Posts from ‘February, 2010’

Job cuts are looming at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) as the new board and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Solly Mokoetle strive to slash costs and reduce the bloated head count of nearly 4000 employees. Details of the staff cutbacks are yet to be finalised.
The public broadcaster’s wage bill soared to 15.3 percent in [...]

Davut Dursun and Zahid Akman, the current and former presidents, respectively, of Turkey’s Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTÜK), have been sentenced to two years and six months in prison for malpractice.
Dursun, Akman, nine current and former board members and five bureaucrats were on trial at an Ankara court for “malpractice by not following [...]

In what may pose a major security risk, eight illegal high frequency [sic] radio stations are functioning in the marshy Sunderbans in West Bengal, airing programmes in unidentified languages and suppressing Prasar Bharati signals.
Police and intelligence officials are now investigating these channels’ involvement in spreading coded messages to Maoist workers and sympathisers suspected to be [...]

Yahoo! on Tuesday began weaving real-time Twitter messages into its search results and said tweets will migrate to its other online properties later this year. “The information in one single tweet can travel light-years farther with this Yahoo! integration,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a statement. “Tweets in more places brings relevance where and [...]

How to maintain leadership in the rapidly changing digital radio industry was one of the hottest topics on the second day of the RadioAsia conference in New Delhi.
Dato’ Borhanuddin Osman, Executive Director, AMP Radio, Malaysia, said his station had decided to introduce five English formats in the same year and one year later switched two [...]

The founders of Ireland-based Setanta Sports are striking out for international growth once more, securing swathes of Asian rights so they can launch a new TV station there “towards the end of the year”. The announcement comes less than a year after Setanta’s UK business failed, triggering more than 200 job losses and leaving debts [...]

The Library of Congress, in cooperation with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, (RFE/RL) will display more than 50 letters and other items from Afghanistan in an exhibition that opens tomorrow. The exhibit marks the recent gift from RFE/RL to the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division of a collection comprising 15,000 letters from listeners of Radio [...]

Israel today launched a new radio station for Jewish settlers living among some 2.5 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. ”This station will focus on the nationalist camp and prove that there is demand in Israel for a different media that supports Zionist values and the Jewish people’s love of the land,” [...]

Israel’s new Arabic television channel took a big step forward yesterday as the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee approved changes to the broadcasting law that improve the chances of a successful tender to operate the channel. The channel has been relieved of the usual local-production requirements. Otherwise, 20% of its content would have had to be [...]

A new TV channel, Can Azerbaijan (pronounced Jan Azerbaijan), has been officially launched in Baku. Canaz began broadcasting online on 1 February, Turkic specialist Ramiz Asgar told the launch yesterday. The channel aims to promote Azerbaijan around the world, Mr Asgar said.
The manager of Canaz TV, Jamal Mammadkhanoglu, said earlier that he had intended to [...]

Indonesia’s Communications and Information Technology Ministry has told a private radio station in the Riau Islands to halt its broadcasts because it is deemed to have no broadcasting licence and is interfering with other radio frequencies. However, the Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) suspect the action against Radio Era Baru was made after political pressure from [...]

A Venezuelan cable TV station known for fierce opposition to President Hugo Chávez says it has accepted new broadcast rules to get back on the air again, after the government last month suspended it. RCTV Internacional was dropped by cable providers in January on government orders for refusing to broadcast some of Chavez’s frequent, lengthy [...]

From 1 March, the Georgian Public Broadcaster will broadcast daily TV news bulletins in the languages of national minorities, Director-General Giorgi Chanturia revealed at a briefing following a meeting with representatives of NGOs dealing with national minorities’ problems.
Mr Chanturia noted that the news programme “Moambe” was currently broadcast for ethnic minorities once a week, but [...]

Siemens staff employed at the BBC today begin a ballot for industrial action. The ballot, which is organised by media and entertainment union BECTU, follows the employer’s decision to implement a pay freeze.
The pay standstill comes after a major redundancy operation which caused over 70 staff to lose their jobs. Siemens have provided technology, transmission [...]

Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission has said it is set to grant community radio licences to various interested communities, as soon as the Presidency gives an approval. The Director-General of the Commission, Engineer Yomi Bolarinwa, told a delegation of Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Lagos State Council, in Abuja that the presidential committee on community radio [...]