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Much has been made of the NFL playing one league game a year outside the US, especially with its success last October when the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins in London and they could have sold 10 times as many tickets as were on offer, so now the English Premier Football (soccer) League says why not play games outside England, too – like in New York and other cities that might make winning bids to stage the games.
It’s taking a look at the logistics for possibly starting in the 2010-2011 season, but if they expand the English league game around the world, and get the world’s TV broadcasters interested in season coverage then why not?
Incidentally, so enthusiastic were the fans at last year’s London NFL game that vendors ran out of souvenirs. No doubt the American owners of Manchester United took note of that.
When a company like Nordic media powerhouse SanomaWSOY disappoints with a weak quarterly performance and its shares crash 4%, after being down at one point by 6%, then it seems there is little escape for anyone from media malaise.
It publishes Finland’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, and its largest tabloid, the PM Ilta-Sanomat along with books, magazines and has other assorted media businesses, but a close look at the numbers say those businesses that relied particularly on traditional paper advertising had a very weak quarter.
Its electronic media business did better than expected, but the newspaper and book business missed most analyst expectations.
It was only about a year ago that the Wall Street Journal inaugurated its Mario Garcia narrower remake with its front page dropping down to five columns. It may have looked nice, but editors complained it restricted their flexibility.
They won over Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli and so this week it’s welcome back to the six-column front page Journal.
In a format development certain to stun the broadcasting world, American broadcaster Emmis Communications launched a radio format with DJs “and staff” picking the tunes. The station is called 101.9 WRXP, The New York Rock Experience, and broadcasts to New York City. Emmis Programming VP Jimmy Steal called it “a great new 3 dimensional rock broad.” (Read Emmis press release here)
The format is, of course, another music format, mixing “New Music, Classic Rock, Alternative and Local Rock.” Launching a new radio format in New York City is doubly dangerous. Triply? Worse?
The last major radio format launch in New York City was the notorious ‘Jack FM’ format, which pretended to ‘play what we want.’ It’s been marketed world-wide. (Read previous scathing review here) CBS replaced its Classic Rock format in NYC with the Jack FM format. It stiffed. New CBS Radio president Dan Mason couldn’t move fast enough to undo that problem.
New York City and environs are home to about 100 radio stations. Almost as important, NYC is home to Wall Street and the illustrious Wall Street stock traders. Granted, Wall Street stock traders are largely rock-n-rollers but they only reward broadcasting companies for firing DJs, not actually having them do something.
All kidding aside, it seems broadcasters are slowly coming to the realization that tight-listed, computer generated radio formats are easy prey to iPods and other music player choices. (Read about Format Radio here) At the very least, Emmis – which also owns several very successful radio stations in Europe – is trying something, if not exactly new, a bit risky. Hats off to Emmis New York Market Manager – and legendary radio programmer – Danny Halyburton! (JMH)
US broadcast stock prices have suffered but one tactic always bumps them up. Fire the DJs! (It's a metaphor for stock traders loathing for those who produce media content.)
Emmis Communications (noted above) announced staff cuts in several US markets, about 5% of its work-force.
The share price was immediately rewarded by Wall Street stock traders.(JMH)
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s wealthiest businessman whose family controls the Mediaset empire, got his wish Wednesday as President Giorgio Napolitano gave up efforts to reform Italy’s election law and instead called for new general elections that will be held April 13.
The broadcast reforms that the Romano Prodi center-left government had tried to introduce have died with Parliament’s dissolution. The legislation would have created more television competition – Mediaset currently has three terrestrial national TV channels as has the Rai state broadcaster -- which means with Berlusconi back as prime minister he will again have a say over 90% of Italian national TV.
Recent polls suggest that Berlusconi’s center-right coalition is some 10 points ahead of the center-left coalition and should win quite easily. Don’t look for Berlusconi to make broadcast reform that would hurt Mediaset as one of his priorities!
Lawsuits and legislation passing through the Illinois legislature still have not solved the issue between the Illinois High School Association and local media on rights to photos taken at IHSA events.
