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The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) paid tribute to author and visionary Arthur C. Clark on his passing (Thursday March 20). He was 90. (Read ITU statement here)
In 1945 Clark wrote in Wireless World the prophetic paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?" establishing the possibility of earth orbiting satellites relaying radio signals.
The rest, as they say, is history. (JMH)
Following on with the mobile TV content theme (read lead article here) comes this nugget from ABI Research. Mobile phone owners, they report from what is apparently a survey conducted only in the US, take ringtones from their mobile phone carrier but “today’s mobile consumer is more likely to watch a video from YouTube on his or her phone than a video from the carrier’s own service.” (read ABI Research release here)
Nearly half (48%) of the sample of mobile phone users who use mobile video (14% of the whole) “rip” music from their own CDs.
Maybe it’s good news or maybe not but the report also said “…despite the strong control most carriers retain over the network, their control over the mobile content ecosystem remains limited.”
Sounds like consumers are in control to me (JMH)
An unconfirmed report in Crains New York Business says that Rupert Murdoch wants to buy Newsday from Tribune. And given Tribune’s overall Q4 results just announced that saw a 41% drop in operating cash flow and newspaper ad revenue down by 15% from a year ago there are reports that Zell, who had previously said he didn’t want to sell any newspapers, may just have a change of heart now that he sees how badly the newspaper situation is deteriorating.
Zell has reportedly already offered to Murdoch to print the Wall Street Journal in Florida and on the West Coast, so there could be a beginning of a Zell-Murdoch relationship in the making.
Overall US advertising expenditures for 2007 rose 0.3% over 2006 according to TNS Media Intelligence with TV’s share slipping 0.45% to 44.2% newspapers down more than 1 percent to 17.4%, and radio down 0.3% to just over 7%.
And no prizes for guessing the big winner -- internet display advertising (not including search) grew 1% to 7.4%.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger gave this advice to an Alabama university audience this week on how to get a letter printed in the New York Times: “Support President Bush. We are desperate for letters in support of President Bush.”
More could be merrier, suggests UK media regulator OFCOM, as it considers revamping TV ad break rules. Currently the rules hold commercial channels to 20 minutes between ad breaks. That would be scrapped.
Allowing ads in public affairs, documentaries and religious programs is also under consideration. For films, breaks might be allowed with 30 minute separation rather than the current 45 minutes.
None of this would increase the amount of commercial time allowed. At present PSB channels – ITV1 and Channel 4 – are limited to 7 minutes of ads per hour. Purely commercial channels are limited to 12 minutes of selling things in any given hour.(JMH)
It seems in libel terms it is far worse to cast slurs on the world’s 12th richest billionaire, American Sheldon Adelson, than it is to write more than 100 stories about parents accusing them with having something to do with the disappearance and possible death of their child.
Adelson won in an agreed settlement of some £4 million in damages and legal fees from the Daily Mail that made all sorts of nasty allegations about his private life and business dealings which the newspaper has now withdrawn. The newspaper has issued an apology and the payment is one of the highest libel settlements in English history. Adelson says he will donate the damages to a London cancer hospital.
ftm detailed (read here) how the McCann family agreed to a £550,000 libel settlement against the Express newspapers that also issued an apology on their front pages for accusing the McCanns in more than 100 stories of having something to do with their young daughter’s disappearance and possible death while on holiday in Portugal. The Express said “a number of the articles in the newspaper have suggested that the couple caused the death of their daughter Madeleine and then covered it up.” For that, it is ‘sorry.’”
One newspaper says very nasty things about a billionaire’s private and business life while four newspapers say very nasty things about a middle class family and a possible crime they kept hinting the family may have committed, yet the billionaire gets almost eight times more. Go figure.
According to the map Ft. Lauderdale is 26 miles (42kms) north of Miami but that’s not stopping the Tribune-owned WSFL-TV in Miami from moving up the road and housing itself in the Tribune-owned South Florida Sun-Sentinel. And as part of the move the publisher of the newspaper also becomes general manager of the TV station.
Probably just the first of many convergence cost-cutting moves we’ll be seeing from Tribune this year – if Sam Zell would like to sell the building KTLA occupies in Los Angeles could the station move in with the Times?
No word in Tribune’s statement whether WSFL is basing news crews in Miami proper or whether they’re going to have to make the long drive every times there’s a breaking news story.
Tribune says having everyone in the same building will offer great cross-platform advertising sales possibilities – with one phone call an advertiser can buy time on the station, a display ad in the newspaper and ads on their web sites. Such convergence sounds good on paper but has been difficult to implement when tried elsewhere. Maybe the Zell people are cut from a different cloth.
Broadcaster UTV posted 20% revenue gains and 4% profit gains in results from its Irish stations.
The company recently purchased Dublin’s FM104 from Communicorp, part of its buyout of Emap’s Irish radio properties.
UTV also owns poorly performing Talk 107 in Edinburgh, Scotland, where this week the company began firing the DJs.(JMH)
A four year legal battle between film markers and Sweden’s TV4 ended yesterday (Tuesday March 18) as Sweden’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that commercial breaks in films violate rights of copyright holders. Even at a scene change, said the court, ad breaks interrupt “a film viewers’ viewing experience.”
One of the complainants, director Vilgot Sjöman, died in 2006. He directed many notable films, including “I Am Curious – Yellow.” Sjöman and director Claes Ericksson sued TV4 in 2004.
The Court affirmed that copyright holders interests outweigh commercial interests.
TV4 is owned by Swedish media giant Bonnier Group.
TV4 will pay each Ericksson and Sjöman’s estate about €32,000.(JMH)
We have written several times that the closer we get to the Beijing Olympic Games in August, the more the world’s media are going to protest against a lack of Chinese media freedom and its lack of progressing human rights.
