Media - Broadcast

France has given the go-ahead to a long-planned Gallic rival to CNN, the international rolling news channel. La chaine francaise d'information internationale (CFII) is expected to start broadcasting in the second half of 2006. Jacques Chirac, French president, said it was necessary to be in the "front rank in the global battle of images" to project France's world view abroad. The channel will...

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- "The Journal Editorial Report," a current-events television program produced by Dow Jones & Co.'s (DJ) Wall Street Journal, has found a new home at the Fox News Channel. The TV show, which was launched in September 2004 on the Public Broadcasting Service and features members of the Journal's editorial board, will air its final episode on PBS on Dec. 2. It will begin airing...

The controller of BBC Two has said he wants it to be the first mainstream TV channel to appear on broadband. Roly Keating revealed his vision of an online BBC Two mixing "simulcast programming" and "comprehensive catch-up" in a speech to TV executives. He said the channel would be "in the front line" of launching on broadband. A pilot will be unveiled next year along with further trials of...

Al-Jazeera is struggling to gain carriage agreements for its new English-language channel in the US and Australia, two of the world's biggest markets. Nigel Parsons, the head of al-Jazeera International, said it was proving difficult to persuade US cable companies to give the channel space on their platforms. "Without doubt there are one or two countries where it's more difficult. The US is not...

The number of sexual scenes on American television has nearly doubled since 1998, according to Sex on TV 4, a biennial study released on Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. While the inclusion of references to "safer sex" issues � such as waiting to have sex, using protection, or possible consequences of unprotected sex � has also increased since 1998, that rate has levelled off in recent...

NEW YORK – One of the toughest challenges media executives face is deciding how to deal with people such as Kelly Cunningham. The 30-year-old single mom, a sales manager at a portable fan company in Chicago, is content to watch just a few television channels, mostly local stations and cable news, on her 27-inch analog TV. She's so satisfied with her budget cable service, at about $20 per month...

LONDON - BBC World News is to be launched in the US, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as part of RealNetwork's SuperPass broadband service in the first step towards offering 24-hour rolling news to the US market. The deal follows reports last month that the launch of a 24-hour US BBC News channel could be getting closer as the corporation extended its BBC World News service to offer hours of...

Fruit cups and tea were served, and then came the matinee feature: a documentary about the Arabic broadcaster Al Jazeera, full of American bomb bursts and bloodied and bandaged Iraqi children. At an international trade show for television programming on the French Riviera recently, Al Jazeera presented the documentary, "Control Room," to promote an English-language news channel it plans to...

Turner International and Global Broadcast News (GBN), a TV18 group company, have announced a partnership to launch a cobranded, 24-hour, English-language general news channel in India. Rajdeep Sardesai will be the editor-in-chief of the channel. The co-branded service, CNN-IBN, will build upon the foundation of TV18's newsgathering experience and infrastructure in India, bolstered by CNN's...

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has announced plans for its biggest transformation in 70 years – it is closing down 10 of its foreign language radio services to pay for an Arabic channel that will be launched in 2007. The move comes amid a mad scramble for the Middle East television market. GRIM FACADE: The World Service provides news in English and 42 other languages (including the 10...