It boils down to the IHSA saying the media can take pictures for media purposes, but they cannot sell those pictures commercially to fans and parents and the like because the IHSA has an exclusive contract with a third party for that business. Those media that don’t agree to the rules don’t get access to the media area of games or, as occurred last Saturday, at the Association’s Cheerleading championships.
The photo rights issue saw the Illinois Press Association ask a state court last November to declare that IHSA cannot impose such media restrictions. No ruling yet. Legislation is also passing through the Illinois General Assembly that, if approved, recognizes media photos as products owned by newspapers and outside the control of other parties such as a sports rights holder.
All of this may be at the high school level but it is being watched with some interest at the professional level as sports rights holders and the media continually tangle on who has the right for what in covering sporting events.
If public broadcasters think they have it bad in Europe as they try and coax governments to give them a little more license fee money, spare a thought for public broadcasting in the US where the Bush Administration has proposed in its fiscal 2009 budget that federal funding for public broadcasting be halved with no budget at all proposed after two years.
The White House proposes cutting $200 million from the $400 million that lawmakers have already appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2009, and for slashing by 53% the $420 million Congress has authorized for fiscal 2010. There’s nothing for 2011.
Not that the public broadcasters weren’t expecting something like this. The Bush White House has tried to decimate public broadcasting budgets for the past eight years but Congress has always had another opinion and restored the funds, and the same is expected to happen again this time. Unlike in Europe, there are no license fees in the US for public broadcasting -- public in the US case means the public’s tax dollars at work.
(Ed note: US government contributions to public broadcasting account for about 15% of total public broadcasting revenue.)
CME Michael Garin finally cleaned up his problem with Studio 1+1 Ukraine minority partners. He bought them out for $US 219.6 million. (Read CME statement here)
CME owned 60% of Studio 1+1, the outstanding amount owned by Igor Kolomoisky, Boris Fuchsmann and Alexander Rodnyansky. Mr. Kolomoisky had argued about the Studio 1+1 ownership in court but, eventually, invested a pile of cash in CME. Mr. Rodnyansky is the former General manager of Studio 1+1 and currently General Director of CTC Media, one of Russia’s fast growing media companies in its own right. (Read previous ftm article here)
Mr. Fuchsmann and Mr. Rodnyansky will receive $US 79.6 million in cash. And they still own 10% of Studio 1+1, which CME has an option to buy. (JMH)
The UK remembers today the air crash 50 years ago that killed Manchester United Manager Matt Busby and eight of his players. It took several decades for the team to rebuild to the powerhouse it is once again today.
But The Manchester Evening News (MEN) reminds us that eight journalists also lost their lives on that snowy Munich airfield, one of them, the MEN’s Tom Jackson. Given the “temporary” job of replacing Jackson was 27-year-old David Meek – his temporary assignment lasted 36 years.
He recalls that 13 days after the crash that football returned to Old Trafford, United’s sacred playing ground. “It was a surreal atmosphere,” he told the MEN. “The press box mood was weird as well. All the number one writers had gone and the replacements were all very young, very inexperienced, and very nervous.”
The dead included journalists from the News of the World, The Manchester Guardian, The Manchester Evening Chronicle, The Daily Herald, the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror.
One of the amazing things about the China weather story and the havoc it created to individuals but also what the damage will do to China’s economy, is that we could see via the 24-hour international news stations what was going on with anchoring from inside China itself and within China itself, it was front page across the country with few holds barred.
The Xinhua News Agency ran a story Tuesday making the point at how domestic media covered the snow storm across the country, focusing basically on whatever good news they could find such as troops clearing the roads, getting the trains running again and the like, but unmistakingly readers also understood that the country had a disaster on its hands, and that’s not something the government talks about.
Watching BBC and CNN what caught the eye was how complete their coverage was, CNN in particular anchoring from the railway station where the biggest crowds had assembled and even reporter Dan Rivers taking a train ride resulting in a 24-hour journey, but at least he got there and he could show viewers the shambles along the way, people arguing who should get seats on the train and so on. And then there were the pictures of a barnlike factory that had collapsed from the weight of the snow, with steel girders bent and the reporter openly questioning the strength of that steel.
All something we would take for granted outside of China, but this was China, close and personal. And the country this week has released from prison the journalist who is to receive the world Association of Newspaper’s Golden Pen award this year.
