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Media trends digest – 2007

Lifestyles of the Ad-adverse (22 Feb)
From Media Week, via Benton: Lifestyles of the Ad Averse, a new study conducted jointly by Microsoft and Starcom, finds that between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of adults 17-35 fall into the category of "ad avoiders" i.e. folks that don't like advertising, and generally find it "annoying." Apparently there are two types of ad avoiders: passive avoiders who simply can't be bothered with ads, and active avoiders, whose message to advertisers is "be good or be gone." The active group is more likely to be young, tech-savvy men who deliberately consume media that has no ads, like DVDs and satellite radio. The passive group is comprised of women, often parents, who gravitate to leisure activities that are untouched by ads, such as books or board games. Avoiders of all stripes represent a scary prospect for marketers. "This is the kind of stuff that keeps us up at night," said Beth Uyenco Shatto, research director at Microsoft. Both groups' habits make them hard to reach by conventional means. Twelve percent of avoiders surveyed said they watch less than one hour of TV per week versus just 3 percent among non-avoiders. Both index low for listening to the radio and reading magazines. And technology like DVRs and the iPod is only making it easier for these avoiders to shun ads.
Full story

Catching the Ad-adverse (22 Feb)
From the Washington Post, via Benton: With TiVo skipping commercials and pop-up blockers neutralizing online ads, traditional advertising is under assault everywhere. "Seamless brand integration" means that books, cartoons, video games and even television shows are now the hottest vehicles for advertisers to get their products in front of a target audience. Although more is spent on traditional advertising -- $210 billion a year worldwide -- global product placement rose 42 percent in 2005 and is expected to triple by 2010.
Full story

Emailers Anonymous (22 Feb)
From Reuters, via Benton: An executive coach in Pennsylvania has devised a plan to teach people how to manage e-mail, which some users say can be as much an intrusive waste of time as it is fast-paced and efficient. Step 1: "admit that e-mail is managing you. Let go of your need to check e-mail every 10 minutes." Other steps include "commit to keeping your inbox empty," "establish regular times to review your e-mail" and "deal immediately with any e-mail that can be handled in two minutes or less but create a file for mails that will take longer."
Full story

Newspapers lead way in online video (22 Feb)
From NYmag via Benton: We think we know that the professional news media, especially newspapers, are obsolete, that the future is all about (excuse the expression) you -- media created by amateurs. But such PowerPoint distillation tends to overlook the fact that mainstream media are not all simply shriveling and dying but in some instances actually evolving. And in evolution, there are always fascinating transitional iterations along the way. Such as newspapers’ suddenly proliferating forays into online video. At their best, the newspapers’ online videos are, minute for minute, superior to TV news. As I write, CNN is airing a live press conference by Anna Nicole Smith’s lawyer and a loop of Smith vamping, while a significant breaking news story -- the U.S. claim that Muqtada al-Sadr has left Iraq for Iran -- is running in tiny type across the bottom of the screen. Given the dumb-and-dumber choices, I can easily imagine newspapers’ Web-video portals becoming the TV-journalism destinations of choice for smart people -- that is, in the 21st century, the dominant nineteenth-century journalistic institution, newspapers, might beat the dominant twentieth-century institution, TV, at the premium part of its own game.
Full story; Mediapost story

Google enters game sphere (18 Feb)
Search company Google is reported to have paid US$23 million for San Francisco in-game advertising company AdScape Media.
The Mercury News in the USA speculates: “The potential deal would fuel speculation that Google is building a virtual world game, much like Linden Labs' Second Life, using its Google Earth product as a backbone. Last April, the company purchased SketchUp, which makes software that allows people to create three-dimensional models.”
Mercury News report; AdScape Media

Navigating the media divide (16 Feb)
From IBM: The worlds of traditional and new media are already clashing, and it’s a conflict that continues to expand. However, a second type of conflict is brewing – one that could cause major rifts among traditional partners. For media companies, it’s time to pursue different and somewhat opposing business models…and navigate the media divide.
A new world of media has arrived. Pioneered by teens and gadget-savvy professionals, it has quickly spread into virtually every consumer segment, and started to encroach on traditional media turf.
Our analysis of how media companies can respond to and exploit these changes reveals two trends as particularly disruptive. They are: the rising popularity of user-created content and the move toward open distribution platforms. In fact, these two axes of change clearly delineate the old and new worlds of media.
Report home

