MEDIABLAB DAILY DIGEST JAN 18: BURMA BLOGGERS EAST TIMOR MEDIA LE MONDE TERMINATOR TOM CRUISE
January 19th 2008 05:14
AUSTRALIAN MEDIA TYCOON JAMES PACKER TARGETED BY TOM CRUISE AS ‘RAW MEAT’ FOR SCIENTOLOGISTS
A sad and overweight James Packer reeling from being jilted by his then wife Jodi Meares, was the "perfect recruit" when actor Tom Cruise set off on a carefully targeted crusade in mid-2002, targeting wealthy and influential celebrities to Scientology.
The Australian today reports that this claim is made in the new biography of Cruise by British author Andrew Morton, who describes the then 35-year- ld media tycoon Packer as the "raw meat" Scientology needed to gain recognition and credibility.
Morton said Packer was specifically targeted by Cruise, who by mid-2002 had resolved to dedicate his life to Scientology.
He suggests Cruise offered Packer a role as a samurai extra in the film The Last Samurai, and, according to the book, Packer was quickly seduced, saying later he admired Cruise for his humility, values and decency.
The book is not available on Australian bookstores, but was available last night on the internet.
MYANMAR BLOGGERS REPORT THAT GOOGLE’S BLOG-CREATING SITE IS BANNED
Myanmar bloggers report that one of the most popular blog sites in the the country, www.blogger.com has been banned by the Myanmar Post and Telecomm Ministry as of Thursday morning.
The www.blogger site, owned by Google enables users to creat their own blogs.
Another Internet Service Provider in Myanmar, 'Bagan Teleport' has also blocked this blog website. Both the ISPs are under the control of the military regime but under two different administrations.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood movie He is Back, premieres on January 25. The movie features action hero Rambo on a rescue mission to Myanmar and was filmed on location around Chiang Mai in Thailand.
The fourth in a series of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo films, and this time the Hollywood action hero heads into the Myanmar jungle to rescue Western missionaries abducted by the Myanmar military.
As reported earlier in MediaBlab, Italian film director Giuseppe Tornatore is also due to make a movie about Myanmar’s pro-democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi. It is to be an English-language film with an estimated budget of US$30 million.
EAST TIMOR TO ‘REFORM’ MEDIA BY FORCE IF NECESSARY
East Timor Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao has threatened to arrest local journalists, claiming inaccurate news reporting is contributing to national instability.
The Australian today reported that Gusmao told reporters they faced arrest if they persisted with reporting as fact rumours and other unsourced claims.
The former president and veteran pro-independence leader slammed local media over recent interviews with Major Alfredo Reinado, an army rebel and key figure in the 2006 unrest that brought the tiny nation to the brink of civil war.
Gusmao said 2008 was a year of reform in East Timor and that would include the local media. The Australian understands Gusmao was particularly incensed by false reports that two people had been killed during civil unrest in the Caicoli neighbourhood in Dili.
SHARES IN US BIG FIVE MEDIA CONGLOMERATES DROP SHARPLY IN 2008
CnnMoney’s Media Bizz reports that share sales for the big five US media conglomerates are down.
Shares in Time Warner are down nearly 5 percent. News Corp has s fallen 7 percent this year. Walt Disney is down nearly 8 percent in 2008. Viacom has shed 9 percent, while its former corporate sibling CBS has plummeted 14 percent.
CBS, Time Warner, Disney and News Corp are all trading near 52-week lows, and each stock is down between 15 percent and 20 percent for the past three months.
CNN said, “The steep sell-off in media stocks so far this year raises concerns about whether the group can possibly do well in 2008. In addition to the recession fears, which have some media experts wondering about a pullback in ad spending, the Hollywood writers’ strike could wreak havoc on sales and earnings this year.”
MACQUARIE MEDIA GROUP TO RENAME ITS AUSTRALIAN RADIO OPERATION
The Macquarie Media Group, part of the recent joint takeover with Fairfax of Southern Cross Broadcasting, will rename its Australian operations.
The Australian newspaper said it understands the group's flagship local operation, Macquarie Regional Radioworks, Australia's largest owner of regional radio stations, is to be “fully rebadged” as Macquarie Southern Cross Media.
It is believed the new name will be effective by mid-February.
US CONSUMER MAGAZINE MARKET HELD ITS OWN IN 2007 WITH SLIGHT INCREASES OVERALL
Total magazine rate-card-reported advertising revenue for consumer magazines grew 6.1 percent in 2007 in the US, compared to 2006, according to year-end Publishers In formation Bureau figures just released this morning.
But Folio reports that total ad pages, considered the more telling statistic given the unaccounted rate card discounts doled out by publishers, declined about a half a percent (-0.6) over the same period.