Could it be with the Olympics approaching that China is beginning to change?
On a visit to the Orlando Sentinel, Sam Zell, the new Tribune owner, was asked his thoughts on journalism, something he has shied away from in the past. “My view of journalism is that I want to make enough money to afford you,” he told employees. Well, that’s clear enough.
Zell, you may remember, made his fortune first as a property tycoon, and he is putting that expertise to work with Tribune. He has announced he is going to buy properties that are currently being leased by the Baltimore Sun, The Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Hartford Courant for $175 million.
Other newspapers (not Tribune-owned) are looking at selling their property to gain cash. The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis, for instance, is looking to sell its property at the edge of downtown Minneapolis that includes three parking lots, an office building and the newspaper’s headquarters.
Avista Capital Partners, based in New York, purchased the newspaper in 2007 for $530 million from McClatchy in what was considered a fire sale at the time. The newspaper almost had a deal with the Minnesota Vikings football team to buy much of its property last August for $425 million for expansion of their Metrodome, but the deal fell through.
Everyone knew the news from Gannett for its Q4 earnings would be bad but few expected its flagship USA Today to turn in such dismal results, although cost savings measures announced by the paper in the past month or so should have been a clue.
The newspaper’s ad sale fell 12.7% with some 200 fewer ad pages.
For the entire Gannett group, Q4 profit declined 31%, but, without comment, we give you CEO Craig Dubow’s take on all of this, “Gannett completed 2007 with strong forward momentum on implementing our strategic plan. That is an impressive accomplishment given the back drop of cyclical pressures on advertising, a softer economic environment and secular changes in our industry.”
When Rupert Murdoch hosted a huge summer fundraiser for Hillary Clinton in 2006 all the nods and winks said he was on her side. Well, something either went very wrong, or people really misread the smoke signals, because as New Yorkers go to vote today in their Democratic Presidential primary, Murdoch’s New York Post has endorsed Barack Obama and not New York’s favorite daughter for President.
As has been stated often now when it comes to his newspapers, Murdoch is a very hands-on publisher. With the exception of the UK Times and The Sunday Times where he keeps his fingers pretty much out of the editorial pie, Murdoch is hands-on as to whom his newspapers endorse for high office.
Hillary must have thought she had it made with that very public fund raiser, but perhaps in Murdoch’s mind he was then supporting New York’s junior Senator rather than a Presidential candidate, and perhaps he saw a difference between the two.
The Post’s description of Hillary was rather scathing. It said a Clinton Presidency would be a return to “scandal-scarred, morally muddled years.”
On the other hand, Murdoch has given $2,300 to Clinton, the largest amount an individual may give in the primary. Think Hillary will remember what the Post said more than she will the $2,300?
Eric Boehlert, one of the consistently most insightful reporters on the odd realm of American media, says Fox News is sick. The ratings have plunged. It seems the ‘fair and balanced’ favorable coverage of the Bush Administration and the political right-wing has become, surprise, a failed strategy. (Read Eric’s analysis here)
And, he points out, the Fox Business News channel is an overwhelming dud. Mr. Murdoch’s exhortations of killing off CNBC to the contrary, the Fox Business News channel rates, as we would say once upon a time, just above the police calls.
If credibility does trump all, and we suspect it does, what then for the brain-trust taking over the Wall Street Journal? (JMH)
Radio reporters covering the Euro 2008 football championships will have access to site technical facilities thanks to an agreement secured by the European Broadcasting Union. (Read EBU statement here) Public broadcasters from 15 countries not otherwise included in TV rights deals will be allowed to report from central facilities.
“This is good for radio and good for football,” said EBU Radio Director Raina Konstantinova.
UEFA awarded broadcast rights for Euro 2008 to SportFive (Lagardère), ending its long term relationship with the EBU. SportFive has been the exclusive sales agent for Euro 2008 broadcast rights, selling market-by-market. Previously, the EBU secured broadcast rights for all public broadcasters collectively.
Last week SportFive said they have “closed deals in 40 markets with approximately 46 European broadcasters and many more will follow.” Lagardère purchased SportFive in 2006 for €865 million from RTL and Advent International. (JMH)
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