MEDIABLAB NOVEMBER 7
November 7th 2007 06:58
NOVEMBER 7
MEDIABLAB DAILY MEDIA NEWS SERVICE, COMPILED BY PETER OLSZEWSKI FOR DOW JONES' FACTIVA
For contact: email bigwordz@bigpond.com
INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCIES TO BOYCOTT CRICKET TEST IN AUSTRALIA
International news agencies they might be forced to cancel coverage of the first Australia-Sri Lanka cricket Test after organisers imposed unprecedented restrictions on the media, The Australian reports..
The news agencies said Cricket Australia's (demand that they surrender all intellectual property rights to their photo coverage of the game raised grave concerns about press freedom, leaving them unable to report on the Test.
The row means the main agencies - Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press - cannot cover the Test beginning in Brisbane, restricting the ability of cricket fans around the world to follow the match.
The agencies are part of a coalition of more than 30 media organisations -
including Getty Images, News Ltd, Fairfax and Australian Associated Press - set up to oppose Cricket Australia’s stance.
FAIRFAX’S NEWLY ACQUIRED AUSTRALIAN RADIO NETWORK WILL GET RID OF NATIONALLY SYNDICATED PROGRAMS – AND THEIR HIGHLY PAID HOSTS
Fairfax Media's newly acquired Southern Cross national radio network has announced a return to localism, spelling the end of nationally syndicated radio programs such as the John Laws show.
The network will probably be renamed Fairfax Radio and highly paid national radio hosts will no longer be part of the new mix.
The new strategy will be to distribute programs from the stations in the capital city of a given state to regional areas within that state.
AUSSIE INVASION OF WALL STREET JOURNAL TIPPED AS TIMES EDITOR ROBERT THOMSON RUMOURED TO BECOME THE NEW PUBLISHER
Rupert Murdoch plans to install Times editor Robert Thomson as publisher of the Wall Street Journal next year, according to a senior US media executive.
MediaGuardian.co.uk reports that the executive said Murdoch had led him to be "90 percent certain" that Thomson would make the move, which would be part of an "Aussie invasion" of New York-based Dow Jones.
Despite the lack of any official comment from News Corporation about the move, it is understood Murdoch has been privately spelling out his plans for Thomson to other media executives.
"Rupert is being quite open about it," a senior US media executive said, "If you ring him and ask him out to lunch he will tell you."
"It will probably happen in the first three months next year, but it could be the first six months," the source added.
The recent announcement that the Times is set to move into profit next year for the first time in its modern history has only cemented the perception that Thomson will move from the editorial side to the commercial side of newspapers when he leaves the London title.
Before his appointment as Times editor in 2002, Thomson ran the Financial Times office in US for four years, increasing its circulation from 32,000 to more than 123,000.
Murdoch has already made a hands-on visit to the Wall Street Journal headquarters in New York where he "got out his red felt-tipped pen" and critiqued the paper, according to one insider.
He has also laid out drastic plans to shake up the Wall Street Journal and take on the New York Times and other mainstream papers.
When asked at a recent conference in San Francisco whether he was aiming to kill the New York Times, Murdoch replied simply: "That would be nice."
STUFF MAGAZINE TO LAUNCH IN SOUTH AFRICA NEXT WEEK
Johnnic Communications is launching Stuff, billed as Europe's best-selling technology magazine, in South Africa mid this month. Frequency will be bi-monthly at first, 25,000 copies will be printed for the launch issue, then 20,000 from then on.
The launch of Stuff forms part of Johncom's strategy to capture communities of interest and follows on the successes it has seen with SoccerLife and the Living titles.
The publisher aims to make it the biggest gadget magazine in SA as it joins its sister publications in 22 countries.
The editor is Toby Shapshak who won the Telkom ICT Journalist of the Year in 2002, and has scooped numerous other awards for his technology writing. He has been the Mail & Guardians technology editor and written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Sunday Times, Business Day, Weekender, FM, GQ, Maverick and Best Life.
BIG US NEWSPAPERS TAKE BIG CIRCULATION HITS
Media Daily News summed it up quite neatly when it reported, “The unrelenting drumbeat of bad news for US newspapers continued Monday with the release of the latest circulation figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, covering the six-month period from March to September 2007. The news was so bad that the Newspaper Association of America has deigned not to tally the numbers for an overall circulation figure, but a quick glance at the big and medium-sized players tells the story.”
Media Life magazine weekday circulation was down 2.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent for the prior reporting period. Sunday circulation fell even more, by 3.5 percent, versus 3.1 percent for the prior period.
Also, similar to the last reporting period, the big declines were among the nation's largest papers, such as The New York Times, down 4.5 percent on weekdays and 7.6 percent on Sundays, Newsday, off 5.6 percent on weekdays and 4.3 percent on Sundays, and The New York Post, which after passing the New York Daily News has fallen behind again, off 5.2 percent on weekdays and 5.1 percent on Sundays.
