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Digital transition for radio broadcasters has wound its way through several platforms, most recently boosted by online offerings. Powerful interests have lobbied for or against every approach. Regulators are having quite a time sorting out the impact of it all.
Poland’s media regulator KRRiT wants an independent examination of the “social costs,” noted wirtualnemedia.pl (May 28). The analysis, said the tender, must evaluate the current status of AM/MW and FM usage, potential consumer take-up of DAB+ platform receivers over the next decade and resulting changes in the “dynamics of household expenditures.” Radio broadcasters in Poland have been platform agnostic, dabbling in one or more but generally settling into online distribution. The KRRiT would like the analysis completed by the end of September. (See more about digital radio here)
Earlier this month the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) held its Euroradio meetings in Warsaw for public broadcasters. In an opening speech EBU Director General Ingrid Deltenre offered that radio broadcasting is reaching 83% of Europeans each day, reported wyborcza.biz (May 20). “It’s still the same as ten years ago.”
And this is exactly the point and some recent national audience estimates - the UK in particular - show measured reach and listening levels dropping. Much of radio broadcasting is “still the same,” pleasing some, no doubt, as many quite traditional offerings hold listeners attention. Of the smartphone bunch, it’s still evolving.
It’s time to start charging for that information super-highway, said Italian communications regulator Agcom president Marcello Cardani to Il Sole 24 Ore (May 28). Free access, “fine for the pioneering phase of the web, is no longer adequate.” Everyone should be paying, he seemed to say, from search engine Google to news consumers.
“We built highways on which trucks full of goods pass,” he explained. “What a utility generates has a construction cost. This cost must be passed on to those who take advantage.” How that redistribution should take place, he admitted, “I wouldn’t venture.”
"Online copyright is difficult to manage,” he continued.” Where the product is intangible, there is always tension in the assignment of rights. There must be a system that brings peace to the world of news. Currently, that system is not here.” The recent agreement between Google and some European publishers on a financial contribution “cannot be considered the definitive solution to the dispute.”
Another German court tossed a lawsuit against technology company Eyeo over its AdBlock Plus software. TV broadcasters RTL Group and ProSiebenSat1.Media complained that allowing consumers to block ads on its web portals endangers programming free-to-air (or stream). Eyeo’s “whitelisting” policy allowing online ads to pass through the screen for a price is even more irritating. The Munich commercial court shrugged, reported media portal wuv.de (May 26), calling Eyeo’s business “within the limits of fair competition.”
The court also said AdBlock Plus usage is too small, in the great scheme of things, to raise its ire. Instead, the judges offered advice to the broadcasters: up your game and give web users an option to opt-out. In April a Cologne court dismissed a similar lawsuit from Handelsblatt and Die Zeit Online against Eyeo over AdBlock Plus. Both RTL Group and ProSiebenSat1.Media indicated appeals would be forthcoming. (See more about media in Germany here)
Recent figures from the German advertising association ZAW showed TV advertising up 4% this year and online ads up 6.6%. The big difference is TV ads account for 28% of all German advertising with online ads but 8.7%. Advertising people, almost unanimously, favor ad blocking software as a means of limiting the public’s exposure to ads they hate.
It could be argued that no advance in technology has grown as fast as information and communication technologies - the ICTs. That includes the wheel. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) released is annual report on global ICT development, mindboggling what changes have come to pass in just 15 years.
Certainly adoption rates for all technologies have increased at staggering rates, largely because the means to communicate smarter, better, faster to the world has never been greater. Mobile technologies are a case in point: this year 69% of the world’s population will have access to 3G mobile broadband. In 2011 it was 45%. Across the globe there are more than 7 billion mobile service subscriptions. Fifteen years ago it was but 738 million. Among the 4 billion urban dwellers a staggering 89% will have 3G access. Catching up are the 3.4 billion living in rural areas, 29% with 3G access this year.
Internet penetration has reached 43% of everybody, from 6.5% in 2000. Household internet access is 46%. The ITU notes, however, the 4 billion people in developing countries remain without internet access and about 85% of those in Least Developed Countries do not use the internet. (See ITU presser here)
“These new figures not only show the rapid technological progress made to date, but also help us identify those being left behind in the fast-evolving digital economy, as well as the areas where ICT investment is needed most,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao in the statement.
His Holiness Pope Francis told Argentine newspaper La Voz del Pueblo (May 25) he’s never used the internet and stopped watching TV in 1990. Perhaps Secretary-General Zhao should ask for an audience.
Listeners to Denmark’s Radio24syvs were subjected to a show host either making a deep philosophical point or raising his social media profile. In any case, it was rude. During a Monday program host Asger Juhl took a nine-week old rabbit and broke its neck with a bicycle pump. An animal rights activist in the studio at the time could be heard screaming.
“We wanted to expose the hypocrisy that exists among many Danes,” he told tv2.com (May 25). “Danes eat meat every day but think it is a sin to kill animals. It simply makes no sense.” He went on to explain that a zookeeper had been consulted on the method as “each week they kill baby rabbits as food for snakes.”
In February 2014 a Copenhagen zoo caused considerable outrage by publicly slaughtering an 18-month old giraffe, complete with the butchering live-streamed. Social media erupted then as it has now. A Florida radio shock jock was indicted in 2001 for animal cruelty after presiding over the castration and slaughter of a boar live on-the-air. He was later acquitted.
Radio24syvs was created in 2010 as a semi-private news-talk alternative to Denmark’s public broadcaster DR. The non-commercial station is jointly owned by publisher Berlingske Media and advertising company People Group. It has struggled for both ratings and credibility. (See more about media in Denmark here)
Mr. Juhl took the dead rabbit home, he told TV2, and made stew.
Russian news outlets are often excoriated by Western reporters, analysts and others as under the thumb of an authoritarian regime, ample evidence cited. Critical voices are rarely heard, they say. There are exceptions.
“I’m still working, though after this speech perhaps not,” said renowned talk show host Vladimir Posner to a Russian Human Rights Council and Press Complaints Board conference, quoted by RBC (May 25). Mr. Posner hosts a talk show on State TV Channel One. As the Soviet Union crumbled he was often seen on Western TV news programs explaining events in a perfect New York accent. And, yes, his long career began with Radio Moscow.
“I am convinced that either the media are independent from the State and then the Fourth Estate or dependent on the State… becoming an instrument of State propaganda,” he offered. “It is enough to watch the news on Federal TV channels to know that they are all the same.” (See more about media in Russia here)
“Today in Russia you can count on one hand the real independent media.” Radio channel Ekho Moscvy, often praised by foreign observers, is “pseudo-independent,” he said. “We all know that 65% of that radio (channel) belongs to Gazprom-Media and we all know who owns that. Today there is no professional journalism in Russia, there are journalists.”
He added that the guest list for his television show is censored. “I know there are people that I cannot ask on the program although they are of great interest. I would have very much liked to invite (Boris) Nemtsov and asked many times. But now it just cannot be.” Activist Boris Nemtsov was murdered near Red Square in February.
It must be noted that several Russian news portals in addition to RBC reported Mr. Posner’s comments.
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