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Media trends digest – August 2007

TV moves to iPod 30 August
UK: Apple today made top TV shows including Lost, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy available to UK users of its iTunes download store -- threatening commercial broadcasters in the process.
Apple is charging £1.89 (AU$4.70) per episode through iTunes UK after signing deals with US TV studios including ABC, Disney Channel, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Comedy.
The shows can be viewed on a PC or Mac, through an iPod or on television using the Apple TV set-top box. It is expected that they will also be available on Apple's iPhone when it launches later this year.
Source: The Guardian

1500 journos for APEC
More than 1500 journalists, speaking several languages, filing copy and footage across several time zones and all jostling for a new break on a micro-managed summit…
Full story: The Australian

European telcos push into TV
New York Times, via Benton: Several European phone companies plan to announce significant expansions of Internet protocol television, or IPTV, this week, led by Deutsche Telekom, which is spending 3 billion euros and has linked about four in 10 German households to broadband TV. The moves will put Europe, which some analysts say already is the leader in Internet TV, further ahead of the United States and Asia. But despite the flurry of worldwide interest in digital video, skeptics say it is not clear that IPTV has a future as a stand-alone business for telephone companies.
Full story

TV going too far?
TV executives are accused of using smut and gore to shock their way to the top of the ratings.
Family and church groups have slammed two new programs -- Network Ten's much-hyped US import Californication and Channel 7's homegrown cop drama City Homicide -- for showing too much violence and sex.
Full story: Herald Sun
Editor’s note: this situation has a precedent in the USA, where religious and ‘family’ groups effectively hijacked the national censorship agenda and, for a while, were demanding ludicrous cuts to well-established TV and cinema works.

Rubbish on TV
UK: Critics may have labelled this year's Big Brother rubbish -- but they ain't seen nothing yet. From Sunday, Channel 4's next reality show will see contestants living on an actual rubbish tip.
Dumped, one of the highlights of Channel 4's autumn schedule, features 11 contestants attempting to live for three weeks off waste deposited at a landfill site in Croydon.
The contestants were sited on a special area created on the tip because hazardous gasses on the main dump could have proved fatal.
"We would kill them and we are not allowed to do that," said the Channel 4 head of factual entertainment Andrew MacKenzie.
Full story: The Guardian

Japan joins race to build the new internet
Wall Street Journal: Japanese researchers are to set to work on an alternative to the internet that will be more secure, capable of handling larger volumes of traffic and more energy efficient. Work on new network technologies will begin in Autumn 2008 and is likely to involve collaborating with other countries, which could mean working with teams in the US and Europe that have started rebuilding internet architecture. The research work will be crucial by 2020.
Full story (requires subscription)

Two decades of USA news
From Benton: The Pew Research Center has released a new study that tracks the public's interest in news from 1986 to 2006. The results show that though American interest in news has shifted with the times, the changes have been slight and not suggestive of any sort of meaningful trend. Although the size and scope of the American news media have changed dramatically since the 1980s, audience news interests and preferences have remained surprisingly static. Of the two major indices of interest that are the focus of this report -- overall level of interest in news and preferences for various types of news -- neither has changed very much. This has been especially true for news preferences; Americans continue to follow -- or to ignore -- the same types of stories now as they did two decades ago. News tastes, measured among 19 separate categories of news, have barely shifted at all: Disaster News and Money News continue to be of greatest interest to the US public; Tabloid News and Foreign News remain the least interesting.
Pew research

News Corp to tackle YouTube
In the US, News Corp and NBC have revealed the name of their joint video site venture: Hulu. It might sound like a lipless zulu, but that's suitably Web 2.0. Both companies hope that their video site will out-perform YouTube by offering more professional content and at better quality.
Reuters

Editor’s Weblog briefs
Journalists are digitalizing, not disappearing: it may seem like traditional media are perishing by the day, with constant news of newsroom layoffs. But according to Mediashift, the pessimistic media forget to mention that newsrooms are increasingly hiring journalists for digital positions.
Link

Don’t lecture, engage -- South African Times editor defends blogs: Ray Hartley, editor of The Times in South Africa. Hartley explains how blogging helps the newspaper become a better product, by engaging the audience rather than lecturing to it.
Link