Of the top 25 papers, 21 saw declines in their weekday circulation, while 22 saw declines on Sunday.
But there is also the consideration that some of the decline is due to repositioning by newspaper companies that are executing a circulation strategy that rebalances away from the less profitable 'other' circulation to the highly profitable 'individually paid.'
PEARSON TO SELL ITS FRENCH FINANCIAL NEWSPAPER GROUP
Financial Times publisher Pearson has agreed to sell its French financial newspaper group, Les Echos, to French luxury goods group LVMH for Eur 240 million (A$377 million).
UK Press Gazette reports that Pearson expects the transaction with LVMH to be completed towards the end of the year.
In 2006, the Les Echos group contributed EUR 126m in revenue and EUR 10m in profit to parent company Pearson.
The agreement includes a series of measures to protect editorial independence and jobs at Les Echos.
The move is the latest in a series of moves by Pearson to exit the European market and make way for the English-language Financial Times to expand into a global newspaper. In 2004, Pearson sold its stake in Expansion, a Spanish-language business title.
It is also reportedly in talks with Spiegel Verlag, owner of the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, which is looking to buy Pearson's 50 percent stake in FT Deutschland.
AMERICAN SCREENWRITERS STRIKE KICKS IN, WITH LETTERMAN AND LENO AMONGST FIRST CASUALTIES
The Guardian reported that as American “TV and film writers went on strike for the first time in almost 20 years, the late night US talk shows that are a nightly ritual for millions of viewers prepared to go off the air.
“With writers unable to pen the topical monologues that are the main attraction of many top-rated programs, networks were preparing to run repeats. Television viewers seemed likely to be deprived of familiar figures such as David Letterman and Jay Leno, both of whom draw around 4 million viewers to the television at 11.30pm each night.”
Early morning picket lines, with writers holding black and red placards, were mounted at studios across Hollywood, at the gates of Disney, CBS, Fox, NBC, Sony Universal and Warner Bros. The writers are demanding a larger share of DVD revenues and new terms for online and digital sales. Writers receive about 4c for each DVD sold. The studios argue that digital sales are in their infancy and it is too early to agree to a binding formula to recompense the writers.
JAPANESE NEWS COMPANY TO SUE MYANMAR GOVERNMENT OVER SLAIN PHOTOJOURNALIST
The president of Tokyo-based APF News Inc., which had a contract with a Japanese photo journalist slain in Myanmar in September, said he will urge the government to file a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court against the Myanmar government.
Japan Times reported that APF News president Toru Yamaji said at a news conference in Tokyo on Sunday that he and the family of slain journalist Kenji Nagai, 50, plan to meet foreign minister Masahiko Komura to seek the lawsuit.
Yamaji said he wants the government to urge the Myanmar junta through the lawsuit to clarify the incident as well as promptly specify the suspect who killed Nagai.
Nagai was on contract with APF News when he was gunned down in Yangon on September 27.
According to Yamaji, a Myanmar man who was guiding Nagai had warned him that the junta was keeping tabs on him.
LIVING MEDIA PUBLISHING TO START NEW DISTRIBUTION COMPANY IN INDIA FOR TITLES SUCH AS FHM
India’s Living Media publishing company is well on the way to meeting its objective to launch a separate distribution company after picking up rights to distribute Maxposure Media Group’s & magazine and Forms magazine, and Next Gen Publishing’s FHM magazine.
Agencyfaq’s reported that earlier the company had a distribution tie-up with Conde Nast’s Indian edition of Vogue.
Maxposure’s & magazine, a luxury and lifestyle publication, was launched in 2006 in the Indian market, and has increased its circulation from 45,000 to 55,000 copies.
But now with the distribution tie-up with Living Media, the magazine’s circulation is expected to increase to 75,000 copies over the next year, according to agencyfaqs.
Maxposure also publishes &More, a glamour magazine.
Forms, a design and architecture magazine, which was launched this year plans to follow a similar growth strategy.
Next Gen Publishing’s FHM has been distributed by Living Media since its launch last month, but subscriptions are being handled in-house by Next Gen.
Next Gen Publishing, owned by the Forbes Group, Emap and Housing Development Finance Corporation, also publishes Commercial Vehicle, Smart Photography, Bike India, Car India, Computer Active, The Ideal Home and Garden and Forbes Yellow Pages.
NEPALESE MAOISTS HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE TO SAY THEY BEAT JOURNALIST TO DEATH
Nepalese Maoist leaders told a press conference that the journalist Birendra Shah had been killed on the day he was kidnapped one month ago, according to Reporters without Borders.
The press conference was told that party cadres had abducted and killed 34-year-old Shah, who worked for privately-owned Nepal FM radio, Dristri Weekly and Avenues TV in Bara, southern Nepal.
