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Radio channels targeting young people have long been part of the public radio repertoire. An ageing audience base for traditional public radio channels has added a certain urgency. Commercial and privately-owned competitors have always chased youthful listeners for want of media buyer happiness.
Radio France launched Le Mouv' for young people in 1997. It has languished among the plethora of hit music commercial channels, regularly failing to reach minimums on the Médiamétrie measurement radar. Each successive CEO has promised a fix. This past week Le Mouv' became, simply, Mouv, replete with new logo. DJs are gone, at least temporarily, and hip-hop electro music for young urban listeners dominates.
There is something of a budget crunch at Radio France. A €20 million plus deficit has sent CEO Mathieu Gallet looking for new revenue sources and, of course, savings. A French Senate report suggested last year sending Le Mouv‚Äô to memory lane. Radio France unions are planning industrial action.
Making the rumor mill rounds is the possibility of funding the new Mouv' by scuttling FIP, the regional public channel that generally serves greater Paris with a quite eclectic program. Audience estimates from Médiamétrie released in January showed strong growth for FIP, Le Mouv' again missing. (See recent greater Paris audience estimates chart here) Le Mouv' is distributed across France on 32 FM transmitters. Big general interest public channel France Inter, by contrast, has hundreds. FIP has 10, mostly in and around Paris. An internet petition to save FIP - "the eclectic nugget of Radio France" - began circulating this week, reminiscent of the listener-supported drive in the UK to save BBC 6Music a few years ago.
Hungary's ad revenues tax that only affected one foreign-owned broadcasting company could be changed, "proposed" Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff Janos Lazar, quoted by State news agency MTI (February 4). The tax imposed a 50% rate on media operators with revenues over a certain threshold. Only RTL Klub, owned by RTL Group, met that criteria. Mr. Lazar now suggests a change to a flat-rate tax applicable to all at 5%.
RTL Group vowed to fight the tax and, knowing Hungarian courts, went directly to the European Commission. News programs on RTL Klub also grew noticeably more critical of the Orban government and the ruling Fidesz party. RTL Klub audience ratings soared.
RTL Group is principally owned by Luxembourg-domiciled Bertelsmann. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, formerly Prime Minister of Luxembourg, paid a visit to Mr. Orban at the end of January. At a Fidesz party meeting this week, party leader Antal Rogan announced support for the new ad tax plan, reported Budapest Business Journal (February 6). (See more about media in Hungary here)
On hearing of party support for a different tax structure media owner Lajos Simicska indicated his pro-government outlets would be changing their stripe to "total media war," quoted by daily Nepszava (February 6). Mr. Simicska principally controls television channel HirTV, national radio channel Class FM and newspaper Magyar Nemzet. Class FM is the successor to foreign-owned Danubius Radio, which lost a license renewal contest under dubious circumstances in 2010.
Shortly after Mr. Simicska threatened to retaliate against the Fidesz party - minutes, apparently - the chairman and deputy chairman of HirTV and chief editors and deputies of Magyar Nemzet abruptly quit for "reasons of conscience." Shortly thereafter Mr. Simicska indicated to index.hu (February 6) his displeasure with the turn of events in quite colorful language; "Orban is a mother****er". Those unintended consequences often appear in multiples.
Pictures across Romania's television news shows and newspaper front pages showed Adrian Sarbu leaving a courtroom in handcuffs this week. The country's best known media proprietor faces charges of tax evasion and money laundering. After he spent last Monday night in jail, prosecutors asked for 30 days detention "necessary to remove a state of threat to public order," reported news portal hotnews.ro (February 4).
Mr. Sarbu owns the well-regarded Mediafax online Romanian news portal as well as newspapers Gandul and Ziarului Financiar. He founded top-rated Pro TV, sold it to Central European Media Enterprises (CME) and became that company's CEO, which he departed at the end of 2013. Since returning to Romania he's had a running battle with Prime Minister Victor Ponta. (See more about media in Romania here)
Prosecutors offered claims that Mr. Sarbu, his lawyer and other MediaPro and MediaFax employees conspired to use complex ownership structures to evade taxes and give the proceeds to themselves. His CME salary, about average for an international media company CEO, and real estate holdings were noted in court proceedings and widely reported in Romanian news outlets. Power and influence when twisted and turned always generate big headlines. Mr. Sarbu denies the allegations, suggesting PM Ponta and TV station owner Sebastian Ghita, a supporter of PM Ponta, are conspiring to allow Mr. Ghita to take over Mediafax, which is in a bankruptcy proceeding. PM Ponta was elected on promises to tackle rampant corruption.
