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Tag: ANi

  • ANI upgrades field units with TVU one 5G pack for stronger live coverage

    ANI upgrades field units with TVU one 5G pack for stronger live coverage

    MUMBAI: ANI, South Asia’s leading multimedia news agency, has upgraded its field production fleet with TVU Networks’ latest TVU One 5G backpack. Designed for challenging environments, the compact pack houses six 5G modem modules, each paired with a dedicated three-antenna Mimo (multiple-input, multiple-output) array, plus a four-antenna Wi-fi Mimo system totalling 22 antennas.

    This advanced design significantly improves performance in congested urban areas, crowded venues, disaster zones, and weak-signal rural regions, enabling crews to go live from locations where other systems often fail.

    Unlike typical single-antenna printed designs that face near-field interference and self-cancellation when radios are clustered, TVU’s per-modem antenna diversity ensures cleaner rf conditions across carriers and frequency bands. The result is stronger links, higher stability, and more reliable throughput even under demanding conditions.

    At the transport layer, TVU’s ISX (Inverse Statmux) technology bonds and orchestrates traffic across all available connections: 5G, ethernet, and Wi-fi, while dynamically routing packets around congestion and cell-edge dropouts. This ensures ultra-low latency and broadcast-grade stability even in contested spectrum environments.

    “As South Asia’s leading news agency, it is our responsibility to deliver breaking news with speed, reliability and quality,” said ANI CEO Sanjiv Prakash. “By upgrading to TVU’s latest 22-antenna 5G system, our journalists can now go live from places others can’t: faster, more reliably, and with greater consistency.”

    “We engineered TVU One’s RF system to thrive in the harshest real-world conditions,” said TVU Networks CEO Paul Shen. “Its six 5G modules, each with a three-antenna MIMO array, plus a four-antenna Wi-fi Mimo backbone, give it the density and isolation needed to overcome congestion, while ISX technology ensures seamless data flow.”

    The TVU One 5G features a total of 22 antennas, comprising six 5G modem modules with three antennas each and a four-antenna Wi-fi Mimo setup. Despite its advanced hardware, the pack remains lightweight and compact, ensuring mobility without compromising performance. Its antenna diversity and isolation architecture mitigate near-field interference effectively, while ISX technology provides real-time bonding and adaptive path optimisation across carriers and frequency bands. The system’s multi-provider and multi-band agility also guarantees stability across varying infrastructures and international deployments, making it ideal for global field operations.

     

  • Veteran journalist M L Kotru, former The Statesman editor, dies at 91

    Veteran journalist M L Kotru, former The Statesman editor, dies at 91

    MUMBAI: M L Kotru, one of India’s most respected journalists and a former editor of The Statesman, passed away on Thursday at his home in Gurgaon. He was 91.

    Kotru’s career stretched across nearly sixty years, during which he reported, edited and mentored across some of India’s leading publications. He began with stints at Sunday Mail and ANI before rising through the ranks at The Statesman, where he worked for years as diplomatic correspondent and later as editor. Even after stepping away from full-time newsroom roles, he remained active in commentary, contributing columns to The Statesman until 2013 and writing frequently for outlets in his native Kashmir.

    Beyond his professional accomplishments, Kotru played a vital role in shaping generations of reporters. A senior member and former secretary-general of the Press Club of India, he was widely regarded as a guiding hand for younger colleagues. His writing earned recognition with the Watumull Award for The Other Side, a series praised for its evocative depth and sharp observations.

    Condolences poured in from colleagues and protégés across the media industry. Furquan Moharkan of Morning Context described him as “the doyen of journalism,” while fellow journalist Parul Chandra remembered him as “a reporter’s editor and a brilliant writer.” The Press Club of India called his passing “an irreparable loss to journalism,” honouring him as a founding presence who upheld integrity and rigour in the profession.

  • Sinclair to take ANI’s My India to US TV homes

    Sinclair to take ANI’s My India to US TV homes

    MUMBAI: My India is going to Uncle Sam. Indian news Agency Asian News International (ANI) and  Sinclair subsidiary Sinclair  Broadcast have signed an agreement wherein the latter will take the former’s weekly TV programme My India to major American cities.

    Launched in Q2’24 and produced by  ANI, My India offers a 30-minute in-depth reportage and analysis of  India’s economy, vibrant culture and growing impact on the global stage. My  India also captures the deepening people to people (P2P), business to business (B2B) and government to government (G2G) ties between two of the most important democracies in the world. 

