The Tickle File is ftm's daily column of media news, complimenting the feature articles on major media issues. Tickle File items point out media happenings, from the oh-so serious to the not-so serious, that should not escape notice...in a shorter, more informal format.

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Week of August 20, 2007

Sarkozy In The Footsteps of Katy Couric – Voila, Electronically, No Love Handles

Arnold Lagardère is a great friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Lagardère publishes the popular Paris Match magazine. The magazine published pictures of Sarkozy on holiday this month in the US. The pictures were very flattering – actually it turns out a helping electronic hand made at least one of them even more flattering. Incentive for doing that? Unflattering stories about Sarkozy and his wife last year, while he was still Interior Minister, saw the then Paris Match editor lose his job.

According to L’Express on a picture of the President sitting naked from the waste up in a boat Paris Match had “removed with the wave of a magic wand the love handles that were slightly weighing down the figure of Nicolas Sarkozy.”  L’Express printed both the before and after shots! Indeed the poignees d’amour were gone in the Paris Match photo. No comment from the magazine.

Brings to mind the Katy Couric debacle at CBS last summer. In the midst of all the promotional hoop-la before she was to begin anchoring duties in September someone at the CBS photo department thought Katy looked too fat in a picture chosen to illustrate a CBS-produced magazine article, so editors slimmed her down electronically by some 20 pounds (9kg).

If only it could be so in real life!

Dow Jones Puts More Emphasis On Online Products

For the first time Barrons Online has its own dedicated general manager and it comes as an auspicious time – the weekly financial newspaper just passed 100,000 in print circulation and then, of course, Rupert Murdoch is on the near horizon.

Indeed Dow Jones named a new vice president for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (formerly known as Dow Jones Online) and that appointment is of note because many believe Murdoch will want to switch the Journal’s web site to free with advertising instead of the current subscription model.

And MarketWatch.com now also has a new general manager – Jim Bernard, who was vice president of strategy and market intelligence in the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.

It’s unlikely any of these people would have taken the new positions if there was not some sort of a wink or a nod from News Corp. that when Murdoch takes over those positions will be secure.

UK Daily Mail Wows With Its Online Numbers

As ftm noted recently the US Drudge Report has been linking very often to the UK Daily Mail web site and surely that should mean big viewing numbers, but that information wasn’t available because Associated Newspapers rarely participates in ABC online audits.

But it did for July and the results have astounded the UKs online news community, for the Mail scored as its second most read newspaper  web site with nearly 12 million unique visitors, beating The Sun, The Times and The Telegraph but still well behind the market-leading Guardian that has 16 million unique visitors.

Only 22.47% of the Daily Mail’s traffic originated from within the UK, according to the audit while for the Guardian some 37% of the users were UK based.

ABC Cuts Jobs In Washington To Redeploy In Digital

ABC has cut 16 more staffers in its Washington, D.C. bureau to make way what it calls additional “assets” in its digital operations. ABC had announced in June it would be firing some 35 (1%) of its news workforce.

And ABC has told union officials that it wants changes to the seniority system (first hired, last fired) to take into account computer skills which it believes are necessary in the digital world.

To the older, better paid employees who may not be all that savvy with the latest hardware and software skills that sounds like a backdoor approach of getting rid of the old to hire younger, less expensive employees. You know it is possible for old dogs to learn new tricks – it’s called training.

AP and NBC Join Together For Olympics Premium Online Service

The Associated Press says it has reached a deal with NBC Universal that will permit the AP to link to NBC’s videos of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as part of a premium online service it is developing for its US clients. NBC holds exclusive US video rights to the Games.

AP says it is developing an Olympics premium site carrying its own interactive graphics and multimedia content and NBC will provide links to its video and other online content it develops.

Financial terms were not released.

AP said that news outlets that subscribe to its service can feed it directly onto their own web site or use a hosted version that is branded accordingly.

With New Measurement System Google Extends Search Lead Over Yahoo!

Google’s share of online search queries is now at 55.2% of the total while Yahoo’s share has dropped to 23.5% under new measurement rules adopted by ComScore Inc.

ComScore says it now additionally measures queries sent to search engines from other Web sites and that pushed Google up from 46.2% to now having more than half of the market.

Nielsen/NetRatings also has Google far ahead with 53.3% of the market, but Nielsen has not changed its methodology and does not include searches from other sites. Nielsen puts Yahoo’s share at 20.1%, down from 23.8% a year ago.

No More Live Ole! From The Spanish Public Broadcaster

The first program the Spanish public broadcaster TVE transmitted back in 1948 was a bullfight. It has been a staple of its programming ever since. So imagine the shock of  the announcement it is not covering this year’s season live, although there will be highlights late at night.

The network says that such violence is not allowed to be shown during the time normally devoted to children’s programming (up to 8 p.m.) and there were rights issues, but there is a deep suspicion the public broadcaster has accepted the increasing public outcry that the national pastime of killing bulls in a bullring is just plain cruel, although, truth be told, the ratings have remained pretty good. But it appears Spain is moving on!

Politicians are already discussing a proposal to ban those under 14 from attending the corrida. If that gets passed it will probably eventually kill the sport for it depends on the young to be the new fans of the future.

Live bullfighting won’t disappear from Spanish screens – there are many satellite or cable stations that will pick up TVE’s slack -- so the National Fiesta will still be available, but just not on the public broadcaster.

US High School Sports Getting Big Web Attention

For as long as ftm has been in existence we have been saying that the media on the web needs to pay more attention to local high school sports because it is one local subject that brings all demographics together.

And so we note with some interest that suddenly Hearst-Argyle Television, Emmis Communications, and Belo have each, separately, launched high school web initiatives.

