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Media trends digest – 2006

Planet in your palm (29 September)
Leading travel publisher Lonely Planet has teamed with computer entertainment giant Sony to launch a new series of electronic city guides on Sony's Play Station Portable, sparking fears that they will replace the books.
The Planet PSP Passport to... guides cover six of the leading European travel destinations: London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Paris, Prague and Rome. Designed for young, technology-savvy travellers, the new interactive guides will be available on Play Station Portable (PSP) media discs.
Taking full advantage of the PSP's multimedia capabilities, the guides include videos, reviews, audio walks, photographs, maps and pre-planned itineraries for everything from arts tours to gastronomic adventures. With an essential language phrase guide and audio playback, Sony is also developing satellite navigation and internet telephony capabilities to make the handheld device even more accessible.
For a $299 portable device that can fit into a coat pocket, that’s not bad.
Product Manager Kendall Travers at Sony Computer Entertainment Australia believes that with all these new features, “Users will really get under the skin of their destination.”
Since December 2004, Sony has shipped 17 million PSPs worldwide, with over 2.4 million units of PlayStation2 consoles and 210,000 PSP units across Australia and New Zealand. 
Lonely Planet has long dominated travel publishing with more than 500 titles in 15 languages. The company sees the new range as the next phase in the evolution of the travel guide, where users can view content from a variety of media and can constantly update their guides from the dedicated website.
However, the new guides have led to fears that they will usurp existing guidebooks, creating a society of users instead of readers and reigniting the debate over the death of the book. 
Jeff Trounce, Lonely Planet's Asia Pacific Business Development Manager, refutes this and insists the range is not intended to replace the Lonely Planet books.
“We're not cannibalising our existing market,” says Trounce. He further contends, “At no point at all will we be thinking that books will fade.”
The range launched yesterday and will be sold in 110 countries across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
By Jana Raus
Links: PSP Passport site, Lonely Planet release 1 & 2

Trendspotting with Google (29 September)
Which is more popular, Holden or Ford? What time of year do people usually think about quitting smoking? Which city in Australia looks up the most porn?
Thanks to Google’s new product, Google Trends, we can answer all these questions in the blink of a line graph, with occasionally surprising results.
Google began its foray into trendspotting with Zeitgeist, a compilation of the most commonly searched-for terms around the world, but Google Trends goes further – you pick the terms, and it shows how often they’ve been searched for over the past three years, and which cities or regions are most commonly searching for them. 
There are some interesting (although perhaps unsurprising) graphs to be found, like the rise in searches for “quit smoking” around New Year’s Day, and the twin peaks for “flowers” at Valentines Day and Mother’s Day, but it gets better when you compare a few terms or look at where the searches are coming from. There’s the predictably seasonal changeover of “AFL” and “cricket” within Australia, but who would have guessed that Melburnians are more likely to be looking for fun than anyone else, worldwide?
Potential spikes are smoothed out in part because the location results are all normalised according to the number of searches coming from a place compared with the proportion of those searches that match your term. Furthermore, when there is a distinct spike in the number of searches for a term, Google finds out why, by searching its news archives for that date and displaying the relevant stories. Pretty cool, huh? And all this while the product is still in the Google Labs program, where new products are tested and developed before widespread release.
Google Trends has already been labelled “a must-bookmark for every PR person and marketer worldwide” by marketing and public relations commentator Steve Rubel (on his industry blog Micro Persuasion), but you may want to read the fine print. Sure, it can provide hours of amusement finding out which celebrity is on the way up (or down – try Britney Spears), but Google admits there are more than a few reasons not to rely on the results for your market research report or PhD. Their disclaimer points out that the inherent approximation and data sampling issues in the product mean it’s more for interest and entertainment than any serious practical use.
A more obvious problem with the product is recognising just what the results are showing. Search terms are highly subjective and need to be taken in context. More importantly, why do people search on Google? Their search term might be what interests them and is a part of their life, or it might be something they don’t have and, thus are searching for. A quick (rather unscientific) test proves that "Vegemite", "AFL", and ‘kangaroo’ are more searched for within Australia than anywhere else in the world. For "ice hockey", "zebra" and "sauerkraut", Australia barely gets a look in. Problem solved.
Based on these results, Google Trends tells us that Australia is the number one region in the world for ‘fun’, Holden and Ford are pretty darn close in Australia (depends where you are), and, believe it or not, the good folk of Wagga Wagga look up more porn than anyone else in the country.
The moral of this story is not to rely on Google Trends for hard data or important research, but to definitely check it out if you’re looking for some entertainment, social commentary or interesting graphs – or if you’re stuck for tomorrow’s water-cooler conversation. “Hey Janet, are you surprised that Australians appear to be more interested in chihuahuas than in Peter Costello?”
By Kate Freeth
Links
Google Trends; Google Blogoscoped (independent source) ; Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion blog; The Bivings Report on Google Trends

Senate media ownership inquiry underway (28 September)
The Senate inquiry into the Federal Government’s proposed cross-media ownership laws began today and is set to continue to tomorrow.
Submissions from those giving evidence can be found at this link.