    Hitherto, the show could  be viewed in the US through Komo TV’s FAST channel and its affiliated YouTube channel, and on Tag Tv’s You Tube channel in the US and Canada.
     

    My India the TV show

    My India will be made available across the US  in Washington DC, California, Rhode Island, Ohio, Michigan, Florida,  Indiana, Seattle, Baltimore, Texas, and Wisconsin among others over Sinclair-owned  TV stations affiliated with ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.
    . 
    Said Sinclair  president & CEO Chris Ripley: “The expanded distribution of My India highlights the close connections between the world’s oldest democracy and the world’s largest democracy. We look forward to continuing our partnership with  ANI.”

    Said ANI CEO Sanjiv Prakash: “The relationship between  ANI and  Sinclair  has already proven to be successful and is a testament to the strong bond between the US and India. We are excited to reach a broader audience in the US, including the  Indian diaspora and beyond. We look forward to bringing My  India showcasing unique and personal stories highlighting  India’s ancient culture and thriving traditions to more homes in America.” 

    The expanded partnership between Sinclair and  ANI builds on the solid foundation established between the two companies with a joint mission to provide high quality news stories from  India and the broader south Asia region to a diverse set of American audiences interested in understanding the  India story, said an ANI press release. 

  • ANI lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement

    ANI lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement

    MUMBAI: Cheating may seem harmless until the consequences come crashing down—a classic case of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”.

    Imagine the titan of artificial intelligence, the very force reshaping our understanding of innovation, now standing accused of stepping over the ethical boundaries it once sought to redefine.

    With a jaw-dropping market cap of $157 billion as of October 2024, OpenAI—the so-called savior of human progress—is now grappling with a high-stakes copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Asian News International (ANI) in India.

    This legal clash, steeped in complexity and a touch of irony, pits the ambitions of cutting-edge AI against the enduring principles of intellectual property rights. Could this be a case of progress overstepping its bounds? Or a necessary infringement in the name of human advancement?

    ANI has taken OpenAI to court, accusing the tech giant of unauthorised use of its copyrighted content to train its large language model (LLM). The case not only raises pressing questions about copyright infringement and fair use but also dives deep into the murky waters of territoriality and intellectual property in the age of artificial intelligence. The stakes? Nothing less than the future of AI innovation and creators’ rights in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital economies.

    ANI accused OpenAI of using its copyrighted material without permission and highlighted the inadequacy of OpenAI’s opt-out policy, which ANI claims fails to prevent its content from being scraped through third-party websites. ANI also alleged that OpenAI’s models produced outputs either verbatim or substantially similar to its copyrighted content, further compounding the copyright violation. Additionally, ANI flagged fabricated responses generated by ChatGPT that falsely attributed interviews or news stories to the news agency.

    OpenAI defended its practices by citing fair use, which permits limited use of copyrighted material under specific conditions. It argued that its models do not reproduce content verbatim and that it sufficiently transforms language to comply with copyright exceptions. On fabricated responses, OpenAI stated it resolved issues flagged by ANI and committed to addressing such problems promptly in the future.

    ANI is seeking an interim injunction to prevent OpenAI from storing, publishing, or reproducing its content and has requested a prohibition on accessing ANI’s material through any channel, including subscribers. OpenAI countered by asserting that no legal action could apply within India, as its data processing and model training occur outside the country, with no offices or servers in India.

    The lawsuit brings two critical issues to the forefront: the balance between copyright infringement and fair use, and the challenges of territoriality in data storage. India’s existing copyright law lacks explicit provisions regarding AI training, making the applicability of fair use a grey area. Moreover, the absence of text and data mining (TDM) provisions complicates the country’s approach to fostering innovation while safeguarding content creators’ rights.

    The territoriality argument further underscores complexities in applying local laws to global AI platforms. Data sovereignty issues arise as distributed AI models utilise data generated in India but processed across international cloud environments, challenging traditional legal frameworks.

    Globally, AI platforms and news publishers have clashed over the use of copyrighted material. While some publishers have entered licensing agreements with AI firms, others, such as The New York Times, have pursued legal action. ANI’s lawsuit reflects a broader struggle over how GenAI platforms interact with intellectual property.

