MEDIABLAB DAILY DIGEST MAR 5: LACHLAN MURDOCH BBC ARABIC IFRA GETTY IMAGES AFP
March 6th 2008 01:38
LACHLAN MURDOCH’S COMPANY TO GET DUE DILIGENCE EXTENSION OVER EXAMINATION OF CMH’S BOOK
The Australian today reports that Lachlan Murdoch's private company, Illyria, and its major American backer, SPO Partners & Co, are expected to be granted an extension to conduct further due diligence on Consolidated Media Holdings after an initial period examining the company's books expires today.
It is understood Illyria and San Francisco-based SPO are likely to request a two- to four-week extension to the due diligence period, after its initial four-week examination of CMH's accounts proved to be insufficient.
The Australian understands Mr Murdoch introduced Mr Scully and other SPO representatives to senior figures at the main operating businesses in which CMH has stakes, including Foxtel, Premier Media Group (which operates Fox Sports) and PBL Media (which owns the Nine Network, ACP Magazines, and stakes in Ninemsn and Carsales.com.au).
SPO is an investment firm that looks after a small group of wealthy private American families and other investors.
Mr Scully and the other SPO representatives are also understood to have paid individual visits to the headquarters of Foxtel, Fox Sports and CMH-related businesses in Sydney to assess the value of their investments.
While Mr Scully returned to the US last week, representatives of SPO are believed to be continuing to examine CMH's books with Mr Murdoch and other Illyria representatives in Sydney.
The Illyria/SPO consortium and James Packer's private company, Consolidated Press Holdings, are jointly planning to privatise CMH in a deal that values the group at $3.3 billion, or about $4.80 a share.
BBC WORLDWIDE TO HAVE ANOTHER CRACK AT ARABIC TELEVISION MARKET
Over a decade after its first attempt to launch an Arabic news channel foundered, BBC World Service director Nigel Chapman unveiled plans to broadcast 12 hours a day, upgrading to a full 24/7 service by the summer with BBC Arabic.
The Guardian reports that the BBC World Service is relying on the controversial new satellite channel to re-establish its pre-eminence in one of the world's most competitive news markets.
It promises to take on al-Jazeera and its rivals head-on, but it also faces accusations that it was little more than a British foreign policy tool and doubts over whether it could establish itself in an overcrowded sector.
The World Service claims to have proved over 75 years that while the Foreign Office has a say over where its money is directed, it has no influence over its content.
The Guardian reported, “Paid for by British taxpayers, the GBP25 million-a-year service marks a big strategic shift. It is the first in a series of World Service TV channels expected to launch in the next few years as it continues to adapt to changing media consumption habits. Later this year it will launch BBC Persian, broadcasting in Farsi.
“If the first Gulf war in 1991 marked a seismic shift in 24-hour television news with the arrival of CNN, and the 2003 war in Iraq was characterised by the influential rise of al-Jazeera, the global news battle is now entering a new phase.”“
As the World Service is launching TV channels and investing in broadband-enabled websites, al-Jazeera is simultaneously striving to make a success of its global English language service.
Competing with BBC World and CNN International, it has been dogged by rumours of internal strife but claims to have established a loyal following since it launched in November 2006.
According to the Guardian, BBC’s first attempt, a commercial joint venture with Orbit, collapsed in 1996 after the BBC broadcast an episode of Panorama critical of the Saudi royal family. Many of those involved went on to launch al-Jazeera, bankrolled by the emir of Qatar.
In all more than 500 channels are available via satellite in the area and rivals say the BBC's commitment to sober impartiality could prove a handicap as much as a strength as it strives to get noticed.
Plans for BBC Arabic were announced in 2005, when 10 radio stations - mostly in eastern Europe - were closed to help pay for the extra investment required. Since then the government has agreed to boost World Service funding to GBP252 million a year.
BBC Arabic, anchored from London and Cairo, will draw on the corporation's network of more than 250 correspondents in 72 bureaux around the world. It will also have journalists throughout Europe, Canada, China and the US.
