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Arbitron offers wake-up call
...broadcasters stay on message...
US audience measurement service Arbitron would like the howling mad US broadcasters off their back. Introducing the electronic measurement system PPM has not exactly gone according to plan. For some reason - never answered - issues of sampling and compliance (getting people to use the PPM device correctly) continue to raise questions... and temperatures.
This week Arbitron announced that it is offering a 'wake-up' service, phoning PPM panel members between 18 and 34 years of age to remind them to start the measurement, or start the measurement in the morning. (Read Arbitron presser here)
Meanwhile, Arbitron officials seem frustrated by critics and, according to a participant in a recent Long Island PPM meeting, want to know "what it would take" for the critics to stop airing "dirty linen in public." (See this for background)
Faced with an onslaught of bad news about the US ad market, broadcasters (some, not all) continue to press for solutions. This is not a good time to raise broadcasters' insecurities. (JMH)
Help Wanted
...CTO for TV company in India...
Consultant and ftm reader Peter Stromquist is vetting candidates for Chief Technology Officer with a TV company based in Delhi. The successful applicant must have both transmission and IT skills.
Send CV directly to Peter Stronquist. (JMH)
OWBT Fellowships Offered
...applications invited...
The One World Broadcasting Trust (OWBT) is inviting applications for a 2 week fellowship program in London for senior broadcasting professionals from developing countries. (See OWBT letter with details here) Deadline is August 22, 2008. (JMH)
BBC WS Annual Review
..."defining year"...
The BBC World Service released is annual review 2007/2008, calling it "a defining year." (See BBC WS presser here)
The summary shows a significant gain in page views for the BBC WS website, growth for BBC WS English service and a slight audience decline overall. World events being what they are, hard news is driving growth to Web portals, the BBC WS and other international broadcasters. It's a trend. (JMH)
Iran Digitally Alters Its Missile Firing Pix
It was a big story on global front pages and many web sites Wednesday and there are going to be just as many corrections today. Iran had test fired missiles, one of which had the range to hit Israel, and the Revolutionary Guard was so pleased it released a picture that Agence France Presse picked up off a Tehran web site and distributed globally. Just one tiny problem – the US defense department says what you see in the picture isn’t exactly what happened-- one of the missiles failed to fire but to the Iranians that was no reason to rain on their parade, they just digitally manipulated the picture to make it look like all had gone well. See the real and fake below.
© Sepah News via AP (top) and AFP (bottom)
Video footage shot from the same angle and a second photo that is nearly identical prove just three missiles went up, not four. AFP issued a correction Thursday saying, "The second right missile has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test."
More than 12 hours after the AFP image had been distributed, the Associated Press moved a nearly identical photo showing three missiles. It appears to have been photographed at almost the same time as the AFP distributed image. The AP said it obtained the photo from the same Iranian Web site from where AFP obtained its picture.
>Lawful To Sell Newspapers From Traffic Medians?
You come to a red light, and there is the newspaper boy walking between the lanes hawking the morning or afternoon newspaper. Not safe for the seller and probably against the law. But what about selling that same paper from a roadway median?
The city of Burlington, North Carolina passed a law last month banning such sales and a federal judge declined to issue an injunction against enforcing the new law. So if things were going to change it would be up to the State legislature.
And the House has now approved in pretty fast time a Bill that would stop cities and counties from restricting the newspaper distribution from street and roadway medians, but they could still prevent vendors, from walking between traffic lanes..
One reason for the Bill being agreed so quickly was that it had the backing of the North Carolina Press Association and the North Carolina League of Municipalities.
Not Looking Good For Consumer Magazines Says Fitch
Fitch Ratings in a report out Wednesday says it believes US consumer magazines are going to be in for a hard advertising ride and lower circulations for the rest of this year, probably not hitting as hard as newspapers but bad all the same, because of the weakening economy and ongoing transition to digital media.
Fitch noted that is has not been easy for magazines lately. “As a result of the volume of corporate actions, (including Ziff-Davis Media's election to file a voluntary Chapter 11 petition, U.S. News & World Report's recent announcement that it would cease weekly publication, and announcements this week from Hearst and Conde Nast of the closures of Quick & Simple and Golf for Women, respectively) Fitch has fielded a number of inquiries from investors regarding the magazine subsector's prospects.
“Fitch believes that lower-quality, lower-circulation titles were launched and attracted advertising dollars during the past few years due to ready access to capital and the health of the overall economy. For both cyclical and secular reasons, Fitch anticipates there will be fewer new entrants as the economics of launching new product become unattractive. It is likely that the larger players will seek to rationalize available print advertising inventory. This shake-out could be painful for certain titles and companies. If consolidation can be achieved without over leveraging their balance sheets, Fitch believes the remaining players could benefit from scale through portfolios of top brands in demographics that are attractive to advertisers.”
In other words, it’s survival of the fittest.
