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New radio listeners added
Bigger is better
Top line figures from the German AG.MA radio figures, released this week (March 3), show a slight recovery in time spent listening, 4 minutes per day over the same period last year. Some of that increase could be due to another little change in the research sample.
In 2008 the sample was changed to include “EU foreigners,” making trend analysis impossible. (More on changes to AG.MA survey here) The sample has been changed again and now includes “non-EU foreigners.” This has increased the sample population universe from 69.9 million to 73.7 million people. Within that population, about 2.9 million more people are listening to radio.
Details from the MA 2010/I audience survey will be released next week (March 10) along with all customary broadcaster press releases. (JMH)
FT’s Subscription Online Service Substantially Grows Revenue
Times were tough for the print Financial Times last year, but its online subscription site went financially from strength to strength, with a 15% increase in paying online customers to total more than 126,000, and a 43% rise in subscription revenues.
One reason for such an increase in subscription revenues could be that the FT Web site is, according to the blogosphere, nearly doubling renewal prices. One blogger wrote he had been paying £6.25 monthly but the renewal was at near double that. But he admitted he did renew and no doubt there were many more just like him.
Maybe that is what the Wall Street Journal Europe has in mind, too. It has started a TV campaign discounting its recently relaunched WSJE Europe print newspaper and complete access to the complete WSJ web site “from €2.49 ($3.35) a week,” depending upon the country. The Web site alone is offered at €1.45 ($1.99) weekly. Question is, which is the loss leader – print or the web?
Bloggers Can Get New York City Press Passes
More and more entities issuing press passes realize they should not judge one platform of dissemination as more important than another and therefore press passes should be issued to journalists regardless of platform used. In other words, bloggers are mainstream when it comes to getting press passes and New York City has now joined that trend meaning more and more cities probably will, too.
Naturally, you can’t give a press pass to everyone who has a computer and says they’re a blogger so under the new rules the New York City police department will issue press credentials to journalists, no matter their dissemination platform, who can show they have personally attended or reported on at least six qualified news events during the past two years. So, what’s a qualified event? Things like a news conference, a city-sponsored parade, and emergency sites where the police put up barricades.
Civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel who in a civil suit represented three bloggers who were refused New York press credentials proclaimed, “Bloggers should be treated equally to television, print and radio journalists.” And the city, it seems, has seen the light.
Winter Olympics Crushes Competition
Jumps for some, misery for the rest
Ratings services are beginning to roll out the numbers for audiences during the Winter Olympics. Let there be no doubt: people watched and watched and watched.
Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT saw its audience double during the two weeks of competitive hockey, skating and curling, reported DagensMedia (March 3) quoting MMS figures. SVT channels pulled a combined 55% audience share. Among viewers 15 to 44 years SVT1’s audience share was 31%, compared to 18% during the same two weeks last year.
“It has been misery,” said a spokesperson for commercial competitor TV4. (See more on Sports & Media here)
Czech viewers watched an average of about a quarter-hour more per day during the Winter Olympics, according to research from Czech public TV. Men watched 24 minutes per day more, compared with the two weeks prior, and women watched 7 minutes more. Czech kids, however, found something else to do; 4 to 14 year olds watched about 1.5 minutes per day less and 4 to 9 year olds watched TV 7 minutes less.
Swiss public TV reported a 66.8% audience share for ski races and 64% audience share for ski jumping. (JMH)
Big Brother to Russia
“reasonable price”
Russia’s WeiT Media has a new partner, Endemol. The deal giving the Big Brother creator 51% of the Russian production house was announced in Moscow, reported Vedomosti (March 2). Financial terms were not disclosed. WeiT Media principal Timur Weinstein said transaction proceeds would be reinvested in the company.
Weit Media’s three divisions will remain separate from Endemol Russia and will continue to produce television series for the Russian and CIS markets. (More on media in Russia here)
For Endemol the deal with WeiT Media “takes into account the number of ongoing projects, their level and diversity and the ability to create a good show at a reasonable price,” said company CEO Ynon Kreiz to Kommersant (March 2).
One other observation: M&A acrtivity in the media sector is back. (JMH)
Can Print Put Your Freelance Material Into Databases, Too?
Back in the Internet’s infancy, about 10 years ago, there was a real squabble between publishers and freelance writers over whether the publishers had the copyright to put the writers’ words of wisdom into electronic databases. Publishers said they did; writers said only if they got paid more. So it all went to US federal court in New York
By 2005 a settlement was reached – the publishers would pay up to $18 million in additional rights fees to freelance writers whose work ended up in electronic databases. But a few writer dissidents didn’t like the settlement primarily because for those who had not registered the copyright for their work, and many hadn’t, then they could be in danger of not getting paid from the settlement – the money could run out paying registered copyright holders before it got to them. So they appealed and in 2007 a federal appeals court ruled the trial judge didn’t have jurisdiction in the case. Victory for those unregistered copyright holders.
