MEDIA DAILY DIGEST JAN 5: MC HAMMER NBC TILA TEQUILA PEARSON MONEY-MEDIA
January 5th 2008 06:01
A Compilation of MediaBlab news items posted over the last 36 hours
US SCREENWRITERS STILL ON STRIKE BUT LATE NIGHT HOST RETURN AFTER A TWO MONTH LAYOFF
US late-night TV hosts have returned to the air after a two-month hiatus, displaying support for striking writers and plenty of creative time stretchers, according to AP which filed unusually witty report.
AP said, “David Letterman walked onstage amid dancing girls holding picket signs. His writers are back on the job, but Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel returned without theirs.
“Leno, however, offered a monologue that included jokes he said he had crafted beforehand. Whether that violated rules of the striking Writers Guild of America - to which Leno belongs - was not immediately clear.
"We are not using outside guys," Leno said in the monologue. "We are following the guild thing ... we can write for ourselves."
AP said that Leno joked that the walkout, "has already cost the town over half a billion dollars. Five hundred million dollars! Or as Paul McCartney calls that, 'A divorce'."
HEY, IT’S GOOD NEWS WEEK ACCORDING TO NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
They say good news doesn’t sell – tell that to Newsweek which, with its international edition, features a good news special.
The cover, which portrays a group of HAPPY smiling neat Bangladeshi school kids says, in large bold letters, “ Though the Global Economy is Gripped by Fear …The Future Looks Very Bright.”
Talk about upbeat feelgood!
The good news copy that goes with the main story starts:
It seems things are as bad as they've been in recent memory. Except that if you look beyond temporal market fluctuations to how the real global economy is doing, things have never been better.
“For the past four years, the world has grown at a 5.2 percent annual rate—a full 2 percentage points higher than in the '80s and '90s—thanks in large part to booming emerging markets. While the US and many parts of Europe are lagging, most of the rest of the planet is soaring.
Consider that between 1980 and 2000, the number of countries growing at 5 percent or more hovered around 50. In 2006, 104 nations grew at that rate. When asked to think of a few countries besides China and India that have shown strong growth, World Bank economist Andrew Burns replies: "It's hard to think of somebody who hasn't."
In fact, this year the economies of only three countries—Zimbabwe, Fiji and Tonga—are contracting. Two are highly isolated archipelagoes and the former is a hugely dysfunctional dictatorship. Harvard's Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the IMF, sums it up simply: "We're in a boom."
SPECULATION ABOUNDS THAT YAHOO IS UP FOR SALE
Wired, along with several other US media pundits, speculates that Yahoo may be acquisition material this year.
The web giant has seen its market capitalisation fall from US$52 billion in 2005 to roughly $33.5 billion today, although its revenue is still on the up and up.
Web industry watchers, citing its languishing stock and revolving door at the top, are buzzing about Yahoo as a prime acquisition target. Major media players like News Corp, NBC and Viacom, always looking to expand their online businesses, would no doubt love to have Yahoo, but they simply don't have $33.5 billion. Neither does Time Warner.
BISEXUAL ONLINE PIN-UP TILA TEQUILA BACK ON MTV AND PEREZ HILTON BACK ON YOUTUBE
Multichannel News reports that America’s Tila Tequila may not have seen in the New Year with a suitor from her dating show, but she will get a return engagement with MTV as the cable net has signed off on another season of her series.
The channel has ordered up 10 more episodes of ‘A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila’ during which the bisexual online pin-up sensation will again try to find love from among a batch of straight guys and lesbians. No surprise here: Her debut season was MTV's top-rated new show with 12-to-34 olds.
Meanwhile celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton’s war against YouTube didn’t last long after he was canned for copyright violation.
After posting a YouTube fxxx-off video on December 20 urging other video creators to defect from the site as well, Hilton returned to the site December 27 with a video showing his new hair color and hair extensions.
How absolutely exciting.
