April 6th was a very enlightening day filled with awe and surprises. The visit to the Al-Jazeera English broadcast centre located on the 60th floor of the world reknowned Petronas Twin Towers. We had to change elevators at the 41st floor then onto the 60th where we were welcomed with open arms.
Source: Google Images
The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa's $150 million grant was the first thing that started the ball rolling. The set up of the Al Jazeera network was a project to educate and inform the public with a notion of presenting unbiased news to the world. It was initially launched as an Arabic news and current affairs satellite television channel 13 years ago. However, the 24 hour English language news channel of Al-Jazeera was only launched 3 years ago in 2006.
Mr Jayaganesh Sabapathy, Head of Technical Operations, Al-Jazeera English, Kuala Lumpur
We had Mr Jayaganesh Sabapathy, the Head of Technical Operations to take us for a tour round the centre and boy were we in awe. While going round, the one thing that was presently notable was the professional atmosphere and the presence of the expatriate staff. We were taken to the main Control room where only 6 of their staff was seen handling live feeds from all over the world. Next stop was the 5 editing rooms where the videos are edited together along with the information chamber, where all their videos are stored and the 4 men crew that gets things in order.
Control Centre showing live feeds from around the world
I was surprised to find out that the 4 bureaus around Asia are interconnected to each other through a high-speed broadband network. Sabapathy claims that through their 155mbps network, they are able to pull in huge amounts of information in short amounts of time. Well i don't doubt that at all considering they have 155mbps networks!
Close up view of instrument panels
Famous anchors Veronica Pedrosa and Divya Gopalan were seen in the office together with fantastic equipment and jawdropping professionalism that in all just blew me away. What more can i say?
