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Still time to protest press freedom in China
...broken Olympic promise...
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and other advocates for press freedoms is still trying to light a flame under the Chinese authorities. You can join in, too. WAN seems to have Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's email address. (See WAN presser here)
It seems to be an exercise in futility. (See comments on that here) More foreign journalists have been busted and, even, beaten up in the last few days. The "idealistic" IOC can't do much.(JMH)
Digital TV keeps growing in Western Europe
...not so fast elsewhere...
Digital TV take up in Western Europe's biggest markets will top 100 million households by the end of the year, says a report from Informa Telecoms. The region's leader is the UK but, says Informa research director Adam Thomas, growth in the UK has "begun to wane" and will be overtaken by Germany by 2013. (See Informa presser here) (JMH)
NRJ International radio revenue up
...bonus from "multimedia strategy"...
Only recently has NRJ Group been reporting - and touting - activities among its non-French broadcasting outlets. NRJ International, according to this weeks presser (read here), reports strong revenue growth at its German, Austrian and Finnish stations for the first half 2008.
"The good results," says NRJ International CEO Mathieu Sibille, " show the positive impact of the multimedia strategy...". That means, he said, "the internet, new products and events."
NRJ has always been a revenue leader. Nobody does big event marketing better. And they get paid for it. (JMH)
New Olympics Contest: McCain vs. Obama
We had written previously that for those Americans who thought the Olympics would give them some respite from all the political advertising going on they had another think coming because Barack Obama had bought $5 million worth of advertising on various NBC platforms during the Games. It took John McCain’s team a couple of weeks to think about that and now comes the announcement they have bought $6 million worth of ads to run through the Olympics coverage.
So the lazy, hazy dog days of August when normally there is hardly any Presidential advertising now turns into big time for both candidates. Obama’s campaign is not taking matching federal contributions so it had no limit on how it spent its money. McCain’s campaign is taking the federal money and one rule is that money earned during the primary campaign must be used by the time of the party convention (later this month), so it seems there was a simple choice for McCain – spend it or lose it.
Murdoch Turns Cold On Russia But Heats Up To India
You could do a lot worse in the media world than follow Rupert Murdoch’s advice so here are some of his gems from the conference call following News Corp.’s fiscal 2008 results which saw profits up 21% in absolute terms and 9% without one-off gains. He was talking from Beijing:
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"We have a great growing business there (Russia) but … the more I read about investments in Russia, the less I like the feel of it."
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“"I would like to be doing more in China and India” – he just announced a major investment of $100m) in six new regional television channels In India. “The growth (in India) is really extraordinary and we will be doing more and more there ... With all the talk of international downturn, even the gloomy Indian economists are still forecasting GDP growth in the coming year of at least 7 per cent."
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"As we look at the year ahead we anticipate an increasingly difficult economic environment. The escalating price of energy, the contraction of real estate values, and liquidity and confidence issues in the finance sector, are creating economic shocks that will likely be felt by the vast majority of consumers in the US as well as in Europe and maybe elsewhere."
“All of our newspapers have a complementary commercial strategy exploiting the display space of print and re-purposing content for the web, so the inventory can be re-sold. Newspaper companies willing to invest in new forms of delivery which have a commitment to quality will prosper."
News Corp Does Well
We have often mentioned that one of the big Internet advances for those who follow US shares is that Google and Yahoo now offer NYSE and NASDAQ real-time pricing instead of the previous 15-20 minute delay. And no greater example of what that means happened Tuesday when News Corp released its great Q4 results after the markets closed. Within 30 seconds News Corp shares rose more than 8%. Within one minute they were up 10%.
Obviously the money professionals had pre-programmed their strategy – if the results were good then buy and if bad then sell. And it was the buy orders that won the day. We at home would have no chance in keeping up with that, but at least we could know immediately, rather than waiting 15 – 20 minutes, to find out what the markets thought of the results.