RAPPER MC HAMMER CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER OF INTERNET START-UP COMPANY
Hey bro, where is this dude coming from? Media Wire Daily reports that the biggest rapper of all time back in the 90's MC Hammer, who burned through millions of bucks supporting everyone in his hood, has now reinvented himself as the ‘chief strategy officer’ of an internet start-up company.
How undudelike is that?
Media Wire Daily said Hammer is “now trying his luck via the internet with a new start up called DanceJam.com. The former rapper who serves as Chief Strategy Officer already landed US$1 million in start up capital. Hammer may be on to something here. Rupert Murdoch may one day take notice and want to slap DanceJam together with K-solo.com, the karaoke website News Corp swallowed a little while back.”
According to eMarketer, “The web site, scheduled to debut in mid-January, will try to upstage YouTube and become the internet's hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008.”
FORMER DATELINE CORRESPONDENT BLASTS NBC FOR ITS SEPTEMBER 11 COVERAGE
MediaBlooodhound reports on an unseemly squabble between NBC and its former Dateline NBC correspondent John Hockenbery who dared to claim that the network’s coverage of September 11 events was utter crap.
Hockenberry claims in an article in this month’s Technology Review that on the Sunday after the September 11 2001 attacks he pitched stories on the origins of al Quaeda and Islamic Fundamentalism, only to be told to instead focus of the firefighters and perhaps ride along with them a la Cops, the Fox reality series.
NBC quickly hit back saying, “It's unfortunate that John Hockenberry seems to be so far out of touch with reality. The comments are so utterly absurd, we will have no further comment."
Hockenberry also claimed that General Electric, NBC's parent company, discouraged him from talking to the Bin Laden family about their estranged family member.
Hockenberry asked GE, which does business with the Bin Laden family company, to help him get in contact with them. Instead, a PR executive called Hockenberry's hotel room in Saudi Arabia and read a statement about how GE didn't see its "valuable business relationship" with the Bin Laden group as having anything to do with Dateline.
PEARSON BOOSTS FINANCIAL TIMES US PRESENCE WITH MONEY-MEDIA ACQUISITION
UK Press Gazette reports that Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, has boosted the newspaper’s US-based news operation by purchasing an American site offering news and commentary on the money management industry.
It said Money-Media, bought from its sole shareholder and ceo Michael Griffin, offers live news services on the American world of “high-net worth” asset management and mutual fund trustees. Its Agenda section claims to be “the most influential source of intelligence for today’s corporate directors”.
Pearson said that Money-Media’s specialist services will “improve the ability of the Financial Times to reach the asset management community in the US” and enhance the recently launched US edition of FTfm, its fund management newspaper supplement.
The paper is expected to face increased competition in North America from a revamped Wall Street Journal after its takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Money-Media was founded in 1996 by Michael Griffin. It has a staff of 70, including 23 in editorial, and is based in New York. It has four online ‘products’: Ignites, a daily online service reaching over 50,000 mutual fund managers; Fundfire, a daily online service reaching 40,000 money management professionals; BoardIQ, a bi-weekly online and print service for over 4,000 trustees and top executives at nearly 140 fund complexes, and Agenda which is delivered to more than 4,000 directors and officers at nearly 300 public companies.
The FT has 24 print sites across the world, and a combined daily circulation of 444,880, according to November 2007's ABC figures, and a readership of more than 1.3 million people. FT.com attracts 5.35 million unique users each month and 43 million page views, according to ABC electronic figures from March 2007.
WEATHER CHANNEL BECOMES HOT PROPERTY WITH A $5 BILLION SALES TAG
Last year MediaBlab reported that with the trendiness of the climate change and global warming issues, normally boring old weather reports would become the new hot media properties.
Now New York Times reports that the Weather Channel, one of America’s most broadly distributed basic cable networks, is preparing to put itself on the block. The sale of the channel, as well as its sister web site, weather.com, could fetch as much as US$5 billion, and the Times speculates that big media companies such as GE's NBC unit, News Corp, and Comcast may be among the suitors. The sale is believed to be part of the break-up of Weather Channel parent Landmark Communications.
Weather.com is the 25th most popular site in the US, and the Weather Channel provides data to a range of leading online destinations including MySpace, Yahoo and AOL. It also started providing mobile video forecasts with technology from Vantrix in October.