The Maoist leaders said it had been established that Shah had been beaten to death on October 5, 2007, the day he was snatched. A local newspaper revealed that it was Lal Bahadur Chaudhary, a member of the Maoist Bara regional committee who personally carried out the fatal beating of the journalist.
An investigative commission set up by the Maoist movement reported that Shah was kidnapped on the orders of Lal Bahadur Chaudhary. Two other party cadres, Kundan Faujdar and Ram Yekbal Sahani, helped him to abduct and murder the journalist. They then buried him in the jungle region 160 kilometres from the capital. Lal Bahadur Chaudhary has reportedly fled to India to avoid arrest.
Reporters without Borders said, “We urge the authorities to take the necessary steps against those who committed this vile murder. The killers of Birendra Shah have already been identified for several days. They should be arrested and tried. The investigation should also identify the instigators of the murder. We also urge the Maoist leaders to rapidly punish all cadres and militants implicated in this killing and recent attacks against journalists."
Shah is the second journalist to be killed since the fall of King Gyanendra's regime in April 2006, which preceded a return to democracy.
SINGTEL HAS 158 MILLION MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS IN ASIA PACIFIC REGION
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd said that the aggregate number of mobile subscribers in the region, including its associates, has reached 157.97 million as at September 30, 2007.
On a year-on-year basis, its mobile subscriber base in the eight markets – Australia,
Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – grew strongly by 57 percent from about 100.77 million customers.
Warid Telecom, its latest investment in Pakistan, contributed 11.87 million subscribers. SingTel acquired a 30 percent equity stake in the company in September 2007.
In Australia, supported by new product launches and innovative customer acquisition activities, SingTel Optus maintained its scale and increased its customer base. In the quarter ended September 30, 2007, it added 92,000 mobile customers of which 65,000 were postpaid, the highest quarterly postpaid net adds in over two years.
Optus total mobile customer base reached 6.89 million, a 4.5 percent increase compared to a year ago. As at September 30, 868,000 subscribers had been provisioned with 3G services, an increase of 27 percent compared to the preceding quarter.
In India, Bharti posted the largest subscriber growth rate among the regional associates for the quarter.
It added a record 6.17 million net mobile subscribers to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 48.88 million as at September 30, 2007. Growth came mainly from prepaid customers who made up 95.4 percent of the net mobile subscribers added during the quarter.
In Indonesia, Telkomsel had the second largest number of mobile subscribers among the associates. It added 1.65 million subscribers in the quarter to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 44.46 million. This is an increase of nearly 12 million or 37 percent compared to a year ago.
In Singapore, SingTel set a new benchmark with its mobile subscriber base reaching 2.13 million as at September 30, 2007.
During the quarter, it saw an increase of 185,000 mobile subscribers, mainly from the record addition of 163,000 prepaid mobile subscribers. Continuing the growth trajectory from the preceding quarter, prepaid mobile market share rose to 35.3 per cent from 31.7 percent a quarter ago.
This reflected SingTel’s success in penetrating the foreign worker segment by boosting its value offerings and expanding its distribution.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S LAST REGIONAL PAPER BENEFITS FROM THE RESOURCES BOOM BUT SUFFERS FROM LACK OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Western Australia’s last remaining regional daily, the Kalgoorlie Miner, a 40cm page tabloid, has capitalised on the resources boom in terms of ad revenue but it’s progress is being stymied by a lack of human resources – it can’t recruit qualified journalists.
“We’ve probably been two or three reporters down for much of the year. We get a number of university graduates applying but trying to get senior reporters, even cadets, is difficult,” the Miner’s editor Michael Gorey told Mediaweek Australia.
But he said the upside of editing the WAN-owned Kalgoorlie Miner at the moment is that adventuring revenues are rolling in.
“Advertising certainly is booming. We’ve been having a bumper couple of years and it’s good for me as an editor and manager of my department to not have to worry too much about the bottom line. It’s sort of taking care of itself at the moment.”
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION’S BILLION BUCK REVENUE SPREAD ACROSS A HOST TV, RADIO AND INTERNET-BASED STATIONS
While some Australian media outlets are comparing the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s record $1 billion revenue to commercial televisions stations with similar revenue, the fact is that the ABC is more than one television station.
It’s a labyrinthine network comprising not only its flagship Channel 2, but also two additional TV services: ABC 2 or Channel 22, and ABC Asia Pacific, the ABC’s international TV channel.
Its budget also supports four national radio networks – Radio National, News Radio, ABC Classic FM and Triple J; one international radio channel – Radio Australia; 60 local radio stations; and three internet based music stations – Dig Radio, Dig Country and Dig Jazz.
In 2000 a study completed by Professor Glenn Withers of the ANU determined that ABC expenditure per average television broadcast hour was just 42 percent of spending averaged across the three commercial networks.
