MEDIABLAB DAILY DIGEST FEB 28: ESPN-STAR AUSTRALIAN TENNIS OPEN SCMP VARIETY
February 28th 2008 01:31
CAN REED BUSINESS INFORMATION BE SOLD IN THE CURRENT ECONOMIC CLIMATE?
Women’s Wear Daily reports that its publisher, Conde Nast has ruled itself out of the running to buy Reed Business Information, the Reed Elsevier division that puts out Variety, Publishers Weekly and Broadcasting & Cable, among others.
A spokeswoman for Conde Nast Publications said on Tuesday that the company isn't interested.
Many US media analysts had tipped Conde Nast as a strong contender and, as Women’s Wear daily comments, this “further raises the question as to why Reed Elsevier is selling now. For one, the Anglo-Dutch company won't see the kind of money it could have garnered a year ago. The magazines could sell for between US$2 billion and $2.5 billion, according to analysts, but could have pocketed as much as $3.5 billion if they had approached the market before the economy began to buckle, said Reed Phillips, of investment firm Desilva Phillips.
FIRST ENGLISH-CHINESE MOBILE PHONE NEWSPAPER LAUNCHED IN CHINA
China daily issued a press release saying that together with China Mobile it has launched “China's first English-Chinese mobile paper” at a ceremony and press conference held in Beijing on Tuesday.
Jointly produced by China Daily and China Mobile, China Daily Mobile News sends English-Chinese news to users' mobile phones as multimedia messages through wireless technology.
China Daily Mobile News will be sent to users twice a day, in the morning and evening. Each multimedia package contains 10 to 20 items of news, including Top News, Biz Info, Odd News, Celebrity, Health, Language Tips, Cartoon, Laughter, Vocabulary and Word Price.
The target users of China Daily Mobile News are foreign officials, embassy representatives, members of chambers of commerce and foreign companies, white collar workers, public servants and college students.
BID TO PRIVATISE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST PUBLISHER SEEMS SCUPPERED
Kerry Media Ltd’s attempts to privatise Hong Kong’s SCMP Group, publisher of the South China Morning Post, seems to have run its course with the company failing to acquire the 90 percent share it needed.
Kerry Media Ltd is a company controlled by Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok's Kerry Group.
A statement from the SCMP Group said only 29 percent of investors had accepted Kerry Media's offer of HK$2.75 per share and, as Tuesday, Kerry Media owned 75 percent of the SCMP.
Marketing reported that yesterday The SCMP today suspended trading of its stock, pending the release of an announcement about the status of its ownership.
A Goldman Sachs report said the fact that only half of the non-Kerry Media shareholders tendered their stock suggested a "lack of enthusiasm" for the $2.75 offer price.
"We assume this may have flowed from an expectation that the Kerry group would sell SCMP's substantial property assets to another Kerry group company following a privatisation at prices above those reported on SCMP's balance sheet," the report said.
Media Asia reported that a source pointed out that minority shareholders may have felt that the SCMP Group’s property assets were being undervalued by Kerry Media’s offer price.
“SCMP has a bunch of properties which might be better transferred to another Kerry Group company, and once they privatised it might be easier to make those transfers,” the source told Media Asia. “Minority shareholders may have been aggrieved.”
SCMP Group’s property assets include TV City along with a significant amount of office building space. The group has been hit by falling corporate notice spend, and increased competition from the internet and free daily The Standard, but it remains a “highly profitable” operation, said the source.
AUSTRALIAN INTERNET COMPANIES BEING PUSHED TO DEVELOP NEW RATINGS SYSTEM
Australian internet companies are being pressurised to spend up to A$10 million on a new ratings system that would allow advertisers to compare online audiences with those for television, radio and other media.
The Australian today reported that while advertisers spent close to $1.4 billion on all forms of internet advertising last year, there is still no single audience measurement system that all publishers agree on, the online equivalent of newspaper readership or TV ratings.
Funding such a system is understood to be a key agenda item at the Interactive Advertising Bureau board meeting, which includes all the leading publishers, due to take place today.
Industry sources estimated the $370 million general internet advertising sector risked losing tens of millions of dollars from its failure to resolve the issue.
AUSTRALIA’S ‘MACMEDIA’ INCREASES PROFITS LOCALLY AND IN TAIWAN AND THE US
One of Australia’s leading regional media player, Macquarie Media Group has become one of the few media groups to forecast improved advertising conditions after yesterday reporting a 26.6 percent increase in interim group earnings to $123.6 million.
But , The Australian reports, the group which recently acquired Ten's regional television affiliates from Southern Cross Broadcasting, has suffered a large non-cash write-down after interest rates fell in the US.