Culture Jammers (16 Feb)
Ever heard the story about the guy who asked to have ‘sweatshop’ embroidered on his custom made Nikes?  How about the group that registered www.GWBush.com to reveal the ‘real’ reasons why Bush was running for presidency?  Leah Craven looks at the phenomenon designed to upset the status quo, known as culture jamming. See this link

Digital paper for Toowoomba (15 Feb)
A group of journos in Toowoomba (Qld), has started an online newspaper called Toowoomba Digital News. This will be an interesting one to watch for a number of reasons. Among them: At the moment it's trying to make an animated newspaper work online, rather than using internet-dedicated design -- interesting, if risky and it has been tried before. Nevertheless we wish them all the best.
Home site, Guidomedia editorial

The great Google heist (15 Feb)
(Editorial) Interested in what actually happened with the weird and wonderful TV deal for the upcoming AFL (football) season? Good luck finding out the details. If you do a Google news search, more than likely you will find the results dominated by the AFL’s own spin. When we searched it today, 10 out of 10 offered links went straight to the AFL’s website. This is sponsored search results gone wrong. We can’t help thinking it’s a little sinister. There are several hundred million dollars of broadcast rights at stake, but that pales in comparison to the value of Google’s reputation – by all means run sponsored links, but do not pretend they are news.
See this story from the Age newspaper for background on the sell-off of broadcast rights.

The $12.79 TV ad (15 Feb)
From the Online Publishers Association in the USA : If you think professional TV actors were angry about the rise of reality TV, wait till we see how steamed ad agencies get over consumer-generated ads. And for the Super Bowl, no less. The Washington Post found that at least four ads for the big game were created by amateurs, who pitched big brands such as Chevrolet, Alka-Seltzer, Doritos and the NFL. The maker of the winning Doritos ad says it cost him just $12.79 to make -- while the airtime for an ad costs more than $2 million. "What this means is: You've got some kid with a video camera and he's playing on the same field as everyone else," veteran adman Kipp Monroe told the Post. Of course, the agencies haven't been completely cut out of the online equation. They've been focusing on getting viral traffic to gimmicky consumer-generated sites. AdAge reports that OfficeMax eschewed TV ads for such websites during the Christmas season, and had 36 million visits to ElfYourself.com, where visitors could upload a photo to make themselves into a virtual elf. The New York Times reports that non-celebrities have also done low-key online pitches for Microsoft, Pepsi and Apple, offering up "the kind of novelty and freshness that young people might blog about, link to and comment on in chats: in other words, make viral on the Internet."
$2 Million Airtime, $13 Ad (Washington Post)
Super Bowl turns into amateur night as YouTube generation takes over (Times of London)
Online Publishers Association

Federal Publishing deal stalled? (14 Feb)
Industry whispers say the proposed buyout of Federal Publishing in Sydney by News Ltd has been stalled, because of questions raised over some of the numbers behind the deal.
Federal Publishing

Online is where it is – Fairfax (14 Feb)
Fairfax reports that online advertising is experiencing massive year-on-year growth – 44% is the prediction for the 2006 and 2007 financial years.
Fairfax report; Asia Media News Daily report

Big Brother leads to big deal (14 Feb)
From the Guardian: Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica is today expected to finally kick off the £1bn-plus sale of its production subsidiary Endemol, maker of Big Brother and Deal or No Deal.
Full story

Google loses copyright case – for now (14 Feb)
Also from the Guardian: Google could face daily fines of €25,000 (Au$42,000) after losing a court battle with Belgian publishers over the scope of its Google News service.
A court in Brussels ruled yesterday that the search engine had infringed the copyright of several newspapers after it included their stories in its news services. But experts said the judgment could prove a pyrrhic victory for newspaper owners.
"Google is disappointed with the judgment, which we will appeal," said a spokeswoman. "We believe that Google News is entirely legal."
Full story

Oz web ads top $1billion (14 Feb)
From the Australian: The Online Advertising Expenditure Report released by the Audit Bureau of Verifications Services showed advertising spending of $1.001 billion for 2006, with the sector now having surpassed radio and magazines and homing in on a 10 per cent share of total advertising expenditure.
Full report