So up it went to the US Supreme Court. And in a unanimous decision Tuesday it overruled the appeals court and said the original trial judge did have jurisdiction – a ruling a bit embarrassing for an appeals court not to have any support in the Supreme Court! The highest US court didn’t say if the original settlement was good or bad, nor whether unregistered copyright stories were at risk, solely that the trial judge did have the authority to approve. And that probably puts an end to that.
In today’s world, of course, this is all water under the bridge and contracts very specifically say what can and cannot be done with freelance material – basically you accept what the publisher wants or you don’t work with that publisher – but this original case popping up again reminds us all of what it was like at the beginning, and the beginning wasn’t really that long ago.
The IOC Celebrates, Too
It wasn’t just the athletes partying in Vancouver at the end of the Winter Olympic Games; so, too, was the International Olympic Committee that says global TV ratings were sky-high. The IOC estimates that half of the world’s population -- some 3.5 billion people – saw some part of the action.
In the US, NBC had its best Winter Olympic ratings since the 1994 Lillehammer Games, but the network had said before the Games it expected to lose $250 million and there’s been no spin that increased ratings brought forth more advertising.
Now comes the tricky negotiations for the 2014 Sochi, Russia Winter Games and the 2016 Rio Summer Games. Vancouver proved the Olympics are still a favorite with American viewers, but are advertisers willing to pay enough to make it profitable for everyone? Will NBC under a Comcast ownership, for instance, be willing to absorb a $250 million loss or more as GE has now done?
Several networks have said they intend to bid, but all seem to be saying they are doing their sums really hard and they’re not in the business of losing money. The IOC is waiting as long as possible before starting the negotiations hoping for a US advertising upturn that will loosen network treasuries. Also complicating things is geography – Vancouver was relatively easy to plan for, and relatively cheap to prepare, but frequent trips to Sochi on the Black Sea for all the people that will need to do that often will not come cheap, nor will shipping loads of equipment there, and the bean counters undoubtedly will be adding those figures into their overall cost sums.
A Maple Leaf On The Sweater
The Swiss-German public broadcaster had a neat idea after Canada’s 3-2 ice hockey Gold Medal win against the US – instead of the Vancouver studio host telling everyone how excited Canada was at the victory, the broadcaster rounded up six red-sweatered joyous Canadians celebrating in the bar on ground level and got them to leave a Visa card there as they trooped up to the studio above to say and show how happy they were. And considering it was a bar they came from they were really quite eloquent in telling how it felt to be Canadian right then. The anchor translated but it really wasn’t necessary – even Swiss Germans would recognize that joy! On camera the host even took a couple of group photos with two of the Canadians’ cameras. It was natural and happy unrehearsed TV – the best kind.
At the closing ceremony everyone, it seemed, was a Canadian, if only for a couple of hours. Seldom has so much pride been on show and there were more than a few tears along the way too. The joy was best summed up by Canadian actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s disease, when he told the crowd to a roaring ovation, “I lived in the U.S. for 30 years, but if the U.S. is playing Canada in hockey, I'm sorry, I'm wearing a maple leaf on my sweater."
But back in the Russian Federation, host to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, there was little joy. President Dmitry Medvedev made clear he was not pleased with just three gold medals from these games – when the Soviet Union was alive and well it usually won the medal table -- and to show how Soviet heritage dies hard Mevedev said he thought Russian Olympic officials should write resignation letters and “If they can't, we will help them." Their German ski coach is already gone.
Tiger, Tiger Where’s The Gatorade?
At the end of the Super Bowl the winning coach usually gets happily doused by his players with a barrel of Gatorade but now it is Gatorade doing an unhappy dousing to one of its prime representatives – it is dumping Tiger Woods to become the third major sponsor behind AT&T and Accenture to do so.
And although Tiger still has a deal with Procter & Gamble, TV’s largest global advertiser, for its Gillette brand there are negative vibes coming from there, too. P&G’s CEO said last week the company did not need the “distraction” of Tiger appearing in another Gillette ad. Not a great endorsement.
That leaves Nike and Electronic Arts Inc., still standing by their man and although Swiss watch maker Tag Heuer hasn’t pulled the plug it’s been a while since a Tiger Tag Heuer watch ad has shown its face.