MacMedia, owner of a mass of local US newspapers and Taiwan's main cable pay-TV group, hedges its exposure to global interest rates and was forced to mark down its portfolio back to market prices by $29.6 million due to recent US rate falls.
When that charge and another for creating new debt facilities to fund the Southern Cross deal was taken into account, the group's bottom line profit fell to $4.2 million from $21.8 million a year ago.
The group’s TV stations were its best performers, with operating earnings up 17.3 percent to $35.8 million partly due to strong election spending.
The company's Taiwanese cable group also had a strong result, reporting an earnings margin of 59.6 percent that MacMedia said was the highest of any Asian cable operator.
Its US business, American Consolidated Media, had reached "critical size" following two recent acquisitions, which takes the number of local papers it owns in the US to 105.
That division lifted operating earnings by 6.8 per cent to $8.3 million in the half.
Al-JAZEERA AUSTRALIAN JOURNALIST CREATES HISTORY TWICE OVER WITH AWARD
Hamish MacDonald, an Australian working for Al-Jazeera English, has won the young journalist of the year award from the Royal Television Society of London, becoming the first journalist outside of the BBC or ITN to win in the 10-year history of the awards.
The judges comments read: "The jury admired the winner's confidence, style and spirit, particularly the reporting from Malaysia in the thick of the pro-democracy demonstrations broken up by water cannon. Real star quality."
The award was also Al-Jazeera English's first from the Royal Television Society.
Meanwhile, another young Australian reporter has signed on with Al-Jazeera in Kuala Lumpur.
Daniel Hoare, an ABC radio current affairs journalist who began his career on The Australian, will start his new job in April.
DIGITAL RADIO DOOMED IN AUSTRALIA BEFORE IT EVEN LAUNCHES SAYS ACADEMIC
Podcasting and MP3 players have doomed digital radio before it even launches in Australia, one of the country's leading broadcasting academics says.
According to The Australian, Jock Given, a professor of media and communications at Swinburne University, who specialises in digital broadcasting, predicts the industry will have difficulty convincing people to upgrade.
He said that, unlike upgrading from analogue to digital television, where there were clear image quality benefits, digital radio didn't add much to the digital audio content already freely available on the internet and portable via MP3 players.
Given's comments were sparked by GCap, one of Britain's largest commercial radio operators, announcing it would quit digital radio to focus on analogue and online services. GCap's reasoning was that digital radio was not an "economically viable platform".
GCap's move is a stinging indictment of the prospects of digital radio in Australia because Britain was seen as one of the markets in which the platform had been relatively successful.
INTERNET BOOSTS RADIO’S MARKETING POWER ACCORDING TO CANADIAN STUDY
Media In Canada reports that advertisers who effectively couple the emotion, immediacy and reach of radio with the information capacity of the internet are far more likely to meet or exceed their sales goals.
This is the gospel according to Chris Bandak, president of Foundation Research Group, which recently conducted a study for the Radio Marketing Bureau.
He said, "Over the past few years, we've seen some significant growth in the marketing power of radio when combined with the internet. A clever spot plays on the radio and provides a web address to get more information. Listeners use that URL to go clicking around for more info and the majority end up purchasing your product."
The study found that 57 percent of radio listeners said they go to a website for more information based on an ad they hear, and nearly 60 percent of that group said they ultimately end up making a purchase.
The study also showed that 39 percent of Canadian adults listen to radio while on-line, and 41 percent of adults have typed a website address into their browser after hearing it on radio, up 6 percentage points versus last year's survey.
PAKISTANI INTERNET PROVIDERS MAY HAVE CAUSED WORLD-WIDE YOUTUBE CRASH
Reuters reports that Pakistani internet service providers may have inadvertently blocked the popular YouTube Web site across the world at the weekend when they restricted local access to the site, a telecommunications official said.
Many users around the world were unale to access YouTube about two hours because traffic had been routed according to erroneous internet protocols. The source of the problem was a network in Pakistan, YouTube said in a statement.
Pakistan ordered local internet service providers to block access to the site because it was running material insulting to Islam, a Pakistani industry official said on Sunday.
A government telecommunications official said the initial order to restrict local access might have mistakenly affected users around the world, but there had been no intention to block the site worldwide.
HONG KONG’S FREE-TO-AIR TV MARKET HOTS UP WITH NEW PROGRAM LAUNCH
Marketing reports that Hong Kong’s free-to-air network ATV will launch four primetime shows from next Monday in its bid to close the ratings gap between market leader TVB.
The shows will air consecutively between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm in Hong Kong.
An ATV spokesman said the company is adopting a new programming strategy to help boost ATV's rating share.