Murdoch calls WSJ reporters to have them stay: everybody’s reacting to news that Rupert Murdoch has made personal phone calls to three Wall Street Journal reporters who wanted to leave the publication.
Link

Fairfax drops recruiting to pathetic levels
Opinion: Fairfax has announced that it will drop its cadet recruiting to just four annual positions each at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. Half will go to university graduates and half to school-leavers.
More at our Spin City page

Specialist web to path to growth
Ninemsn division Platform Nine, founded 12 months ago to market niche sites to advertisers, is expanding from placing video ads on sites to offering direct response marketing in a move it predicts will boost online revenues by 25 per cent to 30 per cent.
Websites such as baitonline.com.au, dogslife.com.au, chinatown.com.au and beerandbrewer.com.au are among the highly specialised destinations the portal will promote to advertisers.
Full story: The Australian

New books
Media Work: a new book exploring the changing nature of work for professionals in advertising, journalism, film and television production, and game development. Author Mark Deuze is a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, and journalism and new media at Leiden University in The Netherlands, his native country. He also maintains a personal blog on issues related to new media and digital culture. In Media Work, Deuze researches the "work histories" of professionals employed in all kinds of media, in countries from Australia to South Africa to the United States. The goal of the book, he says, is to provide a better understanding of the contemporary realities of working in the media and help prepare the next generation for a career in this "exciting yet uncertain industry."
Full story: iwantmedia

Communication Revolution: Robert McChesney explains why we are in the midst of a communication revolution that is at the center of twenty-first-century life. Yet this profound juncture is not well understood, in part because our media criticism and media scholarship have not been up to the task. Why is media not at the center of political debate? Why are students of the media considered second-class scholars? McChesney’s concise history of media studies shows how communication scholarship has grown increasingly irrelevant in recent years, even as media became a decisive issue of our times. Now the burgeoning media reform movement, in which McChesney has been a key player, has made it even more clear that the revolution in communication calls for a transformation in the way we think about media.
Full story: The New Press

Google reveals free wifi numbers
RCR Wireless News via Benton: Google offered a glimpse into the operations of its free, municipal Wi-Fi effort, which the company launched earlier this year in its home base of Mountain View (CA). Google reported that the network now covers 12 square miles and counts 15,000 unique users each month. The company said its free muni Wi-Fi network comprises over 400 mesh routers and carries 300 gigabytes of data each day. The company said the network has seen traffic numbers grow around 10 per cent each month.
Full story

Media Alliance briefs
IFJ Project Manager Position: if you’re a journalist with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region, press freedom, journalists’ safety and quality journalism, this Sydney-based position with the International Federation of Journalists could be for you. You will manage IFJ Asia Pacific projects and campaigns in the region and seek project grants - regular travel will be required. Training skills and project managing experience in press freedom, human rights, trade unions or an NGO background would be a bonus for this position. Applications close Tuesday, 4 September. Contact ifj@ifj-asia.org for a full job description

Freelance Fees Guide: The National Union of Journalists (UK and Ireland) has released a fees guide to assist freelancers negotiate the best rates and conditions possible for the various kinds of work that they undertake. It contains helpful advice on how to negotiate fees, syndication, copyright, freelance rights in general, as well as a full section on photographers.
Link

Media survey: Swinburne University is researching the effectiveness of training and voluntary work in the media industries. Follow this link to complete the five-minute survey and be in the running to win 12 bottles of wine valued at $400.
Media Alliance

Getting eyeballs a struggle for ads 29 August
Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen argues in a recent web alert that display ads on web sites struggle to get user interest.
“Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites,” he says.
His eye-tracking research reveals, “We know that there are three design elements that are most effective at attracting eyeballs:
plain text, faces, cleavage and other ‘private’ body parts.”
See this link

Hysteria follows gutter journalism
Opinion: Melbournians are being treated to a weird form of hysteria being played out in the media at the moment, after Channel 7 resorted to gutter journalism…
More -- see our Spin City column