Media free to roam China during games (27 September)
From the Guardian in the UK: Foreign media will be free to travel around China and enjoy uncensored access to the Internet during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, organisers said on Wednesday.
Non-Chinese journalists currently need permission to move around the country, while websites containing material considered sensitive by the Chinese government are frequently blocked.
"We have no restrictions on travel for foreign journalists in China," Sun Weijia, BOCOG's head of media operations, told the Olympic World Press Briefing on Wednesday.
Guardian Home; Story

Web will breed refuseniks – Pew Project (26 September)
A survey of technology thinkers and stakeholders shows they believe the Internet will continue to spread in a ‘flattening’ and improving world. There are many, though, who think major problems will accompany technology advances by 2020. Among the predictions: 1) Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and "smart agents" proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans' ability to control the technology in the future. 2) Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems. 3) Tech ‘refuseniks’ will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change. 4) People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy. A predictions database can be viewed at this link; The Pew Internet report is at this link. (Source: Benton)

Web builds elites (26 September)
From an opinion piece in the Financial Times: Old media "gatekeepers" (such as the people who edit this column) are out of fashion and what Jay Adelson, chief executive of Digg, calls "collective wisdom" is in. As Rupert Murdoch said last year of young Internet users: "They don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important...They want control over their media, instead of being controlled by it." But such democratic rhetoric (what one critic has dubbed "digital Maoism") ignores one awkward fact. While anyone is free to launch a blog, contribute to Wikipedia or publish photographs on Flickr, a relatively small number of activists often dominate proceedings on Web 2.0 sites. Although they are unpaid, they can nonetheless achieve an elite status reminiscent of the old media's professional gatekeepers. The fact that there is an A-list of bloggers who garner a large proportion of Internet links and traffic indicates that just because the web is an open medium it is not necessarily an egalitarian one. This generation of consumers has learnt to be skeptical about how information and entertainment is edited and filtered by groups of professionals. It ought to remain on its guard in the Web 2.0 world as well. (Source: Benton)
Financial Times home

Ads missing the Boomer mark (26 September)
Around one quarter of the advertising aimed at baby boomers, currently aged between 42 and 60, completely misses the mark. In fact, they find it insulting.
This is the result of a 30,000-person survey conducted in the USA by research company Focalyst in partnership with American Association of Retired People.
Focalyst President Mike Irwin told the Financial Times recently, “There's a perception among advertisers that if you're over 50, your biggest concern is incontinence – that's not true."
A typical misunderstanding is that consumers over 50 are set in their ways and have developed unshakable brand loyalty, which the survey says is not true.
Baby boomers are said to control around 75% of the country’s financial assets and have considerably greater disposable income than younger age groups.
In an earlier survey, Focalyst also discover that 80% of baby boomers and 50% of people over 60 used the internet.
"People associate the internet and computers with youth, but it was the baby boom generation that had the discretionary income 20 years ago to buy the first personal computers and lead the early adoption of the Internet," says David van Nostrand, Focalyst's chief research officer. "By 1995, when Netscape went public and gave credence to the financial and social viability of the internet, millions of baby boomers were already part of the Internet revolution."
While emailing is their primary activity, these users are also going online to make travel arrangements, check the news, find health information, bank and shop. In fact, 30 percent of the online baby boom generation shops online at least a few times a month—the same percentage as those born between 1965 and 1988. As younger members of the boomers enter their 50s, their incomes are likely to increase and, with that, their internet usage and activities, Focalyst says.
Further reading: Financial Times/MSNBC story; Business Week story; Focalyst

Industry gossip (25 September)
Mark Latham, a recent aspirant to the Prime Minister’s throne, has another book coming out soon. Published by Melbourne University Press, it’s a collection of his favourite quotes (from various sources) called A conga line of suckholes.
PBL’s Seek.com.au is branching out into real estate with Myhome.com.au. See this story in The Australian. Meanwhile Bloomberg reports it has made an offer to take over Carsales.com.au.
FPC Magazines, which owns several specialist titles and has about 5% of the local market, is reported by The Australian to be for sale, with PacMags named as the most likely suitor.
National Party leader Mark Vaile has said the current national media ownership proposals may need tweaking to keep his team happy.
From the Communications Minister’s bunker: As part of a three stage rollout ABC NewsRadio will be extended to 13 new areas and two existing NewsRadio services will be enhanced. ABC Local Radio will also be extended to Dubbo, and existing ABC Local Radio services in Wagga Wagga will be enhanced.
DMG’s Vega radio network – pitched at baby boomers – continues to  struggle and the word is it will soon be up for a major shake-up.
BskyB CEO and News Corp heir-apparent James Murdoch has joined the corporate environment movement recently with a column in the Guardian newspaper outlining how business can do more to tackle climate change.
Two San Francisco Chronicle sport reporters have been threatened with 18-month gaol terms for not revealing sources of information from a closed door Grand Jury hearing which referred to the use of performance enhancing drugs. Story; Editorial.

