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Catch-up Radio Measured
Foreign radio attracts listeners
Radio entertainment programs are the most downloaded in France says audience measurement institute Médiamétrie in results for December, published this week (January 28). While specific shows were not identified, programs – podcasts - from general interest national channels Europe 1 and France Inter were the most popular, followed by programs from France Culture.
Entertainment podcasts were most popular, followed by cultural programs and news. Live streaming via the internet was also measured; entertainment, news and sports attracting the most attention.
Foreign programs – outside France – attracted 3.2 million downloads.
Médiamétrie has just begun measuring internet audience with a system involving imbedded tags in programs. (JMH)
Public, private broadcasters plan awards
“outstanding achievement”
A new competition for German radio broadcasters will be held later this year under the auspices of public network ARD and radio marketing service Radiozentrale. The awards will be the first to include all broadcasters. Details will be announced shortly.
It will be a juried competition with eleven categories. The awards will be handed out in Hamburg. The NDR press release said “outstanding achievements in the year for the entire medium of radio” will be recognized.
Back in 2005, a similar awards competition was organized in Berlin but only private sector broadcasters participated. Public broadcasters backed out, refusing to sit with their commercial rivals. A planned television presentation never materialized. (JMH)
Newsday Pay Wall Flops
You’ll recall back in October that Newsday, the New York Long Island newspaper bought from Tribune for some $650 million, decided that non-subscribers to the print newspaper would have to pay $5 a week -- $260 annually—for full access to the web site. So how many do you think have signed up so far? Would you believe just 35?
That’s the figure given to an unbelieving staff by the publisher in a newsroom meeting last week, according to the New York Observer.
But the experiment is giving out some pretty interesting information that other publishers no doubt will look at closely. The newspaper is owned by the same people who own the local cable service, so the deal is that anyone who subscribes to the print newspaper or subscribes to the local cable service gets the Web site for free and on Long Island that covers most households one way or another. So, those 35 who signed up either don’t read the print paper or watch cable TV or, more likely, are not from Long Island. Regretfully the publisher didn’t say where those 35 are from.
But if you make the assumption the primary reason you visit a newspaper web site is for the local news, and local news is of most interest to, well, locals, then there may be a lesson here about what pay walls will do to shrink a newspaper site’s non-local audience. And if the site still carries advertising, but the number of pages accessed is way down what does that do to advertising revenue? Surely that $9,000 from the 35 Web subscribers won’t make up for less advertising revenue?
No doubt these were the types of thoughts Arthur Sulzberger wrestled with in deciding that in 2011 the New York Times would start charging for its web site by allowing a restricted number of free articles each month (he hasn’t yet said how many but the Financial Times’ model of 10 free articles a month is credited with a big increase in subscriptions since the scheme began.) No one cares about the occasional visitor, but someone who visits often – they’re the prime target.
Of course with the FT many of those subscriptions are from within the financial and corporate community and are probably expense-accounted so a big question will be whether the NYT will have enough exclusive material of interest that the Web subscription will be acceptable to those who approve expense accounts.
Anti-Abortion Ad Ok for Super Bowl?
Before every Super Bowl there’s always a lot of buzz about ads – not only is the Super Bowl the number one program by far on the US TV schedule but people actually watch the ads because they have the reputation over the years for being very good –if you had to pay some $3 million for 30-seconds wouldn’t you want your message to be the best it could possibly be?
Last week the buzz was about Chrysler’s buy of a 60-second spot for Dodge at a cost of some $5 million - $6 million – yes the same Chrysler that took a taxpayer bail-out. And now women’s rights groups are up in arms that CBS has accepted a 30-second anti-abortion advocacy ad sponsored by the Focus on the Family group.
CBS says it is only about 90% sold out for the Super Bowl, at around $2.5 million - $3 million a 30-second spot, so it could well be that previous policies on accepting advocacy ads have gone by the boards – after all $3 million is $3 million. CBS says not so. "We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms on the issue," said spokeswoman Dana McClintock.
As for the National Football League -- "CBS standards and practices department approved the content of the ad as appropriate for the audience. We take no issue with CBS' decision."
More than 30 groups are asking CBS to drop the ad. Focus on the Family couldn’t ask for better pre-game publicity for its message.
