “Highway 61 Revisited” and “On the Road Again” - would become the latest celebrity to licence their voice to [...]

A Twitter account which styles itself as that of the Pyongyang-based Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) is actually the work of an unknown individual who bills himself or herself as a “satirist and journalist.”
The account, @kcna_dprk, has been online since April and has attracted more than 4,500 followers. It spews out a daily stream of links [...]

Kazakhstan has launched its first-ever Islamic television channel on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reports. “Asyl Arna” (Sacred Channel) is available in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty. The new channel’s director, Mukhamedzhan Tazabekov, told journalists that the channel’s signal would be also available in Astana, Atyrau, and Aqtau in [...]

The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) has clarified a news item published in a section of the press that Radio Pakistan Lahore has gone silent. The transmission of age old mediumwave transmitter which aired programmes on 630 kHz has not been shutdown but its hours have been reduced due to lack of its reach in the [...]

The Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) has launched an English music station, FM94, in Islamabad, the Daily Times reports. PBC’s Director General, Murtaza Solangi, said the new station would provide “healthy entertainment” and end the monopoly of private FM radio stations in the country.
Speaking at the launch, he said similar stations would soon be set up [...]

Finnish Minister of Communications Suvi Lindén reports that a final decision on the financing model for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) is to be made next week. The new Act on the Finnish Broadcasting Company is being prepared on the basis of the proposals made by a working group.
The working group proposed that in the [...]