Nine of the 12 major advertising categories, comprising more than 85 percent of the US$25.5 billion of total magazine ad spending, showed increases. Eight categories bought more ad pages in 2007 than in 2006. Drug companies spent the most on advertising in magazines.
Reader’s Digest was up eight percent in revenue, but down roughly one percent in pages.
New York magazine was 16.3 percent in ad revenue and 4.3 percent in ad pages, overtaking the New Yorker in total reported ad revenue for the first time.
Celebrity magazines saw increases in spending, and OK! was up 110 percent in ad revenue, 44 percent in ad pages.
The newsweekly category was down. Newsweek was down 1.8 percent in ad pages, 6.7 percent in pages; Time was down 18 percent in ad revenue on 6.9 percent fewer ad pages; and US News & World Report was up one percent in ad revenue, down 4.6 percent in ad pages.
Only Felix Dennis’ The Week, the magazine he left out of the sale of his US magazines, registered significant growth, up 15.8 percent in ad revenue and 5.3 percent in ad pages.
Media Life gave a more negative spin to the figures, reporting, “Year 2007 started off looking poorly for consumer magazines, and it pretty much ended that way, with ad pages down slightly for the year, falling by 0.8 percent from the prior year's total, to 251,577.74, when Sunday magazines are included in the roundup, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
“Total ad spending in terms of dollars was up 5.9 percent, to $27,498,949,143, based on publishers' rate cards before discounting.
“Among the 23 ad categories tracked by Media Life, just over half, 12, showed gains over 2007, versus 11 that fell in ad pages.”
Media Life said the sharpest declines were seen in the long-troubled teen category, which has seen several titles fold. Teen magazines were down 24.4 percent in ad pages over 2007.
The business category was off 11.7 percent for the year, continuing a trend of ad page losses that go back to the ad recession that set in in late 2000.
Media Life said, “Among the big three, Forbes saw the least decline in pages, off 4.8 percent. BusinessWeek fell by 18.2 percent and Fortune was not far behind at 17.3 percent. Perhaps ironically, the only two business titles to see gains were Inc and Fast Company, two long-distressed titles that have gotten an infusion of capital and creative energy under their new owner, Mansueto Ventures. Fast Company was up 20.6 percent and Inc rose 6.4 percent.”
For a full list of magazine totals, click here.
NEW BOOK SPELLS OUT HOW GLOBAL POWER IS SHIFTING TO THE EAST – AND HOW THE WEST CAN BEST COPE
Leading intellectual Kishore Mahbubani's latest book, ‘The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East,’ documenting the rise of Asia, will hit bookstores in February.
The book synopsis says that Mahbubani, whom the Foreign Policy Magazine included among the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, describes how for centuries the Asians have been bystanders in world history, reacting defenselessly to the surges of Western commerce, thought, and power. That era is over. Asia is returning to the centre stage it occupied for eighteen centuries before the rise of the West.
Asians have absorbed and understood Western best practices in many areas, from free-market economics to the embrace of innovative science and technology, meritocracy and the rule of law. And they have become innovative in their own way, creating new patterns of cooperation not seen in the West. Their rise is unstoppable, and by 2050, three of the world’s largest economies will be Asian: China, India, and Japan.
Will the West resist the rise of Asia? This scenario will be disastrous. Asia wants to replicate, not dominate, the West. But the West must gracefully share power with Asia, by giving up its automatic domination of global institutions from the IMF to the World Bank, from the G7 to the UN Security Council.
History teaches that the rise of new powers almost always leads to tension and conflict. This, too, may happen. But this can be avoided if the world accepts the key principles for a new global partnership spelled out in The New Asian Hemisphere.
Kishore Mahbubani is the author of two previous books: ‘Can Asians Think?’ and ‘Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World.’
He is currently the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.
He served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore and has written many articles on world affairs. He served two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002.
In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine included him among the top 100 public intellectuals in the world.
CHINA SET TO DOMINATE THE WORLD THIS YEAR IN THE NUMBER ON INTERNET USERS
China had 210 million internet users by the end of 2007 and will soon have more users than any other country, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Centre said in a report.
China’s online population is only five million less than the US, and the report predicts that at the beginning of 2008, China will become the country with the largest online population in the world.
China already has the globe’s biggest mobile phone user population, numbering 539.4 million at the end of November, according to government figures.
China added 73 million new online users last year, especially in rural areas, where the number of internet users reached 52.6 million by the end of 2007, a 127.7 percent from a year earlier.
President Hu Jintao called last year for efforts to “purify” the internet, and earlier this month the government announced that only state-controlled entities would be allowed to operate websites that post audio-visual content.
WORLD PRESS INSTITUTE RESUMES OPERATIONS IN AMERICA
After a one-year hiatus, America’s the World Press Institute will resume operations and hold a fellowship program for international journalists beginning in August.