Marketing said that ATV has 15 percent to 20 percent of rating share, whereas TVB's Jade Channel has 80 percent.
TVB said made the same move last year when it almost reached the bottom of the industry. Ouch.
AUSTRALIAN PUBLISHER OF THE FIJI SUN ARRESTED AND DEPORTED BY PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
Fiji’s military-led provisional government arrested and expelled Russell Hunter, the publisher of the Fiji Sun daily newspaper, yesterday.
An Australian citizen, Hunter has been banned from returning to Fiji.
Hunter, 59, and the former editor of the Fiji Times, was arrested at his home in the capital, Suva, by immigration officials, who escorted him to Nadi international airport and put him on a flight to Sydney this morning.
The government said Hunter had violated immigration laws by "conducting himself in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, security and stability of the sovereign state of the Fiji Islands."
On his arrival in Sydney, Hunter said he was expelled because of stories in Fiji Sun alleging that finance minister Mahendra Chaudhry (a former prime minister) was involved in tax evasion.
"We were expecting it," Hunter said.
Both the Australian and New Zealand government's have condemned the expulsion of Hunter, who had a work permit that was valid until August 2009. The Fijian immigration department has given his wife, Martha Waradin, three weeks to leave the country together with their 13-year-old daughter.
Hunter’s case has come to the attention of press freedom organisation Reporters without Borders, which said, “Hunter's expulsion is unacceptable and contrary to all of the Fiji government's international undertakings.
"This arbitrary decision deprives the Fiji Sun of its publisher and managing editor and sends a disturbing signal to other Fijian journalists thinking of publishing information that could upset the authorities. We call on the prime minister, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, to reverse this decision and to allow Hunter to resume working in Fiji.
"The good intentions towards the privately-owned media professed by Bainimarama and other senior officials have lost all credibility after Hunter's expulsion."
Hunter has written a graphic account of his “abduction,” in today’s Media section in The Australian newspaper.
INDIA’S ESPN-STAR SIGNS SEVEN YEAR CONTACT FOR ASIAN TELECAST OF AUSTRALIAN TENNIS OPEN
India’s ESPN-STAR Sports has announced a new seven-year contract for the Australian Open till 2014, covering cable & satellite, IPTV, DTH and terrestrial rights.
ESPN-STAR Sports and Tennis Australia have also agreed to a ground-breaking collaboration for new media platforms such as mobile telephony and the internet, according to Exchange4media.
The new contract gives ESPN rights for the entire Asian territory, including China, for 2008, while the 2009 the rights will cover 23 countries across South Asia, South East Asia and North Asia with the exception of China.
Manu Sawhney, ESPN’s managing director, told Exchange4media that, “The Australian Open has always occupied a special place in Asian sports fans’ hearts with its legacy as one of the most prestigious tournaments in the world of tennis. We have built a very successful partnership with Tennis Australia over the last six years and we are extremely pleased to now extend our relationship for another seven years.”
“With the strong equity that our brands enjoy across Asia and the strength of our new media platforms, including mobile and online, we are committed to further strengthen the appeal and distribution of Australian Open across Asia and to continue its growth as the Grand Slam of Asia/Pacific>”.
This latest multi-year acquisition adds to the list of the world’s top tennis events already airing on the ESPN-STAR Sports network, including the Wimbledon throughout Asia, the French Open in South Asia, the ATP Masters Series, which comprises 10 of the best tennis tournaments outside of the Grand Slams, and the Hyundai Hopman Cup, the only ITF official international mixed teams competition.
BBC WORLDWIDE HIRES INDIAN HEAVY HITTERS FOR ITS SOUTH ASIAN OFFICE
BBC Worldwide has hired three Indian heavy hitters to strengthen its business operations in South Asia, according to Agencyfaqs.
Jasdeep Pannu has hired as director of programming, Shaalu Wadhwa as director of marketing and communications, and Abhijeet Deolekar as creative director.
Pannu began his career at New Delhi Television as producer for entertainment and infotainment, before joining STAR Sports and later, Sahara One, as creative director. Prior to joining BBC Worldwide, Pannu was head of programming for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, where his responsibilities included delivering programming strategies, acquiring content, developing Discovery Channel’s first India productions and supervising promotional campaigns.
Wadhwa was marketing director with Nickelodeon India (a subsidiary of MTV Networks) and she was instrumental in re-launching the brand and developing the architecture of its positioning. She has also worked with Dakini Books Publishing House in New York and as associate director, marketing, at the Turner Group’s Cartoon Network India .
Deolekar has produced and edited some well known Indian series for Zoom Television and SAB TV.