The New York Times also said, “The sale of the Weather Channel, once written off as a dull network for weather buffs, could become especially heated as it is one of the few remaining basic cable channels available for sale. One potential suitor described the Weather Channel as ‘beachfront property’.”
EGYPT COURT RULES AGAINST BLOCKING ACCESS TO 51 WEBSITES
The administrative court of Egypt’s state council has ruled against blocking access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on March 11 last year, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised.
Reporters Without Borders reported that the judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint. The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them.
Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
NEW BALKAN DAILY ONLINE NEWS SITE LAUNCHED
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has launched a new daily news site at www.BalkanInsight.com. The site combines the network’s regular investigative and analytic reports with daily news coverage in nine countries in the Balkans.
The International Journalists Network reports that the decision to launch a new site was an obvious next step for the network, given the success of its weekly newsletter, the Balkan Insight. The newsletter had over 15,000 subscribers to its English edition and about 5,000 subscribers to the Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Macedonian editions.
While the new Balkan Insight site continues to provide in-depth analysis and regional political news, it has expanded to include more business news, lifestyle features and newsy blogs.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is a project of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting that strives for in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes.
SWEDEN BECOMES THE FIRST COUNTRY TO SEE ONLINE AD REVENUE OUTSTRIP TV REVENUE
Sweden will this year become the first country to see advertisers spend more on the internet than on TV ads, according to the latest forecast from leading media buying agency, Group M Group M, owned by Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP group.
The same forecast said the UK will see advertisers spend more on the internet than on TV ads next year.
The Guardian reports that Group M forecasts that the UK will be on the brink of passing the milestone at the end of 2008, when the internet will account for 24.8 percent of UK media spend, just behind the 26 percent share held by the TV ad sector.
After that, UK internet ad spend will need to increase by just another 6 percent year on year to overtake TV in 2009.
In Sweden, at the close of last year TV ads accounted for 19.8 percent of all media spend, compared with the internet's 16.7 percent share. By the close of 2008 the internet will have grown to take a 19.5 percent share of all media spend in Sweden, compared to the 19.2 percent share.
But television's share of advertising spend in Sweden is small anyway, because it is a relative latecomer to commercial TV.
AUSTRALIA’S ZYLOTECH INTRODUCES FOOTBALL PLAYER DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Zylotech, teaming with its integrator Swintech Pty Ltd, has won Stage 1 of the contract to supply the NSW Sports Academy at Narrabeen with wireless digital surveillance systems for monitoring National Rugby League player performance by Des Hasler, the head coach of the Manly Sea Eagles.
Zylotech regards this as a prestigious win because Australia’s Sports Academy at Narrabeen, the National Rugby League and the Manly Club have sought and are active promoters of technology to enhance and video monitor their player improvement programs.
Brett Swinfeild, sales manager of Swintech said the company, together with Des Hasler, surveyed the various digital surveillance technologies in the market and selected Zylotech based upon its ability to operate more efficiently over an IP network.
Multiple wireless live cameras can be remotely controlled and zoomed so coaches can effectively set plays during training and monitor fast moving play movements.
At the same time, images can be remotely recorded, accessed and evaluated by other high-performance coaches and officials anywhere in the world.
He said, “By the end of next season we should be able to have all 16 National Rugby League clubs using the system. We are also looking for other codes including the Australian Football league, soccer and cricket pending on the availability of value-adding analysis software by third parties.”
NEW FORTNIGHTLY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MASS APPEAL WOMEN’S MAGAZINE FOR INDIA
Yet another English-language magazine launch in India: this time it’s She, a fortnightly magazine from Dainik Bhaskar which will hit newsstands in selected regions next Tuesday.
Exchange4media said, “The magazine will have 52 colour pages and target the SEC AB women in the 18-35 age group.”
Editor Sathya Saran said, “The magazine will combine real life stories, experiences, and successes that readers can identify with. It brings articles on women who have crossed and surmounted obstacles in marriage, career and in life; it helps a woman be a better homemaker, a better mother, a better career person. It will guide the reader through the new steps in fashion and beauty trends, and tell her how to stay on top of a fast developing social environment.”
