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Digital radio breakthrough
IBC happiness... could be Amsterdam
The IBC opened in Amsterdam this week, the most influential trade show for sellers of broadcast technology. The 'spirit' over the last couple of years has ranged from anxious to grim.
Economic outlooks notwithstanding, the attitude in the halls and stalls this year is remarkably positive. Theword most often heard is 'breakthrough'.
For one, WorldDAB and EBU announced a set of standards for digital radio receivers that - just maybe - will entice manufacturers with pan-European designs. (read WorldDAB presser here) Obviously, there's more to follow. (JMH)
States Attorney calls for ratings investigation
“possibly irreversible consequences”
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has called for an investigation of radio audience measurement. In a letter to Arbitron, released this week (September 8), Cuomo called for “a full investigation of Arbitron's deployment of the PPM methodology is warranted before these sudden and possibly irreversible consequences are imposed on minority radio stations.”
US broadcasters targeting African-American and Hispanic audiences have been particularly vocal in their criticism of the Personal People Meter (PPM) measurement system.
One New York City radio station general manager, quoted by the New York Daily News, questioned how his stations’ audience share as measured by the new system “dropped 50 to 60%.” The result, said WSKQ manager Frank Flores, would be devastating financially. “I don’t know if we can survive that.”
Attorney General Cuomo has demanded documentation from Arbitron. Several US broadcasters – certainly not all – have been critical of the PPM system, citing a lack of transparency on the part of Arbitron. (read one company president's complaint here) Advertising media buyers, says Arbitron, have demanded an electronic measurement system to replace the diary data collection method.
Outside the US electronic measurement has largely been dismissed as flawed for radio audience ratings. (read about the UK turn-down here)The exception seems to be countries where governments mandated the methodology. Several countries are using electronic measurement as a supplement to other means of data collection. (JMH)
Targeting growth markets with design
…interior design and décor, that is…
There seems to be no end to media demand in high growth markets like Eastern Europe and Asia. Much of this is following pent up consumer demand. A large part of that increasing demand is – literally and figuratively – in housing.
RCS MediaGroup announced today that they are launching the Bulgarian edition of interior design and architecture magazine Abitare in November. The company already offers a Chinese edition. (See RCS MediaGroup release here) (JMH)
“The Last, Best Hope For Newspapers Is Rupert Murdoch” -- Australian Broadcast Executive
Rupert Murdoch is one smart cookie, according to Mark Scott, the Managing Director of Australia’s ABC public broadcaster, for Murdoch has so diversified his portfolio that he can offset the cost of quality journalism against profits made in other parts of his empire.
Scott, former editorial director for Fairfax, told the Australian National Press Club, “Through all the turmoil within the Australian media industry, there is only one print mogul who has diversified his portfolio enough to offset the costs of quality journalism against profits made elsewhere in his business. And yes -- that last, best hope for newspapers is Rupert Murdoch."
Scott acknowledged that audience fragmentation has most affected newspapers. "The newspaper groups that are surviving well internationally are those that have kept some newspaper products and diversified significantly into other areas as well. That's what Rupert Murdoch has done. Rupert Murdoch has diversified significantly away from newspapers. "That allows his newspapers, particularly in Australia, to operate under a different model and different fiscal pressures than those companies where newspapers dominate the earnings of the company."
Gambling Executive Says Newspapers Need To Take A Page From Las Vegas And Reinvent Themselves
Attendees at the Associated Press Managing Editors annual get together in Las Vegas got some interesting advice from a casino owner who knows how to successfully roll the dice.
Terry Lanni, MGM Mirage Inc. Chief Executive, told some 165 editors that when tourism dropped in Las Vegas the town transformed itself from a gambling destination to a family resort destination with kids welcome, too, even if whatever happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas!
“Suffering through the turmoil of change is never easy,” he said, but then he quoted a retired US Army general who said, “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”
Words to ponder.
More Than 90% Of Swiss Read A Newspaper Regularly
The Swiss are avid newspaper readers, although they are demonstrating an increasing preference for the free rather than paid. An annual survey says 91.4% of the population reads a newspaper regularly and newspapers are, by far, the favored news source.
There are three main languages in Switzerland – German spoken by 64% of the population; French, spoken by 20%; and Italian with 6.5% -- so there really isn’t any such thing as a “national” newspaper although the German language newspapers certainly have the larger circulations for obvious reasons.
In the German and French areas the local language versions of the free 20 Minutes are increasing readership substantially. The German language edition now has 1.3 million readers daily (circulation 514,000) whereas the French language version increased its readership by 20.5% in the year – to 470,000 readers a day – making it the fastest growing Swiss newspaper.
Ringier will not be happy that Blick, the country’s most read paid-for newspaper now has a readership of about half of its 20 Minutes rival. That must particularly hurt because Blick relaunched last year – more sex and the like – but readership still dropped a bit. In the quality market Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) saw readership fall below 300,000 to 299,000.
And in the French speaking part of the country whereas 20 Minutes and its Edipresse free competitor, Le Matin Bleu, put on readership the paid-fors suffered, with all but one losing readership. Le Matin, the largest circulation paid-for, lost 13,000 readers.
BBC on the Bus
US tour starts
The American presidential elections in just under 60 days may just be the most media covered event ever. The BBC's coverage begins in earnest today (September 10). (See BBC presser here)
Beginning in Los Angeles the BBC crew will take a bus through 16 American States. That itself could be fun to watch.