AMERICA’S ESPN SPORTS CHANNEL ANNOUNCES MAJOR PUSH INTO FEATURE FILMS
Media Daily News reports that ESPN has announced a major push
into films, establishing a new feature film division and hiring Creative Artists Agency, the major Hollywood talent agency.
ESPN Films will now be part of the ESPN Content Development group.
ESPN's first film project, under the new unit, will be its "30/30" initiative, where it will invite 30 filmmakers to each tell a one-hour sports-themed story that will air on Tuesday nights beginning September 2009. The move is timed to coincide with ESPN's 30th anniversary.
The network also announced a closer association with its sister company division, the Walt Disney Studios, on scripted sports films to be presented both theatrically and on television. The new unit will be part of the ESPN Content Development group.
ESPN has made films for its own network for a number of years under its ESPN Original Entertainment brand--with mixed results. One of the more notable movies was a biography about Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt, called "3," which earned some of the highest ratings for the network.
ESPN started producing theatrical films in March 2006 with "Through the Fire," about the troubled life of NBA player Sebastian Telfair. It also created the documentary "Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos."
MYANMAR STATE RADIO AND TV OFFICES TO MOVE TO REMOTE JUNGLE REDOUBT
The offices of Myanmar Radio and Television (MRTV) will finalise its move to the new capital of Naypyitaw in the middle of the March, according Mizzima News.
The new location is bigger and upgraded with modern facilities, said a member of the staff.
A senior officer suggested March 17 would be the last date to move "Myanmar Athan", as it is locally known, but declined to give further details.
However, a majority of staff have yet to be informed of an exact date to move and thus have found it difficult to prepare.
Government controlled MRTV has been moving piece by piece to its new headquarters, built on a barren plain with scrub vegetation, since September 2007. Engineers were first to arrive.
The military government surprised people with the announced move of MRTV to Naypyitaw, saying the new location is a hub for the country and provides the foundation for a modern and developed country. But critics say it is far removed from the people.
The current building on Pyay Road in Yangon is to be handed over to a section of MRTV4 which is partially privately operated but editorially controlled by the government.
ATTACKS ON SRI LANKAN JOURNALISTS OVER TV STUDIO INCIDENT CONTINUE
Sri Lankan journalists continue to be physically attacked in connection with a minister's use of force at state TV station in December
Two attacks on journalists on February 27 seem to be linked to their coverage of a December incident in which labour minister Mervyn Silva stormed into the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, a state-owned television station, and assaulted its news director.
Four men armed with knives tried to attack Priyal Ranjith Perera at his home in Pitakotte, south of Colombo, in the evening of February 27, but were forced to flee when neighbours intervened. Perera was in charge of a TV crew that filmed the December incident at Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation.
The same day, a group of men on motorcycles circled around the home of another journalist who has written about the incident, and who had previously received suspicious phone calls on February 13 and 17.
Silva, a controversial minister known for his hostility towards journalists, burst into Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation headquarters on December 27 and ordered the thugs accompanying him to beat the station's news director, TMG Chandrasekara.
Since then, journalists who helped force Silva to leave the building or who covered the incident have been targeted.
Silva's thugs are suspected of carrying out a knife attack on January 25 on Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation Lal Hemantha Mawalage, who was hospitalised with multiple wounds to the hands and body.
According to the Free Media Movement, a local organisation, around 20 corporation journalists have been questioned since the December incident but no one has been arrested or questioned in connection with the attacks and threats against journalists.
IFRA LAUNCHES NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY NEWS AND INFORMATION SEARCH ENGINE
Journalism.co.uk reports that Ifra has launched a search engine for listing news and information about the newspaper industry.
After announcing it plans to launch late last year, Reiner Mittelbach, ceo of Ifra told Journalism.co.uk at the DNA 2008 conference on Monday that Ifrasearch.com launched last week.