About-face for community website (25 September)
From the Online Publishers Association in the USA: If there is one big danger for publishers trying to manage user-generated content communities, it's that the publishers could exert too much control and scare away the community they've built. That's the lesson from recent dust-ups at social networking site Facebook and user-rated news site Digg.
At Facebook, more than 100,000 members signed an online petition protesting a new "feeds" feature that let people follow the online moves of their friends. The company eventually backed down somewhat, but still plans on opening the site to people outside of colleges and high schools -- another controversial move.
And at Digg, the founders decided to change the computer algorithm to stop people from ganging up to get stories promoted on the home page. In both cases, the founders had to explain themselves and took heat from the community.
AdAge reported that the fickle nature of online communities is what makes them difficult venues for top-notch marketers. "Why would an advertiser invest in something so fragile?" asked Brand Keys' Robert Passikoff in the article. But then he answered his own question: "What you're seeing is symptomatic of the greater control that consumers will have whether companies like it not. They can run for now, but this is the new paradigm."
The Economist agreed, with an article about the maturing of social networking sites, saying they've finally lost their "fad" status. But the Economist noted that if there's an advertising downturn, these sites could get hit hard as newer forms of media are usually punished more. "As far as their business models go, social-networking sites are still in their teen years, with bags of potential," the article concluded.
Online Publishers Association; Digg; Facebook
More reading:
Users Rebel Against Facebook, Digg (AdAge)
Hanging with the in-crowd (The Economist)
Facebook Fracas: Why Participants Matter in Online Communities (PBS MediaShift)

Ruddock Ignores Sedition Advice – MEAA (25 September)
From the Media Alliance: Recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission for changes to the sedition laws to protect freedom of speech have been rejected by Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. The ALRC called on the Government to protect legitimate dissent by making sure the crime of sedition only applies to words intended to provoke violence.
Law Reform Commission article; Sydney Morning Herald report

Diversity report buried (25 September)
A debate has flared up in the USA over the burying of a report by government media regulator the Federal Communications Commission, which revealed that locally-owned television stations produced considerably more local news (about five minutes per bulletin) than those owned by national conglomerates.
The issue has resonance in Australia given the proposed loosening of local ownership laws.
A group of 34 Congress members in the US has called for an investigation into this report, and another on radio ownership, and why they were not released to the public.
The FCC has now released a copy of the report, which can be seen here (PDF); Also, see the StopBigMedia website

TV viewing hits new high in USA – Nielsen (23 September)
Nielsen Media Research reported today that average American television viewing continues to increase in spite of growing competition from new media platforms and devices, such as video iPods, cell phones and streaming video. During the 2005- 2006 television year, which ended on September 17, 2006, traditional in-home television viewing continued to hold its own with audiences, and even gained among technology-savvy teenagers.
Nielsen report

Online videos go commerical (22 September)
Free online video websites, YouTube and the brand new Yahoo Current Network, have bowed to commercial pressures.
YouTube Inc, which has paved the way for free online video sharing, has struck a deal with Warner Music Group to share advertising revenue.
In exchange, users can legally download Warner Music videos and even use them in their own clips. YouTube will use software to seek out user-created videos that incorporate Warner Music recordings and run related advertising alongside them.
Music copyright owners will also be offered a percentage of the advertising fee and the right to request a clip’s removal from the site.
The deal signals a new era for YouTube, where commercial ties have become necessary to maintain the free video-sharing online community.
At the same time, the deal staves off one of many potential copyright law suits. Universal Music Group Chairman Doug Morris said that companies such as YouTube and MySpace are “copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.”
But Warner executive Alex Zubillaga says, “The user-generated content phenomenon is something we believe is only going to continue to grow and is probably unstoppable. We’d like to be a part of it and make it a great experience for consumers and make sure we and our artists are being rewarded.”
The lure of video advertising has also hit Yahoo, launching a new video site with Al Gore’s media company, Current TV. Most clips will begin with a short run of commercials. ­
Under the name Yahoo Current Network, the site will cover news, travel, action sports and cars. Each channel combines professional and user videos and offers remuneration for approved clips.
By Melissa Krafchek
Links:
NY Times story; USA Today; Yahoo Current TV

Irwin death tape is titillation not education (22 September)
(Opinion) "It was a hard thing to watch because you are actually watching a person die," Steve Irwin’s manager John Stainton has said about viewing the videotape of his close friend being killed by a stingray.
So why is there a debate about whether to broadcast it?
According to a number of online forums, a disturbingly high number of people would watch the footage, including 40% of the more than 24,000 respondents to a Sydney Morning Herald poll and 62% of the more than 67,000 respondents to a BBC poll. (Click here for the full story.)