Are you covering the American elections? Let us know what you are doing. (email news@followthemedia.com) (JMH)
Health of Newspapers Central To Australian Democracy – Prime Minister
Since politicians are among the first to get blasted by the media it has always been a curiosity how they continue to praise the media when there must be times they really loathe them. But at a newspaper conference in Brisbane, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd bluntly told newspaper executives, “The state of newspapers is central to the health of Australian democracy – you remain its principal arteries.”
But he also admitted he was the only one in his family who still reads a newspaper -- his wife and three children get their news online --and even he gets his news updates via his Blackberry.
And he was quite adamant that different delivery platforms are no excuse for less quality in news reporting. “I believe today there is even greater demand for quality news and quality debate,” he told the attendees at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association conference meeting.
Save newspapers! Kill the Internet!
Above is our favorite headline of the day, found on a blog site of the Dallas Morning News.
It needs no further comment and it tells the whole story!
“A round-up of the gossip in the national newspapers today:”/h4>
The UK’s national newspapers may well think that their exclusive sports stories are just that – exclusive journalistic gems -- but apparently the Evening Telegraph of Kettering, England, thinks that in reality they’re just gossip.
Thus its headline above for a roundup of the exclusive sports stories in the day’s UK national newspapers.
Who are we to argue?
Television crew arrested in South Ossetia
handed over to Russia troops
A Polish public television (TVP) crew was arrested in South Ossetia Monday (September 8), according to an AFP report. The reporter, cameraman and Georgian driver were detained by South Ossetian militias then turned over to Russian troops. A TVP spokesperson said they were “transported in an unknown direction” and “were considered prisoners of war.” Cameras and mobile phones were confisctated.
A rather different story comes from Russian news agency Rai Novosti. Yes, the crew was busted. But, well, it’s complicated.
"The Poles were so drunk they could not explain how they entered South Ossetia from Georgia," the agency quoted the spokesperson for the South Ossetian Information and Press Committee. (JMH)
Dutch politician fears American-style public broadcasting
…and rein in Commissioner Kroes…
At the National Broadcasting Conference last week in the Netherlands the Minister of Culture and Education made an impassioned plea. Resist, said Ronald Plasterk, the imposition of EU rules on public broadcasters or risk American-style public broadcasting.
Minister Plasterk took shots at EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes for requiring public broadcasters to ‘market test’ for competition abuse before offering new services using State financing. Each national government should, he said, be the arbiter of whether or not the service of public broadcasters are unfair competition to private sector broadcasters. He said, according to Het Financieele Dagblad (September 4), he has the support of other governments for reining in Commissioner Kroes.
When it comes to broadcasting, what unites a large set of European politicians is fear of a truly independent public broadcaster. Mr. Plasterk, a member of the Dutch Labour Party, is misinformed, saying American public broadcasting is relegated to programming “Mexican cooking courses and other niche programming” the commercial channels won’t show. Both the PBS television network and the NPR radio network produce and broadcast a variety of programs – including news and public affairs – reaching wide audiences. What stings Mr. Plasterk and other politicians is the concept of a truly independent public broadcaster. State broadcasters, always begging politicians for funds, are far more docile.
The Minister also said he was “not content” with the “BBC model” either.(JMH)
UK Supermarket Trashes Newspaper Insert for Competing Store
A Wal-Mart owned ASDA supermarket in Edinburgh, Scotland recently ordered staff to remove inserts for a competing supermarket chain from newspapers being sold in the store. According to The Daily Record, staff were told to trash the inserts and were not allowed to even have them recycled.
ASDA management admits the cause célèbre but said it was a local decision. "I can categorically state that this is not a company policy," a spokesman said.
Meanwhile over at Tesco, the competing store, a spokesman deadpanned, "We can't comment on this, as much as we'd love to".
Google’s Love Affair With Newspapers
Newspapers seem to have a love-hate relationship with Google, but the world’s largest search engine just seems to love (and not hate) newspapers. In fact it loves them so much that it has announced a new project, starting in the US and Canada, tomake newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives
When Google sets itself a mission it aims high. Here’s how its own web blog put it. “For more than 200 years, matters of local and national significance have been conveyed in newsprint -- from revolutions and politics to fashion to local weather or high school football scores. Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written. And it's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily. The problem is that most of these newspapers are not available online. We want to change that.”
Yes, at the end of the day they want to put every page of every newspaper digitized on the web. The announcement gave no timeline.
Andrew Smith, blogging on the Dallas Morning News web site, put it succinctly, “It's nice to know that the company that's putting us newspapers out of business will at least preserve our memory.”
A Little Known Fact About Australian Newspapers
Did you know that Australia is the “only mature market in the western world where more money is spent on newspaper advertising than any other medium”?
That’s according to Mark Hollands, the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association (PANPA) chief executive officer, who also told delegates at a three-day PANPA meeting, “My personal feeling is that this is possibly the most exciting time to be in newspapers because we have the challenge ahead of us. Every day we have to face the challenge of thinking about things differently, working collaboratively and trying techniques we've never tried before."
He made those statements in an environment in which job ads in Australian newspapers and the internet plunged 4.9% in August -- the largest drop in over seven years – and at a time when Fairfax Media recently shed 550 jobs in Australia and New Zealand.
Big Bang Day
...find a parade and claim it...
It is an unlikely theme, yes? Nuclear physics? sub-atomic particles? But, the BBC is turning this theme into a special day, Wednesday September 10.
BBC Radio 4 - and much more - descends into the caverns of CERN, the giant particle accelerator near Geneva (my home town) for a day-long tribute to the unknown. Yep, it's very cool.
Wednesday CERN fires up - if that's the right term - their latest and greatest super collider. If it works scientists will learn neat physics stuff. If it doesn't - so say the tin-foil hat people - the world will end, sucked up by a giant man-made black hole. (JMH)
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