News Broadcasting
Critical Mention to Distribute Al Jazeera Media Network’s Channels into Global Business Intelligence Markets
MUMBAI: Critical Mention, the global leader in real-time TV Intelligence, enabling many of the world’s largest business intelligence and big data platforms to efficiently include breaking news and other broadcast content from around the globe into their subscription platforms, announced a partnership with Al Jazeera Media Network today.
The agreement extends to both direct subscribers of Critical Mention as well as the users of third-party media monitoring and business intelligence platforms that rely on the Critical Mention API. Terms were not disclosed.
“With 70 bureaus around the world reaching 260 million households and a fast-growing presence on US cable systems, Al Jazeera reporters are covering the stories and issues that matter to the public and private sector,” said Critical Mention founder and CEO Sean Morgan. “The importance of this real-time content to public and private markets across the world is profound.”
Today’s Al Jazeera Media Network partnership comes as the global, broad-based multibillion-dollar business intelligence and big data marketplace is grappling with a lack of real-time broadcast content.
“Despite huge audience sizes and extended time spent by viewers consuming content, TV has been kept on the sidelines and virtually untapped in real-time intelligence applications,” said Morgan. “Due to the mass infrastructure requirements to aggregate broadcast on a global scale and technical requirements to make it all searchable and distributable, the broadcast industry has never been able to effectively monetize the business intelligence markets as newspapers, magazines and newswires have been able to do, and business intelligence markets have never been able to leverage real-time broadcast data on a global scale to derive insights and drive real-time decisions.”
Recent media consumption and ad-spend studies from Pew Research Center , McKinsey, and Marketcharts bolster the argument that TV is the most persuasive and pervasive mass medium.
With content partnerships in place with close to 300 of the most trusted TV and radio news brands across three continents, Critical Mention’s API is driving a paradigm shift in the utility of broadcast in business intelligence and big data platforms while pioneering new opportunities for broadcasters, who gain clear visibility into usage across all platforms. Al Jazeera Media Network gains immediate distribution into the business intelligence markets. In addition to Critical Mention’s direct client base, the Al Jazeera Media Network’s broadcasts will gain immediate distribution to Critical Mention’s channel partners in the media monitoring, lead gen, ad intelligence and general research markets that are licensing access through the Critical Mention API and AMQP low-latency feeds to add the TV medium into their platforms. These platforms receive either near-real-time or low-latency enhanced and expanded text feeds through the service with all video remaining on the Critical Mention cloud for viewing.
In the integration with Critical Mention, the Al Jazeera Media Network’s properties are optimized through Critical Mention’s content engine. All signals run through the Critical Mention speech-to-text network, making the content searchable by every spoken word in real time and providing other meaningful metadata including program title, estimated audience and ad equivalency. Subscribers to the Critical Mention platform also benefit from natural language processing of Al Jazeera content, exposing proper nouns and sentiment.
“We are pleased to partner with Critical Mention to extend the reach of Al Jazeera’s award-winning editorial coverage into corporations, NGOs, government and other organizations,” said Al Jazeera executive director of marketing and distribution Ehab Sahawneh. “The wide adoption of the Critical Mention API by other business intelligence platforms simplifies and streamlines our efforts.”
News Broadcasting
CNN-News18 to air live counting day coverage for five state election results on May 4
The channel is rolling out its biggest election coverage machinery yet for results day on 4th May
NOIDA: The votes have been cast. Now comes the reckoning. CNN-News18 is pulling out all the stops for results day on 4th May, when counting begins across five battleground states — West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Puducherry — in what promises to be one of the most closely watched electoral verdicts in recent memory.
The channel’s coverage, titled Battle for the States: The Verdict, kicks off at 7am and runs through the day across linear TV, connected television and YouTube. It is the culmination of CNN-News18’s multi-format editorial initiative, Battle for the States, which has tracked the polls from the beginning under the theme Road to Power.
At the operational heart of the coverage will be the Live Results Hub, the channel’s central command centre built to collate, verify and process real-time data flowing in from reporters stationed at counting centres across constituencies. The hub combines newsroom intelligence, analytics and on-the-ground reporting to deliver what the channel promises will be the fastest and most accurate results coverage in English news.
Leading the on-air charge will be primetime anchors Rahul Shivshankar, Anand Narasimhan, Aman Sharma, Nabila Jamal and Shivani Gupta. They will be joined by a wide panel of commentators including author Chetan Bhagat; GVL Narasimha Rao, senior leader of the BJP; Smita Prakash, editor of ANI; activist Saira Shah Halim; political analyst Sumanth C Raman; Abhijit Iyer Mitra, senior fellow at IPCS; Amitabh Tiwari, founder of VoteVibe; columnist Abhijit Majumdar; Nalin Mehta, managing editor of MoneyControl; political analyst Tehseen Poonawalla; senior journalist Subir Bhaumik; and political analyst Manojit Mandal.
Shivshankar, who serves as editorial affairs director at CNN-News18, set out the stakes plainly. “Counting day is one of the most watched events in the electoral cycle, where speed and credibility are tested in real time,” he said. “Battle for the States: The Verdict is built on that promise, combining ground reporting, sharp analysis and cutting-edge election technology to give viewers the clearest and fastest route to the verdict. On May 4, CNN-News18 will once again be the nation’s most trusted channel to witness democracy in action.”
Smriti Mehra, chief executive of English and Business News at Network18, framed the coverage in broader terms. “Elections are defining national events, and audiences turn to brands they trust in moments that matter,” she said. “CNN-News18 has consistently led from the front in every election coverage, and this special programming reflects the scale of our ambition and editorial strength.”
The channel has form here. It claims to have been India’s most preferred English news destination for election results for the past 20 years, covering everything from the 2024 general elections to the Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar and BMC polls on the back of what it calls an “Always First, Always Right” record. Five states, one day, and a nation waiting for answers. The clock starts at 7am on 4th May.
