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Global trends |
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by MEB Journal Staff
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 Eutelsat has signed a deal with an Austrian communications company, Telekom Austria Wholesale, to collaborate in live broadcast transmissions between Asia and Europe. The new service was designed to provide broadcasting and coverage of major sports events in China, and is being marketed as a timely solution to bring European viewers live coverage of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
“In view of the tried and tested reliability of Telekom Austria’s satellite solutions,” says the company’s Head of Wholesale Josef Trimmel, “and the ideal location of the Aflenz teleport for connections aimed to Asia, this form of cooperation was a logical step for both partners.”
The collaboration will combine Eutelsat’s W5 satellite capacity with infrastructure at Telekom’s video services teleport in Aflenz-Kurort, Austria. The plan is to cover sports events – and the occasional disaster recovery operation.
Eutelsat’s W5 satellite includes two spot beams, one of which is positioned over Southeast Asia and allows the direct transmission of high quality video signals between Shanghai and Aflenz, with virtually no time delay.
Telekom Austria says it then has the option of passing terrestrial television signals to TV stations in Europe or via a turnaround satellite service with Eutelsat.
“This will be an attractive offer for public-sector and major private-sector broadcasters in Europe,” says Eutelsat’s Commercial Director Olivier Milliès-Lacroix, “as well as other multimedia-based service providers that wish to receive TV or video content from Asia.”
 Russia adds third foreign-language news channel
Russia’s government continues to invest in public diplomacy through television broadcasting. It is slated to launch a third foreign-language news channel in 2008, this time in Spanish. Televizionnaia Sluzhba Novostei (Television News Service) is the Russian government-funded news agency that produced the English news channel Russia
Today in 2005 and the Arabic Rusiya El Yawm last May.
Rusia Hoy (Russia Today) will begin transmission by the middle of 2008, according to TV Novostei’s Sergei Frolov. Like the English and Arabic channels, it will broadcast news around the clock via satellite from its headquarters in Moscow.
“We will not only bring them the truth about our fast moving country,” said Frolov at the launch of the English-language Russia Today, “we will bring them under-reported stories, especially news from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.”
Evgeniy Sidorov, Editor-in-Chief of Rusiya El Yawm, said in an earlier interview with MEB Journal that he “does not believe” government funding detracts from a channel’s independence. “We have no censorship,” he said. “We have freedom.”
The Arabic, English, and Spanish channels are said to operate independently, but offer the same variety of news.
 CNN launches first 24-hour news channel in high-definition
CNN Worldwide has launched the world’s first 24-hour news network in high-definition. Identical to CNN’s U.S. standard-definition channel, CNN HD offers over 60 hours of HD programming per week.
The HD channel required a significant investment in field equipment – including HD cameras, laptops, trucks, and fly-aways – as well as production strategies to enable journalists to gather news in high-definition.
CNN HD is the first of several HD offerings that the network is set to deliver to viewers. CNN is among the first news networks in America to begin airing some of its programming in HD. It plans to air its New York-based programs, select documentaries, and several special events in high-definition, including two U.S. presidential debates in November.
At this year’s National Association of Broadcasters conference, CNN announced it would use the Sony XDCAM HD format for HD field acquisition. The network began preparing for conversion to high-definition at least three years ago, with infrastructure investment in its Time Warner Building studio in New York City.
The BBC has been broadcasting “the best of BBC” in a trial phase of their on-air HD channel since May 2006. Initially created as a 12-month trial, the channel was provisionally approved in September by the BBC Trust, at a cost of $43 million a year. Plans continue for distribution via satellite and cable, but the BBC said that spectrum issues have delayed a decision to utilize Freeview, Britain’s digital terrestrial service, until sometime next year.
BBC HD’s final 28-day “consultation period” was to end October 23rd. The Trust said it would consider responses on the channel from the public and “other interested parties” and make a decision “no later than November 22nd.”