VOIP to go mainstrem (14 Feb)
From USA Today, via Benton: A distant, much-morphed cousin of Alexander Graham Bell's landmark invention has finally arrived: Internet telephony. Known as "VoIP" in phone circles -- short for Voice over Internet Protocol -- it is the latest iteration of the communications revolution that began with Bell's telephone in 1876. Now VoIP, a 20-year-old technology, seems poised to become a fixture in the lives of millions of Americans. "VoIP is at an inflection point where it's about to go mainstream," says Phil Asmundson, vice chairman and a U.S. managing partner, technology for Deloitte & Touche. VoIP and traditional phone service both offer voice calls, but that's where the similarity stops: Owing to its Internet-based format, VoIP allows a circus of other features, including Internet access and e-mail. Once consumers understand, and get comfortable with, those differences, VoIP will take off, Asmundson predicts. "In consumers' minds, it must be distinguished from traditional phone. If VoIP is just a replacement item (for traditional phone service) that sits on your counter, it's not that compelling."
Full story

My neighbor, my reporter (14 Feb)
From SFGate via Benton: Clear Channel's KFTY-TV in Santa Rosa (CA) has fired most of its news-gathering staff and, over the next few months, will be asking people in the community -- its independent filmmakers, its college students and professors, its civic leaders and others -- to provide programming for the station. Will they be paid? That's being worked out. Who will cover the harder-edged stories? Some will be culled from local newspaper and TV online sites and "other sources" that are still being discussed. "There will be a loss in local coverage, I'm not going to lie to you," says a Clear Channel executive. "But there are a lot of other places to get most of that information."
Full story

Brit newspaper shames American military (8 Feb)
England’s The Sun newspaper -- one of the quintessential tabloids – has shamed the American military into showing an inquest into the deaths of UK personnel in Iraq from ‘friendly fire an on-board video from the aircraft which did the harm.
While the military initially refused to reveal the recording to the court, The Sun obtained a copy, ran the transcript in the newspaper and published the full video on its website – thus making good use of its multi-media abilities to achieve maximum effect.
Sun link

Quiz wars deepen for local TV (8 Feb)
The quiz wars between the three commercial TV networks in Australia are shaping up to be a long and very likely a two-way contest.
Channels 7 and 9 launched two weeks ago, with The Rich List and 1 vs 100 respectively, with the latter hosted by network CEO Eddie McGuire.
Channel 10 launched this week with Con Test, the first promos for which cheekily claimed that its CEO didn’t have time to front the show, so they settled for someone else.
Second week audience figures for the 7 and 9 shows reveal them to be almost neck and neck (in different time slots) at around 1.4 million – beaten narrowly by USA soap Desperate Housewives. 10’s show has got off to a less auspicious start, just cracking the 1 million mark.
Something common to all three is the new level the shows have been taken to. Based on bought-in formats, they involve more complexity, more dramatic sets and attempts to add drama to the plot. There’s a stronger sense of conflict, with 10 going to the extent of interviewing ‘failed’ contestants – in a manner to that used for lab-rat shows like Big Brother et al.

Cartoon character cops US$2million fine (8 Feb)
In a case which proves paranoia to be alive and well, Turner Media in the USA has been fined $2million and two subcontractors face criminal charges, after authorities mistook a mini billboard used to promote a cartoon character for a terrorist’s bomb.
The flashing signs were placed in 10 cities, and promoted a new series called Aqua Teen Hunger Force with a lit-up rendition of one of the characters ‘giving the finger’ to passers-by.
Two to three weeks after they were installed, a concerned Boston citizen called homeland security or similar, reporting a bomb under a bridge. The city went into lock-down and, rather than admitting to a stuff-up, the authorities have decided to sue and charge anyone within reach. (Pic: Creative Commons)
See this commentary from The Daily Aztec

Hicks the media property (8 Feb)
Australian Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks is increasingly becoming a media property, with GetUp.org.au taking up his case with a commercial TV and internet campaign, and The Age newspaper running a creative multimedia presentation on his case as part of its web site.
GetUp has produced a short TV ad pleading Hick’s case, showing him as healthy and happy looking kid, with a voice-over by his father. It is currently featured on YouTube and will get exposure on commercial TV in some of the large cities.
The Age meanwhile has put together a quite powerful mini web providing background, timelines, illustrations and soundbites of the various players in the case stating their point of view.
The Age Hicks site; GetUP

