Posts Tagged ‘worldwide’

RTÉ News Now

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

RTÉ News Now is a 24-hour news service from the Irish state broadcaster RTÉ, which was launched on 12 June 2008. The station is available around the world on RTÉ.ie, and broadcasts with both Irish and English language news programming, as well as a daily news bulletin in Irish Sign Language. Along with regional, national and international news, there are business, entertainment and sport bulletins and regular weather updates. Although initially only available online, it is expected that the service will form part of the new Irish digital terrestrial service (DTT), which will be rolled out in 2009.

The station streams live news bulletins and current affairs programmes as they are broadcast on RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. The remaining programming on the station consists of the replaying of the most recent news, sport and weather bulletins, the streaming of raw feeds of breaking news stories and ‘filler’ programmes such as ‘Entertainment Minute’.

RTÉ News Now is based on the digital radio (DAB) station RTÉ Digital Radio News, which was launched in May 2007 and streams the most recent news bulletin from RTÉ Radio 1.

Scheduling

The channel airs live news programmes such as Six One, as they are broadcast on other RTÉ channels, along with weather forecasts. During other periods, live current affairs programmes such as Prime Time are shown. Outside of these hours the most recent show is repeated, looped, unless interrupted by live feeds of breaking news stories. Up to the minute financial data and weather are also broadcast on-air. As with many other stations, a live ticker is provided, across the bottom of the screen, providing headlines sourced from content on the broadcaster’s website.

Programming

The channel broadcasts a mix of news and current affairs shows.

News

The channel airs the following RTÉ news programmes live:

  • RTÉ News: One O’Clock (including Cinnlínte Nuachta)
  • RTÉ News: Six One
  • RTÉ News: Nine O’Clock
  • RTÉ News on Two
  • Nuacht RTÉ (including RTÉ News with Signing)

Regular news bulletins and weather forecasts shown on RTÉ One throughout the day are also simulcast on RTÉ News Now.

Current Affairs

As well as these current affairs shows:

  • Prime Time
  • Prime Time Investigates
  • Questions & Answers
  • The Week In Politics
  • Nationwide
  • Pobal (Irish language)
  • Capital D
  • One To One
  • Oireachtas Report
  • Euro Report

Other

Supplementing these segments are the slots Entertainment Minute and Sport Minute which offers a chance to see clips from interviews with celebrities. These clips are taken from the bank of content from RTÉ’s other shows.

On 9th February 2009, RTÉ News received a major revamp, with a new ‘walk-around’ studio, new music, titles and graphics. The new look also lead to the revamp of RTÉs New’s Now on-screen rolling tickers.

Weather forecasts form of a core of the news bulletins, like much of RTÉ’s news.

Availability

Currently the channel is available online throughout the world, without restriction. The service is expected to be available on mobile phones in the near future and the Irish DTT system, whenever that launches, as a free-to-air channel.

Currently, the service is only available in Windows Media Player and Real Player formats.

Awards

In October 2008, RTÉ News Now won the award for Business Services at the Inspired IT Awards in Dublin.

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BBC Arabic Television

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

BBC portal

BBC Arabic Television is a news and information television channel broadcast to the Middle East by the BBC. It was launched at 0956 GMT on 11 March 2008. The service was announced in October 2005 and was to start broadcasting in Autumn 2007, but was delayed. Presenters include Hassan Muawad, Tony Khouri, Lena Do, Rania Al-Attar and Dalia Mohammed.

BBC Arabic Television is run by the BBC World Service; as such, it is funded from a grant-in-aid from the British Foreign Office and not the television licence that is used to fund the BBC’s domestic broadcasting. The service is based in the Egton Wing of Broadcasting House in London, but some technical aspects are managed at the BBC World Service’s Bush House. 24-hour programming began January 19th 2009.

BBC Arabic can also be seen via www.bbcarabic.com. The website includes a 16:9 live stream of the channel.

BBC Newshour, an hour-long news bulletin is broadcast twice a day. In this programme, the top stories of the day are analysed and covered by BBC correspondents around the world. Other bulletins are half-an-hour long. The top stories are broadcast on the channel every fifteen minutes.

