Monday, June 29, 2015

Updated RDS standard 'RDS2' to be launched in 2016

The international group RDS Forum, meeting in Switzerland, announced it plans an updated RDS standard, to launch in 2016. It said it hopes to establish this in collaboration with the NRSC RBDS subcommittee, with the goal of "a unified platform for FM broadcasting and data services worldwide."

More at :
http://www.radioworld.com/article/rds-getting-a-boost/276361

Saturday, June 20, 2015

VOA Tibetan is marking the Dalai Lama's 80th Birthday

WASHINGTON D.C., June 19, 2015 -- On July 6, 2015, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet is turning 80 years old. VOA's Tibetan Service is marking the occasion with a 4-hour live TV program covering the special celebration in His honor that will take place in Dharamsala, India, this Sunday, June 21.
 
The celebration will consist of elaborate Buddhist rituals and festive art performances. Thousands of faithful, including leaders of all Tibetan Buddhist sects, will gather around Tsuklakhang, the Dalai Lama's monastery, to celebrate the life of the Tibetan spiritual leader.
 
VOA's live program will be distributed on two satellite channels as well as shortwave radio and it will be live-streamed on the web. As a result millions of viewers and listeners in Tibet and around the world will be able to share this rich cultural experience for the first time since the Chinese take-over in 1959.
 
VOA Tibetan reaches its target audience on television, radio and the Internet with uncensored news that is unavailable to Tibetans through state-controlled Chinese media. VOA offers critical discussions on important issues and provides valuable information and expertise that help support the development of civil society. VOA Tibetan audiences are located in Tibet, in the ethnic Tibetan regions of China in Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan, and in Bhutan, Nepal, and India-where Tibetan speakers live.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Myanmar: 95% of people listen to the radio, while only 5% use smart phones

During the ABU RadioAsia Conference held at the end of May in Yangon, the strength of radio in Myanmar was discussed by Hla Yin Aye, General Manager of the Mandalay FM and Pyinsawadi FM stations.
 
In Myanmar, 83% of listeners tune in at home, while 11% listen in the car and 2% listen at work. Internet usage is slowly increasing, but radio and tv are still dominant in the market. Video usage is declining.
 
More at ; 

Switzerland’s international voice in a changing world

The Swiss Shortwave Service and later Swiss Radio International (SRI) broadcast from the heart of Europe from 1935 until its closure in 2004. Now researchers are going through the records, letters and recordings to see how Swiss identity played out over the airwaves.


More at :

Sunday, June 07, 2015

ABC – Australia restructures for more efficiency

The ABC is urging its staff to work across different platforms for the Corporation to achieve  more efficiency. With this new restructure exercise, some employees could be redundant and some new jobs will also be created.

Full story at :

Ham Radio: Communication without failure

SHARADA ADHIKARI
 
KATHMANDU: A restless day it was — April 25. As soon as the 7.6 tremblor rocked the country, people instantaneously started dialing phones to get updates of their loved ones — but the telephone network was a let-down for many, especially to the cell phone users. By the time the network started working, the cell phones were running out of battery and there was no electricity supply to recharge.


Read The Himalayan Times story at :



Broadcasting critical info hours after disaster strikes

When disasters such as the Nepal earthquake hit, communications are often cut and radio and TV stations off air. First Response Radio aims to get on air within 72 hours of a calamity with its 'station in a suitcase.' 



More at : 
 

BBC’s combined global audience revealed at 308 million

New figures unveiled today show the BBC has a weekly global audience of 308 million people. This represents the combined measured reach of international BBC content – both news and entertainment – for the year 2014/15 and is the first time this figure has ever been measured in this way.
 
In 2013 Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC, set a target of 500m for the BBC's global reach for 2022.
 
The figures – the BBC Global Audience Measure (GAM) – reveal that the BBC's weekly global news audience, which is measured each year, has increased by 18m people, or 7 per cent since last year, to a record-breaking 283 million. This means that one in every 16 adults around the world uses BBC News.
 
For the first time, television (148m) overtook radio (133m) as the most popular platform for BBC international news, and it is also the first time since the BBC tracked audiences for all three platforms – radio, TV and online (55m) – in English and 28 other languages – that they've all grown in the same year.
 
The BBC World Service's audience has increased by 10 per cent in its first year of licence fee funding and now stands at 210m, with the biggest boost coming from new World Service TV news bulletins in languages other than English.
 
The biggest growth for a single service comes for BBC World Service English, which has its highest-ever weekly reach with an audience of 52m, an increase of more than 25 per cent. The countries where the audience increases for World Service English have been highest are Nigeria, USA, Pakistan and Tanzania.
 
BBC Global News Ltd's audience has grown to 105 million with BBC World News TV's up by 12 per cent, and bbc.com/news growing by 16 per cent.
 
Fran Unsworth, Director of the BBC World Service Group, says: "These amazing figures demonstrate the importance and impact of the BBC around the world.
 
"In times of crisis and in countries lacking media freedom, people around the world turn to the BBC for trusted and accurate information. Thanks to our digital innovation we now have more ways than ever before of reaching our audience – from the WhatsApp Service we set up during the West Africa Ebola outbreak to our pop-up Thai news stream on Facebook following the military coup."
 
Tim Davie, Director, Global and CEO, BBC Worldwide, says: "Today's audience numbers show the global reach of the BBC to be strong and growing. The consumption of branded BBC services across TV, radio and digital platforms speaks to the international appetite for premium content across all the genres for which we are best known – primarily news, but increasingly for drama, factual and entertainment.
 
"Having a robust but prudent measurement system in place also helps increase our understanding of our audiences, enabling us to serve them to the very best of our ability in the future."
 
Other points of interest are:
 
The World Service Group is going from strength to strength in both developed and developing markets, with the single biggest audience for any country in the USA (30m), and with more than a third of the total audience on the African continent (100m), the biggest BBC audience ever seen on any continent.
Digital innovations from the World Service Group over the past year have included a new Africa livepage on the BBC website; the Thai 'pop up' news stream on Facebook; the emergency Ebola service on WhatsApp in West Africa; chat app news services on Line, Mxit, WeChat and WhatsApp; and the move of all 27 language service websites plus News to fully responsive design, which means they can easily be read on mobile phones of all sizes and standards.
 
The Global Audience Measure (GAM) measures the combined reach of the BBC's international news services – BBC World Service, BBC World News, bbc.com/news and BBC Media Action. It also includes the majority of BBC Worldwide's BBC-branded direct to consumer services, where measurable and obtainable. It excludes audience for BBC programmes made or sold by BBC Worldwide to third party broadcasters and other platforms.
 
The BBC's global news figures were previously measured by the Global Audience Estimate (GAE). This year, these news figures have been combined with BBC Worldwide measured audience figures for the first time.
 
The GAM shows combined figures, meaning if someone watches both BBC Worldwide content and BBC News, they are only counted once in the total figure. This year's figures have also been adjusted downwards to avoid double counting people who use multiple devices, eg both a tablet and a smartphone.
 
Today's figures include Facebook and YouTube reach for the first time (measuring engaged reach on Facebook which means counting people who interact with our news content.
 
World Service TV news content is now available in 12 languages.
 
(BBC Press Release)