COMMERCIAL TV ON THE NOSE WITH AUSSIE VIEWERS, ACCORDING TO POLL
Australians seem to be going off commercial TV, according to a poll conducted by the ABC.
The ABC-commissioned Appreciation Survey, conducted this June by Newspoll, showed that Australian’s don’t rank commercial TV too highly.
The ABC's 2007 annual report discussed the survey’s findings, noting that the number of people who thinks commercial TV doesn’t host appealing content increased 47 percent to 54 percent, with a similar decline in the number who feel it is doing a good job.
There has also been a smaller increase in negative perceptions about ABC Television, from 15 percent to 19 percent.
Viewers expressed dissatisfaction with commercial television’s heavy use of repeats, particularly by Nine and Ten, the odd start times for programs and last minute program changes.
US AD EXEC WHO SAID HIS BOSS TRIED TO MAKE HIM HAVE SEX WITH HOOKERS NOW SAYS HIS BOSS SNEAKILY PHOTOGRAPHED MARIA SHARAPOVA’S NETHER REGIONS
On Monday MediaBlab ran a story about the former creative director for the US division of Japan's largest advertising agency, Dentsu, who said he was forced to sleep with hookers and placed in sexually-charged situations on business trips as a condition of employment, according to what the New York Post described as a “salacious lawsuit against the company.”
Steve Biegel, of Woodbury, claimed his boss, Toyo Shigeta, ceo at Dentsu Holdings USA, flew into rages when employees refused to play ball and ball hookers.
The New York Post ran details of the story under a headline which read, ‘Axed Ad Big Sues Over Whore-ible Ordeal.’
Dentsu fired Biegel in November 2006, and the company said he never complained while working for them.
But now Steve Biegel has bobbed up on the Smoking Gun website with yet another lurid allegation.
In another lawsuit filed in the US District Court in New York Biegel charges that he was fired by Dentsu after complaining about the photographic hobby of Toyo Shigeta, the firm's ceo.
Biegel claimed the ceo allegedly enjoyed photographing the crotches of unsuspecting females, and snapped a close-up shot of Maria Sharapova's nether region as the tennis star posed for a Canon camera ad. He then allegedly distributed the Sharapova photo to subordinates.
The image, Biegel contends, was surreptitiously snapped by Shigeta in April 2005 during a break in the filming of a Canon commercial at a tennis centre in Key Biscayne, Florida.
Through a Dentsu spokesperson, Shigeta denied taking the Sharapova photo.
Dentsu branded Biegel's allegations "outrageous" and said it would file a counterclaim for libel and fraud.
INTERIM RESTRAINT ORDER AGAINST YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE IN INDIAN COURT OVER COPYRIGHT ISSUES
Google is facing another court case over copyright issues, this time in India.
Rafat Ali reports that Super Cassettes Industries Ltd, better known as T-Series, has obtained an interim restraint order against YouTube.com LLC and its parent company Google from the High Court of Delhi.
The order restrains YouTube and Google from disseminating or displaying on their websites, or infringing in any manner, the copyright of any audio visual work in which the T-Series owns exclusive copyright. T-Series has filed a suit against Google and YouTube for a permanent injunction.
No one represented Google or YouTube in court.
DUTCH GOVERNMENT ADMITS HACKING INTO NEWS AGENCY
The Dutch government on Monday admitted the Social Affairs Ministry officials hacked into a media agency's computers in mid 2006 to find out what stories were being written about them, the UK Press Gazette reported. .
The Geassocieerde Pers Diensten or GPD news agency became suspicious after the ministry asked questions about an interview with its minister, Jan Piet Hein Donner that had not yet been published, according to Fons Tuinstra of the Poynter Institute.
The ministry logged in almost daily, said the GDP. The news agency fears that other ministries might have done the same and calls it a severe infringement of press freedom
Marcel van Lingen, editor-in-chief of the agency which serves more than a dozen newspapers in the Netherlands and Belgium, accused the government of spying, and said the Social Affairs Ministry “used stolen information to influence our reporting.”
The ministry confirmed in a statement some of its employees had accessed GPD's internal site and apologised. It invited public prosecutors to investigate whether any criminal acts were committed
JOURNALISM IN AUSTRALIA HAMPERED BY HUNDREDS OF SECRECY PROVISIONS
Australians are being denied access to information at all levels of government and the law, and falling victim to a "general, subtle shift ... towards secrecy,” according to former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss.
The Australian reported that in handing down her national audit of free speech, Mrs Moss said she had found there were more than 1000 court suppression orders in place across Australia at any one time and that journalistic investigations were hampered by more than 500 legal restrictions, including 335 specific secrecy provisions.
The Audit was commissioned by a coalition of several of Australia's leading media organisations, including News Limited, Fairfax Media, Free TV Australia, Commercial Radio, the ABC, SBS, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and several others.
The Media Coalition will seek to get responses from all political parties on the findings.