Placing products between the covers (22 September)
You’ve seen them at the movies and on TV --  Seinfeld was full of them. Now product placements may be lurking on your bedside table.
The latest marketing trick, says Laura Petrecca in USA Today, is to ‘embed’ products in books.
The most recent example of this can be found in Cathy's Book: If Found Call 650-266-8233, by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, which is due for release next month.
Proctor and Gamble will promote the book on its web site for teenage girls called ‘Beinggirl.com’ in return for having its Cover Girl make-up products appear in the book.
According to USA Today worldwide spending on product placement is on the increase, up 27.9% to $6 billion in 2005, including non-cash promotion and barter deals.
The book publishing industry is the latest to follow this global trend.
Commercial Alert, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to protecting children and communities from commercialism, responded by sending 305 letters to book editors asking them not to review Cathy’s Book, saying that it crossed a line and while it “is in the form of a novel … in reality it is an adjunct of a corporate marketing campaign aimed at impressionable teenagers”.
The book was not commissioned by Proctor and Gamble, but was written and illustrated before the deal was struck with Running Press.  The only changes that have been made are that references to rival company Clinique and generic make-up colours have been replaced by Cover Girl brands and colours.
Other examples of product placement in novels include references to the Ford Fiesta in Carole Matthews 2004 book The Sweetest Taboo and Bulgari jewellery in and Fay Weldon’s 2001 The Bulgari Collection.
By Jennifer Thomas
Links
Authors strike deals to squeeze in a few brand names; Product Placement New; Perseus Defends Cathy’s Book

Seek a fortune in China (21 September)
From The Australian: James Packer-backed Seek has followed Telstra into the booming Chinese online classified advertisements market, paying $26 million for a 25 per cent stake in the country's third-biggest web-based jobs site Zhaopin.
Australian home; Story

Internet TV will threaten free-to-air – report (19 September)
From IDC: Research into the overall Australian digital TV landscape finds that in light of the ever-changing media landscape, competitive pressures will extend beyond traditional free-to-air (FTA) TV networks and pay-TV operators. This is due to internet protocol television (IPTV) entrants as well as internet video services, given that consumers are turning to the Internet for video sources. Initially this is occurring from Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing networks such as BitTorrent for premium studio content, to personal blogs on MySpace or Google Video and YouTube for user-generated content. Other sources are legitimate online video services such as ReelTime and possibly the Australian iTunes store in the future.
"Today, quite a significant portion of Internet video users watch full movies and TV shows, and almost 30% obtain sports content over the Internet, which is one of the major drivers to pay-TV service adoption. Those who do not watch Internet videos have indicated that they do not want to watch videos on the PC screen and this immediate advantage FTA TV and pay-TV operators have over current online offerings will soon diminish. This is due to broadband service providers (BSPs) introducing IP set-top boxes to deliver online video content directly to the TV, along with the adoption of multimedia networks that stream content from the PC to the TV," said Sophie Lo, IDC's Analyst for Consumer Digital Markets. However, local BSPs should watch innovative players like Apple, who are addressing the barriers that are currently inhibiting digital home adoption. For example, Apple will launch iTV (still a codename), early next year in the US iTV is a media adaptor / set-top box-like product that will access content from computers on the network for display on a TV. "By adding connectivity to their current service-device integration model, Apple is providing consumers a complete end-to-end solution. Going forward, the iTV could possibly disrupt BSPs' strategy in establishing the home gateway as the media hub," cautioned Ms Lo.
IDC home page

Dopey reporting inflames Pope vs Islam flap (18 September)
Poor reporting can be held at least partly responsible for the flap over the Pope’s comments during a recent university lecture, where he made passing reference to an historic criticism of Islam.
The lecture put forward the view that religious faith and rational thought were not incompatible and, if viewed as a whole, could be interpreted as supportive of Islam.
However reference to an ancient text critical of the religion has sparked an international furore out of all proportion to what was said.
One of the more irresponsible reports in western media was headlined: Pope enjoys private time after slamming Islam. Published by Yahoo, it went on to say, “Pope Benedict XVI has retreated from the public gaze to spend a private day with his 82-year-old brother after criticising radical Islam in the last major address of his six-day visit to his native Bavaria.”
Much further down the story, but far too late, was a far more accurate description of what happened: “His address late Tuesday to academics at Regensburg University, in which he fleetingly criticised the Islamic concept of ‘Jihad’ or holy war, hit the only political note of his six-day visit, during which his addresses have been almost entirely spiritual.”
Another report, by Political Gateway, gave a far more insightful summary of what was said: “Much of the Pope's speech dealt with how science and philosophy in the West have divorced themselves from faith, bringing secularization to Europe, the report said.
“Secularization has made it impossible for the West to talk with cultures where faith is fundamental, he said.
“Several experts on Islam and the Roman Catholic Church told the Times the pope's source-based speech did not appear to be a condemnation of Islam.”
Papal speech; Yahoo report; Political Gateway report

Telstra to gazump federal digi media sale (15 September)
Telstra is reported by today’s Australian newspaper to be on the verge of launching several of its own mobile phone TV channels. If true it makes a mockery of the Federal Government’s proposals to sell a 3G-based datacasting licence and will probably worsen the already poisonous relationship between the government and communications company..
Click here for the story.

Ambition supported by avarice (14 September)
Former Prime Minster Paul Keating last night presented some compelling arguments against the Federal Government’s current media reform proposals. He told interviewer Tony Jones that the scheme will inevitably reduce diversity which in turn has serious political and social ramifications, potentially putting enormous power in the hands of media proprietors.
Keating was one of the architects of the exisiting cross-media ownership rules, which were introduced 20 years ago.
He said, “People say, ‘Oh, look, there's now convergence.’ This is the magic word, you know. The only convergence here is ambition supported by avarice. That's the only convergence here. That is, how would it be living in Sydney, say, if the PBL squad at Channel Nine, Eddie and the boys, also controlled the Sydney Morning Herald and then down in Melbourne, the Nine Network had The Age? Or, alternatively, the Fairfax company owned Channel Seven? That is HSV7 in Melbourne, ATN7 in Sydney - would this be good for us? How could this be good for us?.”
See this link for the full transcript.