The site returns search results in three categories, 'Ifra and partner sites', a selected list of 'news' sources and results from across the wider web.
The newspaper search engine also allows bilingual searches in English and German.
“We search stories about the news publishing industry, so people working in newspapers, irrespective of the platform they work on, can find information there,” Mittelbach said.
He added that search engine was based on'thousands of sources identified by Ifra as being relevant to the newspaper industry. Besides freely available web content, the search site also lists articles that are normally only available to Ifra members that aren't usually exposed to the 'spidering' tools search engines use to list web content.
YOUTUBE TO BEGIN BROADCASTING LIVE IN NEAR FUTURE
Video-sharing website YouTube is preparing to challenge established television broadcasters by offering its own live channels, according to The Telegraph in the UK.
Millions of people who use the popular site will be able to produce chat shows from their bedrooms, perform music or report on a breaking news story under the new plans.
Parties or weddings could be transmitted live so family and friends unable to attend can still join in.
Dedicated users may even set up 24-hour ‘lifecasts’ of their daily activities, reminiscent of television's Big Brother. YouTube, now owned by search engine Google, has become one of the most popular sites on the internet after just three years of existence, according to the online traffic monitor Alexa Internet.
The long-rumoured live extension was revealed by Steve Chen, co-founder of the site, at a New York party when he was asked when live video would be shown on YouTube.
He replied, “We've never had the resources to do it correctly, but now, with Google, we hope to actually do it this year.”
However, YouTube appears to be holding off from making an official public announcement for the time being.
WILL GETTY IMAGES NEW PRIVATE EQUITY OWNERS SUPPORT AFP NEWS PICTURES BUSINESS
Followthemedia reports that the sale of Getty Images to the Hellman & Friedman private equity group raises the question of what happens with Getty’s relationship with Agence France Presse (AFP) once the deal is done.
Followthemedia asks, “Is a private equity firm really interested in the news pictures business or just in Getty’s fabulous picture libraries?
First word from the private equity group indicates it wants to focus on the archive business, expanding its internet and digital channels.
Getty partners AFP in the distribution and production of photos in Britain, France and the US.
Getty Images has exclusive rights to market AFP images in North America and the UK, and AFP markets Getty Images' photography covering North America to its daily newspaper subscribers in the rest of the world.
Getty’s shares fell by about 40 percent in the last year mainly because of low priced library archive competition on the Internet. A low price Getty license could be around $49, but online competitors sell licenses for as low as $1, and then there are the millions of people who have put pictures up on the internet for free.
Getty’s various archives comprise some 70 million pictures, going back to the mid 19th century, and some 30,000 hours of video.
CHINA’S XINHUA TRIES TO CONTROL FINANCE NEWS ISSUED BY AGENCIES SUCH AS REUTERS AND BLOOMBERG
The European Union and US will launch formal proceedings at the World Trade Organisation over China's attempt to put the financial information businesses of international news providers under the control of Xinhua, the state news agency, the Financial Times reported.
The Financial Times said trade officials from the EU and US were expected to send letters to their Chinese counterparts on Monday requesting talks on regulations issued by Xinhua in late 2006.
AFX News reported that he regulations said agencies such as Reuters and Bloomberg could not sell financial information directly to Chinese clients, and instead go through Xinhua, which is also the regulator of foreign news agencies.
The EU and US believe the move breaches Beijing's commitment to allowing foreign companies to supply financial information services in China under the terms of its 2001 accession to the World Trade Organisation.
WASHINGTON POST’S WOMEN ARE DUMB ESSAY TRIGGER FEMINIST FURY
The Washington Post has unleashed the furies following publications of an essay by Charlotte Allen in which she called women “kind of dim,” suggested that women were not only “the weaker sex” but “the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial,” and claimed that Senator . Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has been “marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex.”
It therefore perhaps comes as no surprise that the feminist media is up in arms.
Feministing.com headlined an article, ‘The Washington Post: Bitches Ain’t S***.