Sanjeev Kotnala, associate vice president and national head of communication, Bhaskar Group, told exchange4media that, “She celebrates womanhood. The concept of She is the outcome of research across the Bhaskar markets along with a detailed analysis of women’s magazines currently available in the market. We found that the available Hindi magazines fell below the expectations of SEC AB women and at the same time, the English magazines for women were not in-line with the culture, expectations, aspirations and environment of today’s women.”
Agencyfaqs put it slightly more bluntly, reporting that She will “Fill the void between glossy English women’s magazines and their drab Hindi counterparts…a version of an English woman’s magazine, which the group is calling a magazine for the average Indian woman, not over the top in the glitz and glamour department.”
FORMER BRIT CNBC FINANCE REPORTER BECOMES A BUM WHO CALLS A STREET BENCH HOME
A former British ITN newsreader and GBP85, 000 (A$190,000) a year business and finance reporter for US network CNBC ended up as a homeless bum due to mismanaged finances.
Credit card debt and alcoholism led to divorce, bankruptcy and homelessness, which in turn led to a 10 month stint sleeping on a bench next to a nightclub.
But things are on the improve: the former newsreader Ed Mitchell is in rehab and about to become the subject of a new ITV1 documentary in which his former journalistic colleague Carol Barnes attempts to find out why it happened.
Mitchell’s story became fodder for the newspapers last month when details of his fall from the comfortable life came to light, and his plight captured the public’s imagination.
It also attracted Carol Barnes who saw the newspaper story, wondered what happened, found out and decided the story was worth a documentary.
In the documentary, provisionally titled Saving Ed Mitchell, Barnes will be seen paying her former colleague a surprise visit and the cameras follow him on the streets before he checks into rehab at the Priory.
The production team filmed with Mitchell over the Christmas period and will be monitoring his progress during rehab.
The 30 minute film will air later this month, and is being made by TwoFour Productions with executive producers Joe Houlihan and Emma Morgan.
Mitchell told the Guardian, "There is an irony that someone who should be an expert as a business and finance reporter should get their finances in such a state."
Indeed.
US SCREENWRITERS STILL ON STRIKE BUT LATE NIGHT HOST RETURN AFTER A TWO MONTH LAYOFF
US late-night TV hosts have returned to the air after a two-month hiatus, displaying support for striking writers and plenty of creative time stretchers, according to AP which filed unusually witty report.
AP said, “David Letterman walked onstage amid dancing girls holding picket signs. His writers are back on the job, but Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Kimmel returned without theirs.
"We are not using outside guys," Leno said in the monologue. "We are following the guild thing ... we can write for ourselves."
AP said that Leno joked that the walkout, "has already cost the town over half a billion dollars. Five hundred million dollars! Or as Paul McCartney calls that, 'A divorce'."
HEY, IT’S GOOD NEWS WEEK ACCORDING TO NEWSWEEK INTERNATIONAL
They say good news doesn’t sell – tell that to Newsweek which, with its international edition, features a good news special.
The cover, which portrays a group of HAPPY smiling neat Bangladeshi school kids says, in large bold letters, “ Though the Global Economy is Gripped by Fear …The Future Looks Very Bright.”
Talk about upbeat feelgood!
The good news copy that goes with the main story starts:
It seems things are as bad as they've been in recent memory. Except that if you look beyond temporal market fluctuations to how the real global economy is doing, things have never been better.
Consider that between 1980 and 2000, the number of countries growing at 5 percent or more hovered around 50. In 2006, 104 nations grew at that rate. When asked to think of a few countries besides China and India that have shown strong growth, World Bank economist Andrew Burns replies: "It's hard to think of somebody who hasn't."
In fact, this year the economies of only three countries—Zimbabwe, Fiji and Tonga—are contracting. Two are highly isolated archipelagoes and the former is a hugely dysfunctional dictatorship. Harvard's Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the IMF, sums it up simply: "We're in a boom."