Since it was founded in 1961, the World Press Institute brought international journalists to the US each summer to study, travel and meet officials of public and private institutions and learn about the role and responsibilities of a free press.
However, the program was suspended last year because of a funding shortfall and the decision by Macalester College, where it was based, to cut its ties to the World Press Institute.
Following negotiations, an endowment for the program was transferred to The Saint Paul Foundation, and David Mcdonald, a Minneapolis attorney who has hosted journalists from the program for more than 20 years, was appointed as its new executive director.
The 2008 program will begin in the Twin Cities in mid-August and will last about eight weeks. Participating journalists will cover the Republican National Convention in St. Paul and spend about a month traveling to four other major US cities, where they will participate in briefings and conduct interviews, before returning to the Twin Cities for a final stay in mid-October.
Each year, between 100 and 200 journalists from outside the US apply for the program and about 30 are chosen. Since the program was founded, nearly 500 journalists from 94 countries have participated.
JOURNALISTS SEEK TO STOP TAKEOVER OF FRENCH NEWSPAPER LE MONDE
Bloomberg reports that journalists at the French daily newspaper Le Monde are seeking to block Lagardere and the largest Spanish media group from taking control of the last independent French national newspaper by backing their own candidate for chief executive.
Supervisory board members rejected a bid from Eric Fottorino, Le Monde's editor-in-chief, to lead the unprofitable French media group, Le Monde said in its edition on Wednesday.
The journalist group SRM, the newspaper's largest shareholder, has asked the board to reconsider, according to Le Monde.
Promotora de Informaciones, or Prisa, the largest publicly traded media company in Spain, said it aimed to increase its stake in Le Monde from 15 percent in association with Lagardere, which owned 17 percent.
The SRM said Lagardere is unfit to control Le Monde as Arnaud Lagardere, chief executive officer of the largest French media group, is close to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The SRM has the power to veto key decisions at Le Monde.
NEW GUIDELINES IN JAPAN TO PREVENT BIAS IN MEDIA CRIME REPORTS
The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association released guidelines on Wednesday reaffirming the need to stamp out bias in crime reports ahead of the introduction next year of lay judges in criminal trials.
Kyodo News reports that among the areas drawing attention is the tendency to implicate criminal suspects as the actual perpetrators.
Kyodo News said the major media association worked out the guidelines for its 140 member newspapers, news agencies and broadcasters after the government considered restricting media freedom in the process of formulating the lay judge law, which was enacted in 2004.
Government officials argued such a restriction would be warranted because crime reports could generate prejudice among the public, from which the lay judges will be chosen. The guidelines declare that media organisations ‘shall respond to the (citizens') right to know through harmonisation of a fair trial and the freedom of the press’ and reconfirmed the objectives and significance of crime reporting, such as shedding light on the facts behind each case.
The National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan is expected to announce similar guidelines soon.
Under the lay judge law, a panel of three professional judges and three citizens, serving as lay judges – to be chosen at random from lists of eligible voters – will oversee trials of serious crimes, including murder.
NEW STYLE TV SPONSORSHIP DEAL FOR TERMINATOR: SARAH CONNOR LAUNCH IN US
In a new-style television sponsoring deal in the US, Verizon is partnering with Fox and the Warner Bros Television Group on an integrated marketing promotion for Fox’s hot new series, ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,’ which premiered in America this week.
Nine Network will launch the series in Australia next month.
RCR Wireless reported that the promotion connected the launch of the series with mobile, digital on-air, cable and off-air components.
The push kicked off with a “Get Terminated” mobile market-to-market tour making its way through New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Phoenix, St. Louis, San Diego and Charlotte, North Carolina.
In each city, teams distribute branded premium items and try to get fans to board a Verizon-branded bus to film an action scene opposite a Terminator using green-screen technology. The video shot on the bus can be sent to the fan’s e-mail or Verizon Wireless phone, or shared by posting it on social-networking sites such as MySpace, creating a viral marketing message.
After the series launched on Fox, Verizon Wireless Vcast subscribers began to get access to exclusive material from the ‘Sarah Connor Chronicles’ produced specially for mobile.
MULLAHS CALL FOR DEATH PENALTY FOR YOUNG AFGHAN JOURNALIST
Pressure is being placed on Afghan authorities by conservative religious leaders in the case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a young journalist in the northern province of Balkh who has been detained since late October on charges of blasphemy and defaming Islam. The Council of Mullahs says he should be sentenced to death.
Reporters Without Borders said, "The calls for the death penalty for Kambakhsh highlight the growing influence of fundamentalist groups on intellectual debate. The blasphemy charges are an ill-disguised attempt to hide the desire of the local authorities to restrict press freedom."
Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter for the newspaper Jahan-e Naw (The New World) and a journalism student at Balkh University, was arrested on October 27.
Articles on the role of women in Muslim society were found at his home.
His brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, also a journalist, told Reporters Without Borders his arrest was illegal.
He said, "Any case involving the press should be heard first by the Media Evaluation Commission before going to the courts. Furthermore, the prosecutor only referred the case to the courts after the Council of Mullahs said he should be sentenced to death for insulting holy texts."
Journalists in Balkh province finally revealed that Kambakhsh was being detained after the failure of attempts to obtain his release through negotiation. They wrote to President Hamid Karzai calling for his release. Two days later, the Council of Mullahs warned the authorities against releasing him.
Reporters Without Borders said it is also concerned about Ghows Zalmay, a former journalist and attorney-general's spokesman, who is being held for publishing a translation of the Koran into Dari.
He was arrested in early November after conservative religious leaders said the translation was un-Islamic and misinterpreted verses about adultery and begging. Parliamentarians have even accused him of being "worse than Salman Rushdie."
TURKISH EDITION OF OK! MAGAZINE LAUNCHED THIS WEEK
OK! magazine launched in Turkey this week, marking the 14th international edition of the popular celebrity weekly, the Guardian reports..
The title is produced by GD Gazete Dergi, part of the Ciner Group, under licence from UK publisher Northern & Shell.
Christian Toksvig, the Northern & Shell international operations director, said it was a long-standing ambition for the company to launch a Turkish version of OK!.
OK! was founded in the UK as a monthly in 1993 and went weekly in 1996. The current average circulation stands at 557,014, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The first international edition was in China in 2004 and the 15th edition is set to launch in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in February this year.
Northern & Shell also owns or partly owns editions in Australia and the US, while the other 11 titles are produced under licence.
The initial print run of the Turkish edition is 50,000.
STRAITS TIMES JOURNALIST JAILED IN CHINA FOR ESPIONAGE SEEKS PAROLE
The family of jailed Straits Times journalist Ching Cheong is seeking parole for the Hong Kong resident, now serving a five-year sentence for espionage in a Guangdong prison.
The Straits Times reports that it has been over 1,000 days since Ching, its chief China correspondent, was detained on the mainland in April 2005. He was convicted in Beijing of spying for Taiwan in August 2006.
Professor Ong Yew Kim of Hong Kong's Chinese University said, “He has passed the halfway mark of his jail term, which means he could be eligible for parole.”
China has granted parole to prisoners including political dissidents such as student leader Wang Dan, who was involved in the Tiananmen Square protests. He was released in 1993, four months before his four-year term was up.
In 2000, another democracy protester, Chen Lantao, was released on parole after serving 11 years of an 18-year sentence.
Speculation over Ching's release surfaces whenever a major milestone in China draws close.
In a letter to Hong Kong's Chinese-language newspaper Mingpao Daily this week, Ching's brother appealed for his release in time for next month's Chinese New Year.
INDIA’S OUTLOOK GROUP TO CASH IN ON STOCK MARKET SURGE WITH NICHE MAGAZINE
India’s Outlook Group will launch Outlook Profit, a fortnightly magazine for high net worth investors exploring the stock markets, in the last week of February.
This will be the group’s third financial title, following the recent launches of Outlook Money and Business Outlook.
Outlook Profit will start with a print run of 150,000 copies, which Peri expects to cool down to 70,000 copies later on.
“The group is quite optimistic about the numbers that the magazine will manage, as more and more people are investing their savings in the stock market and are dependent on brokers or newspapers for advice on investment.
Maheshwar Peri, president and publisher, Outlook Group, said, “It’s quite unbelievable that Reliance Power’s IPO is already 20 times over-subscribed and that the company is aiming for 200 times.
“People who are investing in stocks are our target audience. The space is strong enough to manage us a subscription of four times the circulation of all other stock market magazines currently available in the country.”
“The magazine will be for hardcore investors who have substantial money to invest in the stock market and treat the stock market as a serious business rather than a hobby.”
TNS AND JV PARTNER CSM MEDIA SECURE TEN YEAR BROADCAST AUDIENCE MEASUREMENT DEAL IN CHINA
Marketing reports that TNS has been awarded another 10 years of running the TV and radio audience measurement in China under its joint venture with CSM Media Research.
Paul Wang, managing director for CSM Media Research, said its audience measurement data has provided excellent support to a variety of products and services seeking to build their share in China's consumer market.
With the licence renewal, Wang said that the company will continue to increase its TV audience measurement coverage in second and third tier cities in China in response to increasing demand from marketers shifting their attention towards the rising buying power in suburban areas.
It also intends to upgrade its audience measurement tool by installing a planned 3,500 PeopleMeters this year.
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