Apple sells movies via iTunes (14 September)
Apple Computer is broadening its online media sales offerings with the addition of full-length movies to its catalogue. Punters can now download full-length feature films from the likes of Pixar and Disney for a one-off fee and play them on their PCs or iPods.
The movie producers who are so far on  board say the films will be added to the catalogue at the same time as they are released on DVD.
This is the latest move in Apple’s ongoing attempts to stay just a step ahead for increasingly aggressive competition for its portable media player business.
Further reading: IT Wire; Tech Digest

Media reform should be scrapped – Fairfax (13 September)
It seems that yesterday’s sweetener to allow existing media players to bid on new digital channels has left Fairfax (owner of several print and internet titles, including the Sydney Morning Herald pictured here) deeply underwhelmed.
CEO David Kirk today suggested the policy as it now stands should be scrapped.
He said: "A fundamental principle of the Government's media policy was to promote diversity and new services to the Australian people," Mr Kirk said.
"This is an objective we have always supported. We have told the Government consistently that our views on the reform package were dependent on the way it promoted diversity.
"The decision to permit free to air television and Foxtel to have the ability to control the new mobile TV licence can only increase media concentration, and will compromise the delivery of new digital services.
"Cross media legislation that is already vulnerable to the charge that these reforms will reduce competition should not permit the incumbent video media players to control the only new competitive services that will be made available.
"The fixed digital channel is still so encumbered with content restrictions that we believe there is no commercially viable business model.
"The Government's announcement yesterday therefore destroys all hope of any diversity from these licences.
"Competition and diversity in media is essential to the robust functioning of a democracy. The Government's policies, by promoting further media concentration in the new digital world, will harm our democracy at the very moment when we should be exploiting the full potential of the digital media age.
"The Australian people deserve better than legislation that rewards entrenched old media interests, that limits competition, and undercuts the delivery of new digital media services.
"This is not about Fairfax having a specifically-advantaged position from the reforms. It is about an even-handed treatment of all media companies so as to promote diversity for the Australian people.
"Our view is that the best alternative to what has been finally produced by the Government is that all restrictions should be removed."

Media reform under Senate cloud (13 September)
Senator Helen Coonan’s media reform package faces opposition from National Party senators Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash. This means that Family First senator Steven Fielding could become pivotal to the passing of the package.
Meanwhile Prime Minister John Howard told ABC Radio in Perth: "I'm not going to commit myself to further changes but I'm not going to rule out fine tuning either."

Media industry gossip (13 September)
News Corp has bought a controlling interest in Jamba, a mobile phone content company owned by Verisign. Most people will best know it for its Mobizzo arm, which sells ringtoones and wallpapers direct to the public. The company paid US$145 million for the stake, which is the latest in an aggressive series of take-overs in the digital publishing world.
Family Circle, owned by Pacific Magazines, has closed after its circulation dropped more than 100,000 to 72,000. The 33-year-old title went through a relaunch in 2004, trying to shake off its old ‘CWA in the city’ image for a younger demographic with more lifestyle content. The move seems to have estranged the old audience and failed to attract a new one.
The Sun newspaper in the UK, perhaps better known for its page 3 soft porn (which has expanded into a gambling empire), has gone green – spending this week talking about global warming and what needs to be done to reduce it. Yesterday’s editorial thundered, “Too many of us have spent too long in denial over the threat from global warming. The evidence is now irresistible: Searing summers and dry winters in the UK; increasingly frequent tornados and hurricanes worldwide; the shrinking Arctic ice cap.”
Prime Minister John Howard is hosting a cocktail party tonight to celebrate the 50th anniversary of TV in this country. It takes place at Canberra’s The Lobby restaurant.
Video production company ReelTime Media is reported by The Australian to be a potential bidder on the government’s new digital services, if it can find suitable business partners.

So who pays for free news? (13 September)
Crikey.com.au publisher Eric Beecher yesterday raised a discussion on the web-enhanced trend towards print publishers providing free news, in the form of give-away papers.
He said: “They are concepts which raises a gnawing question: if the business model for news becomes a completely free model, will there be enough advertising revenue to pay for the vast resources currently deployed to comprehensively cover the news? And if there isn’t enough advertising revenue to pay for the hundreds of journalists employed by most large newspapers, what will happen to the quality of news and, more broadly, the quality of journalism?”
The issue has also been looked at in detail by the Guardian newspaper recently, which is much closer to the current battle of the freebies going on in London, which has seen the return of the afternoon newspaper.
Richard Addis of the Guardian wrote: “In the next ten years canny media operators who know what advertisers want will identify any readers that are paying for their papers and try to lure them to a free rival. Established operators will respond by doing the only thing possible: going free themselves.”
Guardian home page; Story; Crikey

