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Broadcasters, prospective and existing, have lined up for radio licenses of the analogue kind in Romania. Media regulator National Audiovisual Council (CNA) published this week the list of applicants for 35 FM and 9 AM/MW frequencies scattered around the country, including several in Bucharest. Three applicants have proposed news or information-related radio services, according to paginademedia.ru (November 12).
The frequencies were either vacant or made available from spectrum adjustments. More than half once belonged to Guerrilla Radio, revoked two years ago when the CNA found bankrupt owner Realitatea Media unfit for service. Guerrilla Radio’s new owner, Expresiv SA, seems to be back in the regulator’s favor and will participate in the license contest. (See more about media in Romania here)
Newspaper publisher Adevarul Holding and broadcaster Romania TV have applied for licenses to operate news stations in Bucharest, Adevarul Live and Radio 24 Hours, respectively. Broadcaster Antena 3 filed for an “information themed” station to be called 3 FM. Adevarul Holding publishes the namesake daily newspaper and several magazines. Bucharest TV is owned by Ridzone Computers SRL and rumored, according to mediafax.ru (November 11), to be in investment talks with Swedish media house Bonnier. Antena 3 is owned by Intact Media Group, newspaper publisher and operator of Radio Zu and Romantica FM, both seeking to expand coverage in the license contest.
In September the CNA assigned about one-third of the available FM and AM/MW frequencies to public broadcaster Radio Romania. The CNA will announce decisions of new licensees later in November.
Big data hoovers make their bread and butter trading user particulars to big data crunching media buyers. These biggies are insatiable and very rich. They also consider themselves very smart, in that smirky techie way.
Earlier this week a Belgian court supported the country’s privacy commission in a complaint against Facebook for sucking up data bits from anybody in near proximity of its pages. The court ordered Facebook to stop collecting non-user data within or face a daily fine of €250,000. Facebook indicated an appeal will be filed, reported Volkskrant (November 11).
The Facebook lawyers argued first that the Belgian privacy commission has no jurisdiction because of its Irish headquarters, European single market rules applying. That didn’t move the needle. Moving on from that, they argued that surreptitiously installing tracking cookies is necessary to differentiate between real Facebook users from the unreal kind. Anyway, those cookies only identify browsers, not people, real or otherwise. The court batted that away, too. (See more about privacy laws and rulings here)
Lawsuits against big - typically American by birth - tech companies are always rattling through European courts. Privacy concerns have very deep roots, pushed to the surface by bleeding edge technologies. The “right to be forgotten” ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), in the privacy realm, forced the tech giants to invest in ever more clever lawyers.
Publishers reading the digital media tea-leaves, understandably, have been upset by the rise in consumers employing ad blockers. German publishers have mustered forth lawyers to stem the flow of people trying to stem the flow of unwanted ads with no effect. Ad people have also noticed.
At an event focused on ad blocking organized last week by British advertising association ISBA attention was given to the oft-forgotten consumers who “tend to install ad blocking software on desktops because they find ads to be interruptive, annoying, slows down the surfing experience, irrelevant and there are privacy concerns of targeted ads,” said the after-glow ISBA statement. (See here) “On mobile all the concerns of desktops apply and we can add that advertisement with rich media and autoplay video within content, use up data allowance, take over the screen and drain battery life of what is essentially a productivity tool.”
Appealing to a presumed instinct for fairness - ads make this stuff free, cutting off ads could make it all go away - doesn’t seem to be working. A YouGov survey for the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) released this week showed a “slight increase” if folks using ad blockers to 18% from 15% in June. Young people, particularly young guys, are most irritated by ads, old folks much less. (See IAB statement here) The assumption being that with maturity irritation abates or, perhaps, turns to other things.
Far more folks in the UK are blocking ads on laptops (71%) or desktops (47%) than smartphones (23%) or tablets (19%). But wait, didn’t Tim Cook (Apple CEO) just announce that the desktop is dead?
“The long-term solution to ad blocking has to be industry-wide action that treats readers’ valuable attention with more respect,” offered Guardian News & Media’s Sam Coleman at the ISBA event. “If this is the wake-up call that creates positive change for readers then it has to be embraced not feared.”
“The debate around ad blocking is a great opportunity for everyone in the industry to look at the quality of their advertising,” said Financial Times (FT) Global Sales Director Dominic Good. “At the FT we are always seeking to provide the best service and results for advertisers while preserving the tone and integrity of our editorial environment.”
Mobile platforms are not simply part of the digital revolution, they are a separate reality. More transformative for the media world than the shift from print to desktops. Big Scandinavian publisher Schibsted - highly engaged in digital platforms - has illustrated the challenge with market research in its Future Report 2015. Some in the media sphere might think the world of Blade Runner has arrived.
“It took many years for the mobile phone to replace cameras or the paper calendar,” read the report. “It will take years for the phone to replace cash and (credit) cards too. But fewer years. The pace of change is increasing. It is one of digitizations fundamental laws.” (See more about mobile media here)
The social science part of Future Report 2015 is a chip off the old McLuhanism. “Mobile is the burning glass where the rays of the other trends come together. Needless to say, mobile is tightly connected with the force of digitalization. It is also the most individualized media. People tend to use their phones almost like extensions of themselves.”
Associating youth and smartphones is both common and pale. “We hear anecdotes of ten year-olds that when asked what they wish for their birthday cannot come up with anything if they already have a mobile phone. All they really need is inside that phone anyway.”
New media investment arm Schibsted Growth shared its take on the future. “To squeeze existing business models onto a small screen will not be enough. There are already victims of this new transformation. Search engine-driven marketplaces shrink when digital engagement moves to apps. (The big) question is how this will affect the company that defined the desktop web: Google.”
Opening a Moscow media conference, Rossia Segodnya director general Dmitry Kiselev explained to those attending the way news media works. "Censorship is impossible with current technology these days,” he said, quoted by rbu.ru (November 10). “No one is able to pull it off, no one can shield a person from someone else’s information or propaganda. No one has a monopoly on this information. Agitation, censorship and propaganda are old concepts in a world that describes itself completely differently.” He's given this speech before.
Mr. Kiselev is best known as a bombastic Russian TV talk show host who reports various conspiracy theories thematically based on Russia as a victim of the evil West. President Vladimir Putin rewarded his intense style two years ago by creating Rossia Segodnya from news agency RAI Novosti, adding international radio network Voice of Russia, rebranded as Sputnik, centralizing the Russian Federation’s media outreach. (See more about media in Russia here)
The Forum of European and Asian Media (FEAM), organized this year by Rossia Segodnya, aims to bring together, literally and figuratively, the old Soviet Union. It’s been held previously in Belarus and Kazakhstan. The event has been widely ignored by reporters and agencies outside the old Soviet sphere: that athletics doping report attracting all the attention.
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