    India’s policymakers face the task of balancing innovation in AI with content creators’ rights. A permissionless innovation approach, which allows experimentation with new technologies while addressing harms retrospectively, may provide a pathway for advancing AI while protecting intellectual property.

    This lawsuit will likely serve as a landmark case in determining the accountability of AI developers for content generated by their platforms. As the first legal action of its kind in India, the outcome will influence how AI platforms navigate copyright, fair use, and territorial regulations in the country.

  • Network18’s Palki Sharma to make comeback with a new show?

    Network18’s Palki Sharma to make comeback with a new show?

    Mumbai: News personality and Wion’s ex-managing editor Palki Sharma, who recently joined Network18 Group for an upcoming project, is likely to be back with a new show soon.

    In a conversation with ANI’s managing editor Smita Prakash on her podcast, Sharma hinted at her return, hopefully, with a better show.

    In the recently announced teaser of the episode by ANI, Sharma was recalling the reason why she left her previous channel, Wion: “… left because I thought that whatever I wanted to do there, I had done there…”

    Moreover, she also shared that she did not enjoy everything that she was doing there and didn’t like the direction they were taking.

    Acknowledging the curiosity of the fans and their desire to know about her return, Sharma said, “A lot of people write to me, and every time I put a photo on Instagram, people are like, yeh toh theek hai par show kab ayega? which is nice, but I want to tell you and everyone else that… I will be back, and it will be a better show hopefully…and I want to do the show when I am ready, when I know it is going to work.”

    Sharma has over 21 years of experience across several media, including the ITV Network, Network18, Doordarshan News, and The Hindustan Times.

    She was the host of Gravitas, a popular prime-time English news programme, as well as the highly regarded digital programme Gravitas Plus on Wion. Additionally, she conceptualised and oversaw the Wion Global Summit, a channel event held annually in Dubai.

    In a career spanning over two decades, Sharma has interviewed several national and international heads of state. She has also covered important stories and events on the ground, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the Quad Summits in Tokyo and Washington DC, and many others.

    At Network18, Sharma will launch a new multi-platform video project for the group. This will be her second stint at Network18, where she has earlier worked in different capacities.

    The video project to be built and led by Sharma will straddle all formats of news reporting and presentation. The new product will aim to capture a new generation of audiences for the group.

  • WarnerMedia pauses business operations in Russia amid Ukraine conflict

    WarnerMedia pauses business operations in Russia amid Ukraine conflict

    Mumbai: As the Russia-Ukraine ongoing war has escalated over the days, the entertainment conglomerate WarnerMedia decided to pause “all new business” in Russia, CEO Jason Kilar said. This announcement comes a few hours after Discovery Inc, which is set to soon close its acquisition of WarnerMedia, suspended all operations in Russia amid the country’s war on Ukraine.

    According to Variety, Kilar, in a memo to WarnerMedia staff said, “Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, WarnerMedia is pausing all new business operations in Russia. This includes ceasing broadcast of our channels, halting all new content licensing with Russian entities and pausing our planned theatrical and games releases.”

    Previously, along with suspending CNN broadcasts in Russia, WarnerMedia’s production house Warner Bros had halted its plans to release “The Batman” in the country ahead of its planned premiere. Kilar further stated, “We are following this situation closely and future business decisions will be made with that context in mind. Our thoughts in this moment are with  the people of Ukraine.”

    As per the Deadline report, Universal Music has also just announced it ceased operations there, along with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and others. 

    Amazon will be shutting off Amazon Prime in Russia and stopping deliveries to the country, according to news agency ANI.

  • Channel NewsAsia relaunches; adds Mumbai bureau

    Channel NewsAsia relaunches; adds Mumbai bureau

    MUMBAI: Asian news broadcaster Channel NewsAsia is ramping up investments and has set up new bureaus in Mumbai and across Asia as it expands its programming lineup.

     

    Channel NewsAsia has relaunched and moved from a live broadcast of 20 hours a day to a 24-hour cycle. The channel also has a new look and new programmes to help viewers better “Understand Asia”.

     

    The free-to-air channel already has a bureau in New Delhi. Going forward, it will add more bureaus. This will enable the channel to produce more original content and news stories for the additional hours of “live” broadcasting

     

    The channel is banking on digitisation that it hopes will reduce carriage fees paid to cable networks.