Wrong path to 9/11? (12 September)
The recently-aired US$40 million mini-series, The Path to 9/11 has come under fire for rewriting history with a political right-wing agenda.
Several participants in the real story have objected, including former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and senior figures in the 9/11 Commission – the wide-ranging post-event inquiry.
One of the numerous disputes is over whether the Clinton administration passed up a pre-9/11 opportunity to capture Osama bin Laden.
Albright and former 9/11 co-chair Samuel Berger complained in writing to Thomas Kean, one of the executive producers of the show and himself a former 9/11 Commission co-chair. The letter said, in part: “While we do not object to a certain amount of dramatic license, we strongly object to wholesale fabrications. Actors portraying us do contemptible things we never did, and say things we neither said nor believed. And what’s more, in many instances these portrayals are contradicted by your Commission’s own findings.” Albright and Berger are political Democrats, while Kean is a Republican.
A former 9/11 commissioner and Republican politician, John Lehman, saw no problem with the series going ahead, saying it was critical of both sides of the political fence. He added in a TV interview: “If you don’t like the hits to the Clinton administration, well, welcome to the club. Republicans have lived with Michael Moore and Oliver Stone and most of Hollywood as a fact of life.”
Meanwhile website Think Progress complains that the consolidation of media across the USA means that the ABC-made show had far more influence that it might have deserved, given the network’s considerable national market penetration.
However it also cheerfully points out under a  story tagged “braindead media” that the 9/11 show was outrated by NFL (football) on the rival NBC network. Apparently the NFL scored a Sunday evening market share of 23 compared to 12 for the docu-drama.
Links: The Path to 9/11; Albright letter; Think Progress

Mobile digital TV becomes a priority – Coonan (12 September)
From the Fed Communications bunker: Australian consumers could be watching TV on mobile devices during their daily commute and enjoying new digital television channels in home as part of the Government’s media reform package, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, announced today.
The Minister today announced that the Government will allocate two currently unassigned channels of television broadcasting spectrum nationally for new digital services for Australian consumers.
This builds on the Minister’s announcement in July of a comprehensive media reform framework for Australia.
The first channel will allow new free-to-air, in-home digital services and the second channel could be used for a wider range of services, including mobile television services.
“The allocation of this spectrum provides a significant opportunity for the emergence of new digital services such as true mobile television in Australia,” said Coonan.
“It will also make digital television more attractive, offering new free-to-air digital-only content and services to act as an additional incentive for consumers to take-up digital television. For instance, a mobile TV service could offer 30 channels under some models.
“The Government also views the allocation of this spectrum as an opportunity for industry to expand and respond to the challenges of the digital environment.” 
The allocation process, which will be conducted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), will start as soon as possible in 2007, subject to the passage of legislation.
In addition to these new digital services I am announcing today, consumers will be able to access improved multichannels from the two national broadcasters -- ABC and SBS. The commercial broadcasters will also be permitted to provide a High Definition multichannel from 2007 and a Standard Definition multichannel from 2009. (Ed's note: See our commentary at Spin City.)

Will newspapers be pining for the fjords? (11 September)
An international Monty Python-esque debate is developing over the death (or otherwise) of the newspaper industry.
The Economist magazine has produced an extensive report outlining what it says is the inevitable shrinking if not complete demise of the newspaper industry.
The first part reports: Newspapers have not yet started to shut down in large numbers, but it is only a matter of time. Over the next few decades half the rich world's general papers may fold. Jobs are already disappearing. According to the Newspaper Association of America, the number of people employed in the industry fell by 18% between 1990 and 2004. Tumbling shares of listed newspaper firms have prompted fury from investors. In 2005 a group of shareholders in Knight Ridder, the owner of several big American dailies, got the firm to sell its papers and thus end a 114-year history. This year Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, attacked the New York Times Company, the most august journalistic institution of all, because its share price had fallen by nearly half in four years.
See this link for the full report
A glimmer of hope, in the magazine’s view, is represented by those who successfully make the transition online. That part of the report says: The first thing to greet a visitor to the Oslo headquarters of Schibsted, a Norwegian newspaper firm, is its original, hand-operated printing press from 1856, now so clean and polished it looks more like a sculpture than a machine. Christian Schibsted, the firm's founder, bought it to print someone else's newspaper, but when the contract moved elsewhere he decided to start his own. Although Schibsted gives pride of place to its antique machinery, the company is in fact running away from its printed past as fast as it can. Having made a loss five years ago, Schibsted's activities on the internet contributed 35% of last year's operating profits.
See this link for the full report
However the reports of imminent death are not universal. Mark Day, a coluymnist for  the Media section in The Australian newspaper says. Doomsayers who predict the end of newspapers within the next few decades frequently argue that the longest-lingering will be those big-brand titles that offer superior journalism. I think the opposite is more likely.
Community papers, reporting over-the-fence news and providing local information services, are shaping as the stayers of the industry.
Mark Day column
News Ltd proprietor Rupert Murdoch sounded a warning bout the need to engage online to a newspaper editors’ conference in the USA last year. Click here for the full text.

