News Broadcasting
BBC World to extensively cover Johannesburg ‘green’ summit
LONDON: BBC World has announced that it will dedicate a large portion of its schedule this month and early September to special programming and news reports related to The World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
For BBC World News David Loyn, Hilary Anderson and Nik Gowing will be among the team reporting live from Johannesburg from 26 August. For World Business Report, Mike Sergeant and Richard Scott will be turning the spotlight on the business issues.
In addition to BBC World’s daily news coverage during the World Summit, the channel has commissioned a series of news features and programmes. News presenter Nisha Pillai will be co-hosting a two-part debate, Earth Summit: The Debate filmed at the UNESCO heritage site, ‘The Cradle of Humankind’ outside Johannesburg. Together with Bill Moyers of PBS America, Pillai will lead the discussion between a panel of world leaders and campaigners from all sides of the debate.
Regular BBC World programme, Earth Report, is also featuring a series of specials dedicated to the summit. The Children of Rio will look at the lives of some children all over the world ten years on from the last Summit in Brazil and I Wish offers a unique look at what 21 people from a cross section of global society wish the World Summit would achieve.
The popular interview show, HARDtalk with Tim Sebastian, will run a special week of interviews starting on 26 August with Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexico City Environment Minister. The monthly magazine show, Africa Direct, will offer a local African environmental perspective when it airs 28 August.
The three-part documentary series, State of the Planet presented by David Attenborough attempts to answer some of the big questions about our planet, assessing the gravity of the environmental crisis and asking what lies ahead at this point in human history. Developing World is a magazine series which takes viewers from Armenia to Zanzibar, Nepal to Peru showing what is possible when people work together, while Life is a five-part award-winning series looking at how the newly globalised world economy is affecting ordinary people across the planet.
News bulletins in August and September will include specially commissioned reports from BBC correspondents around the world highlighting the tension between small projects and government-level statements of intent which have been the product of world summits. Tim Hirsch will be looking at Green capitalism in Brazil and some Micro initiatives using solar power in South Africa.
Jonathan Head follows the course of a river to Bangkok looking at various pollution problems and ending in an environmental project which offers a solution. Ian Bruce follows a scheme in Brazil which gathers local people together to decide how government money should be spent in their area. He also looks at a trade union in Colombia which dared to challenge the powers that be and reports the story of a boy from rural India who will be one of the youngest delegates at the World Summit. Mike Donkin reports on one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in the Amazon which is under threat, despite international agreements to protect them and their environment. Finally, Shirin Wheeler looks at clean power in Iceland as it becomes a global guinea pig by aiming to be the first fully-fledged hydrogen-powered, eco-friendly economy in the world.
World Summit – Johannesburg 2002 Times in GMT
Earth Summit: The Debate
PART 1
31 August 2:10 pm, 9:10 pm
1 September 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
PART 2
7 September 2:10pm, 9:10 pm
8 September 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
State of the Planet, 3 programmes (NOT AVAILABLE IN PAS 2 REGION)
17, 24 August 2:10 pm, 9:10 pm
18,25 August 9:10 am, 5:10 pm
In addition ‘I Wish’ vignettes will air throughout the schedule in August and September. In the lead up to the earth summit in Johannesburg, 21 individuals from a cross-section of global society were given a unique platform to send their messages to the world leaders and decision-makers attending the summit.
News Broadcasting
Times Network to air JVC Exit Poll across 5 regions on April 29
Four-hour broadcast spans states and Puducherry with data-led analysis
MUMBAI: Times Network is set to roll out what it calls one of its most expansive election programming efforts yet, culminating in the JVC Exit Poll on 29 April, with a multi-hour broadcast spanning key poll-bound regions.
The exit poll will air across Times Now and Times Now Navbharat, beginning at 5pm and 4pm respectively. Co-powered by Vedanta and Jindal Stainless, the programming aims to combine on-ground reportage with data-driven projections across West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
The network has deployed over 50 journalists across these regions, gathering voter sentiment and local insights in the run-up to polling. The effort builds on its ongoing election formats such as Election Yatra and Election Premier League, which have tracked campaign narratives and community-level issues.
In parallel, Times Now Navbharat has focused on constituency-level reporting in West Bengal through its Jan Gan ka Mann series, capturing voter opinions across diverse segments.
The coverage has also featured interviews with prominent political leaders. Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Congress leaders Ramesh Chennithala and V D Satheesan have appeared on the network’s election specials. From Tamil Nadu, voices including deputy chief minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, DMK MP Dayanidhi Maran, BJP leader K Annamalai and NTK’s Seeman have also featured in discussions.
On the day of the exit poll, the network’s primetime anchors, including Navika Kumar, Zakka Jacob and Sumit Awasthi, will lead the coverage. They will be joined by a panel of political analysts, psephologists and senior journalists offering real-time insights and interpretation of trends.
The programming will integrate grassroots reportage with analytics from the JVC Exit Poll, aiming to give viewers an early sense of electoral outcomes ahead of the official results on 4 May.
With its combined English and Hindi broadcast reach, Times Network is positioning this effort as a comprehensive look at voter sentiment, blending field reporting, data and debate to decode what could lie ahead when the final mandate is revealed.
