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Week of June 9, 2008

No UK TV Product Placement?

UK Culture Secretary Andy Burham took the UK TV industry by surprise this week when he signaled he was against product placement in UK Television. His line of reasoning, “You can buy the space between programs on commercial channels, but not the space within them.”

Not exactly what commercial broadcaster ITV wanted to hear. Nor for that matter what the stock market wanted to hear either with ITV shares hitting a 52-week low Thursday before recovering a couple of pence.

The Office of Communications has estimated that product placement could be worth some £35 million within five years although advertising agencies say they believe the figure could be far higher. But the culture minister seems to be standing strong in his opposition. “There is a risk that product-placement exacerbates the decline in trust and contaminates our programs. There is a risk that, at the very moment when television needs to do all it can to show it can be trusted, we elide the distinction between programs and adverts.

An EU directive on audio-visual industries requires member states to say by the summer whether they will permit product placement.

In the US TV product placement is a growing big business. Nielsen reports that the broadcast networks saw a 39% increase in product placement during Q1, 2008.  The top 10 programs featured 15,404 product placements during the period compared with 8,893 in the same period in 2007.

It May Be Difficult To Find A National Newspaper In France Today

French newspapers desperately need to reform the antiquated newspaper distribution system in France, but the union that  represents most of the workers in that sector doesn’t see it that way and a culmination of work stoppages, non-deliveries and the like over two months moves up a gear Thursday with action that threatens that no daily national newspaper gets distributed.

The NNMP, the cooperative that has distributed French national newspapers since 1947, has proposed a plan that would see about 350 distribution workers lose their jobs although there would be no compulsory layoffs.

President Sarkozy has spoken about the “gigantic problem of distribution” of newspapers in France. Deadlines may have to be as early at 4 p.m. for a morning paper published in Paris to be delivered in some parts of the South of France. The number of newsstands throughout the country has declined substantially over the years – there are about 30,000 now – with the main reason for closure that the kiosk doesn’t make enough profit from each newspaper in a time of continually declining newspaper sales.

US Q1 Newspaper Ad Revenue Down 5.2%

While total US advertising revenue actually increased by 0.6% in Q1 – not much of an increase but an increase all the same in a pretty poor economic climate – newspapers were not the beneficiaries with their revenue down 5.2% over the same period a year ago, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

Local newspapers suffered a 5% decline; national newspapers were down 6.2%.

And the dire warning is that Q2 will be worse. “After a hopeful start to the year, the pace of ad spending slowed perceptibly during March and early figures from the second quarter indicate little immediate or sustained improvement in the core economy,” warned Jon Swallen, TNS senior research vice-president.

Has Sarkozy Done It Again?

The most influential TV anchor in France is Patrick Poivre d”Arvor, known throughout the country as PPDA. He has been reading news bulletins on the ratings leader, TF1, since 1987. But not for much longer. He’s “stepping down” and Laurence Ferrari, a blonde with whom President Sarkozy is rumored to have known quite well before his recent marriage, will be taking his place.

Sarkozy doesn’t like PPDA, more so after the anchor asked him after his election victory a year back whether the new President felt like a “little boy in the big boys’ playground? Sarkozy, at just 5 feet five inches (165.1 cm), is sensitive about his height. His response at the time –“It’s very nice of you to present things in that way, Monsieur Poivre d’Arvor.”

TF1 is owned by Sarkozy friend and supporter, the billionaire Martin Bouygues. Ferrari had worked at TF1 a couple of years back as a weekend back-up presenter. She is now a newsreader on Pay-TV channel Canal Plus.

PPDA’s ouster was front page news in France, and his career was best summed up in an editorial in Liberation, “PPDA, who became a logo in his own right, invented the star journalist in France and in this capacity, hated by many, feared by others, set his mark on the 8 o’clock news for more than 30 years.”  But it seems he has finally met his match.

(ed. note: This story is oddly - or not so oddly - similar to one from Italy a few years ago. Read about the firing of a well-known Tg5 anchor here.)

Farewell To Jim McKay

Back in the days before satellites gave us live coverage of sporting events around the world the US ABC network started an ambitious weekly sports program “Wide World of Sports” hosted by a guy named Jim McKay. It was there that American TV first showed Australian Rules football, European soccer championships, international golf, even cricket and log rolling, and McKay seemed to be at every one of those events. It is said he traveled more than 4 million miles (6.4 million kms) during his career.