Digital future for ABC (7 Feb)
ABC CEO Mark Scott today announced the broadcaster will be placing a lot more emphasis on digital publishing, including looking for more revenue streams through a division called ABC Commercial, which replaces ABC Enterprises.
"Digital media is now integral to everything we do. It is not an add-on, it is not a novelty, it is the present reality as well as the future," Mr Scott said. "The proposals I am announcing today reflect the shift of digital and new media from the fringe of our operations ten years ago to the very centre of our Television, Radio and News and Current Affairs output today.
"They will better equip us for a world where our audiences increasingly want ABC content on demand - when they want it, not just when we want to schedule it." The changes to be introduced in coming weeks in consultation with staff include:
* The creation of a new Innovation Division as an incubator for digital development across the ABC, and reporting directly to me;
* The integration of the ABC News Online unit with the news and current affairs team into a rebadged ABC News Division as we develop the most content rich news site in Australia, drawing on the wealth of audio and video content gathered by ABC journalists every day;
* Integrating ABC TV and ABC2 in the Television Division to improve the synergies between the two channels and creating a structure that can sustain additional digital television channels in the years ahead;
* The Radio Division to become the Radio and Regional Content Division, accelerating the process of turning each of our 60 local radio stations across Australia into hubs for digital content generation - providing both audio and video content for radio broadcasts, local ABC websites and television programming;
* Combining our international operations into one division to promote and grow audiences for Australia Network and Radio Australia; and
* Pursuing the potential for new revenue streams afforded by digital technology, including video-on-demand, the digitisation of the ABC archive and partnerships to disseminate ABC content more widely.
Full release at ABC

Get a life (1 Feb)
Fancy joining world where you can buy and sell land (or even your own island) while participating in a range of online communities? Imagine a version of the Sims computer game on steroids and you’ll be close to understanding Second Life.
The site, which has been running for several years, now claims a membership of over 3 million people and a substantial economic turn-over. With claimed membership figures on the rise, it is attracting corporate interest. Two Australian companies have bought islands on the site: the ABC and Telstra. Tourism Australia is said to be lining up, while many big international corporate names, such as BMW, Sony and Adidas have joined in.
Second Life; ABC report

$1000 carrot for work contracts (1 Feb)
From the Media Alliance: Australian Associated Press (AAP), the news agency owned by News Limited, Fairfax Media, WA Newspapers and Rural Press, is the first major media employer trying to bust the Alliance and move all its employees on to individual contracts. AAP is offering employees a $1000 cash lure to abandon their collective agreement and, instead, sign individual contracts which strip out overtime and other benefits, and will leave people substantially worse off over time.
Alliance web

Council edits newspaper (1 Feb)
Fed up with what it saw as inadequate coverage of local issues, the Kingaroy Shire Council in Queensland has hired two part-time writers to write material for the Australian Provincial Newspapers’ owned Kingaroy Mail.
Local Mayor Roger Nunn says this was in response to the change in editorial direction of another local paper, the South Burnett Times

Court case vindicates risky Age (1 Feb)
A judgement yesterday that Victorian woman Carol Stingel deserved damages after being attacked in 1971 by former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission head Geoff Clark (and others) has, for the time being, vindicated the decision by The Age newspaper to air allegations that the prominent politician was accused of rape. (Clark has said he will appeal.)
Back in 2001 when it first aired the story, the newspaper suffered considerable flack, with accusations of racism being prominent. Then Editor Michael Gawenda spent several days defending the motives of the newspaper and the veracity of its claims.
However today, Andrew Rule, who wrote the original story, was able to write, “The story was never about race, or politics, but about behaviour – and the fitness for office of one of the country’s most highly paid public figures.”
That Clark chose not to sue the newspaper when the allegations were published was seen as evidence that he was on shaky ground. In the meantime, Rule was awarded a Gold Walkley for the story.
However Clark said after the case ended, ""It's an injustice. Do you feel proud of what you've done, the media? You've interfered in the rule of law, you know that? So in effect it's a victory for nobody."
Andrew Rule piece

Let the games begin (1 Feb)
Game shows are the big news in television this week, with the networks Seven and Nine battle spilling into this territory. Seven debuted The Rich List with a very respectable audience of 1.4 million, but was beaten by Nine with 1 vs 100 – hosted by CEO Eddi McGuire. The latter had a lot of stake with this show, not least of which the wisdom of hosting a quiz show while running the network. The performance was helped by a strong audience for the lead-in program – a Steve Irwin doco with a 1.6 million audience.

