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Week ending September 22, 2007

What's new at PRIX EUROPA 2007 - September 19, 2007

from Valeska, Adele and Susanne at Prix Europa

PRIX EUROPA 2007 is "Europe in Berlin". The festival is opening its doors to the public in more way than one:

Multicultural Opening Concert and End-of-Ramadan Celebration

PRIX EUROPA opens with a concert by the Turkish-German pop star Muhabbet and The Capital Dance Orchestra on Saturday 13 October and celebrates the end of Ramadan. The German radiomultikulti broadcasts the concert live in 5.1. Listeners from all over the world can follow the concert on radio via the EBU satellites and online. The concert also marks the opening of the third Radio Day of European Cultures on 14 October.

Tickets can be bought from 24 September at 10 Euros each (plus advance sales fee) at German sales agents and in the RBB shop Berlin.

Online -Voting for everyone

The 30 nominated one-minute-films of the category SPOT under the heading "I am Europe“ will be put online on the RBB website www.rbb-online.de and you can vote for the best film from wherever you are in the world. The winner will be announced on 20 October at the PRIX EUROPA Awards Gala in Berlin. This category for young talent at PRIX EUROPA is partnered by the German Foreign Office.

Weblog "I am Europe"

Users from all over the world can't only vote online, they can also get into dialogue in the blog "I am Europe“ on www.radiodayweb.eu.

Here Europe is talking to itself.

The idea is that Europe consists of the people of this continent, and the people means every individual person, which means: you and me!

The blog is part of the Radio Day of European Cultures on Sunday 14 October which PRIX EUROPA is organising together with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for the third time already. Over 30 broadcasting organisations will be focusing their programmes on European cultural themes on that day.

Onliner-Speed-Dating

The annual budget for New Media activities of all traditional media organisations in Europe in the year 2006 was over18 billion Euros. Great news for companies who can create content for the European market. PRIX EUROPA is offering the vibrant IT-scene in Berlin the opportunity to meet the internet-creatives from 16 European broadcasters on Tuesday 16 October in the Münzsalon in Berlin-Mitte.

European Crime Movie Marathon and Training Exchange

On Monday 15 October the festival is opening its doors to the public. Here they can breathe festival atmosphere and go on a European Crime Movie Marathon for the day. There will also be the chance for young people to get information about getting placements or training with the various European broadcasters.

Festival Cinema in Berlin and Potsdam

From 16 to 18 October there will be public screenings of PRIX EUROPA 2007 festival films at the Berlin cinemas Babylon Mitte and Kant and the Potsdam cinema Thalia.

School Journalists

The gathering of the European media industry will be followed and reported on by school journalists. Their articles, comments, interviews will be published in a PRIX EUROPA festival newsletter and online.

Hungarian Day & Night

Hungarian Television MTV will join the PRIX EUROPA ALLIANCE, the festival celebrates with the Hungarian Day on Friday 19 October. An After Work Lounge to relax after a hard week's festival work in the Green Salon in Berlin-Mitte is planned together with the Collegium Hungaricum. Including live music from Hungary.

Non-festival participants are most welcome!

Gofresh Launches World’s First Mobile Social Ad-Network – September 18, 2007

from Gofresh

Gofresh, the technology company behind US and Europe’s leading off-deck mobile community “itsmy.com”, launches the world’s first mobile social ad-network in New York during MIXX and OMMA on September 24th, 2007.

“The concept behind Gofresh’s new mobile advertising idea is simple: Don’t book channels, reach people on their mobile phones,” says Sabine Irrgang, COO Gofresh. “To make advertising a success on mobiles, ads have to be relevant for the user and targeted for the brands.”

The service runs on an ad-platform developed in-house by Gofresh, offers almost all mobile advertising formats from banners to click-to-call, in-game advertising, WAP-site branding, Mobile TV and personalized content downloads.

The world’s first “one user exclusive per day” deal is the service highlight. Prices start at 0.60 $ per user and day, including three different forms of advertising, for example video downloads, animated banners and brand elements like background images. The exclusive deal comprises that users do not get any other branding campaigns or banner ads during the same time period, except for text ads.

For the launch phase the mobile ad-network is already integrated for the 600,000 mobile internet homepages of “itsmy.com”. As a second step other mobile communities will be added. It is not a competitive product to traditional mobile advertising, but offers the opportunity to integrate targeted user profiles within the existing ad-channels of the big ad-networks.

