ABU appeals to IOC to prioritize FTA broadcasters for Olympic broadcast rights

5 November 2007

Tehran – The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) has called on the International Olympic Council (IOC) to prioritize free-to-air broadcasters when distributing Olympic Games' broadcast rights and to sell the rights directly to the free-to-air broadcasters. These were among the main concerns highlighted by the "Tehran Declaration on Media Coverage of the Olympic Games" adopted by the 44th ABU General Assembly in Iran on November 3. The General Assembly also appealed to Asia-Pacific governments to enact laws to keep the Olympic Games on free-to-air TV.
The ABU, which negotiates broadcast rights fees on behalf of its members via a sports pool, has been pressured to "unbundle" broadcast rights to sporting events as governing bodies of various sports had wanted to sell them separately to operators of different media platforms.
The General Asssembly also elected Manuel Goncalves of Teledifusao de Macau (TDM) and Dr Hasan Khojasteh of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting as new Vice Presidents of ABU. They replace Radio Television Hong Kong's (RTHK) Chu Pui-hing who retired as Director of Broadcasting in July this year and IRIB-Iran's Mohammad Honardoost, who passed away on September 29.

Selected from some 199 submissions of which 141 were for TV categories and the remaining 58 for radio, the ABU prizes were presented on November 3 at the General Assembly. Radio and Television of the People's Republic of China received special commendation for drama Fragrance and news programme 16 Seconds to Live or to Die, as well as 2 radio awards. Japan's NHK took the Entertainment award for Isao Tomita: Symphony for Buh Poh Soh, Sports award for Shizuka Arakawa: The Bid for Gold, as well as special commendation for drama, The Vulture Part 1: Buy Japan Out!, and documentary, Targeted for Takeover.

Also, Thailand's MCOT won the Dennis Anthony Memorial Award for best news coverage of the year by a member of Asiavision, ABU's daily news exchange. The ABU Broadcast Engineering Excellence Award, sponsored by Sony Corporation Hong Kong, was presented to Seoul Broadcasting System's Kim Sangjin; while the ABU Engineering Industry Excellence Award went to Ding Wenhua of RTPRC/China Central Television.