Choice quotes from the article include, “Charlotte Allen - a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women’s Forum … has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb f***s women are.
“Lest Allen seem like she's just spouting misogyny for a patriarchal head-pat and a pay check, she offers super compelling evidence that other women also find women stupid:
“’I'm not the only woman who's dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us. It's a frequent topic of lunch, phone and water-cooler conversations; even some feminists can't believe that there's this thing called "The Oprah Winfrey Show" or that Celine Dion actually sells CDs. A female friend of mine plans to write a horror novel titled "Office of Women," in which nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox.’”
Feministing says, “Her reporting skills astound. Though it isn't hard to believe that when one works at an organisation whose sole purpose is to convince women that sexism is actually fabulous, that water-cooler talk would consist of chatter about how vaginas are really just brain cell black holes.
“But of course, Allen includes herself in this dumb-off, presumably to garner even more credibility with misogynists.”
WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER’S RELATIONSHIP BUST-UP IS OH-SO-CYBERSPACE
Rachel Marsden, 33, the Canadian right-wing political pundit has been dating Jimmy Wales, 41, co-founder of Wikipedia, the web encyclopedia that aims to provide up-to-date "user-generated" information.
But on Saturday, she logged on to discover that her own particular affair had also been updated. She had been dumped on Wikipedia.
Wales posted a statement on the site that said: "I am no longer involved with Rachel Marsden."
The Tiems in the UK reported, “Ms Marsden did what any self-respecting scorned cyberpundit would do: she dug out the shirt and jumper that her former lover had worn during what was apparently their only night together and put them up for sale on eBay.
She also sent a transcript of their passionate conversations on an instant messenger service to a California technology blog, fuelling a debate on whether Wales had broken his own website's principles.
Among them is the policy that all of Wikipedia's "user-facing" content "should be written from a neutral point of view" and may not "amount to a novel narrative or historical interpretation".
More important to Mr Wales was the allegation that as he became involved with Ms Marsden, he intervened to redraft her Wikipedia biography. This detailed a history of harassment claims by men: a swimming coach, a radio host and a Canadian counter-terror officer.
HIGH-POWERED DIGITAL VIDEO INDUSTRY FORUMS SCHEDULED IN INDIA
The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia will host two “high-powered” industry forums in New Delhi on March 17 and 18, designed to encourage the further development of India's fast-moving digital video communications market.
The March 17 invitation-only roundtable ‘Advanced Video Communications: Convergence-Choice’ will be keynoted by Smt. Asha Swore, the Secretary for the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in India, and focus on increasing the deployment of digital services for India's 76 million pay-TV subscribers.
Other participants will include Jawahar Goel of Dish TV, Deepak Shourie of Discovery Networks India and Jaggi Panda of cable MSO Ortel.
Among the crucial issues covered during the invitation-only briefings for senior industry executives and government officials will be means to increase the quality and variety of content from which Indian consumers can choose, and the affect of current regulatory practices on investment in new infrastructure.
On March 18 CASBAA will host the India Satellite Forum, ‘New Horizons, New Challenges’ for satellite services, a conference designed to explore ways to develop additional satellite capacity over India if increasing demand for DTH, broadband, cable TV and VSAT services is to be met effectively.
The India Satellite Forum will be staged at The Oberoi Hotel, New Delhi as the international satellite industry's first-ever public forum in India. Senior executives drawn from telecoms carriers, pay-TV platform operators and content providers, as well as government bodies such as the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India will be among the participants.
Featured speakers on Tuesday March 18 will include:
Sujata Deb, managing director, Time Broadband
Ravi Mansukhani, managing director, INCablenet
Vikram Mehra, chief marketing officer, Tata Sky
Amitabh Kumar, director corporate affairs, Zee Networks
Dr N Bhaskara Rao, chairman, Centre for Media Studies
Prashant Gokam, partner, Spectrum
DP Vaidya, president, VSAT Association of India
N Sampath, managing director, Intelsat India
RN Choubey, advisor (B&C), TRAI
The high-profile satellite industry event will include panel discussions on DTH business opportunities, India's satellite market demand and supply, and prospects for growth in delivery of network services via satellite.