For advertising customers with a minimum budget of 10,000 $ there are more than 100 targeting parameters available. From age to special interests and location based information released from users for advertising purposes. The mobile social ad-network already has a total of more than 2.1 million mobile WAP sites optimized for more than 3,000 handsets.

“If the development of mobile advertising keeps the current pace of growth, the traditional advertising industry must pay attention not to be overtaken by us,” comments Antonio Vince Staybl, CEO Gofresh.

More entries than ever at PRIX EUROPA 2007 – September 18, 2007

from Valeska, Adele and Susanne at Prix Europa

Around 1000 media professionals from about 40 countries are expected to come to Berlin for the 21st edition of the biggest tri-medial festival in Europe. From 255 nominations they will be selecting this year's best European Television-, Radio- and Internet productions during the festival week from 13until20 October 2007. It is hosted by the German broadcaster Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB). Partners of the festival are European broadcasters, the European institutions, the Länder Berlin und Brandenburg, and their common bodies Medienanstalt (mabb) and Medienboard.

Broadcasters and producers answered with a record number of entries from 36 countries to this year's call for entries. This meant hard work for the pre-selection juries, consisting of European television critics and media professionals who met in Berlin in August. Europe is a very rich world of documentary-making, we had a choice between a variety of excellent documentary programmes. What a shame that they can't all be shown in October, Eduardo Cintra Torres, O Público, Portugal.

The same applies to the TV Fiction productions, which include very good serials as well as many outstanding television movies. The quality of programmes we are getting from across Europe has increased notably and it is evident that in many countries the realisation that programme has to be able to travel has hit home. The number of quality co-productions in television, radio and internet has also struck me this year. Susanne Hoffmann, festival manager.

PRIX EUROPA 2007 with its motto ‘Europe in Berlin’ is opening up to the public for the first time with a series of special events during the festival week. These include a big multicultural opening concert "Muhabbet and the Capital Dance Orchestra", Public Screenings in three cinemas, an Open Day with a Television Crime Marathon, Speed-Dating for Onliners and a Hungarian After Work Lounge.

The Awards Ceremony on 20 October will take place in Berlin - Mitte in the headquarters of the Deutsche Telekom, with among others PRIX EUROPA Patron and President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering.

With its total of 78,000 Euros award money the competition belongs to the financially most well-equipped festivals in Europe. And, last but not least, if a production has won a PRIX EUROPA Award it is likely to sell much better on the European market.

Radio Farda Correspondent Azima Allowed To Leave Iran;Legal Concerns Remain – September 18, 2007

from Martins Zvaners / RFE/RL

Radio Farda correspondent Parnaz Azima, a virtual prisoner in Iran for more than eight months, has left Iran and is en route to the United States -- but criminal charges against her have not been lifted.

RFE/RL President Jeff Gedmin welcomed news of Azima's departure, saying: "For eight long months, Parnaz' colleagues at RFE/RL have been waiting for the day when she will be a free person again. We are happy Parnaz can finally be reunited with her family and see her newborn grandchild for the first time." But Gedmin said he remains concerned because a legal cloud still hangs over Azima.

A citizen of both the U.S. and Iran, Azima's Iranian passport was confiscated on arrival in Tehran in late January to visit her ailing mother. She has been charged with acting against Iranian national security and spreading anti-Iranian propaganda by working for "counterrevolutionary" Radio Farda. The criminal case against her remains active and the deed to her mother's house in Tehran, offered in lieu of $550,000 in bail, has not been returned. Azima has rejected the charges, stating repeatedly that she was only doing her job as a journalist.

She was trapped in Iran with three other Iranian-Americans. Woodrow Wilson International Center scholar Haleh Esfandiari returned to the U.S. earlier this month after spending 105 days in prison, while Open Society Institute consultant Kian Tajbakhsh and peace activist Ali Shakeri remain in jail.

Gedmin said: "I and the entire RFE/RL family express our profound thanks to everyone who has kept Parnaz in their hearts during this long ordeal -- from representatives of the U.S. Government and members of the U.S. Congress, to officials at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, to the many non-governmental organizations, groups and individuals that raised their voices to demand Parnaz' freedom and the freedom of all the innocent Iranian-Americans being held by the Iranian government. We join our voice to theirs in demanding freedom for jailed Iranian-Americans, and Iranian prisoners of conscience."

Azima is a broadcaster with Radio Farda, the joint RFE/RL-Voice of America 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Persian-language broadcast service to Iran. She joined RFE/RL in 1998 and is based at RFE/RL's broadcast headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic.