THE CHANNEL
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ISSUE 2 2014
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05
GUNDA CANNON EDITOR
P54
NEWSWITHBENEFITS
The ideabehind crowd-curated
video serviceNewstag
P46
AFRICANSISTER
Euronews’Africanewsproject
ison course
P56
VISIONOFTHEFUTURE
DolbyVision imagequality
leaves viewers stunned
THE INTERNATIONALMEDIAMAGAZINEFORTV,RADIO,ONLINE&MOBILE
ISSUE2 |2014
TheChannel
Camera inthesky
Usingmulticopters forcreative
andnewsgathering
Digital
switchover
Myanmaremerging
Reportingconditionsarechanging
A disruptive transition - but
players are beginning to see
and seize the opportunity
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CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Simon Spanswick
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Are you in the slow zone? I guess not. My friends are
not shy to press the point and have just given me
‘The joy of laziness – How to slow down and live
longer’. But make no mistake. Slow is on the up.
Travellers on British Airways have been able to
sample ‘Slow TV’ – a seven hour train journey to
Oslo in real time, no commentary, no fancy editing.
The film has become a cult hit in Scandinavia, where
Slow TV as a genre is already popular – featuring
knitting, walking and fishing. As an antidote to
modern TV, where camera angles shift every second,
it’s strangely calming.
But all you action producers and action fans, fear
not. People like the BBC’s Tom Hannen and Owain
Rich, and Ruptly’s Ahmet Cakan are making sure
you are not bored. What they are doing with drones
is truly amazing. My colleague Rita who did the
interviews went from ‘drone virgin’ to ‘drone mistress’
in a very short time and loved the experience.
Our focus topic is digital switchover – we try to look
at the reality of DSO from different angles. H Nwana
writes that a lot of African countries and emerging
markets are going through DSO as a purely technocratic
exercise – that is a big mistake and completely misses
the point that it is all about creating jobs, creating a
new economy. Add to this Emeka Mba’s observation,
that “In Africa, information is not just about
entertainment, it often makes the difference between
access to health and education, and indeed life and
death; which is why the DSO offers us the
opportunity to rethink and remake broadcasting to
serve our social and economic needs more efficiently
in order to secure a more developed and socially
cohesive country.” Generally the realisation seems to
be dawning that although the transition to digital is
disruptive, the evolutionary benefits at the end will
be more than worth it. All the new broadcasters that
are popping up throughout Africa understand the
digital opportunity but, as Mayo Okunola points out,
one major challenge is that a great deal of content is
exclusive across Africa to MultiChoice. Is the end of
that monopolistic style of selling content near, where
business is done in Cannes or South Africa?
Ah, yes, content. Shell are doing exciting things with
‘branded content’, getting close to the action of a
story in a way that no ordinary broadcaster could.
Euronews are venturing into Africa with a pan-
African sister channel called Africanews, to produce
the right sort of content for their target audiences.
And in Burma (or Myanmar), international
broadcasters like the BBC and Channel NewsAsia are
practically frolicking at the prospect of being able to
do proper journalistic work on the ground. Speaking
of ‘on the ground’, AFP’s video business is expanding,
always on the search for that exclusive.
Where would content be without technology? Henrik
Eklund gives us a glimpse of his vision of tagging
video news; and Dolby promises a ‘wide colour
gamut’ with its Vision technology which – after a
start in the movies – will hopefully soon filter down
to broadcasters. Roland Vlaicu says they have started
to think about the live broadcast cases and will be
showing some advances at IBC. So see you there?
WELCOME
From ‘drone
virgin’ to ‘drone
mistress’ in a
very short time
”
“
EDITOR, THE CHANNEL
Gunda Cannon
E
CONTRIBUTING
EDITORS
Neal Romanek
Rita Stade
LoreWindemuth
DIRECTOR ASIA &
HEAD OF SPORT
John Barton
E
REGIONAL HEAD |
SOUTH ASIA
Amitabh Srivastava
E
ADVERTISING
EdwardWilkinson
Business Development
Executive
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+44 20 7993 2557
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© 2014
Association for
InternationalBroadcasting
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