Thomson Foundation trainer Deborah Kelly has just returned to the UK from Qatar where she has completed two training courses at the Al Jazeera Training Centre working with journalists and producers from across the Arab world.
News Bulletin Production Course 3 February to 7 February 2013
Eleven journalists, many from the Al Jazeera Arabic Channel, joined Deborah and translator Assad for the five-day course on news-bulletin production. Many of the journalists had some experience in producing television news bulletins and wanted to improve their story selection and running-order construction, but for others it was their first opportunity to produce their own news bulletins.
It also provided an opportunity for the local journalists to view bulletins produced on the worlds numerous news channels and compare how they select their own running orders and the techniques and formats they employ. With an increasing number of channels producing news programming in Arabic, the journalists were anxious to ensure they were writing to high standards and in an informative and compelling form.
New challenges During the course, the students looked at long form and short form bulletins. They explored the use of graphics and the importance of effective strap and ticker writing.
With the expansion of existing news channels and the creation of new ones, many of the journalists said they are being challenged to be more creative in the production of their news bulletins but at the same time want to maintain high ethical standards in their journalism. These challenges prompted a great deal of informed and interesting debate during the five-day course.
Planning and television production course 10 February to 20 February 2013
Youve a great idea for a new television programme, an issue that cries out to be made into a documentary, or need to plan material for a new magazine programme; How do you make sure everything goes smoothly from planning to production?
This was the challenge that the 11 students taking part in the planning and television production course run by Thomson Foundation trainer Deborah Kelly tackled during a recent ten day course at the Al Jazeera Training Centre in Doha, Qatar.
The students representing a variety of television channels from across the Arabic world examined television programming from planning, to pitching, production and critical review. Discussions took place around programmes as diverse as the BBCs latest format success, The Great British Bake Off, Indian Televisions talk show, Satyamev Jayate, and Al Jazeeras highly successful chat show, The Opposite Direction.
Tough critics Senior members of staff at Al Jazeera, including commissioning editor, Rawan Al Damen, and talk show producer, Montaser Marai, talked about their experiences in programme production. The toughest critics for the students were their fellow class members who they had to impress when pitching their ideas for programmes.
The course culminated in the production of a half hour chat show with audience participation and use of social media. The students worked in two production teams and shared the production and presentation roles.
One team chose to explore aspects of the conflict in Syria whilst the second looked at the growing issue of obesity and how sport is being promoted to tackle the increasingly sedentary lifestyle of children. Both teams invited guests to contribute, but the team producing the sport based show had the added benefit of being able to use the course translator Assad who, when he is not working at the training centre, is the senior translator for the Al Jazeera Sport Channel.
New opportunities The broadcast industry in the Middle East has been flourishing and expanding at a fast rate since the "Arab Spring" with many more opportunities opening up for journalists and producers.
"It was a great to be with such enthusiastic and talented people," said trainer, Deborah Kelly. "I am certain their skills and new understanding of the medium will translate into producing innovative and informative television productions."
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
Thomson Foundation trainer Deborah Kelly has just returned to the UK from Qatar where she has completed two training courses at the Al Jazeera Training Centre working with journalists and producers from across the Arab world.
