Thursday, March 13, 2014

SatLink Communications chosen for global distribution of Ethiopian news channel


The Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency (ERTA) has chosen SatLink Communications, a leading provider of satellite services, for the global distribution of its ETV news channel.

As a result of the partnership, ERTA, which is a government-owned television channel, broadcasting news, entertainment, music and sports content, will extend its audience reach over SatLink’s Global Satellite and Fibre Network across Africa, North America, Europe and the Middle East.

Using state-of-the-art technology, SatLink will broadcast ETV to the African market utilising SatLink’s capacity on AMOS-5 C-band, which will enable ETV to effectively distribute its content with ease to the continent’s multi-channel platforms.

ETV’s goal is to broadcast informative, educating and timely information of the development of Ethiopia. SatLink assisted the broadcaster to help design the uplink competencies for the channel from ETV’s Ethiopian-based facilities on to Amos.


This ensured the network of satellites chosen specially met the broadcaster’s needs and accomplished the international reach that was necessary.

The Ethiopian news channel will also be transmitted across Europe and the Middle East on Hot Bird 13.0° and for distribution into the North American market, ETV will utilise the Galaxy 19 at 97.0° West Ku-band. The latter hosts the biggest ethnic video platform in North America and ETV will use this to its advantage to reach the Direct to Home (DTH) ethnic market in the USA.

International news broadcasters such as France 24, i24 News, NTV-MIR, euronews and primary news agencies like Thomson Reuters and APTN already uses SatLink for the global distribution of content.

According to Worku Gachena, Deputy Director General for Media Technology at ETV, the company was looking for a global provider to not only distribute its content but to work alongside ETV as a partner to the organisation extend their global reach further than before.

Gachena said: “We needed a provider who had the experience to help design our uplink capabilities and also obtain satellite space on Amos-5 so we could meet the multi-channel platforms in Africa, a rapidly growing a prosperous broadcasting region.

“SatLink’s strategic location coupled with its extensive knowledge and experience in this market meant that we knew that they would be able to assist us as we extend our reach further and address our growing audience’s needs across the globe,” he concluded.

CEO of SatLink, David Hochner, commented: “We are thrilled to work with ETV to extend its audience reach to different corners of the globe using our Global Satellite and Fibre Network. By working closely alongside ETV we gained a real understanding of their broadcasting requirements and were able to tailor a reliable and effective solution, help them uplink their signal directly from Ethiopia and be on the world's most popular satellite TV platforms.”

Hochner concluded that SatLink has been able to proactively assist ETV meet the objective of reaching its audiences, much of whom is scattered across multiple continents, so that viewers are able to connect with the news that is happening back home in Ethiopia and share the success stories of the country.
http://www.screenafrica.com/

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