MEDIABLAB DAILY MEDIA NEWS SERVICE, COMPILED BY PETER OLSZEWSKI FOR DOW JONES' FACTIVA
For contact: email bigwordz@bigpond.com
INTERNATIONAL NEWS AGENCIES TO BOYCOTT CRICKET TEST IN AUSTRALIA
International news agencies they might be forced to cancel coverage of the first Australia-Sri Lanka cricket Test after organisers imposed unprecedented restrictions on the media, The Australian reports..
The news agencies said Cricket Australia's (demand that they surrender all intellectual property rights to their photo coverage of the game raised grave concerns about press freedom, leaving them unable to report on the Test.
The agencies are part of a coalition of more than 30 media organisations -
including Getty Images, News Ltd, Fairfax and Australian Associated Press - set up to oppose Cricket Australia’s stance.
FAIRFAX’S NEWLY ACQUIRED AUSTRALIAN RADIO NETWORK WILL GET RID OF NATIONALLY SYNDICATED PROGRAMS – AND THEIR HIGHLY PAID HOSTS
Fairfax Media's newly acquired Southern Cross national radio network has announced a return to localism, spelling the end of nationally syndicated radio programs such as the John Laws show.
The network will probably be renamed Fairfax Radio and highly paid national radio hosts will no longer be part of the new mix.
The new strategy will be to distribute programs from the stations in the capital city of a given state to regional areas within that state.
AUSSIE INVASION OF WALL STREET JOURNAL TIPPED AS TIMES EDITOR ROBERT THOMSON RUMOURED TO BECOME THE NEW PUBLISHER
Rupert Murdoch plans to install Times editor Robert Thomson as publisher of the Wall Street Journal next year, according to a senior US media executive.
MediaGuardian.co.uk reports that the executive said Murdoch had led him to be "90 percent certain" that Thomson would make the move, which would be part of an "Aussie invasion" of New York-based Dow Jones.
Despite the lack of any official comment from News Corporation about the move, it is understood Murdoch has been privately spelling out his plans for Thomson to other media executives.
"Rupert is being quite open about it," a senior US media executive said, "If you ring him and ask him out to lunch he will tell you."
"It will probably happen in the first three months next year, but it could be the first six months," the source added.
The recent announcement that the Times is set to move into profit next year for the first time in its modern history has only cemented the perception that Thomson will move from the editorial side to the commercial side of newspapers when he leaves the London title.
Before his appointment as Times editor in 2002, Thomson ran the Financial Times office in US for four years, increasing its circulation from 32,000 to more than 123,000.
Murdoch has already made a hands-on visit to the Wall Street Journal headquarters in New York where he "got out his red felt-tipped pen" and critiqued the paper, according to one insider.
He has also laid out drastic plans to shake up the Wall Street Journal and take on the New York Times and other mainstream papers.
When asked at a recent conference in San Francisco whether he was aiming to kill the New York Times, Murdoch replied simply: "That would be nice."
STUFF MAGAZINE TO LAUNCH IN SOUTH AFRICA NEXT WEEK
Johnnic Communications is launching Stuff, billed as Europe's best-selling technology magazine, in South Africa mid this month. Frequency will be bi-monthly at first, 25,000 copies will be printed for the launch issue, then 20,000 from then on.
The launch of Stuff forms part of Johncom's strategy to capture communities of interest and follows on the successes it has seen with SoccerLife and the Living titles.
The publisher aims to make it the biggest gadget magazine in SA as it joins its sister publications in 22 countries.
The editor is Toby Shapshak who won the Telkom ICT Journalist of the Year in 2002, and has scooped numerous other awards for his technology writing. He has been the Mail & Guardians technology editor and written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Sunday Times, Business Day, Weekender, FM, GQ, Maverick and Best Life.
BIG US NEWSPAPERS TAKE BIG CIRCULATION HITS
Media Daily News summed it up quite neatly when it reported, “The unrelenting drumbeat of bad news for US newspapers continued Monday with the release of the latest circulation figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, covering the six-month period from March to September 2007. The news was so bad that the Newspaper Association of America has deigned not to tally the numbers for an overall circulation figure, but a quick glance at the big and medium-sized players tells the story.”
Media Life magazine weekday circulation was down 2.6 percent, versus 2.1 percent for the prior reporting period. Sunday circulation fell even more, by 3.5 percent, versus 3.1 percent for the prior period.
Also, similar to the last reporting period, the big declines were among the nation's largest papers, such as The New York Times, down 4.5 percent on weekdays and 7.6 percent on Sundays, Newsday, off 5.6 percent on weekdays and 4.3 percent on Sundays, and The New York Post, which after passing the New York Daily News has fallen behind again, off 5.2 percent on weekdays and 5.1 percent on Sundays.
Of the top 25 papers, 21 saw declines in their weekday circulation, while 22 saw declines on Sunday.