During the trial, the channel has been broadcasting three to four hours a day. The plan is to offer general programming in 1080i for nine hours a day from 3:00 pm to midnight, and then add HD sports events in HD outside these hours.
 CNN drops Reuters, loses edge with bin Laden tape
While the world’s largest news network makes its transition to HD, it is cutting costs elsewhere. After 27 years, CNN International has ended its contract with Reuters. CNN Managing Director Tony Maddox told his staff in an e-mail that the network needed to cut “continually rising costs” and would be “making significant investments in our own newsgathering.”
CNN cancelled its contract with Reuters one week before Reuters provided its clients with video excerpts of Osama bin Laden’s latest message. While rival networks Fox News and MSNBC ran the tape as breaking news, CNN continued its regular coverage and reported on bin Laden’s message using archival footage. According to the New York Times, CNN was able to broadcast the video half an hour later through an arrangement with Al Jazeera, which was also broadcasting the Reuters video.
CNN will continue to use the services of the Associated Press as well as the AP’s Television News operations. It also maintains relationships with about one thousand local broadcasters around the world.
CBS kids reality show debuts to controversy
America’s most watched TV network, CBS, has released a new reality show which is being described as a children’s version of its celebrated series Survivor. Kid Nation places 40 children, aged eight through fifteen, in a remote New Mexico village and tapes them as they survive by themselves for 40 days.
Each child is paid $5,000 for the 13 one-hour episodes. Critics speculate that CBS may have chosen New Mexico as the show’s location in order to circumvent U.S. child labor laws. The subject has been heavily covered in the American press, even before the show debuted. CBS issued a statement saying that “the series was filmed responsibly and within all applicable laws in the state of New Mexico at the time of the production.”
The controversy may have intimidated advertisers, some analysts contend. “Since the first commercial break didn’t come until 38 minutes into the show, there’s reason to suspect that sponsors, fearing contamination by controversy, stayed away,” wrote Tom Shales in the Washington Post on the show’s premiere.
No outsiders are allowed into what producers have called a “summer camp,” rather than a place of employment for the children. The participating children and their parents signed a 22-page contract absolving producers from responsibility for accidents, and requiring the children to follow their producer’s orders or risk being expelled from the show. Parents also signed a strict confidentiality agreement, requiring them to notify CBS of any interview requests – covering up to three years after the show’s end.
During the series, the children attempt to construct a viable society, which includes everything from enacting a code of laws to adopting leadership roles as government officials and even shopkeepers. It’s a unique challenge, since the average town citizen is only twelve-years-old.
Every week, they get a chance to bow out of the challenge and go home – but at the cost of losing their $5,000. Instead of elimination, producers chose to award the best child each week with a “gold star” worth an additional $20,000.
Tom Forman, the producer of Kid Nation, told Forbes magazine that “the viewers will be the ones who set” whether the show is acceptable or not: “It is a ratings-driven business.” [In fact, to date, ratings have been lackluster – Editor] Forman said reality television has “grown up” and “has come into its own alongside comedy and drama as a real and legitimate television genre that is here to stay.” Producers have already started to interview children for the second season of Kid Nation.
Mobile TV lags behind in Europe
Mobile TV continues to draw little commercial interest in Europe and, according to recent research, its providers face obstacles if the service is to successfully gain ground.
In a study by Gartner Research of Stamford, Connecticut, only 5% of Europeans say they would be interested in watching TV or video on their mobiles in the upcoming 12 months, as compared to 20% of Asians. Mobile television is commercially available in at least eight MENA countries and in the Philippines, India, Vietnam, and Nigeria.
“Europeans’ interest in watching mobile television is as tiny as cell phone screens,” reported Reuters in September, citing the Gartner study. Another study released by the UK’s Juniper Research predicts that the United States will be the largest single market for mobile TV services by 2012, followed by Japan and Italy.
The Juniper report also says that the key to successfully introducing DVB-H services is to mass market the required chipsets and handsets so that the service is easily available for everyone to try out. |
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Global trends 