He covered 12 Olympic Games – he may have been a sports reporter but his non-stop coverage of the Munich Olympics massacre set examples for others to follow -- few will forget the starkness of his words, “They’re all gone”. He ended up with 13 Emmy Awards during his illustrious career.  For those of us who grew up watching McKay his opening line each week to introduce the show became folklore – “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat".

McKay, 86 died Saturday. At his funeral Tuesday came the famous and great of the news and sports business – some 600 people in all -- but, as the Baltimore Sun reported, “Sitting unobtrusively in a back row, was Jeff Jerome.

“Who?

"I'm nobody. I just wanted to pay my respects," said Jerome, of Annapolis, as he left the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. "There are a lot of big names here; I'm just part of the common folk who never met Jim McKay, but who grew up watching him on TV.

"I always felt like he was talking to me. He was a friend, and I wanted to be part of his going away."

And that is how many who grew up watching McKay must have felt, too – a friend who will be missed.

Clean Up Those Free Newspapers

One of the major complaints against free newspapers is the mess they leave behind. In London various local councils had to threaten the two free PM newspapers with taking away their distribution licenses unless they cleaned up their act by installing more trash bins, and here in Geneva, for instance, special recycling bins have been put up at some tram stops.

But now the Swiss Federal Environment Bureau is getting in on the act, and it is scheduling meetings with local councils and free newspaper publishers to agree upon ideas for how the daily mess is cleaned up. The threat – there always seems to be the need of a threat to get publishers to act on cleaning up their mess – is that if they don’t agree a plan of action then the Environment Bureau will tax the publishers and use that revenue to clean up the streets.

UK Viewing High For European Soccer Tourney Even Though No UK Team

The European Soccer Championships have started and the UK doesn’t have a team playing, yet the BBC and ITV are sharing broadcast rights. Now one might think without a UK interest then ratings would be down but thus far the games are getting at least a 20 share, going as high as 27% for Portugal beating Turkey, 2-0.

And ITV says it has lined up some 150 brands to sponsor its coverage with the event “selling better than we hoped.”  It is thought that if England had not been knocked out in the preliminary rounds that ITV would probably earned another £10 million ($20 million, €12.5 million).

Broadcasters have always figured that if the local team wasn’t playing there would be little coverage interest. Maybe that needs a re-think. Here in Switzerland, for instance, if Roger Federer makes the final of a non-Grand Slam tennis tourney then the Swiss public broadcaster usually shows the match, but if he is knocked out early then no final coverage. It’s not about coverage of good tennis, rather coverage of a good Swiss player.

That’s why most sports coverage tends to emphasize the national hero(s) but the ITV and BBC European soccer experience seems to be if it is good sport then people are willing to watch, even if their nationals are not involved. That should get some programmers thinking!

Deadly weekend for journalists
…murdered in Afghanistan and Somalia…

The BBC confirmed that two of its reporters were killed this past weekend.

Abdul Samad Rohani, working for the BBC World Service from the BBC Kabul unit, was kidnapped Saturday (June 7). His body was found the next day. He had been shot in the head. He had been reporting on drug trafficking.

Somali free-lance reporter Nasteh Dahir, who filed for the BBC, the Associated Press and the New York Times, was shot and killed Saturday in Kismayo, Somalia. He had been shot numerous times. (Read more about dangerous places for reporters here)

Both murders were targeted. (JMH)

No exceptions in French music quotas
…not even for the dance floor…

Les Echos reports (June 9) that the French media regulator CSA has denied a request by Fun Radio (RTL) to reduce the required percentage of French language music. Fun Radio, which bills itself as ‘from the dance floor,’ requested the change March 1st. (JMH)

Kyiv to host Junior ESC in 2009
…all Eurovision on the Eastern front…

The seventh Junior Eurovision Song Contest moves to the Ukraine in 2009. Public broadcaster National Television Company (NTC) won the rights for hosting the kids version of famous TV show, announced last week (June 6). Cyprus hosts this years’ Junior ESC in November with entries from 18 countries. Ukraine hosted the 2005 BIG ESC in Kyiv.

Meanwhile, NTC is hopping mad at RTR Planeta, a Russian channel, for broadcasting this years’ Eurovision Song Contest in the Ukraine.  NTC says it had rights to broadcast the show in Ukraine on First Channel (UT-1) and RTR Planeta did not. Russia’s Dima Bilan took first place in this years’ ESC and Ukraine’s Ani Loraktook second place. (JMH)

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