Risky business in China (1 Feb)
Reporting in China has become a risky business, with the recent death of a journalist highlighting problems in the industry. Lan Chengzhan was beaten to death while he and his colleagues were researching a story on illegal coal mines in Shanxi Province. The case has reached the national headlines, with President Chinese President Hu Jintao calling for justice to be done.
However the Taipei Times reports that industry may well have to work on cleaning up its own act, which includea allegations that writers demand bribes from people wishing to avoid bad publicity.
See this report from the Taipei Times

This digital decade – Gates (1 Feb)
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates (pictured) reflected on this digital decade, during a recent speech to launch new operating system Vista at a consumer electronics show. Here’s an edited version of what he said…
It's amazing to see the progress over the course of the year, and truly the Digital Decade is happening. We see it everywhere we look. We see it in photography over 2 billion digital photos were taken this last year; 65 percent of homes are using digital cameras. We see it in the Internet adoption, higher and higher penetration on a worldwide basis, and more and more activity there, whether it's buying and selling, or whether it's planning, or being creative, the Internet connected up to the Windows PC and other devices is taking over things that would have been done without it before. Over 40 percent of US homes now have multiple personal computers. And if you look at young people, the new generation, they actually spend more time on their Windows PC than they spend watching TV. Now that's a pretty dramatic change.
We see portable devices proliferating, a higher and higher part of the growing PC market. We see the connections, both through Wi-Fi and 3G getting to the point where you can get information wherever you want to go. And we're just scratching the surface. More and more can be done because as this marketplace is extended, the number of startups, the R&D budgets of the established companies, all are investing in this global market to do better and better work.
How do we look at that, what are some of the metrics that we have here? Well, we have incredible devices with very high fidelity. Think about cameras, six megapixels and up. Think about these high definition screens that when you buy it you just drool looking at that picture, it's such an improvement over the classic TV screen that you used to have, and now it connects up to your high definition cable, to your PC, to your games, all those experiences taking advantage of that incredible visual capability. Network bandwidth has gone up very dramatically, we're avoiding that being a bottleneck, even as we're sending high definition signals around. The processors are now opening the memory capability up to 64-bit, and that's a transition we're making without a lot of incompatibility, without paying a lot of extra money. Software, the old 32-bit software can run, but if you need to get more space, it's just there.
The graphics resolution is letting us think about representing reality on the screen. So when you shop, you won't just see a list of things, it will be that environment, either the stores that really exist, or the stores that would exist if it was designed for you personally. So we're seeing that in games, we're seeing that in virtual reality, that this presentation richness that all these great devices deliver, because of the graphics chips and the screens, and the development tools, is really quite phenomenal.
Storage space, people aren't talking gigabytes anymore, they're talking terabytes of storage, or petabytes of storage, where really that doesn't hold us back at all, even with the largest databases. So we have amazing hardware. I love walking around the CES floor seeing, okay, who's got the biggest LCD this year, who's got the biggest plasma, who's got the biggest hard disk. So those are an element of the equation of what we need to deliver on the promise of digital decade.
That alone is not enough. There are some key things missing, and in particular the key thing missing is the connection. Delivering on connected experiences requires more than just great hardware. So consumer electronics has been defined to be a much broader industry. It's an environment where people want to do things across multiple devices, working with many other people.
I want my music when I'm in the car, when I'm at home, when I'm in the living room. I want that to be simple. I want my family's schedule, and the ease of updating it, from the phone, the PC, just touching something on the refrigerator. I want to collaborate with people. I want to have the experience connect up to people at work, as well as at home. So we can't just say consumer, because the experiences span into that business environment.
So delivering on connected experiences, where people are being productive, doing new creative things, where they're sharing with each other, where they're mobile, where they're just playing games, that is the key element that's missing, and something that we've all got to deliver on to take full advantage of that hardware, and deliver on the promise.
Full text at Microsoft

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