    The broadcaster has an on-going deal with news agency ANI in India. From India one will see more news on different topics like finance, business and entertainment.

     

    Channel NewsAsia MD Debra Soon said, “As the locus f the world economy shifts towards Asia, we believe we are well-positioned to deliver what we’ve been doing daily since 1999, and help audiences around the world better understand Asia. We have made substantial investments to provide more business content about Asia, from Asia. We intend to increase our lead in covering South East Asia better than other broadcasters operating here, and we will cover South Asia better. This is all part of the drive to deliver insightful documentaries and programmes for viewers, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

     

    Channel NewsAsia’s re-launch was celebrated today with a Champagne Lunch with the channel’s partners and friends at its new Marina Bay Studio. Simultaneous parties were also held in Mumbai and Hong Kong to mark this milestone occasion.

     

    Increased news and business content and documentaries

     

    Business news at prime time is more than doubled. A new one-hour financial programme, ‘Business Central’, airs at 8 pm featuring key stories from the region’s financial hubs – Singapore, Mumbai, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The show will give viewers insights into daily developments in other key world financial centres from the bureaus in London and New York.

     

    Day-time market reports and key interviews will be conducted out of Channel NewsAsia’s latest facility in the Marina Bay Financial Centre, at the heart of Singapore’s new financial district.

     

    The Marina Bay Studio will be featured during a new one-hour lunchtime show, ‘Asia Connect’, which will bring together the market action from every trading day in Mumbai, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore and keep viewers on the pulse of Asia. This studio is a result of the collaboration with DBS Bank.

     

    News content is increased by more than one-third. A daily additional newsbelt called ‘News Pulse’ from midnight to 6 am, tracks world developments overnight for Asia, with breaking news from the US and Europe. This will be followed by a new start to Asia’s day, with ‘First Look Asia’ from 6 am.
        

              
          

    With a line-up of new programmes interspersed throughout the channel, viewers are given an uninterrupted flow of news through the day:

     

    (1) First Look Asia

    (2) News Now
    (3) Asia Connect
    (4) Singapore Connect (Only on Channel NewsAsia, Singapore)
    (5) Business Central
    (6) Business Singapore
    (7) News Pulse

     

    Beyond the news, Channel NewsAsia is raising the depth of content about Asia with nearly 30 per cent more hours of current affairs programmes focused on the dynamism and progress of Asia. An example is ‘Power List Asia’, which looks at the core of Asian success stories through interviews with top CEOs and tycoons.

     

    ‘Extraordinary Asians’, meanwhile, profiles the exceptional Asians who inspire the community by contributing in extraordinary ways. ‘Boomtown Asia’ offers a preview of what Asian cities of the future might look like and what is being done now to help make existing cities sustainable, liveable and future-proof.

     

    New branding and on-air look: The launch is marked by the channel’s new branding and on-air look. “To be the Voice of Asian Progress” describes Channel NewsAsia’s unique positioning of capturing the exclusive stories unfolding in the region in all its diversity. The fresh graphics and colours reflect the channel’s celebration of the dynamism and energy in Asia, while the channel will stay true to its mission of helping viewers “Understand Asia”.

     

    All platforms: In such a dynamic environment, consumers would expect to have information whenever and wherever they are. Channel NewsAsia is already available via the iPhone, iPad and Android Apps. Its Android App will have enhanced features when relaunched later this year.

     

    The channel is also streamed “live” on both Channel NewsAsia (url: channelnewsasia.com ) and Livestation (url: livestation.com/en/cna_en) websites. It has entered into a strategic partnership with YouTube to provide even better quality services for viewers.

     

    Marketing initiatives: On the marketing front, Channel NewsAsia has launched a series of initiatives in the region, such as the partnership for the CEO World Forum held in Ho Chi Minh City on 11 January 2013.

     

    In March 2013, the channel is taking its discussion programme, ‘Perspectives’, on the road in Jakarta. To be recorded on location live, a panel has been invited to discuss the topic of Indonesia Rising. Speakers include Indonesia’s Investment Coordinating Board chairman Dr. M. Chatib Basri; Garuda Indonesia president, CEO Emirsyah Satar, the World Bank’s Country Director for Indonesia Stefan Koeberle and Indonesia’s Pertamina president, director and CEO Karen Agustiawan. The channel will launch more of such initiatives, like the Luminary Awards Forum in Singapore at the end of March.