SPECULATION ABOUNDS THAT YAHOO IS UP FOR SALE
Wired, along with several other US media pundits, speculates that Yahoo may be acquisition material this year.
The web giant has seen its market capitalisation fall from US$52 billion in 2005 to roughly $33.5 billion today, although its revenue is still on the up and up.
Web industry watchers, citing its languishing stock and revolving door at the top, are buzzing about Yahoo as a prime acquisition target. Major media players like News Corp, NBC and Viacom, always looking to expand their online businesses, would no doubt love to have Yahoo, but they simply don't have $33.5 billion. Neither does Time Warner.
BISEXUAL ONLINE PIN-UP TILA TEQUILA BACK ON MTV AND PEREZ HILTON BACK ON YOUTUBE
Multichannel News reports that America’s Tila Tequila may not have seen in the New Year with a suitor from her dating show, but she will get a return engagement with MTV as the cable net has signed off on another season of her series.
The channel has ordered up 10 more episodes of ‘A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila’ during which the bisexual online pin-up sensation will again try to find love from among a batch of straight guys and lesbians. No surprise here: Her debut season was MTV's top-rated new show with 12-to-34 olds.
Meanwhile celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton’s war against YouTube didn’t last long after he was canned for copyright violation.
After posting a YouTube fxxx-off video on December 20 urging other video creators to defect from the site as well, Hilton returned to the site December 27 with a video showing his new hair color and hair extensions.
How absolutely exciting.
RAPPER MC HAMMER CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER OF INTERNET START-UP COMPANY
Hey bro, where is this dude coming from? Media Wire Daily reports that the biggest rapper of all time back in the 90's MC Hammer, who burned through millions of bucks supporting everyone in his hood, has now reinvented himself as the ‘chief strategy officer’ of an internet start-up company.
How undudelike is that?
Media Wire Daily said Hammer is “now trying his luck via the internet with a new start up called DanceJam.com. The former rapper who serves as Chief Strategy Officer already landed US$1 million in start up capital. Hammer may be on to something here. Rupert Murdoch may one day take notice and want to slap DanceJam together with K-solo.com, the karaoke website News Corp swallowed a little while back.”
According to eMarketer, “The web site, scheduled to debut in mid-January, will try to upstage YouTube and become the internet's hub for sharing and watching dance videos. DanceJam then hopes to make money by grabbing a piece of the rapidly growing Internet advertising market, which is expected to rake in $27.5 billion in 2008.”
FORMER DATELINE CORRESPONDENT BLASTS NBC FOR ITS SEPTEMBER 11 COVERAGE
MediaBlooodhound reports on an unseemly squabble between NBC and its former Dateline NBC correspondent John Hockenbery who dared to claim that the network’s coverage of September 11 events was utter crap.
Hockenberry claims in an article in this month’s Technology Review that on the Sunday after the September 11 2001 attacks he pitched stories on the origins of al Quaeda and Islamic Fundamentalism, only to be told to instead focus of the firefighters and perhaps ride along with them a la Cops, the Fox reality series.
NBC quickly hit back saying, “It's unfortunate that John Hockenberry seems to be so far out of touch with reality. The comments are so utterly absurd, we will have no further comment."
Hockenberry also claimed that General Electric, NBC's parent company, discouraged him from talking to the Bin Laden family about their estranged family member.
Hockenberry asked GE, which does business with the Bin Laden family company, to help him get in contact with them. Instead, a PR executive called Hockenberry's hotel room in Saudi Arabia and read a statement about how GE didn't see its "valuable business relationship" with the Bin Laden group as having anything to do with Dateline.
PEARSON BOOSTS FINANCIAL TIMES US PRESENCE WITH MONEY-MEDIA ACQUISITION
UK Press Gazette reports that Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, has boosted the newspaper’s US-based news operation by purchasing an American site offering news and commentary on the money management industry.
It said Money-Media, bought from its sole shareholder and ceo Michael Griffin, offers live news services on the American world of “high-net worth” asset management and mutual fund trustees. Its Agenda section claims to be “the most influential source of intelligence for today’s corporate directors”.
