The annual ASBU–EBU Week of Technology has seen the continuation of long-standing cooperation between European broadcasters and their peers in the Arab States Broadcasting Union. This week's gathering in Tunisia involved 20 speakers, over a two-day workshop, covering three technology domains: media production, media and news exchange, and media distribution.
The EBU facilitated the involvement of 10 speakers at the event, with six experts from the Technology & Innovation departmant, along with representatives of VRT, BBC, SMPTE and WorldDAB. Walid Sami and Bram Tullemans of the EBU were physically present in Tunis. The workshop also featured talks from representatives of several industry vendors (TVU, Dalet, EVS, Irdeto, Tata Communications, SVG, Ampegon) and other organizations (DRM consortium, Fraunhofer IIS).
As usual, the programme took in a broad range of topics, with speakers providing updates on the latest trends and best practices. Subjects dealt with in the different sessions included remote and cloud production, automatic captioning and translation, virtual production, IP and software-based media production, live IP studios, AI for media newsrooms, IPR management, multi-CDN, 5G for newsgathering and 5G Broadcast, WRC-23 preparation, OTT, DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondiale.
There were around 30 on-site attendees at the workshop, with more following remotely. ASBU members represented included the Saudi Broadcasting Authority, Bahrain Ministry of Information, Kuwait Broadcasting, Abu Dhabi TV, Tunisia TV, TDA Algeria, Arabic News and Programme Exchange Centre Algeria, and the Tunisian broadcasting operator ONT.
With WRC-23 just around the corner, the event was also a valuable opportunity to exchange upon and coordinate broadcaster actions during the event, notably with regard to positions on Agenda Item 1.5 concerning the future use of UHF spectrum.