As If Newspapers Don’t Have Enough Costs…
It’s no secret in Boston that the Globe and the Herald are really hurting from the economic downturn. There have been multiple layoffs and the Herald recently announced it was going to outsource its printing. So how does the city intend to help its ailing newspapers? By charging them for every news box they have on city property, that’s how!
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino wants to start charging newspapers a $300 application fee and then $25 for every newsboy placed on city land. Currently newspapers pay a $150 registration fee and that’s it.
The mayor also wants to limit each newspaper to no more than 300 boxes. In an effort he describes as cleaning up the streets while the newspapers say that is a violation of freedom of the press. The Globe currently comes close to the proposed limit with 294 boxes, while the Herald has 176. The mayor has also proposed that each publication must space its own boxes by 150 feet (50 meters) and no one location can have more than five boxes from all of the city’s various publications..
Herald Publisher Patrick J. Purcell commented, “I believe this fee puts an unreasonable burden on publishers who are already struggling to fulfill their obligation to inform the public.” Robert Ambrogi of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association noted, “If you haven’t noticed, newspapers are struggling, these are tough times.”
As for the city, spokeswoman Dorothy Joyce said back in June when the proposals were first announced, “We have a small city, we only have so much room on the sidewalk for news boxes. We think 300 news boxes per publication are generous in order to cover the city."
License fee bill delayed
…turmoil in Poland…
Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski delayed, for now, provisions in a new media law impacting public broadcasting funding. The law was passed by the Polish parliament but needed President Kaczynski’s signature or veto. Instead, late Monday he took option number three and referred the bill to Poland’s Constitutional Court.
One of the laws most notable provisions exempts more people from the radio and TV license fee; pensioners and other old people. President Kaczynski favors abolishing the license fee and bringing the public broadcasters under direct government control. Had he signed the bill into law it would have come into effect in 30 days, throwing the public broadcaster into even more turmoil
One politician, Grzegorz Dolniak, was widely quoted in the Polish press saying, “President Lech Kaczynski’s game with the delay is so that revision could not enter into force.” Political talks with TVP President Andrzej Urbanski are said to be going nowhere. (JMH)
Changing of the Old Guard At The Washington Post
With the announcement that Marcus Brauchli, 47, is to be the next executive editor of the Washington Post, the company’s chairman, Donald Graham, now knows his beloved newspaper is going to be in safe hands for years to come. The Post now makes up less than 50% of the income of the Washington Post Company, the majority now comes from the education business, but the influence of the Post cannot be overstated. It is an American institution.
What Graham did in February was name his 42-year-old niece, Katharine Weymouth, as the newspaper’s publisher. She is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham of Watergate fame. She is young, and she didn’t really hide that she wanted a new editor around the same age with new ideas how to integrate the Post’s print and Web news operations, maintain and increase the newspaper’s journalistic reputation, and yet recognize that the Post, like most other metropolitan newspapers, has and still is experiencing frightening drop-offs in advertising revenue and circulation. Can the young fix what the older generation could not?
Graham is 63. He is going to retire in the next two to seven years and the betting is Weymouth will take his place. But she will have several years under her belt as the Post publisher and she will have ensured she has at the newspaper the person she believes she can trust to run its editorial policy for the next 20 years or so.
As for Brauchli, it goes to show there is life after being booted out (officially he resigned) in April from the Wall Street Journal’s highest editorial position by Rupert Murdoch’s new team there. It is said he walked away with a $3.5 million severance but he also gave a promise not to compete for a while. There are differing accounts whether this is a non-compete or not, but it is highly likely that one way or another that $3.5 million is still safe. It may not have seemed it at the time, but Murdoch buying the Journal may turn out to be the best thing for Brauchli’s career! Life is strange that way.
US Ad Forecasts Decrease Again
Every December the gurus at various advertising agencies pontificate on how they think the business will do for the next year. And in recent years come mid-year they have had to row back and this year is no exception, as ftm had forecast when the original forecasts came out. (See this on ad forecasts big and small)
The guy who has been at it the longest and has the best reputation is Bob Coen of Universal McCann. He had predicted in December that 2008 would see US online advertising growth of 16.5%. He has now cut that back to 12%. That is really bad news for newspapers that desperately need their web sites to quickly make up the ad revenue loss from their print operations. Put simply, it’s going to take a whole lot longer than most publishers thought.
He sees overall US ad revenue increasing by 2%, a considerable rollback from his 3.7% prediction in December. ftm figures if US ad revenue makes breakeven the media will be lucky – it depends on the advertising for the Olympics (NBC says one month before the games that it has plenty of ad inventory still left),how much gets spent on the US Presidential and Congressional elections, and what $4 a gallon gas does to advertising budgets.
Farewell Charles Wheeler
The BBC was blessed with two fantastic correspondents in the US who seemed to understand Americans and the way they did things better than Americans themselves. The first was Alistair Cooke who died in 2004 at the age of 95 – his Letter From America being “must” radio listening for those outside America wanting to understand America, and the other was Charles Wheeler who passed away last week at the age of 85.