CBS CORP POSTS 15 PERCENT FOURTH-QUARTER INCOME DECLINE BUT IS READY TO GO ON ACQUISITION PUSH
The Wall Street Journals reports that CBS Corp in the US has posted a 15 percent decline in fourth-quarter net income.
But the company also signalled a new acquisition push to offset a slowdown in its more mature broadcast television and radio businesses.
The Wall Street Journal said “CBS's earnings portrayed a company generating significant cash but little growth, fanning concerns about the long-term prospects of its core businesses. TV and radio both performed poorly, with radio's operating income plunging 22 percent, as weak ad sales and the sale of stations took a toll.
The one bright spot was outdoor advertising, a smaller division than radio or TV, which boosted its operating income 29 percent.
CBS chief executive Leslie Moonves said he may make acquisitions in high-growth areas, such as new media and outdoor advertising.
He also warned against counting the TV business out, saying "network television is still the best game in town."
Moonves said the radio business, which has undergone a major overhaul, would post revenue growth this year, contrary to some analyst expectations. CBS said its outdoor-advertising division was expected to have a first quarter similar to the fourth quarter, when revenue was up 7 percent.
WARNING SIGNS IN THE US THAT INTERNET ADVERTISING MAY NOT BE RECESSION-PROOF
Internet advertising may be showing itself more vulnerable to a consumer slowdown than many in the industry had hoped, according to new search-ad data released this week.
The Wall Street Journal said Google’s poor January performance (see yesterday’s MediaBlab) amplified existing concerns about the effect of a broader economic slowdown on the internet.
The Journal added that many online-ad experts have played down such worries, predicting any economic weakening will be offset by a continued shift in ad spending from traditional media to the internet.
But some investors and analysts have grown anxious in recent months that any pullbacks in consumer spending would hurt online ads.
The concerns about the online-ad outlook come amid indications that internet advertising hit record levels in 2007. The Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group and PricewaterhouseCoopers Monday estimated that US online-ad revenue hit US$21.1 billion last year, a 25 percent increase from 2006.
The Wall Street Journal said “tepid electronic-commerce data have added to concerns, given a link between online sales and advertising. US e-commerce spending in January fell 17% from December, and was up a modest 11 percent compared to January 2007, according to comScore. It had fallen 14 percent in January 2007 from December 2006, and risen 19 percent in January 2007 compared with a year earlier.”
AUSTRALIA’S UNWIRED INTERNET COMPANY REVEALS THAT IT IS BLEEDING MONEY
The Australian reported yesterday that internet company Unwired has bled profusely in its early days under the control of new management losing $A47,000 per day over a span of 44 days.
From November 15 to December 29, Unwired made a loss of $2.1 million, owner and media giant Seven told the Australian Securities Exchange in its half-year results for the period ending December 29, 2007.
Seven gained control of Unwired on November 15, 2007 after it acquired the business for $135.6 million.
Unwired is in the midst of building a mobile, rather than fixed, broadband network using wireless technology known as WiMAX, which it hopes to deploy in July.
Unwired only has around 75,000 subscribers despite being in business since August 2000.
THE CONSERVATIVE AUSTRALIAN JEWISH NEWS BLASTS FAIRFAX FOR BIAS IN A PATRONISING EDITORIAL EXPLAINING WHY IT PRINTED THE VIEWS OF A FAIRFAX JOURNALIST
The Australian Jewish News’ editorial went on a rant, saying, “Within days of starting work in a newsroom, trainee journalists are quickly and firmly made aware that they are there to report the news, not make the news. Maybe Ed O’Loughlin was away that day.”
“O’Loughlin is the Middle East correspondent for Fairfax Media, and has attracted headlines in this newspaper, and occasionally the general media, for a perceived lack of balance in his reporting from Israel and surrounding areas.
“Much of the time, these concerns are legitimate. O’Loughlin’s choice of stories and his editorial tone would suggest that his sympathies lie overwhelmingly with the Palestinians.
“He rarely reports the views of everyday Israelis, preferring instead to place great store on the comments of extremist Israelis from either side of the political spectrum, and somehow presents them as mainstream perspectives.
“As a foreign correspondent in a region perpetually on the brink of conflict, O’Loughlin’s main brief is to report back to Australians on that conflict. Fair enough.
“But he has done little to enlighten Fairfax readers that Israel is a living, breathing first-world nation, a world leader in science, technology, art and culture, which has maintained a thriving and robust democracy despite the perpetual threats it faces to its existence.”
