Broadcast Film and Media 0

Broadcast Film and Media 2012

Aitec Africa held their 4th Broadcast, Film and Media Africa Conference and exhibition in Nairobi on 10 11 July 2012. The theme of this year's event was Innovation, investment and partnerships for local content and service excellence with the focus on two main areas of industry development: content development and content distribution.

NewSat's Regional Head for Africa, Steve Rich participated in Broadcasting: The impact of new satellite technologies session together with fellow speakers from SES, Luxembourg and Eutelsat, France. Steve presented on content distribution and the difficulty faced by new and existing broadcasters ability to fund and maintain necessary infrastructure. This point is often cited as the primary cause limiting growth of broadcasting in the African market.

The concept of channel distribution as opposed to signal distribution was proposed, where industry participation allowed for managed broadcast services procured on a per channel basis from a platform provider. For an annual cost per channel, a platform provider could offer content management, playout, conditional access, signal distribution, STB procurement and distribution, and service support. To the broadcaster, this appears to be provided from under one roof, but to the platform provider, some services such as STB procurement and distribution, playout and content management may be sourced in.

Steve's presentation highlighted that economies of scale derived from servicing multiple broadcasters would ensure that the cost of channel delivery became affordable to all broadcasters in a region. This in turn would allow small broadcasters to enter the market and significantly increase sector growth. Steve highlighted that with the introduction of Jabiru-1 and later Jabiru-3, NewSat's skills and services, together with local entities would allow NewSat to participate in a regional channel distribution strategy and NewSat welcomed discussions along these lines. Jabiru-1 and Jabiru- 3 will bring new capacity to the African continent, initially covering parts of East Africa and later Southern Africa.

LINK:	http://www.newsat.com/Company-News/broadcast-film-and-media-2012-nairo...
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