But there is also the consideration that some of the decline is due to repositioning by newspaper companies that are executing a circulation strategy that rebalances away from the less profitable 'other' circulation to the highly profitable 'individually paid.'
PEARSON TO SELL ITS FRENCH FINANCIAL NEWSPAPER GROUP
Financial Times publisher Pearson has agreed to sell its French financial newspaper group, Les Echos, to French luxury goods group LVMH for Eur 240 million (A$377 million).
UK Press Gazette reports that Pearson expects the transaction with LVMH to be completed towards the end of the year.
In 2006, the Les Echos group contributed EUR 126m in revenue and EUR 10m in profit to parent company Pearson.
The agreement includes a series of measures to protect editorial independence and jobs at Les Echos.
The move is the latest in a series of moves by Pearson to exit the European market and make way for the English-language Financial Times to expand into a global newspaper. In 2004, Pearson sold its stake in Expansion, a Spanish-language business title.
It is also reportedly in talks with Spiegel Verlag, owner of the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, which is looking to buy Pearson's 50 percent stake in FT Deutschland.
AMERICAN SCREENWRITERS STRIKE KICKS IN, WITH LETTERMAN AND LENO AMONGST FIRST CASUALTIES
The Guardian reported that as American “TV and film writers went on strike for the first time in almost 20 years, the late night US talk shows that are a nightly ritual for millions of viewers prepared to go off the air.
“With writers unable to pen the topical monologues that are the main attraction of many top-rated programs, networks were preparing to run repeats. Television viewers seemed likely to be deprived of familiar figures such as David Letterman and Jay Leno, both of whom draw around 4 million viewers to the television at 11.30pm each night.”
Early morning picket lines, with writers holding black and red placards, were mounted at studios across Hollywood, at the gates of Disney, CBS, Fox, NBC, Sony Universal and Warner Bros. The writers are demanding a larger share of DVD revenues and new terms for online and digital sales. Writers receive about 4c for each DVD sold. The studios argue that digital sales are in their infancy and it is too early to agree to a binding formula to recompense the writers.
JAPANESE NEWS COMPANY TO SUE MYANMAR GOVERNMENT OVER SLAIN PHOTOJOURNALIST
The president of Tokyo-based APF News Inc., which had a contract with a Japanese photo journalist slain in Myanmar in September, said he will urge the government to file a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court against the Myanmar government.
Japan Times reported that APF News president Toru Yamaji said at a news conference in Tokyo on Sunday that he and the family of slain journalist Kenji Nagai, 50, plan to meet foreign minister Masahiko Komura to seek the lawsuit.
Yamaji said he wants the government to urge the Myanmar junta through the lawsuit to clarify the incident as well as promptly specify the suspect who killed Nagai.
Nagai was on contract with APF News when he was gunned down in Yangon on September 27.
According to Yamaji, a Myanmar man who was guiding Nagai had warned him that the junta was keeping tabs on him.
LIVING MEDIA PUBLISHING TO START NEW DISTRIBUTION COMPANY IN INDIA FOR TITLES SUCH AS FHM
India’s Living Media publishing company is well on the way to meeting its objective to launch a separate distribution company after picking up rights to distribute Maxposure Media Group’s & magazine and Forms magazine, and Next Gen Publishing’s FHM magazine.
Agencyfaq’s reported that earlier the company had a distribution tie-up with Conde Nast’s Indian edition of Vogue.
Maxposure’s & magazine, a luxury and lifestyle publication, was launched in 2006 in the Indian market, and has increased its circulation from 45,000 to 55,000 copies.
But now with the distribution tie-up with Living Media, the magazine’s circulation is expected to increase to 75,000 copies over the next year, according to agencyfaqs.
Maxposure also publishes &More, a glamour magazine.
Forms, a design and architecture magazine, which was launched this year plans to follow a similar growth strategy.
Next Gen Publishing’s FHM has been distributed by Living Media since its launch last month, but subscriptions are being handled in-house by Next Gen.
Next Gen Publishing, owned by the Forbes Group, Emap and Housing Development Finance Corporation, also publishes Commercial Vehicle, Smart Photography, Bike India, Car India, Computer Active, The Ideal Home and Garden and Forbes Yellow Pages.
NEPALESE MAOISTS HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE TO SAY THEY BEAT JOURNALIST TO DEATH
Nepalese Maoist leaders told a press conference that the journalist Birendra Shah had been killed on the day he was kidnapped one month ago, according to Reporters without Borders.
The press conference was told that party cadres had abducted and killed 34-year-old Shah, who worked for privately-owned Nepal FM radio, Dristri Weekly and Avenues TV in Bara, southern Nepal.
The Maoist leaders said it had been established that Shah had been beaten to death on October 5, 2007, the day he was snatched. A local newspaper revealed that it was Lal Bahadur Chaudhary, a member of the Maoist Bara regional committee who personally carried out the fatal beating of the journalist.
