Year: 2024

French radio journalist Sebastien Farcis said he was leaving India after more than 13 years, as the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) refused to renew his work permit.He is the second French national in four months to have been denied work permit and the third foreign journalist reportedly forced to leave the country this year.Farcis had served as the South Asia correspondent for Radio France Internationale, Radio France, Liberation and the Swiss and Belgian public radios.He is married to an Indian woman and has Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status, which allows him to live and work in the country but requires a special permit for missionary activities, mountaineering or journalism.He said that no reason had been provided “despite formal and repeated requests” and that he had applied for a new work permit.Farcis, in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), said the MHA had notified the denial on March 7 this year, not allowing him to cover the country’s recently concluded general elections.Describing the decision as an act of “incomprehensible censorship.“, Farcis wrote on X:“After 13 years working as a correspondent in India, the authorities have denied me a permit to work as a journalist. I have thus been forced to leave the country,”

“It was communicated to me on the eve of the Indian general elections, the largest democratic elections in the world, which I was hence forbidden to cover. This appeared to me as an incomprehensible censorship,”“This denial comes in a worrying context of increasing restrictions on the work of foreign journalists: after Vanessa Dougnac I am the second French journalist in four months having to leave India under these conditions. At least five OCI [Overseas Citizen of India] foreign correspondents have been banned from working as journalists in less than two years,” he added.In February, French journalist Vanessa Dougnac left the country after the government revoked her OCI card. Dougnac, a contributor to several French-language publications, including the weekly magazine Le Point, came to India as a student 23 years ago, worked as a journalist, married and raised a son.Vanessa revealed that the Ministry of Home Affairs sent her a notice in January, stating her work was “inimical” to national interests, leading to the cancellation of her permanent residency.Two months later, Avani Dias, the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), said she had been forced to leave India on April 19, the day the general elections started, after the government objected to her reporting on the assassination of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.The ABC had said Dias was informed of the decision by an official from the Ministry of External Affairs, who said her most recent Foreign Correspondent episode on Nijjar “crossed a line.” […]

Lytus Technologies Holdings PTV. Ltd., which operates as a platform services company in India, has  launched a regional Indian audio streaming platform called Radio Room.Radio Room will offer an array of audio dramas that encompass a variety of genres such as classic literature, crime thrillers, romance, and children’s stories, all tailored for the Indian diaspora worldwide.The platform aims to become a pivotal player in the audio streaming sector, which delivers content directly over the internet to consumers (“over-the-top” or OTT), bypassing traditional distribution.Lytus plans to rapidly scale up operations of the newly launched platform, targeting four million subscribers in its first year.By leveraging Lytus’ existing customer base, Radio Room is poised to accelerate its growth and extend its reach across numerous Indian regional languages, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Eezha Tamil.Additionally, efforts are underway to expand into other regional Indian languages such as Marathi and Bengali, as well as international languages like Spanish, Portuguese, and German.Dharmesh Pandya, CEO of Lytus, stated: “Launching Radio Room underscores our mission to leverage cutting-edge technology to enhance user experiences. We are confident that Radio Room will redefine the audio OTT landscape and transform how audiences connect with audio content. Lytus management’s strategic support, large user base, and industry expertise will enable Radio Room to fundamentally transform the audio OTT space, offering a rich tapestry of engaging content that resonates with listeners worldwide.” […]

StreamGuys announced that Dick Broadcasting, which owns and operates 19 radio stations across three southeastern US states, has quintupled its monthly advertising revenue since transitioning to StreamGuys ad insertion services. Dick Broadcasting has amplified its revenue generation through StreamGuys’ programmatic ad services, which automatically fills unsold inventory in ad breaks for live streams and podcasts.StreamGuys has also diversified Dick Broadcasting’s advertising strategy by adding midroll placements to the mix, which required a structural change to how ads were distributed.“Nielsen had long required Dick Broadcasting to faithfully simulcast their over-the-air streams due to how they reported FM ratings in their markets,” said Tyler Huggins, director of advertising, StreamGuys. “That limited the customer to preroll ads, which while effective also limits revenue opportunities for stream monetization. We effectively split their streams into in-market and out-of-market streams, which allowed us to insert midrolls within the latter.”Huggins says that StreamGuys offers a “waterfall system” that prioritizes direct sold campaigns first, then programmatic fulfillment from its network of advertisers. If neither has an impression to serve, StreamGuys returns the opportunity to Dick Broadcasting to place an unsold promo. StreamGuys manages the entire process, from server-side ad insertions to revenue payouts. “Dick Broadcasting communicates open inventory, and we manage all campaigns, advertisers and invoices,” he said. “We also work with their app developer and web team to pinpoint geographic data, which helps us precisely pinpoint where listeners are located. That finite data helps us make decisions on whether a listener is inside or outside the market, and which ads to serve.”Dick Broadcasting also uses StreamGuys’ SGrecast service to create podcasts and side streams from live radio shows, which StreamGuys also automatically inserts ads within. StreamGuys also hosts and delivers all of Dick Broadcasting’s streaming content, using StreamGuys’ enterprise CDN to deliver live and on-demand content to websites, apps and smart speakers among other consumer receive points. The result is a turnkey streaming service that has reduced costs, streamlined internal labor, and increased revenue.“We are lucky to have very dedicated audiences for our streams, many of which live outside our geographic FM footprints,” said Taylor Dick, Vice President of Finance and Strategic Analysis, Dick Broadcasting Company. “We found that we were carrying substantial costs to operate our streaming infrastructure and serving ads that were meaningless to many of our listeners. StreamGuys reduced the costs of our streaming infrastructure while effectively creating zones that allow us to serve ads of interest to out-of-market listeners. We can now offer a better listening experience for our entire streaming audience while substantially increasing our revenue through a programmatic service that requires no heavy lifting from within. StreamGuys has helped us to a much better job of managing, monetizing and growing our streaming business.” […]