Pearson said that Money-Media’s specialist services will “improve the ability of the Financial Times to reach the asset management community in the US” and enhance the recently launched US edition of FTfm, its fund management newspaper supplement.
The paper is expected to face increased competition in North America from a revamped Wall Street Journal after its takeover by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Money-Media was founded in 1996 by Michael Griffin. It has a staff of 70, including 23 in editorial, and is based in New York. It has four online ‘products’: Ignites, a daily online service reaching over 50,000 mutual fund managers; Fundfire, a daily online service reaching 40,000 money management professionals; BoardIQ, a bi-weekly online and print service for over 4,000 trustees and top executives at nearly 140 fund complexes, and Agenda which is delivered to more than 4,000 directors and officers at nearly 300 public companies.
The FT has 24 print sites across the world, and a combined daily circulation of 444,880, according to November 2007's ABC figures, and a readership of more than 1.3 million people. FT.com attracts 5.35 million unique users each month and 43 million page views, according to ABC electronic figures from March 2007.
WEATHER CHANNEL BECOMES HOT PROPERTY WITH A $5 BILLION SALES TAG
Last year MediaBlab reported that with the trendiness of the climate change and global warming issues, normally boring old weather reports would become the new hot media properties.
Now New York Times reports that the Weather Channel, one of America’s most broadly distributed basic cable networks, is preparing to put itself on the block. The sale of the channel, as well as its sister web site, weather.com, could fetch as much as US$5 billion, and the Times speculates that big media companies such as GE's NBC unit, News Corp, and Comcast may be among the suitors. The sale is believed to be part of the break-up of Weather Channel parent Landmark Communications.
Weather.com is the 25th most popular site in the US, and the Weather Channel provides data to a range of leading online destinations including MySpace, Yahoo and AOL. It also started providing mobile video forecasts with technology from Vantrix in October.
The New York Times also said, “The sale of the Weather Channel, once written off as a dull network for weather buffs, could become especially heated as it is one of the few remaining basic cable channels available for sale. One potential suitor described the Weather Channel as ‘beachfront property’.”
EGYPT COURT RULES AGAINST BLOCKING ACCESS TO 51 WEBSITES
The administrative court of Egypt’s state council has ruled against blocking access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on March 11 last year, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised.
Reporters Without Borders reported that the judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint. The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them.
Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
NEW BALKAN DAILY ONLINE NEWS SITE LAUNCHED
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has launched a new daily news site at www.BalkanInsight.com. The site combines the network’s regular investigative and analytic reports with daily news coverage in nine countries in the Balkans.
The International Journalists Network reports that the decision to launch a new site was an obvious next step for the network, given the success of its weekly newsletter, the Balkan Insight. The newsletter had over 15,000 subscribers to its English edition and about 5,000 subscribers to the Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Macedonian editions.
While the new Balkan Insight site continues to provide in-depth analysis and regional political news, it has expanded to include more business news, lifestyle features and newsy blogs.
The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network is a project of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting that strives for in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes.
SWEDEN BECOMES THE FIRST COUNTRY TO SEE ONLINE AD REVENUE OUTSTRIP TV REVENUE
Sweden will this year become the first country to see advertisers spend more on the internet than on TV ads, according to the latest forecast from leading media buying agency, Group M Group M, owned by Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP group.
The same forecast said the UK will see advertisers spend more on the internet than on TV ads next year.
The Guardian reports that Group M forecasts that the UK will be on the brink of passing the milestone at the end of 2008, when the internet will account for 24.8 percent of UK media spend, just behind the 26 percent share held by the TV ad sector.
After that, UK internet ad spend will need to increase by just another 6 percent year on year to overtake TV in 2009.
In Sweden, at the close of last year TV ads accounted for 19.8 percent of all media spend, compared with the internet's 16.7 percent share. By the close of 2008 the internet will have grown to take a 19.5 percent share of all media spend in Sweden, compared to the 19.2 percent share.
But television's share of advertising spend in Sweden is small anyway, because it is a relative latecomer to commercial TV.