An investigative commission set up by the Maoist movement reported that Shah was kidnapped on the orders of Lal Bahadur Chaudhary. Two other party cadres, Kundan Faujdar and Ram Yekbal Sahani, helped him to abduct and murder the journalist. They then buried him in the jungle region 160 kilometres from the capital. Lal Bahadur Chaudhary has reportedly fled to India to avoid arrest.
Reporters without Borders said, “We urge the authorities to take the necessary steps against those who committed this vile murder. The killers of Birendra Shah have already been identified for several days. They should be arrested and tried. The investigation should also identify the instigators of the murder. We also urge the Maoist leaders to rapidly punish all cadres and militants implicated in this killing and recent attacks against journalists."
Shah is the second journalist to be killed since the fall of King Gyanendra's regime in April 2006, which preceded a return to democracy.
SINGTEL HAS 158 MILLION MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS IN ASIA PACIFIC REGION
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd said that the aggregate number of mobile subscribers in the region, including its associates, has reached 157.97 million as at September 30, 2007.
On a year-on-year basis, its mobile subscriber base in the eight markets – Australia,
Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – grew strongly by 57 percent from about 100.77 million customers.
Warid Telecom, its latest investment in Pakistan, contributed 11.87 million subscribers. SingTel acquired a 30 percent equity stake in the company in September 2007.
In Australia, supported by new product launches and innovative customer acquisition activities, SingTel Optus maintained its scale and increased its customer base. In the quarter ended September 30, 2007, it added 92,000 mobile customers of which 65,000 were postpaid, the highest quarterly postpaid net adds in over two years.
Optus total mobile customer base reached 6.89 million, a 4.5 percent increase compared to a year ago. As at September 30, 868,000 subscribers had been provisioned with 3G services, an increase of 27 percent compared to the preceding quarter.
In India, Bharti posted the largest subscriber growth rate among the regional associates for the quarter.
It added a record 6.17 million net mobile subscribers to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 48.88 million as at September 30, 2007. Growth came mainly from prepaid customers who made up 95.4 percent of the net mobile subscribers added during the quarter.
In Indonesia, Telkomsel had the second largest number of mobile subscribers among the associates. It added 1.65 million subscribers in the quarter to bring its total mobile subscriber base to 44.46 million. This is an increase of nearly 12 million or 37 percent compared to a year ago.
In Singapore, SingTel set a new benchmark with its mobile subscriber base reaching 2.13 million as at September 30, 2007.
During the quarter, it saw an increase of 185,000 mobile subscribers, mainly from the record addition of 163,000 prepaid mobile subscribers. Continuing the growth trajectory from the preceding quarter, prepaid mobile market share rose to 35.3 per cent from 31.7 percent a quarter ago.
This reflected SingTel’s success in penetrating the foreign worker segment by boosting its value offerings and expanding its distribution.
WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S LAST REGIONAL PAPER BENEFITS FROM THE RESOURCES BOOM BUT SUFFERS FROM LACK OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Western Australia’s last remaining regional daily, the Kalgoorlie Miner, a 40cm page tabloid, has capitalised on the resources boom in terms of ad revenue but it’s progress is being stymied by a lack of human resources – it can’t recruit qualified journalists.
“We’ve probably been two or three reporters down for much of the year. We get a number of university graduates applying but trying to get senior reporters, even cadets, is difficult,” the Miner’s editor Michael Gorey told Mediaweek Australia.
But he said the upside of editing the WAN-owned Kalgoorlie Miner at the moment is that adventuring revenues are rolling in.
“Advertising certainly is booming. We’ve been having a bumper couple of years and it’s good for me as an editor and manager of my department to not have to worry too much about the bottom line. It’s sort of taking care of itself at the moment.”
AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING COMMISSION’S BILLION BUCK REVENUE SPREAD ACROSS A HOST TV, RADIO AND INTERNET-BASED STATIONS
While some Australian media outlets are comparing the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s record $1 billion revenue to commercial televisions stations with similar revenue, the fact is that the ABC is more than one television station.
It’s a labyrinthine network comprising not only its flagship Channel 2, but also two additional TV services: ABC 2 or Channel 22, and ABC Asia Pacific, the ABC’s international TV channel.
Its budget also supports four national radio networks – Radio National, News Radio, ABC Classic FM and Triple J; one international radio channel – Radio Australia; 60 local radio stations; and three internet based music stations – Dig Radio, Dig Country and Dig Jazz.
In 2000 a study completed by Professor Glenn Withers of the ANU determined that ABC expenditure per average television broadcast hour was just 42 percent of spending averaged across the three commercial networks.
COMMERCIAL TV ON THE NOSE WITH AUSSIE VIEWERS, ACCORDING TO POLL
Australians seem to be going off commercial TV, according to a poll conducted by the ABC.
