Website: Rapid TV News

Australia’s Sky News has won a programming deal with China’s CCTV (impressive Beijing HQ pictured) as the broadcaster seeks to establish its credentials ahead of a bid to take over the operation of the international Australia Network from public broadcaster the ABC.

Under the terms of the deal, Sky news programming will be broadcast in China while English-language CCTV programming will air on Sky News on a regular basis.

Business and trade news in particular, sourced from the Sky News Business Channel, will be a part of the deal.

CCTV will have access to programming and journalists from both Sky News and Sky News Business.

CCTV’s Dialogue will air weekly on A-PAC (Australian Public Affairs Channel), which is jointly funded by pay-TV platforms Foxtel and Austar and produced by Sky News.

Angelos Frangopoulos, the CEO of Australian News Channel that provides the SKY NEWS channels, said: “This is more than just a gesture between Australian and Chinese media that has occurred in the past.

The results of the agreement that SKY NEWS and CCTV have signed will materialize immediately into regular television broadcasts from next week.”

Sky News Australia is operated by Australian News Channel Pty which is a joint venture of PBL Media, Seven Media Group and BSkyB.

The company has indicated that it plans to challenge the ABC’s operation of the government-funded Australia Network at the next tender process, due later this year.

A close relationship with one of Asia’s most important broadcasters is likely to help the bid.

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Website: Rapid TV News

A whopping 240 million Chinese are regular online video users, according to new figures reportedly from the state-owned China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Online video users account for some 63% of the 380 million internet users in China.

The 240 million now using internet video is up on 222 million at the end of 2008.

A CNNIC study found that 48% of those surveyed said they watched online video every day, with movies and TV shows the most popular content to watch.

Originally posted here:
240 million watch internet video in China

It’s an exciting time for TV Everywhere as the company takes its first steps into the Chinese market. We’ll soon be making an exciting announcement about a major new initiative. With Google hell bent on dominating pretty much every aspect of the internet world, ironically, it seems to be the last place where a company can compete unimpeded.

xping.pubsub.com/ping

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Go East

The long running Google hacking incident, which began back in January with a cyber-attack on Google (and other companies) that originated in China, has finally come to a head.

Google has made good on its promise to cease censoring search results in China, as a response to these alleged attempts to access human rights activists’ Gmail accounts, and other free speech issues (such as the blocking of YouTube and Facebook).

The search company has decided to divert China based searches from Google.cn to Google.hk, or the Google Hong Kong servers, where results won’t be censored.

When implementing the move, Google warned that traffic may be slow for a time, due to the increased load on the Hong Kong servers.

However, Chinese surfers still don’t have full access to the web, as the government operates its own system of filters to block any “inappropriate” content.

In fact, China could block the Google.hk site itself, although currently this hasn’t happened.

The government has made very negative noises about Google’s action. The Press Association quoted a state official as saying: “This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicisation of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts.”

The next move is the Chinese government’s, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they did take the route of blocking Google.hk. We shall see.

Meanwhile, Google continues to maintain a sales presence in China, and intends to still pursue research work in the country.

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Google stops censorship in China

It appears that Google is ready to make good on the threat it made back at the start of the year, whereby it would close its operation in China.

This all relates back to the hacking incident where Google’s systems were compromised by sources alleged to have originated from China, seeking out data on human rights activists.

As a result of this incident, Google said it would no longer censor search results in the country. It added that if the company and government couldn’t agree on a method by which unfiltered results could be introduced, it would pull out of China.

This now appears to be the case, at least according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Reliable sources seem to indicate that Google is about to close its operation in the country.

For its part, Google says that talks are still continuing, although the company made it clear it will definitely not continue to censor its results when questioned by Reuters.

While Google doesn’t rule the search roost in China as it does in the Western world, Chinese citizens probably won’t be best pleased about the loss of even a censored Google service.

Originally posted here:
Google ready to leave China?