Great internet publishing flops revealed 27 August
From Editor & Publisher: After more than 10 years of newspapers slowly migrating to the Web, most have embraced the medium as their future, showing they can break news, provide audio and video extras, and give readers more space to react and rebut than ever before. Successes are many, ranging from exclusive online interviews to sourcing details that give readers more complete information than any daily could have provided just a few years ago. Even the Pulitzer Prizes are giving props to Web-based offerings.
But with those accomplishments and expansions have come no shortage of starts and stops, bumps, flops, and sometimes outright debacles…
Full story

Pollie & defence staffers sprung editing Wiki
Staff in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have been editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the Government.
A new website, WikiScanner -- which traces the digital fingerprints of those who make changes to entries in the online encyclopedia -- points to the department as the source of 126 edits…
Full story: Sydney Morning Herald

E-mail marketing outstrips letterbox 26 August
For the first time in the UK, e-mail marketing volume has overtaken direct mail volume, according to a new report by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Marketing Council.
The latest National Email Benchmarking report survey includes responses from 75 percent of UK e-mail service providers, who deliver the majority of outsourced e-mail messages to both business and consumer e-mail accounts in the UK. The study found that while direct mail expenditure continues to rise, volumes have decreased over the past year, as targeting and multichannel efforts have been integrated into the campaigns.
More: DM News

Stones to stop rolling
The Rolling Stones will reportedly quit touring for good after playing London's O2 Arena this Sunday, after 45 years in the music business.
More: News (Pic: Stones website)

Search habits of mothers surveyed
Media release: DoubleClick Performics, the performance marketing division of DoubleClick Inc, unveiled data resulting from a search usage study targeting the “moms” segment and completed in cooperation with Microsoft and ROI Research, Searcher Moms – A Search Behavior and Usage Study. The data illustrate heavy search engine usage in support of online purchases, offline purchases, coordinating travel and many other planning activities among moms.
“Although we suspected much of what the study uncovered, we gained a much better understanding of just how much moms rely on search engines to accomplish a wide range of tasks, literally on a daily basis,” said Stuart Larkins, vice president of search for DoubleClick Performics.
“Of the nearly 1000 moms surveyed, 89 per cent use the Internet at least twice/day, and 90 per cent have been using it for more than seven years. A whopping 86 per cent of respondents said search engines are the most efficient way to find information.”
Other interesting findings of the study include: 70 per cent use search engines to gather information before making any online purchase; 57 per cent use search engines to gather information before making any offline purchase; and 64 per cent use search engines to find out where to purchase products offline. DoubleClick Performics has prepared an overview of the study’s key findings.
More: 901am

Study shows steady news invasion by web
An aggressively updated -- and promoted – Web site is an increasingly important tool in the arsenal of TV news outlets trying to reach, engage and hold on to younger news consumers.
That is especially true when covering big stories that develop over an extended period of time, according to the latest Millennial Strategy Program research conducted by Frank N Magid Associates. The new research was completed in May, just weeks after the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre in which one student killed 32 people and himself.
The online survey asked 150 questions of more than 3000 people who fall into the categories of Millennials; the next older demo, Gen Xers; and Baby Boomers. The queries focused on how respondents heard about and followed news of the killings. Television coverage was the primary source to which all three groups turned for information on the shooting spree, but nearly a quarter of the adult Millennials first learned about the story, which began unfolding as the school day started on the campus, via the Internet.
Twenty-three per cent of the adult Millennials cited the Internet as the source from which they first learned about Virginia Tech, compared with 19 per cent of Gen Xers and 16 per cent of Baby Boomers who cited the Web. Worth noting: As a group, Millennials were the last to know, and 29 per cent of them heard about the Virginia Tech story by word of mouth, which includes text-messaging.
More: TV Week (USA)

US Newsrooms become whiter
According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual survey, the percentage of minority journalists working in daily newsrooms slipped this year for only the second time since 1978, to 13.62 per cent. ASNE’s goal has been to increase minority representation until it mirrors society at large -- which is now 33 per cent non-white. Other indicators in the ASNE survey also are slipping into reverse. Minorities account for only 10.9 per cent of all newsroom supervisors, reverting to a level reached two years ago. Meanwhile, the number of newspapers with no minorities at all on their newsroom staffs increased to 392, from 377 last year.
More: News Guild