The ABC-commissioned Appreciation Survey, conducted this June by Newspoll, showed that Australian’s don’t rank commercial TV too highly.
The ABC's 2007 annual report discussed the survey’s findings, noting that the number of people who thinks commercial TV doesn’t host appealing content increased 47 percent to 54 percent, with a similar decline in the number who feel it is doing a good job.
There has also been a smaller increase in negative perceptions about ABC Television, from 15 percent to 19 percent.
Viewers expressed dissatisfaction with commercial television’s heavy use of repeats, particularly by Nine and Ten, the odd start times for programs and last minute program changes.
US AD EXEC WHO SAID HIS BOSS TRIED TO MAKE HIM HAVE SEX WITH HOOKERS NOW SAYS HIS BOSS SNEAKILY PHOTOGRAPHED MARIA SHARAPOVA’S NETHER REGIONS
On Monday MediaBlab ran a story about the former creative director for the US division of Japan's largest advertising agency, Dentsu, who said he was forced to sleep with hookers and placed in sexually-charged situations on business trips as a condition of employment, according to what the New York Post described as a “salacious lawsuit against the company.”
Steve Biegel, of Woodbury, claimed his boss, Toyo Shigeta, ceo at Dentsu Holdings USA, flew into rages when employees refused to play ball and ball hookers.
The New York Post ran details of the story under a headline which read, ‘Axed Ad Big Sues Over Whore-ible Ordeal.’
Dentsu fired Biegel in November 2006, and the company said he never complained while working for them.
But now Steve Biegel has bobbed up on the Smoking Gun website with yet another lurid allegation.
In another lawsuit filed in the US District Court in New York Biegel charges that he was fired by Dentsu after complaining about the photographic hobby of Toyo Shigeta, the firm's ceo.
Biegel claimed the ceo allegedly enjoyed photographing the crotches of unsuspecting females, and snapped a close-up shot of Maria Sharapova's nether region as the tennis star posed for a Canon camera ad. He then allegedly distributed the Sharapova photo to subordinates.
The image, Biegel contends, was surreptitiously snapped by Shigeta in April 2005 during a break in the filming of a Canon commercial at a tennis centre in Key Biscayne, Florida.
Through a Dentsu spokesperson, Shigeta denied taking the Sharapova photo.
Dentsu branded Biegel's allegations "outrageous" and said it would file a counterclaim for libel and fraud.
INTERIM RESTRAINT ORDER AGAINST YOUTUBE AND GOOGLE IN INDIAN COURT OVER COPYRIGHT ISSUES
Google is facing another court case over copyright issues, this time in India.
Rafat Ali reports that Super Cassettes Industries Ltd, better known as T-Series, has obtained an interim restraint order against YouTube.com LLC and its parent company Google from the High Court of Delhi.
The order restrains YouTube and Google from disseminating or displaying on their websites, or infringing in any manner, the copyright of any audio visual work in which the T-Series owns exclusive copyright. T-Series has filed a suit against Google and YouTube for a permanent injunction.
No one represented Google or YouTube in court.
DUTCH GOVERNMENT ADMITS HACKING INTO NEWS AGENCY
The Dutch government on Monday admitted the Social Affairs Ministry officials hacked into a media agency's computers in mid 2006 to find out what stories were being written about them, the UK Press Gazette reported. .
The Geassocieerde Pers Diensten or GPD news agency became suspicious after the ministry asked questions about an interview with its minister, Jan Piet Hein Donner that had not yet been published, according to Fons Tuinstra of the Poynter Institute.
The ministry logged in almost daily, said the GDP. The news agency fears that other ministries might have done the same and calls it a severe infringement of press freedom
Marcel van Lingen, editor-in-chief of the agency which serves more than a dozen newspapers in the Netherlands and Belgium, accused the government of spying, and said the Social Affairs Ministry “used stolen information to influence our reporting.”
The ministry confirmed in a statement some of its employees had accessed GPD's internal site and apologised. It invited public prosecutors to investigate whether any criminal acts were committed
JOURNALISM IN AUSTRALIA HAMPERED BY HUNDREDS OF SECRECY PROVISIONS
Australians are being denied access to information at all levels of government and the law, and falling victim to a "general, subtle shift ... towards secrecy,” according to former NSW Ombudsman Irene Moss.
The Australian reported that in handing down her national audit of free speech, Mrs Moss said she had found there were more than 1000 court suppression orders in place across Australia at any one time and that journalistic investigations were hampered by more than 500 legal restrictions, including 335 specific secrecy provisions.
The Audit was commissioned by a coalition of several of Australia's leading media organisations, including News Limited, Fairfax Media, Free TV Australia, Commercial Radio, the ABC, SBS, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and several others.
The Media Coalition will seek to get responses from all political parties on the findings.
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