NewsNet online, a division of Brigham Young University’s newsroom, will provide live Real Audio coverage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ 168th semi-annual General Conference in eight foreign languages.
NewsNet first offered its live online audio netcast for the 168th General Conference in April, broadcasting the conference in Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Cantonese, Mandarin and Korean.
NewsNet received permission from Bonneville Communications to broadcast the conference live from the NewsNet web site.
Seven Real Audio servers were used to broadcast the languages. Each server provided audio feed to 60 people at one time so a total of 360 people could be served at a single moment. Users who clicked on the audio stream to listen to the conference could browse the rest of the site while they listened.
The response was so great that the Web site had more than 1.5 million hits in April, whereas a normal month had only 300,000 to 400,000 hits. An anonymous donation allowed NewsNet to purchase a new server so it could accommodate more people during October’s conference. Two hundred people will be able tune in to each language for conference this weekend, bringing the total number to 1,600.