Tweet, Tweet – Two Murdoch UK Papers For Sale
So now we know, if you really want to spread a rumor like wildfire just put up a Tweet on Twitter, which is exactly what Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff did in saying “Rumor in London banking circles: Times and Sunday Times up for sale.”
Well that certainly got his fellow Twitterers into a tizzy and the Tweet gained more credence when a Financial Times journalist added, “Working it right now. Being characterized as ‘strong rumor among private equity’ that Times and Sunday Times could be on the block.”
Wolff said later he put out the Tweet, based on a good source, basically to see what leaves fell from the tree. Murdoch, the elder, has newspaper blood in his veins, and surely it is just as prestigious to own the money-losing Times of London as it is the money-losing Wall Street Journal? But son James, who runs the European and Asian business, has “0”s and “1”s running through his veins so maybe he doesn’t care about prestige as much as he does about the bottom line.
No doubt there will be much more on this in the days to come – but remember, it started with a Tweet.
Should Banks Own Newspapers?
The Seattle Times, locally owned by the Blethen family since 1896, has some advice for Bank of America and other lenders that will own the majority of MediaNews when it comes out of bankruptcy. Sell those newspapers to local owners! Doubt Dean Singleton will take kindly to that!
The newspaper editorialized, “ THAT Bank of America and other lenders are taking an 88% stake in The Denver Post, The Salt Lake Tribune, The San Jose Mercury News and dozens of other U.S. newspapers is not welcome. Banks do not belong in the newspaper industry and should find a quick and honorable way out of it.
“The nature, the role and the mentality of newspapers are too different from banking. Newspapers report on the banks; they should not be owned by them. Newspapers should be independent. That is a difficult charge at the moment, but the difficulty of it makes it no less necessary.
“The event that occasions these thoughts is the Chapter 11 filing last week of Affiliated Media, of Denver. Affiliated Media owns MediaNews Group, which owns the above-named papers and others. MediaNews went on a spree of buying newspapers with money borrowed from banks. That strategy has failed. Media News' method of making money was by melding newspapers and their functions, tending to create a nationally homogenized product.
“If there ever was a way to kill the American people's appetite for newspapers, it is this. Make the paper nonlocal. Make it the same everywhere. Treat it as a "property," like a telephone-company bond or a share of stock. Don't sweat the long run because in the long run, as the economist said, we are all dead.
“That is not the way to save newspapers.”
Could be there’s some sense in all of that.
Haiti Telethon Raises Record Amount -- $58 million and Growing
Friday night’s Haiti telethon was not just a US event – TV and cable stations around the world carried it live, too, including CNN International, MTV, and some public broadcasters such as ORF in Austria. Since it wasn’t on until the wee morning hours in Europe, for instance, some stations taped it for later play – a Swiss public broadcaster, for instance, bumping an old American movie for the telethon in early evening on Saturday.
The strip giving the international number to call was on screen all the time, but no word from the organizers on how much came from outside the US.
To earn some $58 million in just a couple of hours is truly remarkable – the most prominent annual US telethon is the Jerry Lewis 21-hour telethon over the Labor Day holiday (the first Monday in September which designates the end of vacation season) and last year the telethon raised $60.5 million, compared to $65 million the year before. But the Jerry Lewis money comes after a great deal of hard fund raising work over many months at the local community level by groups across America, yet in just a couple of hours almost as much was raised for Haiti. The Lewis show is on one station in a market whereas Haiti was carried by the networks, even YouTube, so the audience was pretty captive.
Host and organizer George Clooney said he gave $1 million and other Hollywood stars have said the same – Jerry Lewis probably never gets that generosity – and so far the Haiti organizers haven’t said how much has come from the minute contributions from all over America that Jerry Lewis usually depends upon.
Still, it’s a lot of money in a very short time and the songs sang on the telecast can be downloaded from ITunes and that money will also flow to charities, too.
Big Money and Foreign Ratings for “House”
The Brits best know Hugh Laurie for a long varied comedy career but Americans and viewers in some 250 countries will never pick up on any British accent and they know him better as cranky Dr. House, and for the second year in a row House is by far the most popular import on European television.