Journalism Review in trouble
American Journalism Review, the influential but financially troubled media journal, could face a shutdown by year's end. Tom Kunkel, the review's president, said it is "more likely" that the magazine will be able to continue publishing next year, but that he must close a deficit of roughly $200,000 -- about one-quarter of its annual budget.
The bimonthly, launched in 1977 as Washington Journalism Review, has been cutting costs as the economic downturn in print journalism has eroded its advertising base. Longtime editor Rem Rieder essentially became the only editorial employee after the managing editor, Rachel Smolkin, left and was not replaced.
Even the design and artwork of the magazine are contracted out. There was a time when AJR, along with Columbia Journalism Review, operated by Columbia University, provided much of the critical examination of an industry not known for self-reflection. But the rise of Web sites and blogs dedicated to critiquing, and in some cases bashing, the media has increasingly overshadowed magazines that publish six times a year, although their carefully reported examinations of media mistakes and trends remain important.
More: Washington Post

iPhone unlocked
It had to happen -- a software developer has found a way to unlock Apple’s iPhone so you can use a provider other than the one the company wants you locked in with.
See this link

Hollywood to head across the Pacific
Even before the Federal Government's Australian Screen Production Incentives take effect, a confluence of events is likely to lead to a rush of foreign film production in Australia in the fiscal year 2007-08.
More: The Australian

Haneef case breaks new ground on trial by media
The release by Haneef’s lawyers of the second full transcript of their client’s police interview has stretched the envelope on what is regarded as reasonable behavior when it comes to ‘trying’ a case in the public domain.
More at our Spin City page

Off the record should be off the agenda 16 August
Both theThe Australian and Crikey today warn of the pitfalls for journalists when agreeing to engage in an off-the-record discussion with people who are newsworthy. The issue has arisen thanks to the bun-fight between the Treasurer Peter Costello and three parliamentary reporters over a dinner held two years ago. The latter claim Costello briefed them on his ambitions to replace the Prime Minister, John Howard, something he now disputes.
Richard Farmer at Crikey argues that journalists should refuse off-the-record briefings on the basis that they’re an ethical minefield and often prevent important stories being reported.
The Australian
Crikey

Newspaper body wants to claw back ad revenue
The newspaper industry is set to become its own best advocate with the launch of a $10million press campaign.
The Australian

Role of media crucial in terror emergency --  report
The media's role would be crucial during a domestic terrorist attack and news organisations should be more closely involved in planning how to handle one, according to a paper to be released today by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The Australian

Note: the role of media on times of emergency is widely recognised. For example the US federal government expended considerable resources on looking at the role of the media in the wake of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

Win drops Nine programs
Channel Nine's regional affiliate WIN Television will today take the extraordinary step of dumping three key Nine Network programs.
The Australian

Sexualisation of kids on Federal radar
Media release: The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator the Hon Helen Coonan said today that the Howard Government was furthering its commitment to protecting children with new measures agreed today in relation to radio and television.
“In addition to the NetAlert – Protecting Australian Families Online initiative which will go live on Monday, the radio and television industry will investigate the short and long term effects of sexualised images of children.
 “We take the issue of child exploitation on the internet, television and radio extremely seriously.
“The world leading $189 million NetAlert programme will help Australian families to manage their internet experience as well as provide tough new policing and enforcement measures.
“We are committed to tackling child exploitation from every angle, and today’s motion is another step in the process,” Senator Coonan said.
“Reports about the sexualisation of children in the media are alarming to me, both as a parent and as Communications Minister, and I also know this concern is shared by the broader Australian community.
“This sexualisation can have a detrimental effect on children’s self esteem, emotional development and body image.
“Today, in recognition of these concerns, a joint motion was moved that will address the harmful effect of the sexualisation of our children in the media.”
Senator Coonan said that industry, currently conducting their three year review of the Commercial Television Industry Codes of Practice and the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice, will investigate who benefits from the sexualised images of children and the ramifications it can have on children.
“The Australian Communications and Media Authority must be satisfied that the industry review and any relevant recommendations reflect community values and standards and provide me with a detailed report by March 2008,” Senator Coonan said.

