Online

The news aggregation app, Smartnews, now includes English-language content from DW. The product of a Japanese startup, Smartnews has 13 million monthly users and was nominated this year for the Google Play Awards in the innovation category.

After expanding cooperation with the censorship circumvention specialists, Psiphon, DW’s Farsi news content is reaching more people in Iran. In one month, more than 85,000 daily users have been able to access DW’s independent and accurate global news coverage using Psiphon’s desktop and mobile technology. DW has worked with Psiphon for several years to deliver content to places where local sensors block international news.

Asia

The most advanced IPTV provider in India has acquired DW’s English-language channel, DW, for its channel package. Bangalore-based LukUp Media operates a “light stream” network that keeps transmission costs low and makes LukUp content more affordable for a wider group of consumers. In its first year of operation LukUp has added 150,000 subscribers.

DW is now on the OTT platform My Super TV in Hong Kong operated by the pay TV partner TVB. DW’s  English-language channel, DW, will be available along with other international providers.

The second-largest cable provider in Pakistan is carrying DW. Tri Star cable in Lahore broadcasts the DW’s English language channel, DW, to more than 100,000 subscribers. And DW is being carried by a new cable partner in Mardan, Pakistan. Mardan Cable Network is the largest provider in the city with 35,000 subscribers.

 

They set up their tents and the sun sets below the immense horizon of the Kazakh steppe. As darkness closes in and the team settles down for the night, doubt begins to rise. Will they ever find the last herd of Saiga antelope? Weeks before, over 90 percent of the world’s largest Saiga population dropped dead from a mysterious infection. Nearly 200,000 animals died in the space of days. Their carcasses littered the landscape.

Now a team of researchers, along with a production team from DW’s Global Ideas, is on a journey to discover why. But they have crossed a thousand kilometers and there are no Saiga, only swarms of mosquitoes. Hidden somewhere in the endless landscape, is all that’s left of a critically endangered species. Can the team led by led Steffen Zuther from the Frankfurt Zoological Society protect what remains of the species?

Morning arrives and the herd isn’t where it is supposed to be and rain has turned the dirt roads into impassable muddy puddles. The researchers have tracking collars on two animals, but they don’t know exactly where the Saiga are. According to Zuther, the Saiga can run 100 kilometers in one day and their search area, the Altyn Dala reserve in central Kazakhstan, is the size of France.

“The steppe is an incredibly beautiful and surprising landscape,” says Zuther. “The openness is truly impressive. Such expanses you don’t find anywhere else but at sea.”

Will the team ever find the last of the Saiga? The whole story is now on Saigas in distress, a multimedia production that combines video, photos and text for an interactive and immersive experience. Using the multimedia storytelling tool Pageflow, stunning cinematography and photography capture the majesty of the steppe and lets users experience the environment and join the team as the story unfolds.

Along with the Frankfurt Zoological Society, DW’s partners on Saiga in distress include the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), Flora and Fauna International, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Committee for Foresty and Wildlife.

Europe

DW’s Focus on Europe is now being broadcast in Georgia in cooperation with local broadcasting partner Starvision. The European culture and political program will be broadcast weekly with a Georgian-language voiceover and the program design will be adapted for the Georgian market. Starvision reaches 700,000 viewers and is also available on a free app for iOS and Android. This partnership expands DW’s presence in Georgia, where DW’s Russian-language news program DW Nowosti is currently being broadcast by Georgia’s national public broadcaster.

Latin America

WIPR, Puerto Rico’s largest public broadcaster, has expanded cooperation with DW and will soon be broadcasting more DW programming. WIPR currently broadcasts Euromaxx and DW Noticias during prime time. The channel, which focuses on educational and cultural content, can be received by more than 1,6 million households in Puerto Rico and will significantly increase the reach of DW’s Spanish-language programming.

Brazilian partner Claro will be providing DW’s German-English language channel DW (Amerika) to all of the Olympic villages in Brazil during the 2016 summer games.

The Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro will also be including reports from DW’s Futurando! and Camarote.21 in its “Anthropozän” exhibit, which is visited over 100,000 times each month.

Guatemalan news website Siglo 21 has embedded DW content boxes in Spanish with articles and videos from Enlaces, Cultura 21, Global 3000 and En forma.

North America

Three Spanish-language programs from DW are being carried on Telecentro, a Hispanic-American broadcaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Telecentro reaches 30,000 households.

Africa

DW (Deutsch) will now be available in 10 countries in southern Africa via pay-TV partner Multichoice. Countries included are South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland und Zimbabwe. The channel will also be available to Multichoice hotel subscribers.

Angola’s first private television broadcaster, TV Zimbo, is broadcasting Futurando!, Camarote.21 and Africa on the Move in Portuguese. TV Zimbo will also become a coproduction partner for Euromaxx. The partnership is a positive step into a broadcasting market that had previously been inaccessible due to political conditions.

What if you could feel what it is like to be there as news happens? Using new virtual reality tools, journalists can recreate news worlds and users can interact directly with the environment.

DW’s Innovation projects team presented this technology at the Global Media Forum and allowed the audience to experience the latest applications and devices.

It is striking how a virtual reality story creates a sense of presence and forces people to think differently about a story. Users can experience the news as a protagonist, and encounter jarring emotions and sensations. The meaning of a story is transferred directly by the medium and the information becomes an accessory, just like in real life.

A best practice example of applying virtual reality technology to journalism comes from the Guardian in their report on solitary confinement. The multimedia story, “6 x9: explore solitary confinement in 360”, expresses how solitary confinement could be considered torture by combining first-hand reports with the VR experience of being confined to a cell 23 hours a day. Another example, Harvest of Change, from the Des Moines Register in the United States, explores issues reshaping farming in America.

This user experience is becoming more accessible because a variety of virtual reality accessories for mobile devices are more affordable.

Wireless virtual reality headsets are set to grow in popularity according to analysis from DW Innovation. Immersive info-graphics providing data on top of a virtual environment could be another big opportunity to translate complex stories to a wider audience in a visually appealing way. In an early VR experiment, DW Innovation cooperated with the Berlin VR start-up VRagments to visualize parts of the new Berlin Airport (BER), which is still under construction.

As the trend in virtual reality news progresses, innovators like those at DW will be asking how to create and improve virtual reality stories that address what viewers want and uncover their interests to intimately depict important stories.

Asia

Over 100 hours of high-quality documentary content from DW Transtel have been acquired by the Chinese educational video program supplier “Wuhan Yuanlai Educational“, which provides video on-demand for universities and schools across the nation. Now millions of students in China can easily download general knowledge and cultural documentaries from DW Transtel. The English and German-language programming will be provided with subtitles in Mandarin Chinese.

DW’s automotive program Drive it! is being now carried by the Indonesian pay TV network K-Vision. The program will be shown with Indonesian subtitles on the “Otomotif” channel, which reaches 450,000 households across the country.

The Pakistani cable television broadcaster, Webcom PTV is now a DW partner and will provide 20,000 subscribers in Islamabad with DW’s English channel.

Online

DW is now broadcasting its English channel live on YouTube, thereby becoming one of the first international news channels to make use of this feature.

Online articles in English from dw.com are now being included amongst a wide variety of content from quality international news and information outlets on RealClearWorld. The news website from the USA features coverage, opinion and analysis of current events from around the world. It attracts 5.9 million unique visitors every month.

A consortium of international broadcasters recently met at DW’s headquarters in Bonn to discuss internet censorship. The DG 7 Internet Freedom Group brought together experts from the BBC, BBG, FMM, RNW and DW for two days to exchange ideas and discuss the importance of freedom of information online.

Europe

DW’s critical talk format Nemtsova.Interview is now being broadcast by NewsOne in the Ukraine. According to Nielsen, NewsOne is ranked amongst the most popular channels in the country.