Media jugheads hurt women’s sport – Lundy (9 September)
Sentor Kate Lundy (pictured) has complained bitterly about what she describes as sexist unfair treatment of women’s sport by the Australian media, during the tabling of a Senate committee report into the state of women’s sport and recreation.
She said: “Women’s sports find it almost impossible to get regular coverage for a couple of reasons. 
“First, the commercial risk by TV broadcasters, free and pay alike is considered too high. This is because it is perceived that women’s sport does not rate high enough to attract advertising and therefore revenue to offset production costs and the cost of the rights. When existing sports programming is jammed full of very high quality footy, cricket and other proven rating content, there is very little commercial incentive to try something new like a range of women’s national leagues.
“Because the coverage is not there, the sponsorships are less lucrative. Because sponsorship revenue is limited, the sport is less able to purchase coverage to demonstrate rating credibility and therefore little chance to attract the interest of media buyers and hence break the vicious circle it is very frustrating as I said.
“Second is the appalling ongoing sexism perpetuated by many media jugheads who seem to derive some pleasure from denigrating female athletes and their sports.  This immature and unintelligent approach is reinforced by commercial decisions in networks that see less than 2 %  of women’s sport on our TV. 
“I say immature and unintelligent because there is ample evidence that not only does women’s sport rate, it rates strongly when a quality product is produced and promoted well. Netball Zealand has a product which attracts 20-30% audience share for weekly national league games and up to two thirds of audience share for finals and international matches. At the Olympic and Commonwealth Games to use an event example we also see female athletes rate equally as well as the men, if not better.”
Full speech; Report (Note: these are hosted at sister site, AllWomenSport.com)

Make court proceedings more open – Australian  (9 September)
The Australian newspaper has argued that court proceedings should be more open and relations between media and lawyers should move closer to the US model.
Writer Greg Barns has highlighted that lawyers working either side of a court case might background journalists off the record, but cannot engage in an open discussion of the case they are working on. Barns says that, while the US model has suffered some excesses, it also provides a useful window for the public to see into court proceedings.
Australian home page; Story

Press council dismayed at FOI decision (8 September)
The Press Council is dismayed at the recent High Court decision to dismiss an appeal on freedom of information, which involved a tussle between Michael McKinnon of The Australian newspaper and the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello.
A statement from the organisation says: “The Court has failed to give adequate weight to the aims of the FoI Act, to ‘extend as far as possible the right of the Australian community to access to information in the possession of the Government of the Commonwealth’.”
McKinnon has been chasing federal government documents on the effect of ‘bracket creep’ in income tax plus the take-up of the first-home buyers’ scheme – neither of which you would normally categorise as state secrets.
However his moves were blocked by the Treasurer and have lead to a series of actions through the administrative appeals tribunal and now the High Court.
The concern among media now is the FOI process has become one which a minister can circumvent on whim and which, now thanks to the most recent ruling, places far more reliance on leaks and whistleblowers which has inherent and far greater legal dangers.
More reading: Press Council statement; Press Council on the need for FOI reform; Ruling exposes farce of FOI Act (Australian)

Google offers historic news (8 September)
What did they write when humans first landed on the moon in 1969? Apparently you can now find out via Googles’s web search service.
The company says: Google users can now discover a wealth of historical information when they search. Available today, Google News now has archive search to help users quickly and easily search for events, people and ideas over different periods of time. History buffs and curious users alike can explore more than 200 years of historical information to get a glimpse of the emotions and attitudes of the past.
Users can search archives from Google News by clicking on the News Archive Search link. For selected queries, users of Google web search may also see links to the top three related articles from the news archives integrated at the bottom of the result page.
Google is working with many prominent information providers to help users discover relevant historical information. This includes freely available articles from sources such as TIME.com, The Guardian, and many others, as well as snippets of articles available for a fee or via a subscription, such as those from news organizations like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.Newsweek Interactive, and from news aggregators like AccessMyLibrary.com from Thomson Gale, Factiva, HighBeam Research, LexisNexis and others. When searching news archives, results are ranked based on relevance.
Today, the service is being launched on the news.google.com domain and enables searching of articles in English as well as articles in a number of other languages. Our goal is to include even more global content in our news archive search, and we're working with international partners to make their content available. We also plan to introduce the service in other countries as well. (Note: At this stage you need to go to the US site -- the Auatreealian version does not yet have thge link.)

Media industry gossip (9 September)
From Crikey.com.au: Channel Ten News contacted the SES helicopter in Tasmania the day Steve Irwin died, requesting that it fly them out to the site of his wife Terri to be the first ones there so they could film her reaction to the news of her husband's death. The pilot of the helicopter told Channel Ten he would rather quit than fly them out there to film that.
ACP/Trader Classifieds has sold Blue Water magazine.
The Bulletin magazine staff door has been overworked recently, with the most recent departure being Editor Kathy Bail, to be replaced by chief sub Andrew Forbes. Several staff and columnists have left since former Ed in Cief Garry Linnell moved over to Channel 9 and was replaced by John Lehmann.
From the Age newspaper: Communications Minister Helen Coonan is preparing to buy time to win over anxious colleagues on media changes by sending the package off to a Senate committee…concerns are mounting that she may be preparing to do an about-face on a commitment to stop free-to-air and pay television broadcasters from bidding for two new digital channels.
The Australian newspaper reckons New Idea magazine paid up to $20,000 for recent pics of Nicole Kidman, to back a story on how she might (or might not) be pregnant.