AUSTRALIA’S ZYLOTECH INTRODUCES FOOTBALL PLAYER DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM
Zylotech, teaming with its integrator Swintech Pty Ltd, has won Stage 1 of the contract to supply the NSW Sports Academy at Narrabeen with wireless digital surveillance systems for monitoring National Rugby League player performance by Des Hasler, the head coach of the Manly Sea Eagles.
Zylotech regards this as a prestigious win because Australia’s Sports Academy at Narrabeen, the National Rugby League and the Manly Club have sought and are active promoters of technology to enhance and video monitor their player improvement programs.
Brett Swinfeild, sales manager of Swintech said the company, together with Des Hasler, surveyed the various digital surveillance technologies in the market and selected Zylotech based upon its ability to operate more efficiently over an IP network.
Multiple wireless live cameras can be remotely controlled and zoomed so coaches can effectively set plays during training and monitor fast moving play movements.
At the same time, images can be remotely recorded, accessed and evaluated by other high-performance coaches and officials anywhere in the world.
He said, “By the end of next season we should be able to have all 16 National Rugby League clubs using the system. We are also looking for other codes including the Australian Football league, soccer and cricket pending on the availability of value-adding analysis software by third parties.”
NEW FORTNIGHTLY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE MASS APPEAL WOMEN’S MAGAZINE FOR INDIA
Yet another English-language magazine launch in India: this time it’s She, a fortnightly magazine from Dainik Bhaskar which will hit newsstands in selected regions next Tuesday.
Exchange4media said, “The magazine will have 52 colour pages and target the SEC AB women in the 18-35 age group.”
Editor Sathya Saran said, “The magazine will combine real life stories, experiences, and successes that readers can identify with. It brings articles on women who have crossed and surmounted obstacles in marriage, career and in life; it helps a woman be a better homemaker, a better mother, a better career person. It will guide the reader through the new steps in fashion and beauty trends, and tell her how to stay on top of a fast developing social environment.”
Sanjeev Kotnala, associate vice president and national head of communication, Bhaskar Group, told exchange4media that, “She celebrates womanhood. The concept of She is the outcome of research across the Bhaskar markets along with a detailed analysis of women’s magazines currently available in the market. We found that the available Hindi magazines fell below the expectations of SEC AB women and at the same time, the English magazines for women were not in-line with the culture, expectations, aspirations and environment of today’s women.”
Agencyfaqs put it slightly more bluntly, reporting that She will “Fill the void between glossy English women’s magazines and their drab Hindi counterparts…a version of an English woman’s magazine, which the group is calling a magazine for the average Indian woman, not over the top in the glitz and glamour department.”
FORMER BRIT CNBC FINANCE REPORTER BECOMES A BUM WHO CALLS A STREET BENCH HOME
A former British ITN newsreader and GBP85, 000 (A$190,000) a year business and finance reporter for US network CNBC ended up as a homeless bum due to mismanaged finances.
Credit card debt and alcoholism led to divorce, bankruptcy and homelessness, which in turn led to a 10 month stint sleeping on a bench next to a nightclub.
But things are on the improve: the former newsreader Ed Mitchell is in rehab and about to become the subject of a new ITV1 documentary in which his former journalistic colleague Carol Barnes attempts to find out why it happened.
Mitchell’s story became fodder for the newspapers last month when details of his fall from the comfortable life came to light, and his plight captured the public’s imagination.
It also attracted Carol Barnes who saw the newspaper story, wondered what happened, found out and decided the story was worth a documentary.
In the documentary, provisionally titled Saving Ed Mitchell, Barnes will be seen paying her former colleague a surprise visit and the cameras follow him on the streets before he checks into rehab at the Priory.
The production team filmed with Mitchell over the Christmas period and will be monitoring his progress during rehab.
The 30 minute film will air later this month, and is being made by TwoFour Productions with executive producers Joe Houlihan and Emma Morgan.
Mitchell told the Guardian, "There is an irony that someone who should be an expert as a business and finance reporter should get their finances in such a state."
Indeed.
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