Much attention has been focused on Darfur and since China is a major trading partner with Sudan there has been pressure on the Chinese to do something there. Steven Spielberg’s pulling out of helping to plan the opening ceremony because of a lack of progress on Darfur was a major embarrassment. But now with the current events in Tibet it seems the gloves are really coming off with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders urging a boycott by dignitaries from around the world of the opening ceremony. And the French foreign minister says he believe the EU should consider such an action.
Walking a fine line between destroying the dreams of athletes who have dreamed of participating in an Olympic Games, and yet wanting the Chinese to understand that it can no longer be business as usual, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement claiming “China has not kept any of the promises it made in 2001 when it was chosen to host these Olympics. Instead the government is crushing Tibetan protests and is imposing a news blackout while Hu Jia, a tireless human rights campaigner, is facing a possible five-year prison sentence at the end of a summary and unfair trial."
In not calling for a full boycott of the Games, the group emphasized, however, “it would be outrageous not to firmly demonstrate one's disagreement with the Chinese government's policies and not to show solidarity with the thousands of victims of this authoritarian regime." It therefore urged foreign dignitaries not to attend the opening ceremonies.
If you were the CEO of America’s largest newspaper group would you have any problems in accepting 43% of your 2007 compensation in stock options? Used to be a pretty good bet, but today?
Well, Craig Dubow, Gannett CEO received 43% of his 2007 compensation in Gannett share options which he can exercise at $61.26 each. Trouble is the shares closed at $30.18 Tuesday and it’s questionable whether Gannett shares will ever see the $60s again. But don’t shed too many tears for DuBow, he still got $4.5 million in cash.
Gannett’s shares lost about half their value in the past 12 months, yet DuBow’s compensation package, including the options, grew 30%. Wonder what shareholders will make of the company’s capitalization being cut in half during the same period the CEO’s compensation package went up 36%? At least DuBow has asked the executive compensation committee to refrain from increasing his salary or bonus this year in light of the “challenging business environment.”
We have written extensively about Bruce Sherman, whose Private Capital Management Inc. (PCM) three years ago controlled more than 100 Million US newspaper shares worth in excess of $4 billion and today the fund owns none, losing hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more, in the process.
Well, it turns out the bad times are continuing for Sherman who will go down in US newspaper infamy for forcing Knight Ridder to sell itself. According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Sherman's firm held 5.5 million Bear Stearns shares as of Dec. 31, 2007, a 4.8% stake. Those shares at Friday's close were valued roughly at about $166.5 million, down 80% from a year ago, and at the offered buyout price Monday of $2 a share they’re worth just $11 million.
Unconfirmed reports say that Sherman and other big Bear Stearns shareholders are considering voting against the JPMorganChase offer. That may be one reason why the Bear Stearns shares closed at $5.91 on Tuesday, nearly three times the offer price
If the deal doesn’t go through then JPMorganChase gets title to Bear Stearns NY headquarters – a property said to be worth more than $1 billion. Goes to show bankers know how to stick it to fellow bankers when they’re in trouble, just as they do to their regular customers!
One of the problems that web sites like ours when concentrating on such a subject as newspapers that seem to do only worse and worse as time goes on is that we get flak from our readers for continuing to send out the doom and gloom message. A bit like shooting the messenger.
So we try and balance coverage trying to find the good news as well as the bad – look for our story later this week on Murdoch’s $1.2 billion printing plant opening in the UK – but the fact is the news about newspapers is mostly bad and getting worse.
So to show that what we write really isn’t as dire as you can find elsewhere we reprint below without change the lead paragraph to a Dow Jones (Murdoch) story on the state of the US newspaper business: “Los Angeles (Dow Jones) -- The digital wave washing over newspapers has turned into a tsunami in the past several weeks, as hundreds of newsroom layoffs coast- to-coast are raising fears that the push for profits and a dismal economy are teaming up to accomplish the unthinkable -- putting the print industry in its grave. “
Bad news we might have expressed, but we’ve never hinted at the graveyard! But now you have one of America’s premier news organizations saying the patient may well be terminal! That can’t be good.
Eurovision announced the running order for the two semi-finals for the Eurovision Song Contest. Montenegro is first in the first semi, Iceland first in the second semi. (Read Eurovision release here with the COMPLETE list) (JMH)
The Berlin/Brandenberg media regulator MABB has granted a license to RADIOROPA for 90.7 FM. (Read MABB release here in German)
It's another news station which has been operating on DVB-T.
The 90.7 FM frequency had been granted to US public broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) to augment the rather limited coverage from its 104.7 FM frequency. NPR "declined to develop" the 90.7 FM frequency.(JMH)
It's another Europe-wide journalist competition! The European Parliament is sponsoring the prise for journalists covering European issues. Winners in each of the four categories - radio, TV, internet and print - receive €5000. (Read details here) (JMH)
ACAP Project Director Mark Bide responds to Phil Stone's article on ACAP saying there's 'commercial suicide' in publishers outside the biggies going on-line without some sort of content protection. (Read his full comment here)
Doubtless this is worthy of reflection by all content producers, not just those who cut down trees.
He mentions, quite correctly, that most robots scouring the web for content pay little attention to robots.txt. They are - WITHOUT QUESTION - looking for content to steal. (JMH)
Further to Phil Stone's article on ACAP (read it here) is ACAP's statement on Google's statement. Got it? (read ACAP statement here)
Clearly the publishing world represented by the ACAP sponsors need to get a grip on Web 2.0. There's a reason Google and other search portals see no need to adopt ACAP. It's the Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. (JMH)
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