This is not the first time that the BBC has attempted to set up an Arabic television service. The previous attempt closed on 21 April 1996, after two years on air, when the BBC’s partners, Orbit Communications Corporation (owned by King Fahd’s cousin, Prince Khaled) pulled the plug after the BBC broadcast an episode of Panorama that was critical of the Saudi Arabian government. Many of the staff who worked for the original BBC Arabic Television service went on to work for Al Jazeera television. Al Jazeera is one of BBC Arabic Television’s main competitors.

Competitors

  • Al Alam
  • Al Arabiya
  • Al Hurra
  • Al Jazeera
  • France 24
  • Rusiya Al-Yaum

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Al Arabiya

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Al Arabiya (Arabic: العربية‎

al-ʿArabiyyah) is an Arabic-language television news channel. It was established on March 3, 2003.

The international news station is based in Dubai Media City, United Arab Emirates, and is partly owned by the Saudi-controlled broadcaster Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC).

Al Arabiya broadcasts 24 hours a day with news updated at the top of the hour. The free-to-air channel carries news, current affairs, business and financial markets, sports, talk shows, and documentaries. It is consistently rated among the top pan-Arab stations by Middle East audiences. Al Arabiya says it tries to use neutral, non-supportive language when covering Islamic militant groups. On January 26, 2009 President of the United States Barack Obama gave his first formal interview as president to the television channel. The White House contacted Al Arabiya’s Washington Bureau chief, Hisham Melhem, directly just hours before the interview and asked him not to announce it until an official announcement was made by the administration.

Content and Al Jazeera rivalry

Al Arabiya was created to be a direct competitor of Qatar-based Al Jazeera. According to a 2008 New York Times profile of Al Arabiya director Abdul Rahman al-Rashed, the station was founded “to cure Arab television of its penchant for radical politics and violence,” with Al Jazeera as its main target. Mr. Rashed alleged that Arab television’s coverage of militant groups was overly friendly. “You have to remember, it was television that made bin Laden into a celebrity,” Rashed said. “That made Al Qaeda, and its recruiting, and this is how violence spread throughout the region.” Mr. Rashed said Al Arabiya works to describe incidents of Islamist violence with neutral, non-supportive language. He also said the station had pushed Al Jazeera to be more critical of the insurgency in Iraq. “Now Al Jazeera is a very soft, reasonable station when it comes to the Iraqis,” he said. Al Arabiya has, in turn, drawn accusations of pro-American or pro-Saudi bias, in part due to MBC’s Saudi ownership.

Track record and controversy

Al Arabiya had been banned from reporting from Iraq by the country’s interim government in November 2003 after it broadcast an audio tape on November 16 purportedly made by the deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government had also banned the channel on September 7, 2006 for one month for what it called “imprecise coverage”.

On February 14, 2005, Al Arabiya was the first news satellite channel to air news of the assassination of Rafik Hariri, who was one of its early investors.

On September 2, 2008, Iran expelled Al Arabiya’s Tehran bureau chief Hassan Fahs. He was the third Al Arabiya correspondent expelled from Iran since the network opened an office there.

On October 9, 2008, the Al Arabiya website (www.alarabiya.net) was hacked.

Slain reporters

In February 2006, three Al Arabiya reporters were abducted and murdered while covering the aftermath of the bombing of a mosque in Sammara, Iraq. Among them was correspondent Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi national whose calm, non-sectarian coverage of the war had made her a popular figure in the region.

In September 2004 Al Arabiya reporter Mazen al-Tumeizi was killed on camera in Iraq when a US helicopter fired on a crowd in Haifa Street, Baghdad.

Investment and ownership

The original investment in Al Arabiya was $300 million by MBC, Lebanon’s Hariri Group, and other investors from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

Online

Al Arabiya’s internet site Alarabiya.net was launched as a news website in February 2004 initially in Arabic. The website launched an English-language service [1] in August 2007, and Persian and Urdu services in March 2008.

The channel also operates a business website that covers financial news and market data from the Middle East.

The Al Arabiya News Channel is available live online and free of charge on Livestation (excluding the US)[2].

Historic appearance

On January 26, 2009 President of the United States Barack Obama gave his first formal interview as president to Al Arabiya, delivering the message to the Muslim world that “Americans are not your enemy”, while also reiterating that “Israel is a strong ally of the United States” and that they “will not stop being a strong ally of the United States”.

Competitors

  • Al Jazeera
  • BBC Arabic Television
  • Alhurra
  • Rusiya Al-Yaum
  • Al-Alam News Network

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