The latest entry into pan-Arabic television news launched and closed within a day. Bahrain-headquartered satellite channel Al-Arab went on the air last Sunday and went dark a few hours later, internet distribution included. Both the channel and Bahrain's Information Affairs Authority cited, vaguely, "technical and administrative reasons." Media watchers in and outside the region quickly speculated the "problem" stemmed from an interview broadcast with a Bahraini opposition leader.
The channel "failed to abide by GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) customs and conventions," said an unnamed source to Bahrain newspaper sympathetic to the government Akhbar Al Khaleej (February 2), adding something about "neutral media attitudes." After about 12 hours of darkness Al-Arab returned to the airwaves late Monday broadcasting station promos and, notably, no news. (See more about television news here)
Al-Arab is owned by Saudi Arabian billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who first proposed the channel in 2011 to challenge Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. It has about 280 employees working from the Bahrain World Trade Center in Manama, independent television channels being forbidden in Saudi Arabia. An arrangement with Bloomberg News provides the channel with business and financial news.
Prince Al-Waleed is no media neophyte, holding since 1997 the largest non-family stake in News Corporation. Rupert Murdoch returned the favor, buying a minority stake in Prince Al-Waleed's entertainment company Rotana Group. Prince Al-Waleed also holds a small but noticeable stake in Twitter as well as a very noticeable stake in Citibank. He owns two newspapers in Lebanon.
Kingdom Holding, Prince Al-Waleed's investment vehicle, reported (February 4) selling most of its News Corporation Class B voting shares for about US$188 million, citing a portfolio review. Kingdom Holding still has a 6.6% voting stake in 21st Century Fox while reducing its News Corporation stake to 1%.
Satellite TV news channels are plentiful in the Gulf region, new ones popping up from time to time. The biggest names are, obviously, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the former owned by Qatari royals and later owned by Saudi royals. Al-Mayadeen launched in 2012, operating from Beirut, funding allegedly from Iranian benefactors.
BBC Arabic Television has been around, more or less, for twenty years. Originally the Arabic language news channel was financially attached to the Saudi royal family. A fall-out between the BBC, as content producer, and the Saudi Arabian government, putting up the money, closed the channel in 1996 with many employees joining the brand-new Al-Jazeera. BBC Arabic was relaunched in 2008 as part of the BBC World Service.
Sky News Arabia is a joint venture of UK TV network operator Sky and Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. It launched in May 2012. Sky, formerly known as BSkyB, is principally controlled by 21st Century Fox, part of the Murdoch media empire.
US government funded Al-Hurra pan-Arabic TV channel launched in 2004. Other government supported Arabic-language TV news channels targeting the region include Russia's Rusiya Al-Yaum (Russia Today), Iran's Al-Alam, China's CCTV Arabic, France 24 Arabic and more.
The murder of Kenji Gota at the hands of the notorious fanatics calling themselves Islamic State tore, once again, at the whole of the journalistic community. Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) tallied 119 media workers kidnapped in 2014 with 40 still held at the end of the year. Reflection has been considerable along with resolve and, too, bitterness.
The 47 year-old freelancer, experienced in conflict zones, entered Syria from Turkey last October against the advice of Japan's Foreign Ministry. "His chief concern was always to report on the very basics of humanity, or what is happening to ordinary citizens like us in the midst of war," said documentary producer Taku Nishimae, quoted by Japan Times (February 1). When Japanese media workers based in the Middle East grouped on the Syria-Turkey border last week the Foreign Ministry, in negotiations with the fanatics, issues an order to evacuate believing all journalists risked kidnapping. (See more about press/media freedom here)
With media worker increasingly becoming kidnapping targets Denmark's Foreign Ministry consular service and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (DSIS) announced plans to "educate" journalists, particularly freelancers. "We will draw attention to the risk of going to troubled parts of the world by those who travel on their own without a professional security apparatus from a major media organization," said Undersecretary of Consular Affairs Ole Egberg Mikkelsen to news agency Ritzau (February 1). "Generally, it is my impression that large media companies and organizations are highly conscious and very attentive to employee safety. It's another thing when freelancers go." Mr. Mikkelsen formerly served as Danish ambassador to Turkey.
Danish freelance photographer Daniel Rye Ottesen was kidnapped in Syria in 2013 and held for 13 months by Islamic State before being released after friends and family raised a reported one million Danish kroner ransom. He had been in captivity with US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, both beheaded. Danish freelance journalist Jeppe Nybroe was kidnapped the Lebanon-Syria border a year ago and released about a month later.
"When one considers that 30 years ago identifying oneself as press was a way of making one safer, then it is understandable that as a profession we are both shocked by and unprepared for our own vulnerability," wrote Guardian columnist Emily Bell (February 1), noting a heated discussion among media people at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "Without those who do the hard incremental work of reporting chaos and corruption we live in a much less financially stable world."
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