No subject

[Harold F. Schiffman]

FRom the NYTimes, January 11, 2006

All-News Channels Abroad Look to Their Future in English
By DOREEN CARVAJAL

PARIS, Jan. 10 - The competition stares dead straight into Ulysse Gosset's
eyes every moment he sits at his cluttered desk at temporary headquarters
near the Seine. Three yards away flickers a television tuned to CNN, which
25 years ago created a powerful genre with a 24-hour all-news network that
now reaches more than two billion people. For many countries, such global
power is as tantalizing as new oil wells, inspiring fresh competition from
India to Russia and Qatar to France, where all-news channels are emerging
with different perspectives. But to sway the world, the messengers have
settled on a lingua franca: English.  Mr. Gosset, who is helping to lead a
project to create an all-news French channel this year, is unabashed about
why its breaking headlines will be delivered in French and English.

"Today news channels are part of the global battle in the world," he said.
"It's as important as traditional diplomacy and economic strength. If we
have a real desire to communicate around the world, we need to do it with
the right medium, and that's English." The hotly debated French project,
which is scheduled to start by December with 75 million euros ($91
million) in government funds, is one of several all-news channels that are
rushing headlong to television screens and Web sites this year. Veteran
television executives say the burst of all-news channels has been ignited
by two critical forces: the falling cost of technology and television's
power in the international marketplace.

"Many communities want to have their voice in the global conversation,"
said Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC's World Service and global news
division. In the spring, Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based bane of the Bush
administration, plans to roll out its English version. A Kremlin-financed
news channel in English, Russia Today, began broadcasting last month
despite hacker attacks that briefly shut it down. In India, a country of
15 official languages where English is deemed an "associate" tongue, urban
television viewers will soon become the focus of an old-fashioned media
war in English. One competitor is The Times of India, which in October
announced an alliance with Reuters to start an all-news channel in
English.

Two months later, a rival with a familiar brand name slipped quickly onto
India's cable and satellite channels. That new channel, CNN IBN, is a
partnership forged in October between CNN and the Indian broadcaster IBN.
CNN IBN began broadcasting with little fanfare, but quickly sought to make
a name for itself with investigative reports about government corruption
and juicy tales of the local movie industry, like the recent report: "Big
Boys, Smuggled Toys: How Bollywood Uses Illegally Imported Cars." The
Times of India's Times Now is playing catch-up this month with a mix of
news and weekend features, like a show called "The Foodie" and a business
program, "Brand Equity," that are aimed at Indian urbanites.  Sunil Lulla,
chief executive of Times Now, said his company had chosen English for its
channel because it is the language of business and metropolitan India.

"We believe," he said, "that over the years to come, with a growing
economy, a young consumer market, and as India gets more connected to the
world, more people will be looking at news as a business tool." For the
record, CNN executives say they welcome new competition. "We're the
pioneers of the 24-hour news business," said Claudia Coles, a CNN
International spokeswoman in London. "Our view is that it further
establishes the importance of the media and challenges us to do better."

But many all-news newcomers are drawing more inspiration from Al Jazeera,
which they say has created an influential global voice for Arabs that was
missing until the channel appeared. While the channel, started in 1996 and
financed by the emir of Qatar, says it will begin broadcasting an English
version in the spring, so far it has not announced any distribution deals
with satellite or cable operators to carry the channel. Charlotte Dent, an
Al Jazeera spokeswoman, would not comment on whether any alliances had
been struck.

Using Al Jazeera as a model, a group of investors and supporters met in
Nairobi last month to plan the creation of a pan-African channel in French
and English. They are now developing a business plan and have received
commitments from some cable and satellite operators to carry a new
channel, said Salim Amin, who is leading the effort and is chief executive
of Camerapix, a television production and photography company in Nairobi
and London.

"We're not looking at Al Jazeera for their contents or their controversial
nature," Mr. Amin said. "We're looking at them because they started as a
very small set-up. We don't have a network or media that enable us to talk
to each other and to send the message out to the rest of the world. All we
see on the international networks about Africa is very negative: famine,
war, disease, death, H.I.V. There are positive things happening here that
never get highlighted."

Kenneth Tiven, a former CNN executive and a consultant who is advising the
African group, said the falling price of new technology had opened the way
for smaller countries with fewer resources to start news channels with
high ambitions. "Today if you have a Mac laptop, just about everything you
want to do is in that laptop," he said. "You feed your video into the
computer. You edit your video and you output it back to a videotape or a
network server.  That's about 3,000 euros versus what would have been
roughly 80,000 euros in the past." With low-cost technology, the African
group maintains it can start an all-news channel with a $20 million
budget, possibly by March 2007. That is far less than the $91 million that
the French project will get for its seed money, and the French channel is
also drawing on the journalism resources of the country's public
broadcasters.

Mr. Gosset, who is seeking permanent offices to move out of current
quarters at France Televisions, said it was not expected to make a profit,
but advertising would be needed to defray some costs. "We know it is very
difficult for any international news channel to make money from
advertisements," he said, "but we think there is a real possibility to
sell some advertising. It's a complement." Deutsche Welle, Germany's
all-news broadcaster to the world, has some experience in that area. Since
1992 it has been producing a bilingual German and English news program
that switches segments hourly in the two languages. Last year it started
providing the same programming in Arabic.

"Every single one of us has difficulties trying to sell advertisements,"
said Cristoph Lanz, managing director of Deutsche Welle. "There is no
global advertising or commercial market. There are only a handful of
really global companies, and even some German companies like Siemens are
not selling themselves as German companies." But after 13 years of
delivering news in English as a second language, the channel's management
is satisfied with the results. During big news events like the outbreak of
the Iraq war, American viewers turned increasingly to the program for
another perspective, Mr. Lanz said, and even sent letters and e-mail
messages.

"There are more viewers watching it in the English language than German,"
he said. "And that doesn't have to do with a small amount of Germans
watching. It just has to do with the fact that the world is six billion
people and there are just 80 million Germans and there are maybe 150
million German speakers. If you have a mission statement to reach out to
the world, then you have to reach across the language gap." With an annual
budget of 69 million euros ($109 million) and a viewership of about 29
million weekly, Deutsche Welle is chasing what the French, the Russians,
the Africans and the Indians are also yearning for. Their target viewers
are what Deutsche Welle calls "opinion leaders and the information elite."

The French are actually even more precise, illustrating why they want a
big megaphone. In the first stage of the new channel, they will work to
make it accessible in New York, the home of the United Nations, and in
Washington, the base for the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/11/arts/television/11engl.html?pagewanted=all


Harold F. Schiffman