China broadcasts Olympics

One of China's home-grown multimedia radio broadcasting technologies will begin supplying services for the upcoming Olympic Games from this week in Beijing, says CCTV.com.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television will donate 1 000 sets of receivers for mobile multimedia radio broadcasting to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 29th Olympiad.

The new technology allows different kinds of mini-screen terminals such as mobile phones, PDAs, MP4 players, notebooks, and digital cameras to receive television signals and other information with the help of special chips inside.

The Canadian federal government should lighten restrictions on foreign ownership in the broadcast sector, says National Post.

The Competition Policy Review Panel recommended that foreign investment restrictions should be liberalised in a manner that is "competitively neutral" for broadcasting companies, but only following a review of how that would affect the production of Canadian programmes.

The report also recommended merging existing regulations for broadcasting and telecommunications companies. This comes on the heels of last week's call by the chairman of Canada's regulator for telecoms, radio and television services - CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein, to combine the Broadcasting and Telecommunication Acts to reflect the rate in which technology is converging the two industries.

Clear Channel Radio and CBS Radio began carrying out a strategy of "more channels and music formats, and less-intrusive advertising" by broadcasting advertising-free digital side channels - complementary music and talk programmes - in a combined 43 markets, says NYTimes.

Digital radio technology allows a broadcaster to offer up to three additional FM channels in the space formerly occupied by one.

The radio industry, like broadcast television before it, is switching to digital technology. With digital technology, AM stations sound like FM, and FM stations approach CDs in sound quality. A retrofit to HD Radio, or high-definition radio, costs about $100 000 per station.