NZ paper’s outsourcing sparks debate
Guardian: Outsourcing will undermine journalistic quality, according to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Its general secretary, Aidan White, argues that newspaper owners who break up their editorial departments and outsource journalistic work to what he calls "money-saving information production factories" will rue the day.
Full story

Dr Google & Dr Microsoft
NY Times, via Benton: In politics, every serious candidate for the White House has a health care plan. So too in business, where the two leading candidates for Web supremacy, Google and Microsoft, are working up their plans to improve the nation’s health care. By combining better Internet search tools, the vast resources of the Web and online personal health records, both companies are betting they can enable people to make smarter choices about their health habits and medical care. “What’s behind this is the mass consumerisation of health information,” said Dr David J Brailer, the former health information technology coordinator in the Bush administration, who now heads a firm that invests in health ventures.
It is too soon to know whether either Google or Microsoft will make real headway. Health care, experts note, is a field where policy, regulation and entrenched interests tend to slow the pace of change, and technology companies have a history of losing patience.
Full story

Web goldrush starts again
News.com.com via Benton: This summer has been an unusual hunting season for the start-up world, with nascent Internet companies firmly in the crosshairs of major media conglomerates. Sometimes, the motives behind the purchases are ambiguous, but one thing's clear--media companies are forking over amounts of cash in the tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars for Web start-ups that would seem more appropriate targets for a Yahoo or Google. The big media rush to buy into the Web brings a remarkable sense of deja vu--and skepticism.
The common wisdom (based on more than a little evidence, like Time Warner's hugely disappointing acquisition of AOL), ever since the first wave of tech acquisitions in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, has been that big media doesn't know what to do with its pricey Web acquisitions. "It's a classic example of how the old media companies have been extremely slow to adapt to the new opportunities posed by (new) technologies. They are trying at a late date to acquire," said Alan Mutter, blogger,
"Reflections of a Newsosaur"
Story

Web video surge may threaten service
Wall Street Journal via Benton: Researchers have long warned that rapid increases in Internet usage could strain the capacity of the data lines and gear that make up the network, severely slowing traffic and even knocking out service. For years, they've been wrong as Internet-access providers and telecom carriers have added routers and other hardware to keep ahead of demand, and the data-carrying capacity of the Internet pipes has greatly expanded thanks to technical advances. But could the doomsayers be right this time? It depends on whom you ask.
Prompting the latest concerns is the rapid growth of bandwidth-hungry applications like online video, file-sharing programs and Internet telephone service. Transmitting a minute of video can require 10 times the bandwidth of audio – or more, depending on the quality. Already, peer-to-peer video swapping -- most of it illegal -- is estimated to represent in the range of more than one-third of all Internet traffic this year.
US Internet video sites alone transmit more data per month than was carried over the entire US Internet backbone monthly in 2000. "One of the key possibilities for 2007 is that the Internet could be approaching its capacity," analysts at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu wrote in a January report. "Our belief is we'll start to see some brownouts or service slowdowns or service issues," says Phil Asmundson, the national managing partner leading Deloitte & Touche USA's Telecommunications practice. But some analysts and Internet companies such as Google Inc. play down the idea that there's an impending crunch, pointing to the forecasters' poor track record of predicting such problems. There are also political implications to the debate. As part of the "network neutrality" scuffle in Washington, telecommunications companies say Internet companies should help foot the bill for more data lines and equipment if they're sending lots of video traffic at high speed to consumers. One issue causing alarm is that access providers
often don't have the gear in place to provide the bandwidth they promise to DSL or cable Internet customers. They practice oversubscription in the way airlines overbook planes with the expectation some people will fail to show up. Cable companies are particularly susceptible because their network design shares bandwidth among neighbors, allowing a few Internet users to degrade service by using more than their fair share. Some warn
that new applications from start-ups and media companies using peer-to-peer technology to transmit TV shows online could increase any strain if they prove popular. Telephone companies face another challenge. Many own networks that are a hodgepodge of older equipment, much of which is inefficient at handling new forms of traffic like video.
Full story

