This week's media news (episode 13)

Welcome to this week's media news.

This one has to do with audio balancing on Astro's TV channels. In an ABU news report on May 3, Astro has appointed Salzbrenner Stagetec Media Academy as consultants to support their switch from "level-based loudness management" to "loudness metering" based on the ITU 1770 standard for its pay-TV channels.

Stagetec.com says by switching to loudness metering and processing Measat aims to deliver a uniform, high-quality sound experience throughout all of Astro's channels.

Since 2010 Astro has been equipped with Stagetec Nexus audio routing systems and Aurus consoles that offer native loudness metering as well as support for third-party solutions such as Pinguin LndServer.

A first round of training and consultancy was held in March 2013 and led by loudness expert Jean-Paul Moerman from the Mediagroup headquarters in Buttenheim, Germany. For a week, Jean-Paul together with the Astro Audio Committee imparted theoretical and practical knowledge to all audio staff members in all areas of the Astro campus including studio production, MCR, transmission and post-production.

If you really want to know what happened behind-the-scene on the preparation for the recent GE 13 results TV broadcasts, The Star has published two features on its last Sunday's edition. One is about TV presenters facing challenges on making the news about election and another is about the highlights of last Sunday's GE 13 election results TV programmes.

This week was also exciting because I spotted Media Prima TV channels inviting back some former TV3 personalities for a while. Aziz Desa who had previously presented Malaysia Hari Ini in the 1990s returned for Nasi Lemak Kopi O on TV9 last Saturday. On Sunday, Zainal Ariffin (still working with Media Prima) with another one presented the GE 13 results programme on TV9 while Raymond Goh, who ocassionally presents TV3's Nightline appeared as one of the presenters of NTV7's GE 13 results programme. On Tuesday, Christine Ling who was previously with TV3 in its early years appeared in an episode of Santai Bersama on TV3 at 11:30 am.

Moving on to TV presentation. On May 5, I saw TV3's on-screen logo variation being shrinked from big sized to smaller sized as small as TV3's main on-screen logo. On May 11, I saw the addition of TV3's slogan Inspirasi Hatiku below TV3's logo at the middle of Buletin Utama's desk. I think this is a minor change after the recent GE 13. Studio A Sri Pentas was reserved for GE 13 coverage for two weeks until May 5 while TV3's news bulletins moved to near-the-newsroom studio and newsroom studio.

On the morning of May 11 while checking on Tanyalah Ustaz live programme via Tonton TV streaming, I saw the programme having a right-side bar showing off viewers' questions and the guest presenter's answers about the programme's topic of the day through a special website on http://apps.tv9.com.my/tanyalahustaz/. Tanyalah Ustaz is shown as a live broadcast every Friday to Sunday at 7:00 am.

(Revised on May 11 and 12)