As for those results, the headline number that prompted the buying was that net profit was up 27%, exceeding analyst forecasts, but then a closer look showed the big gain was because of the sale of Fox Sports Bay Area and Gemstar-TV Guide International. But then there were double digit percentage profit jumps in nearly all divisions although US TV really suffered - operating income down 28% because of lower advertising revenue at its local stations and network primetime ad sales down because of lower Fox ratings.
Peter Chernin, News Corp. President, says growth is slowing in the US and Western Europe which may be one reason why his boss, Rupert Murdoch was in India this week announcing television investments there. In Europe, Sky Italia is moving from strength to strength, adding 366,000 subscribers, but the numbers from BSkyBin the UK were poor because of its third writing down of its investment in the terrestrial ITV commercial TV network, but the number of BSkyB subscribers was up.
NBC says it will have 2,200 hours of live streaming of 25 Olympic events on its NBCOlympics.com site, and it will also have some 3,000 hours of replays and highlights, so perhaps it is little wonder that Lehman Brothers says US advertisers will be spending anywhere from $75 million to $100 million on Olympics web advertising.
Lehman Brothers says it doesn’t know how much of that spend by major Olympic advertisers is already included in the more than $1 billion in sales that NBC says it has made for the games on all platforms. The network is said to be more than 90% sold out.
NBC is keeping to its usual philosophy that during prime time its audience wants taped highlights of the day’s major events in HD on big screens at home, even if viewers already know the outcome, but for those who want live coverage then there is the web streaming plus coverage on its cable networks, too.
That all brings back memories of nine years ago during the planning stages for the 2000 Sydney Summer Games when our Philip Stone attended an International Olympic Committee (IOC) sponsored meeting in its home Swiss city of Lausanne. The meeting was to discuss how to handle possible rights for the then emerging digital media – at that time it was down to the Internet rather than mobile phones and the like. And there was little doubt how concerned IOC officials were on how any digital coverage would adversely affect the value of the Games to NBC, and the IOC was not about to let that happen.
The meeting provided an opportunity to ask NBC why it insisted on prime time tape delay instead of showcasing events live, even if most major live events occurred in the early morning US time. So Phil took the microphone and asked a senior NBC producer, "In Europe, the Sydney Games will be occurring mostly during the early morning hours. Yet Europeans are used to getting up early for such events and the ratings are surprisingly high. If Europeans can get up in the very early morning to watch their favorite athletes live then why can't Americans?"
Well, that brought more than a few snickers from the mostly European audience for everyone understood how NBC operated at the time, but the question seemed to bring near apoplexy to the NBC producer. He basically said there were more viewers, thus more money to be made, in a four-hour block from 8 p.m. to midnight than there was from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. Hard to argue with that, but why not have both, Phil asked the producer, let those who want to get up early take a look and for those who sleep let them see prime time? The producer looked at Phil as if this was one crazy guy!
But again our man was ahead of his time! What a difference two Summer Olympic Games can make. Now broadband rights are sold with the televisions rights, and if the broadcaster doesn’t use its broadband rights then it loses them. NBC has now finally seen the light (it started to see it with Athens and Turin) and the broadband rule, plus using its various cable networks, has turned the Games into a truly multi-platform media event. It’s one reason why these Games could well be renamed the $1 billion NBC Games.
Let's go to the phones
...mobile, that is..
The mobile phone has been touted as a - if not THE - platform of choice for new media. Content purchased by the byte is extremely attractive to telcos and not a few content providers. And the mobile phone is pervasive... and, well, mobile.
It's competitor is the web.
Social networking websites are touted as the Big Thing because they deliver huge HUGE traffic. But, well, revenue is hard to find.
ABI Research says (see presser here) social networking stuff needs to move to the mobile phone.
Big content producers - BBC World Service, for example - see mobile phones as the 'go to' platform in developing regions. (See BBC WS presser here) (JMH)
Murdoch expands in India
…no newspapers, though…
Rupert Murdoch has never been shy in investing in emerging media markets. The announcement of a $100 million TV investment is no surprise. News Corp, he said (August 4) would expand the existing Star TV brand into 6 cities over the next year. Which cities and what programming is still left to speculation.