Public radio chief resigns, board crippled
Health and timing
Czech public radio director Richard Medek resigned last week (February 24), citing health reasons. He’d been in the position since last September. His predecessor was also a short-timer.
Nothing, arguably, is easy in public broadcasting these days. If it isn’t public opinion it’s the politicians. If it isn’t funding, it’s the future. Breakdowns would seem inevitable.
The CRo Board would, normally, graciously accept a director’s decision and name a replacement. But these are not normal times. The terms of three members of the CRo Board expired at the end of February and the Parliamentary Committee of Deputies can’t name successors until after elections, perhaps in six months. This leaves five members of the CRo Board, one member short for naming a permanent radio director.
Less than two weeks before stepping down, Medek brought forward a restructuring plan that involved cutting services and jobs. The CRo Board approved a new organizational chart but not much else.
"This is a sensitive issue,” said Medek’s predecessor Vaclav Kasic to Tyden (February 25), “because the current board can not work together." Less than a month after taking the post of CRo director Medek was hospitalized for a month. The timing of his resignation, as the terms of board members expired, raised eye-brows. Medek’s contract stipulates 10 months severance pay in return for a 10 month non-compete clause.
None of this – or not much – is related to the most recent radio ratings, which showed significant declines for several CRo channels. (See recent Czech radio audience chart here) (JMH)
Public broadcaster cuts questioned
More football to follow
Spring has not yet sprung but public broadcasters are cleaning house. Cuts in staff and programs are necessary, they say, to bring budgets in line. Critics have gathered.
The Board of Directors of Swiss public broadcaster SSR-SRG announced (February 25) staff trimmings beginning next year resulting in the loss of 100 full-time jobs. The broadcaster has been undergoing considerable restructuring over the last year. Staff reductions are confined to IT, human resources, marketing, logistics, training and PR and will be achieved, generally, by attrition. Among the affected work areas, SSR-SRG employs about 850 people, about one-quarter of the total fork force.
The union representing SSR-SRG employees cried foul, saying they hadn’t been informed in advance of the announcement.
Pondering the SSR-SRG restructuring is a new media critic – gfmks (Gesellschaft für Mediensrktik Schweiz). Former SSR-SRG director Ulrich Kündig is the group’s president. It was formed last September.
"The SRG measures the success of their programs today, much like a commercial enterprise, almost exclusively on the criterion of market share,” said the gfmks statement when the latest round of restructuring was announced. “That is the basic strategic error of SRG.” The group seeks to influence the selection of a new head of SSR-SRG as current General Director Armin Walpen steps down at the end of this year.
Last week a report leaked to the Times (UK) told of two BBC digital radio channels headed for the block along with a substantial part of the broadcasters’ website and ‘foreign’ program purchases. The report from the BBC Trust titled “Putting Quality First” as been attacked by unions, music fans and other BBC supporters while critics, that unbending collusion of the right-wing Conservative Party and News Corporation, say it ain’t enough. (More on public broadcasting - finance and politics here)
The size, shape and funding of the BBC has become a political football as elections loom and the influence of Clan Murdoch is felt. Labour Party Culture Minister Ben Bradshaw offered, like the Conservative Party, that changes – read:reduction – in BBC funding is on the table, reported the Telegraph (March 1). (JMH)
Italian children watch a lot of TV
German kids, not so much
Kids do watch TV. How much they watch TV and what they see distress some and delight others.
The Eurodata TV Worldwide Kids TV Report, released by French measurement institute Médiamétrie (February 26), shows a wide variance in TV habits of 4 to 14 year olds across Europe’s five largest countries. Italian kids watch an hour a day more than German kids. The study collected viewing data from 2009 in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the UK.
Italian kids were the “televores”, watching 2 hours 36 minutes of TV per day. Spanish kids watched 2 hours and 29 minutes, followed by kids in the UK – 2 hours 17 minutes, les jeunes Français – 2 hours 10 minutes and, lastly, German kinder watching 1 hour 28 minutes. Length of the school day, said the report, explains much of that difference.
The Médiamétrie study advances other interesting observations. Kids in the UK tend to watch the same channels as adults (BBC1 and ITV1) rather than channels with more dedicated kids shows. Not so in Germany, where kids channels (Super RTL and Ki.Ka) attract the littles.
Like adults, kids in the five European countries go for well-known international shows; the Simpsons, Hannah Montana, SpongeBob Squarepants, Ben 10 and Pokemon. (See more on kids and media here)
“The kids’ TV market in Europe is evolving faster than ever before with the rapid rise of dedicated digital platforms giving kids greater choice about what they want to watch,” said Eurodata director Alexandre Calley in the press statement. (JMH)
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