A group of international broadcasters is calling on Olympics officials to give priority to free over-the-air broadcasters in distributing rights to the Games.
The Asia-Pacific Broadcast Union, meeting in Iran, also asked the International Olympic Council to ensure that free-to-air broadcast rights are sold directly to free-to-air broadcasting organizations in the ABU region.
ABU negotiates broadcast rights fees on behalf of members via a sports pool; it says it has been facing pressure to “unbundle” the broadcast rights to sporting events because “governing bodies of various sports were keen to sell them separately to operators of different media platforms.”
The organization also adopted a new strategic plan, including exploration of developing an IP-based content exchange network and helping members preserve their archives.
Two broadcast engineering awards were presented. The ABU Broadcast Engineering Excellence Award was given to Kim Sangjin of Seoul Broadcasting System. The ABU Engineering Industry Excellence Award was presented to Ding Wenhua of Radio and Television of the People’s Republic of China/China Central Television.
ABU’s 170 members include organizations like Radio Television Hong Kong, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, All India Radio, the BBC and the Korean Broadcasting System.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened the ABU General Assembly.
