Posts from ‘May, 2010’

Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov has vetoed the Radio and Television Bill, the press service of the President’s Office announced. The National Assembly adopted the bill on May 19, 2010. The head of state opposes the reduction of the members on the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) from nine to five.
The parliament decided to decrease the [...]

The Dutch radio listening figures for March/April 2010 were published today by research bureau Intomart GfK. The big winner this month is public network 3FM, which has consolidated its position in third place with a market share of 9.5%. Fourth-placed Sky Radio, once the country’s most popular station with a share of more than 13%, [...]

A bit slimmer but still extravagant at 55, Europe’s biggest song contest Eurovision is scaling down its starry ambitions to a harsh new economic reality. Watched by some 124 million Europeans and staged by public broadcasters, the Eurovision song contest has seen its budget shrink by a quarter in 2010 and four countries have dropped [...]

The DRM Consortium has written to the Communications Committee of the UK’s House of Lords, chaired by Lord Fowler who expressed a fear that the digital switchover in the UK would render millions of FM radios useless by introducing a solution that does not fit everyone. The Consortium raised the possibility of other, complimentary digital [...]

Text of press release by German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle on 26 May
Deutsche Welle [DW] director-general Erik Bettermann has condemned the jamming of DW’s radio programming in Ethiopia. Before and during the parliamentary elections in Ethiopia on Sunday, May 23, Deutsche Welle’s shortwave broadcasts of its Amharic programme was blocked several times.
“This blatant violation [...]

International news broadcaster Al-Jazeera will cover the whole Balkans from its regional center in Sarajevo, which is likely to go on air in November, Bosnian media reports. The new channel will be called Balkan Al-Jazeera. Representatives of the TV channel are expected to arrive in Sarajevo next week to wrap up the acquisition of the [...]

Europe’s biggest commercial broadcaster RTL Group plans to sell off its British broadcaster Five, the Daily Telegraph reported in its Wednesday edition. Citing unnamed sources the paper said RTL had lined up advisors to prepare a “tender process” for the British TV channel, home to imported TV shows such as Australian soap opera Neighbours and [...]

NRK’s Eivind Motland reports: TV 2 has secured the rights to show live English Premier League football in Norway for the next few seasons. Canal+ has held the rights up to now. TV 2 will show every match as a subscription-based option only, on a new stand-alone channel named TV 2 Premier League HD. Every [...]

Broadcasting equipment should only be sold to holders of broadcasting licenses in order to block the emergence of more illegal radio stations, Taiwan’s National Communications Commission (NCC) said today. Over the past few months, the government initiated a crackdown on underground broadcasters because they were involved in the promotion and sale of dangerous illegal medicine, [...]

Nukualofa’s newest TV station will return to air next week on privately-owned DigiTV after falling out with the government-run Tonga Broadcasting Commission. The Taimi Media Network’s Television Tonga 2 Channel was taken off air on 7 May after it had refused to pay the lease for the previous two months.
The network had been on air [...]

The BBC has launched a new version of its popular iPlayer online catch-up video service with prominent links to rivals’ websites, a move that may dampen criticism of its power in the market. The new version of the iPlayer will also allow viewers to personalise their home page, and share tips with friends via Facebook, [...]

North Korea warned today it would block South Korean access to a joint industrial estate in its territory if Seoul goes ahead with its plan to resume cross-border propaganda broadcasts. The North’s military vowed in a message to the South to block its personnel and vehicles from the western section of the border if the [...]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has announced the launch of his new interactive blog www.chavez.org.ve, as part of a broader campaign to take the “media war” to the Internet. Available to users of the site are news articles, speeches, videos, feeds to his weekly column, Chávez’s Lines, and his weekly television program, Hello President, as well [...]

The Japanese government said today that 83.8 percent of Japanese families had televisions or tuners to receive terrestrial digital broadcasting signals as of the end of March, beating its target of 81.6 percent. The diffusion rate, up 14.3 percentage points from September, came as the government offered “eco points” for purchases of new TVs designed [...]

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva yesterday launched TV Brasil, a new Portuguese-language network based in Mozambique’s capital Maputo and tasked with “saying good things” about Brazil.
“We want a network that talks about politics in quality terms, leaving aside prejudices because this will be a public network showing how Brazilians are beyond our borders,” [...]