Broadband in Australia – background briefing (6 September)
Telstra has control of about two-thirds of the broadband market in Australia. The tension between the telecommunications company and government regulations over returns on infrastructure (which have impacted business models) and the lack of healthy competition have stunted broadband growth. (By Georgia Lawson) Click here for the full story.

ACCC and the new media landscape (6 September)
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission head Graeme Samuel last month gave a speech for La Trobe University on his organisation’s view of the proposed changes to media ownership and structure regaulations. Click here to find it on our Movers & Shakers page.

Irwin coverage points to shift in web news (5 September)
There was a time not so long ago when publishers of print and internet products knew their respective places: Internet, because of its speed, produced the early news, which was updated on the run; While the newspaper provided the in-depth coverage the next morning – perhaps respectfully followed by the web site. This ‘natural’ order has changed...
See the Editor’s blog

Have you been Tenched? (4 September)
Had your curiosity roused by the teasers for Tench Tonight on Channel Ten over the past few weeks? You’re not alone. 1.15 million Australians tuned in to watch the first episode of this bizarre, larger than life animated talk show host strutting his stuff on Thursday night, following a fierce marketing campaign by Channel Ten. (By Merrin Hughes) Click here for the full story.

Luddites and digital TV (4 September)
(Opinion)The call came late one Tuesday night. The voice on the end of the line sounded urgent. “Quick, have you got a set top box?” my friend cried.
“Set top box? I puzzled. (Instinctively I think it is something that sits on top of the TV set, but I don’t know what for, or why.)
“No I don’t think so,” I reply, as I cast my eyes wildly in the direction of the television set.
“Oh too bad, there’s a John Lennon special on ABC2.”
“ABC2 -- you mean there’s more than one?”
If like me, you didn’t know that digital TV is about to make your analogue TV set obsolete and have no idea what a set top box is, here are a few tips about how not to be a Luddite in an increasingly digital age. (By Jennifer Thomas) Click here for the full story.

Use it or lose it --  the sport TV anti-siphoning debate (4 September)
Forcing die-hard sporting fans to purchase pay TV subscriptions in order to watch their favourite events might move patriotic cricket fan John Howard to declare the idea un-Australian.
Yet, his government has proposed amendments to the anti-siphoning laws to allow pay TV greater access in securing sporting events.  The amendments include loosening the first dibs protection policy on 1300 sporting events currently reserved for free-to-air networks. (By Janine Budd) Click here to read the full story.

Could YouTube become media of first resort for whistleblowers? (3 September)
The whistle-blower who aired allegations on YouTube that Lockheed Martin sold the US Coast Guard $24 billion worth of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats with significant security flaws and other deficiencies says it was a decision of "last resort". He turned to YouTube when the mainstream media dismissed his claims as "outlandish".
"I contacted every single mass media outlet on television and probably 75 separate reporters at different newspapers," says Michael De Kort, the 41-year-old former engineer for Lockheed Martin. De Kort was laid off by the military contractor days after he posted his 10-minute video on August 3, soberly detailing shortcomings in the boats' security cameras, communications abilities, and cold weather capabilities. "They wouldn't do the story."
Following De Kort's YouTube airing, however, his allegations were subsequently reported in the Navy Times, and then picked up by The Washington Post, NPR and other news organizations. The video has become the latest example of new media driving the old, cited by ABC News as, "Further evidence that the Internet has given the average person a way to be heard."
Full story from MediaPost

Downer’s claims draw scathing response (2 September)
Claims this week (see 29 August) by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer that newspapers failed to check their facts on a story saying the Israeli military had attached an ambulance in Lebanon in the recent conflict, have drawn heavy return fire. The fourth estate often loves a good stoush, particularly when it smells blood and, in this case, has had a field day.
The Australian broadsheet pointed out the Minister’s claims were based on information from an unreliable blog and backed this up with a report from the Red Cross, which owned the ambulance confirming the attack. The Age newspaper went one step further, actually getting a reporter to visit the car-yard where the ambulance is resting to confirm its condition and the circumstances of how it got that way.
The Foreign Minister wasn’t on his own – Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt also claimed the reports had been part of an anti-Israeli bias in reporting. Somewhat ironically, the key source for the claims that the ambulance story was false was zombietime.com…

APN wields axe (1 September)
From the Media Alliance: Members across APN newspapers have condemned the company's forcible termination of 19 journalists less than two weeks after posting a record $72.1 million interim profit. The union has sought clarification on the total number of editorial redundancies with reports that management yesterday advised members at one site of 30 terminations across APN regional dailies. APN has rejected union demands for a voluntary redundancy process.
Media Alliance; APN

China clamps down on journos (1 September)
From the LA Times: The sentencing of a Hong Kong reporter Thursday to five years in prison on espionage charges sends a chilling message to the journalism community in China to not cross the party line, analysts watching the case said. Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based correspondent for the Straits Times newspaper of Singapore, was detained in April 2005 during a visit to southern China and convicted two weeks ago after a closed-door trial in Beijing that lasted one day.
LA Times home; Story; IFJ protest

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