Europe went through a spell a few years back when American TV imports were somewhat frowned upon – this was unwelcome inexpensive American culture rather than European TV stations investing in producing far better, although more expensive, European culture, the politicians were saying. The people running things with the remote control, however, saw it very differently. Thus in France, that was in the forefront of the politicians’ outrage against cheap American TV imports, House in 2008 averaged some 9 million viewers per episode – up some 30% from the year before. In Italy and Germany House garners more than 4 million viewers each. Other big US shows that make it big in Europe include CSI: Las Vegas, CSI: Miami, Lost and Desperate Housewives.
With the dollar down which keeps the price of American imports down, and advertising down, which means TV stations will still require inexpensive alternatives to producing all their own programming, the outlook looks bright for House and the others to continue on even stronger.
More Haiti radio aid
Power at a premium
Response to the crisis in earthquake-ravaged Haiti by media development agencies and broadcasters has helped fill the information void. There will be heroes when this story is finally written.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) contracted with Internews, an international media development specialist, to coordinate media relief and monitor humanitarian information. Internews also coordinated local Haitian distribution of the “Hope For Haiti Now” telethon broadcast last week.
The BBC began offering a short daily program in Creole (January 23), broadcast on six local FM stations. It’s the first time BBC has produced a news program in Creole. The 20-minute daily program is produced in Miami. The BBC’s English, French and Spanish services targeting the Caribbean feature disaster relief information.
The BBC’s local Haitian FM outlet Radio Lumiere was knocked off the air by the earthquake.
Port-au-Prince station Signal FM managed to stay on the air during and flowing the earthquake, reported CNN (January 24). The Haitian government and others have contributed fuel for the stations power generators. Another FM station still on the air is Caraibes FM, operating on the sidewalk in front of its damaged building, powered by automobile batteries.
And power for everything from radios to lights and cellphones remains a problem, solved by ingenuity and good will. The United States Army has been passing out solar-powered and wind-up radios, about 80,000, in Port-au-Prince. Cellphone provider Digicel, owned by Irish broadcaster Denis O’Brien, set up free battery charging stations.
Three Haitian media workers died in the devastating earthquake, reported the Haitian Association of Journalists (January 23); Radio Galaxie reporter Wanel Fils, Radio Magic 9 reporter Henry Claude Pierre and Radio Tele Guinen cameraman Belot Senatus. (JMH)
Commanding lead for Swiss public radio
Fewer tuning in
Slightly fewer people tuned-in to radio in the second half 2009, when compared with the first half of last year. And Swiss public broadcaster SSR-SRG channels continue to hold a commanding lead over private sector competitors, according to the bi-annual Mediapulse audience survey.
In the dominant Swiss-German speaking region, the overall listening share dropped to 89.3% from 90.3% in the first half 2009. (See market share rankings in the Swiss-German region here) Comparisons with surveys released prior to the first half 2009 were rendered useless after Mediapulse made sampling adjustments and upgraded the Radiocontrol ‘watch’. The half-year survey periods are January through June and July through December.
Overall listening in the French-speaking region dropped to 86.2% from 87.4%. (See market share ranking in the French speaking region here) In the Italian-speaking region overall listening dropped insignificantly to 88.2% from 88.3%. (See market share rankings in the Italian-speaking region here)
The three main radio channels of Swiss-German regional public broadcaster DRS lost market share, the overall DRS market share dropping to 65.6% from 66.6% in the first half 2009. DRS offers 11 radio channels covering the entire Swiss-German region. Public radio market shares increased in both the French and Italian speaking regions. (JMH)
Job cuts too costly
And everything else
Several local sources reported this week (January 21) up to 400 jobs would be cut at Hungarian public television MTV. That isn’t exactly the case, said an MTV spokesperson. A new round of redundancies – that dreadful euphemism for firings – won’t happen because MTV can’t cover severance costs without financial intervention from the government.
MTV is in a difficult financial position. It put up for bid it’s broadcast rights to this years World Cup. The Board of Trustees wants to combine MTV, Duna TV and public radio under one management to save money. But the new headquarters building awaits completion.
The latest communication from MTV says consultants will be next to go, questions raised about €3 million fees due the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). As usual, said the statement, administrative staff departing will not be replaced. (JMH)
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