Why do it? “High school sports is an untapped area,” said Chris Campbell, director of interactive media at Emmis, and managing director of IHSAAsports.org (Indiana High School Athletic Association). “We’ve found an overwhelmingly positive reaction from advertisers who are hungry to reach the multiple demographics that high school sports attract.”

Belo is launching Hsgametime.com, covering high school football in six of its TV markets, and plans to extend it to all 15 of by next month.

Hearst-Argyle is launching HighSchoolPlaybook, an online, on-air and mobile service combining social networking with video, stats, music and merchandising.

Magazines Are Still In Vogue – The September Issue Has 100 More Advertising pages Than Last September

One way the magazine world judges the state of the magazine economy is to see how thick the September issue of the US Vogue Magazine is. It’s the month all the designers want to show off their fall fashions and it is the real biggie of the year.  And this year it came in with a whopping 727 pages of advertising, 100 pages more than last year. The luxury trade is alive and well!

Vogue has also launched a broadband web channel which, besides offering plenty of runway shows and other original programming, also provides links directly to each of the print edition’s advertisers. And the advertisers seem to really like that. We’ll need to wait a while to see if the good idea actually results in plentiful direct sales for the advertisers.

Radio rips ad spending
…except in the US

As if last weeks’ radio audience figures weren’t enough to get UK broadcasters off Prozac here comes the Q2 revenue report from the RadioCentre.

Second quarter national ad revenue for radio rose 3.2% over the previous period and local ad revenue rose 1.2%. Total Q2 radio revenue was £149.4 million, 57% national, 27% local and 16% in sponsorships and promotions. The Q2 RAJAR audience survey showed listening to commercial radio up 4% compared with the same period last year.

And, on the other side of the International Dateline, Nielsen Media reports radio advertising in New Zealand up 16.5%. Similar double-digit increases in radio advertising are common this year, particularly in Eastern Europe. In July Nielsen Media reported a 2.5% increase in radio ad spending in Italy, comparing May results to the previous year.

The notable exception to the trend is the US ad market, where just released June figures show a 9% drop for radio advertising from May.

Brits Slam Web News Video For Identifying Student  Culprits

In the first ruling of its kind the UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC) says that video shot by a citizen journalist student of her fellow students who were badly misbehaving in class and which a Scottish newspaper ran on its web site violated the offending students’ privacy

The PCC said students have a right to privacy while they were in school and several students could be identified in the video shot with a mobile phone camera by a classmate who was dismayed that her fellow students were dancing in the classroom and playing games rather than studying.

The PCC said the subject matter was fair game, but being able to identify the offenders was not.

The student shot the video to explain to her parents why her math results were so poor – how could one study in such a classroom atmosphere? But the PTA (parent/teacher association) president complained the film was shot without permission and damaged the school’s reputation.

The PCC ruled the filming itself was ok – the story was one of considerable public interest – and the fault lay only in making it possible to identify the offending students. Other newspapers that ran stills from the video were in the clear because the students could not be identified in those particular stills.

Another Beauty Product Ad Runs Afoul Of UK Advertising Standards

Can fear sell cosmetics? Apparently Clarins thinks so. How’s this: “If electromagnetic waves can penetrate walls, imagine what they can do to your skin?” The message was that Expertise 3P (Poly Pollution Protection) neutralizes the effect of electromagnetic waves on skin.

But the UK’s Advertising Standards Association (ASA) wasn’t having any of it and has ruled that Clarins failed to substantiate its claims, they were not truthful, and were fear-mongering. ASA ran its own tests and told Clarins to stop claiming the waves caused skin damage and to stop claiming the product has any anti-ageing or health claims unless the company could provide supporting evidence.

ASA recently nailed another cosmetics company, L’Oreal, for a misleading ad featuring Penelope Cruz for L’Oreal Telescopic mascara. The ad claimed the product could increase eye lash length by up to 60%. Trouble is L’Oreal added some fake eye lashes to fill gaps between Cruz’ natural eye lashes.

L’Oreal admitted adding the false eyelashes but said it didn’t matter, claiming its product does increase eyelash length. ASA didn’t buy that, saying “In the absence of a disclaimer stating that Penelope Cruz was wearing some individual false lashes added to her natural lashes, and because the ad did not make clear that the claim referred to an increase in the ‘appearance’ of lash length (rather than actual growth) , the ads could mislead. It ordered future showings to contain the disclaimer that false lashes were being used, and that the 60% claim applied just to ‘appearance’.

China’s Media Spend Will Overtake UK and Germany By end 2008

China will be responsible for 6.8% of the world’s global media spend by the end of next year, placing it third behind the US and Japan, according to a report by Group M.

The WPP-owned company says that by the end of next China will have 6.8% of the world’s global ad spend, outstripping the two leading European ad spend countries (UK, 5.7%; Germany 5.3%).

Still leading the world by far, according to the report, will be the US 36.6% followed by Japan with 8.5%.

The big advertising strength in China is television with the report forecasting it will account for 71.7% of the spend by the end of next year.

Don’t forget China hosts the summer Olympic Games next August.

Vincent Bolloré joins Médiamétrie board

Médiamétrie confirmed (Friday August 17) that Havas Groupe chief Vincent Bolloré will join its board of directors October 3rd.

Bolloré is considered one of the most powerful media people in France, more so now with his close relationship with French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Yes, there are tiny little conflicts of interest. Mais, bon, c'est la France.

Bolloré replaces outgoing board member Dominique Delport, General Director of ad agency MPG, a Havas subsidiary. Médiamétrie’s 15 member board is equally divided among ad agency, radio and television representatives.

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