The paper’s editorial went on to say that Fairfax “ shackles” (presumably it meant ‘hackles) with a recent spate of letters published in The Sydney Morning Herald, comparing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The Australian Jewish News said, “From all reports, a flurry of letters rebutting these claims were not published, leading to further claims of anti-Israel bias at The Sydney Morning Herald.
“This week, The AJN has taken the unusual step of publishing an opinion piece by O’Loughlin, rebutting some of the criticisms of his reporting from Israel that we published in a column by Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby last September.
“Mainstream media balance, or the lack thereof, has been a bugbear of our community for many years, with the ABC and SBS also targets of Jewish ire. We share that discomfort.
“But it would be churlish and hypocritical of us to editorialise on media balance and then not put that into practice by denying O’Loughlin an opportunity to defend his work.
“Fairfax might produce some of Australia’s finest newspapers, but this week at least, we would like to think we have taught it a lesson in presenting both sides of a story.”
THE EURANET PAN-EUROPEAN RADIO NETWORK TO LAUNCH ON MARCH 31
The ambitious Euranet pan-European radio network, the creation of which was announced on February 26, will debut on March 31. The network will start its news and information programming in 10 languages, ultimately expanding to the 23 official European Union languages.
The creation of Euranet was announced in Brussels, and Margot Wallstrom, vice-president of the European Commission responsible for institutional relations and communication strategy, stated that the European Commission intends to give to the European consortium of radio stations financial support for five years from its launch.
The Euranet network will be the product of a consortium made by 16 radio stations from 13 countries as well as other 7 associate stations.
The consortium includes Germany’s Deutsche Welle, France’s RFI, Netherlands Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, Spain’s Punto Radio, Poland’s Polski Radio Warsaw and Polskie Radio Szczecin, Belgium’s RTBF, Bulgaria’s Bulgarian national radio and RFI Sofia, Czech Republic’s Czech Radio, Greece’s Skai Radio, Hungary’s Hungarian Radio, Romania’s Radio Romana International and RFI Romania, Slovenia’s Radio Slovenia International, and Portugal’s Europa Lisboa.
A major aim of Euranet is to inform young citizens about the European Union. Unlike earlier forms of co-operation among radio stations, the Euranet programmes will be common productions. Initially Euranet will broadcast in English, Spanish, French, German and Polish, and ultimately expand to the 23 official EU languages.
The station will be paid for by European funds and will cost about five million euros per year.
INDEPENDENT PRESS AGENCIES PUSH FOR PAYMENT FOR NEWSPAPER WEBSITE USE
Several leading independent UK press agencies have called for the introduction of a standardised payment system for online use of their stories and images by a maturing market of newspaper websites.
Representatives from eight leading independent agencies told Journalism.co.uk that fees for online use of agency material, which were often waived during the embryonic years of online journalism, should now be adhered to.
Agencies claim they are rarely offered specific fees by newspapers for online use, leaving them feeling exploited' by national newspaper websites, many of whom claim international readerships of millions.
"We've had newspapers and publishing houses imploring us to co-operate with them to supply the material without charge while their websites were embryonic and not in profit," Chris Johnson, vice president of the National Association of Press Agencies and owner of Mercury Press Agency told Journalism.co.uk.
"This is not a viable business model, which is what we're trying to get them to recognise. They do, but they also want the payment holiday. What we're saying is the payment holiday is over."
Representatives of all the agencies that spoke to Journalism.co.uk claimed the problem is rife, with newspaper publishers failing to recognise online as a separate platform when it comes to payment.
SRI LANKAN MEDIA FREEDOM SLIPS FURTHER DOWN A SLIPPERY SLOPE
Sri Lankan media freedom has been on the slide since December 2005 when violence between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam intensified, according to Dawn.
The paper added, “With the collapse of a five year ceasefire between the two this January, their fears have now reached panic levels.”
"What we have seen is that media freedom has been clearly diminishing these past two years," Sunanda Deshapriya, convenor of the Free Media Movement told Dawn.
"We have raised this at so many forums, even with President Mahinda Rajapakse, but there has not been any improvement. “Now with the fear of attacks in public places high, even members of the public have begun to disregard their right to information."
On January 27, the Sri Lankan defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa called for more media censorship and a reintroduction of criminal defamation laws.
Rajapaksa, who is the brother of the Sri Lankan president, told the Sunday Lankadeepa that he advocated press censorship, harsh punishments for critical reporting on the military and military expenditures, and a criminal defamation law.
Since 1999, at least 14 Sri Lankan journalists have been killed. Last year a newspaper printing press was set on fire, several journalists fled the country temporarily or suspended their writing for a short time following threats. One newspaper, the Uthanyan, in northern Jaffna Peninsula, was left to print on brown wrapping paper after newsprint ran out.
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