Wheeler concentrated on television and was probably one of the BBC’s most cantankerous journalists – something he readily admitted himself. He was the BBC’s longest serving foreign correspondent, but he will always be remembered for his incisive reporting on America in the mid-sixties to seventies – Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Nixon and Watergate. He later went on to cover the first Gulf War with great distinction. The head of BBC journalism called him simply “the greatest broadcast journalist of his generation.”
Cooke and Wheeler had one great gift in common – when they spoke the listener instantly understood these guys knew what they were talking about. A journalist can’t ask for a higher testament than that.
Countdown To Beijing – Press Center Opens
It’s one month until the opening of the Beijing Olympics and the international press center opens there today. But with some 25,000 foreign journalists expected, the Chinese are backing off promises of their free foreign journalist movement throughout the country, according to a Human Rights Watch report Monday.
China promised last year to improve press freedom and issued temporary rules allowing foreign journalists to travel freely across China and speak with any consenting interviewee, so all looked good on paper, and the Ministry of Foreign affairs seemed to help foreign journalists as much as it could with problems they encountered, but then came Tibet and the reality is now something else.
The report said, “the gap between government rhetoric and reality for foreign journalists remains considerable. Their working conditions today, while improved in some respects, have deteriorated in other areas, dramatically in the case of Tibet. The result is that during a period when reporting freedoms for foreign journalists in China should be at an all-time high, correspondents face severe difficulties in accessing ‘forbidden zones’ — geographical areas and topics which the Chinese government considers ‘sensitive’ and thus off-limits to foreign media. An important consequence of the continuing barriers is that there are key events and trends in China that cannot be covered in detail or at all.”
Foreign journalists in Beijing told Human Rights Watch that officials are fixated on only good positive news coming out of China leading up to the Games and some said they were threatened with losing their Olympics accreditation if their stories didn’t toe the line.
EBU President begs for Polish license fee reprieve
…President Kaczynski to decide Monday…
Outgoing European Broadcasting Union (EBU) president Fritz Pleitgen has asked Poland’s President Lech Kaczyski not to approve legislation that would reduce license fee revenue to Polish public radio and television. Revisions in the public broadcasting law approved by the Polish Parliament in May exempt retired and unemployed people. Monday (July 7) is the deadline for President Kaczynski’s signature. If signed the law goes into effect in 30 days.
In his letter, reprinted in the Polish media, Pleitgen said the new law would "severely restrict the possibility of compliance by Polish Radio and TV in its statutorily defined public service mission." The new law does not provide replacement funding for the lost revenue.
"This system has worked well as a very efficient manner,” Pleitgen’s letter continued. “The BBC, which is regarded as the best channel in the world, is funded predominantly from the license fee. This makes it independent of market forces and politicians."
Invoking the good name of the BBC is one way to remind a politician that big is beautiful, even as the BBC itself is moving into post-license fee mode. And, too, President Kyczynski has remarked in the past that Polish public broadcasting should be less independent rather than more. We all know where this goes. (JMH)
Weather Channel sold to NBC Universal, private equity
…more content, more often…
NBC Universal and Landmark Communications announced a final agreement on the purchase and sale of the Weather Channel (July 6). Terms were not officially disclosed but AP reported an anonymous source “close to the deal” suggesting US$3.5 billion. Time Warner and other biggies dropped out of the bidding a month ago.
The Wall Street Journal had earlier suggested that $3.5 billion would be the price and that Landmark had been looking for $5 billion.
NBC Universal is partnering with private equity firms Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.
All things considered, this is not a staggering amount of money for a tested and profitable content franchise. The Weather Channel is widely available on US cable TV, offers weather information to newspapers and radio stations and operates weather.com. In addition it provides a B2B forecast service globally.
For NBC it’s a strong addition to the content offering. And it’s another jump into real-time content, where the web makes money. (JMH)
EBU elects officers in Budapest
...General Assembly names Phiilppot and Sambrook...
Public broadcastings' main institution - the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) - elected new officers at its General Assembly in Budapest. (See EBU presser here)
Jean-Paul Philippot General Director of Belgium French public broadcaster RTBF was elected president and the BBC's Richard Sambrook vice president. Philippot will succeed WRD GD Fritz Pleitgen and Sambrook, who has become the BBC's go-to person in international relations succeeds highly respected Boris Bergant from Slovenia public broadcasting. (JMH)
Agora sends Orange content
...more content, more sites...
Poland's media continues moving into new media. Publisher Agora has extended its deal with PTK Centertel to provide thematic content to Orange mobile phone subscribers. (See Agora release here - in Polish) (JMH)
'Secret Sound' Secrets
..."very effective"...
I'm collecting comments and obeservations on radio contests and competitons. Radio Hamburg (Germany) has been running 'Secret Sound' for several years. (See Martina Müller's comment here)
Send your comments, views, thoughts and suggestions to me. (JMH)
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