"In recent years, India's vibrant communications industry has demonstrated exceptionally strong demand for satellite services but this has not been matched by adequate supply. The international industry is looking forward to greater cooperation with Indian market players, so that together we can ensure that India has access to all the satellite capacity it needs," Anjan Mitra, executive director, India for CASBAA.
ANOTHER US BOOK MEMOIR TO BE PULPED AFTER DISCLOSURES BY AUTHOR THAT SHE MADE IT UP
The Wall Street Journal reports that a memoir published last week will likely be recalled as soon as today by Pearson PLC's Riverhead Books imprint.
"We haven't officially recalled it," said David Shanks, ceo of Penguin Group (USA), whose units include Riverhead Books. "There are enough inaccuracies in the book to make us think that we will need to recall it."
Shanks estimated that 19,000 copies of Margaret Jones's ‘Love and Consequences’ have been printed, most of which have likely been shipped to bookstores.
The book, a memoir of a drug-gang member, is a fraud. According a story in the New York Times, Ms Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer.
Seltzer and her book were the subject of a profile that appeared in the House & Home section of The New York Times last week, the Times story noted. After the article appeared, a family member called Riverhead to explain that Seltzer had been raised in a comfortable suburb, not South Central Los Angeles.
Also, Ms. Seltzer is white, said the New York Times article, and doesn't have a mixed racial heritage as she claimed. The Times story said that admitted to having made up the story.
FINANCIAL TIMES HAD AN ‘EXTRAORDINARY YEAR’ ACCORDING TO PEARSON CHIEF EXECUTIVE
British publishing company Pearson PLC said 2007 net profit fell 36 percent to GBP284 million (A$608 million) on a sharply higher tax bill, but the company posted a big increase in profit at its Financial Times unit.
The Wall Street Journal said, “After years of criticism from investors over the performance of its newspaper division, Pearson delivered strong results at FT Publishing, the smallest of its six operating units. Adjusted operating profit at the unit -- which includes the Financial Times newspaper, a 50 percent stake in the Economist magazine, and Mergermarket, an online news service for bankers -- more than doubled to GBP56 million in 2007 from GBP27 million a year earlier.”
Overall, Pearson's sales rose 4 percent % in 2007 to GBP4.16 billion from GBP3.99 billion, helped by its biggest division, which sells textbooks and testing services to US school systems.
The Wall Street Journal said, “Breaking with past practice, Pearson chief executive Marjorie Scardino declined to disclose earnings at the Financial Times, and it isn't clear how profitable the paper was. But the company said the Financial Times had an ‘outstanding year,’ increasing subscriptions 19 percent and daily circulation by 2 percent to almost 440,000 globally. It and the Daily Star Sunday were the only two national newspapers in Britain to increase circulation last year, according to the UK’s Audit Bureau of Circulations.”
Mrs Scardino said profit at the paper should rise this year even if advertising revenue is flat.
INDIAN REGULATOR EXAMINES WHETHER THE FOREIGN INVESTMENT LIMIT FOR BROADCASTING SHOULD BE RAISED TO 100 PERCENT
India’s Business Standard reports that consultation the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has sought comments on raising the foreign investment limit in the broadcasting sector to 100 percent to permit the Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies to provide broadcasting services.
Agencyfaqs reports that the authority has said that the 100 percent foreign investment limit for such broadcasting companies should come with appropriate monitoring and content regulation.
The move has come in response to the industry’s demand.
The paper is aimed at recommending a comprehensive policy on foreign investment in the broadcasting sector at the behest of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India aper has also sought comments on whether the investments should come via the automatic route or if there should be a sub-limit beyond which the Foreign Investment Promotion Board approval would be needed.
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