Ronen Najar is a lighting designer used to working under some pressure, and for the 2018 Israeli Independence Day (Yom Ha'atzmaut) Opening Ceremony on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem, he needed those steely nerves as part of the creative team helping to commemorate a historically significant moment in Israel’s history, … the 70^th anniversary of the 1948 Declaration of Independence.

International broadcasters invested a record £1.02 billion (€1.15bn) in the UK in 2017, an increase of more than 50 per cent on the comparable figure (£679m) in 2011, according to independent research commissioned by UK trade body the Commercial Broadcasters Association, who warns that this investment is at risk unless the Government secures access to EU markets once the UK leaves the EU.

AVIWEST, a global provider of video contribution systems, today announced that TV2 Denmark, the Danish public broadcaster, extended its fleet of AVIWEST bonded cellular uplink systems by deploying several PRO180-RA remote transmitter units, MOJOPRO mobile applications, and StreamHub transceivers. Using an expanded range of AVIWEST digital mobile newsgathering equipment, TV2 Denmark vastly improved live coverage of the recent regional election. The AVIWEST system allowed TV2 to successfully broadcast live HD video of the event over 3G/4G cellular wireless networks with minimal delay.

UK competition watchdog the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) has published the provisional findings from its in-depth examination of the proposed acquisition of Sky Plc by 21st Century Fox, advising that Fox taking full control of Sky is not in the public interest because of media plurality concerns, but not because of a lack of a genuine commitment to meeting broadcasting standards in the UK.

In the US, just four companies – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google – will harvest up to two-thirds of all new TV and video revenue in 2018. Their gains will be due partly to the saturation of traditional TV in the country, but also to their growing domination of the OTT video market. Amazon and Netflix will take 69 per cent of OTT subscription revenue, while Google and Facebook will corner 45 per cent of OTT in-stream video advertising (also known as advertising-funded video on demand) spend, claims Ovum.

Have you noticed that most of the calls you get on your smartphone are from solicitors?

Other than that, … not so much!

Voice has been flat for years.

The mobile everything is so embedded in our lives that this holiday season nearly 40 percent of the online purchase were made using smartphones.

Throughout the rest of the year apps, games have been good traffic builders; but the real goldmine is video.

In September 2017, the National Assembly of Zambia put its new Parliament Television into operation. STRYME, long-term supplier of the Austrian Broadcast Corporation (ORF) and internationally renowned broadcast solutions expert, and sonoVTS, a leader in the broadcast industry from Germany, devised a user-friendly state-of-the-art solution to enable live broadcasts of parliamentary debates. To implement the project, the Zambian government, having embarked on a path of transparency and good governance, received financial support from the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW). MCI’s Studio Berlin provided consultative advice.

Chinese TV broadcasting company, the Xiamen Media Group, will implement EVS technology to deliver coverage of BRICS China 2017 - the eighth annual meeting between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This important event in the region’s political schedules will be captured live in HD by XMG’s Xiamen TV. The programming will be broadcast on its news channel XMTV-1 and on CCTV-1 as well as CCTV-4, CCTV-13 and China Radio International. To accompany these broadcasts, Xiamen TV will also produce programming in UHD-4K – a feed which will be recorded for future use as well as for online broadcast.

In the third successive year, Lawo once again in 2017 provided IP-networked audio consoles for the 14^th July celebrations in Paris. More than 500,000 spectators celebrated at the foot of the Eiffel Tower in Paris “Bastille Day”, the National Holiday in France, marking the beginning of the modern French nation. The “Concert de Paris” is one of the largest classical music events in the world, followed by the traditional fireworks. The music featuring the National Symphony Orchestra and the Choir of Radio France with internationally renowned soloists was relayed to TV viewers and radio listeners in France and beyond.

Each year on July 4^th, Americans all over the country gather with family, friends and fellow patriots to celebrate the birthday of our great nation. A long-standing tradition is America’s favorite Independence Day music and fireworks celebration that takes place at the National Mall in Washington, DC. Wisycom products were deployed by JetWave Wireless to provide interference-free coverage throughout the event, presented by Capital Concerts. The celebration, which brought hundreds of thousands to the nation’s capital, was also watched by millions on PBS.

An Expert Media Partners (EMP) report has found that UK-based international broadcasters face very serious challenges in a post-Brexit world, and predicts that the consequent impact is likely to start being felt this summer. The UK is currently by far the biggest location in the EU for companies broadcasting television channels to other EU member states, but EMP research has identified that this preeminent position is now under threat.

Kuwait, which is not involved in the dispute and is acting as middle man, delivered a list of demands to Qatar which include: Close the news channel, sever all its links to Iran and its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to close a Turkish military base in Qatar and to pay ‘compensation’ to Saudi Arabia. The demands also call for Qatar to close the Al Jazeera affiliates, which is taken to mean its English and other language channels.

More than half of CEOs and senior executives from egta members – Europe’s leading television and radio sales houses – expect the TV and radio advertising segments to grow over the coming three years, with less than a quarter forecasting contraction, according to a new, high-level survey carried out by egta.

The message is clear: as audiences adapt the ways they watch and listen, and advertisers evolve their own strategies for communicating with consumers, television and radio broadcasters – and the sales houses that represent them – are stepping up to the plate and delivering real change.

Broadcast connectivity specialists SIS LIVE today announced that a total of 26 of its ‘ad-hoc’ SNG vehicles will be despatched for multiple UK broadcasters for live coverage throughout the day and into the night of the UK General Election on 8 June 2017.