Foreign investment in media is capped by law at 26% in India. And that does limit Mr. Murdoch’s interest.
"We don't see ourselves taking a stake in print,” said The Elder.
Poland also limits foreign investment in media and there are indications that News Corporation might be seeking a buyer for its 35% stake in TV Puls. (JMH)
Do You Multitask When You Sit On The Throne?
For all the doom and gloom stories that Philip Stone has written on this web site about the newspaper business he firmly believes in his heart that newspapers will always be with us, if for no other reason that when guys retire to the bathroom to sit on the throne it is their newspaper they take with them and not their PC.
But he may now need to reconsider if the latest research from the AOL Mail’s fourth annual Email Addiction Survey is to be believed. It says 59% of American email users check their messages while they are in the bathroom. And that’s up six percentage points from last year! There was no breakdown of numbers between the sexes.
Well, do you?
Yahoo Drives Record Traffic To Newspaper Sites
When it comes to news items about newspapers and search engines it is usually about how newspapers are still fighting copyright issues with Google. So it may have gone unnoticed that Yahoo recently hit a major milestone under its content distribution system with 30 US newspaper companies representing 779 newspapers – that it has driven more than 100 million visits to their newspaper web sites.
The 779 local newspapers are equivalent to 32% of all U.S. dailies and 41 percent of all U.S. Sunday circulation. Content distribution is part of the Yahoo deal that gives newspapers Yahoo search, access to Yahoo’s AMP! advertising platform and to its HotJobs recruitment services. The Newspaper Consortium says it has sold millions of dollars of employment advertising onto HotJobs.
Such newspapers as the Dallas Morning News and The New York Daily News say they have experienced steady traffic growth since they joined the network.
Liquidation of Polish public radio and TV proposed
…TVP President to ‘work like a dog’…
Poland’s Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski has proposed liquidating Polish public TV (TVP), radio (Polskie Radio) and regional public broadcasting companies to form three new State broadcasters, reports Gazeta Wyborcza (August 3). The liquidation is, said the source, a mere formality as a new TV company, radio company and regional broadcasting company would be formed by a new law on public media. Why, you might ask, would this be happening?
In political terms, none of Poland’s political parties can agree on a direction for public broadcasting other than bringing in more political influence. (See more about that here) In practical terms, the liquidation and restructure would allow another 500 TVP employees to be fired, said Tadeusz Kowalski, quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.
No new law on public broadcasting would be complete without a swipe at the license fee. And, yes indeed, Minister Zdrojewski still wants to scrap the license fee. Taking a cue from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, public broadcasting would be funded from the VAT paid by private sector broadcasters. All of this is leaving TVP President Andrzej Urbanski feeling very lonely.
“I have no partner in the government," said Urbanski to Puls Biznesu. "I cannot count that somebody will try to solve the subscription problem, taking into account EU and Polish law. The European Commission must be notified of the new regulations. The whole process will last a dozen months while the new law should come into force in January. Instead of developing TVP, I will have to make up for the giant loss in the budget amounting to PLN 300 million (€93.5 million). I’ll be working like a dog to repair all this.” (JMH)
ProSiebenSat writedown
...Telegraaf Media Group pays...
Private equity firms Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts (KKR) and Permira forced Telegraaf Media Group (TMG) to buy 12% of ProSiebenSat.1 with a put option call. TMG will pay €28.71 per share – with ProSiebenSat trading at around €5.42. And so, the writedown (read: write off) of ProSiebenSat continues.
Financial markets not being what they used to be, KKR has been trying to shed ‘difficult’ investments and, even, take itself public.
TMG's statement said more cost cutting would take place at ProSiebenSat, where key executives are fleeing.
When KKR and Permira merged SBS Broadcasting into ProSiebenSat, TMG sold them its 20% stake in SBS. But the agreement included a put option which, if exercised, would cause TMG to buy back their stake. Confused? Even the Reuters reporters called this “complicated.” (JMH)
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