Quote of the week 12 August
"That's . . . why I spent the better part of the past three months enduring criticism that is normally levelled at some sort of genocidal tyrant," the 76-year-old global media tycoon said yesterday during a conference call on News Corp's fourth-quarter results. "If I didn't think it was such a perfect fit with such unlimited potential to grow on its own and in tandem with News Corp assets, believe me, I would have walked away."
Rupert Murdoch, on buying Dow Jones
Washington Post

Reporters – watch your backs… 10 August
People in the news get to review it
From Google’s news blog: We wanted to give you a heads-up on a new, experimental feature we'll be trying out on the Google News home page. Starting this week, we'll be displaying reader comments on stories in Google News, but with a bit of a twist...
We'll be trying out a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question. Our long-term vision is that any participant will be able to send in their comments, and we'll show them next to the articles about the story. Comments will be published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report.
As always, Google News will direct readers to the professionally-written articles and news sources our algorithms have determined are relevant for a topic. From bloggers to mainstream journalists, the journalists who help create the news we read every day occupy a critical place in the information age. But we're hoping that by adding this feature, we can help enhance the news experience for readers, testing the hypothesis that -- whether they're penguin researchers or presidential candidates-- a personal view can sometimes add a whole new dimension to the story.
We're beginning this only in the US and then, based on how things go, we'll work to expand it to other languages and editions. We're excited about the possibilities of this new feature and we hope you are too, so if you've been covered in a news article please send us your comments and we'll work with you to post it on Google News.
Link

Mobile phones central to innovative reporting project
Dutch journalism site Skoeps has been sponsoring an innovative reporting project in Africa, training journalists and equipping them with mobile phones as their primary reporting tool – used to take photos, video amd send stories to a central site. The4 results are impressive.
Skoeps explains: In the summer of 2007 the project Voices of Africa was launched. A unique project which provides reporters in South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana, and Kenya with state-of-the-art mobile phones. These local reporters can cover current news events in their area, using mobile phones to produce video footage or photographs. Especially in places where it is to expensive to send regular television crews.
Each reporter is trained to use the equipment and is coached for the first six months. Reporters will also receive compensations for their work, thanks to the project's generous sponsors. With this innovative project, African citizens –– from the sprawling metropolises to the most isolated villages – can let their voices be heard across the continent and around the world.
According to Voices of Africa: Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having traditional internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa.
Skoeps
Voices of Africa

Pay TV moves online
Digital media buying agency Emitch has launched a division to help advertisers develop or buy original television programs on the open market and screen them on the internet in competition with free-to-air and pay-TV channels.
See this story in The Australian

One in five use net video daily -- Pew
The online video habit seems to be catching on. Pew Internet found that 57 per cent of online adults in the US have ever watched or downloaded online video, with 19 per cent doing it daily. Of those surveyed, 57 per cent send video links to other people, and 57 per cent watch online videos with others, making it a more social activity. Not surprisingly young adults are more likely than the rest of the population to rate videos, post comments on them or upload videos themselves. As for the content of video watched, news led all categories (37 per cent of people ever watched it), followed by comedy (31 per cent), music (22 per cent), educational (22 per cent) and animation (19 per cent). "Young adults are among the most contagious carriers when it comes to understanding how viral videos propagate online," Pew's Mary Madden said. "Younger users are the most eager and active contributors to the online video sphere."
Pew report

Seven heads to China
The Seven network plans to expand its involvement in China following the Beijing Olympics through Beijing International Media Services Company (BMC), its joint venture with the state-owned Beijing TV.
The Australian

Book chain puts bite on publishers
Angus & Robertson, Australia’s biggest book store chain, has sent a letter to small publishers demanding money to help prop up their sales.
The letter demands sums of up to $20,000 from publishers the company feels are under-performing on the bookshelves, or face being scratched from the stock list.
See this story in the Sydney Morning Herald

Murdoch buy prompts cross-media call
Our cross-media laws have just been watered down, while the US is considering ramping up theirs…
LA Times, via Benton: Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire Dow Jones and with it the country's second-largest paper, the Wall Street Journal, even though it owns a broadcast TV network and a cable news channel that blanket the country. Some Democrats say such national combinations should be scrutinized as well.
Already not particularly fond of Murdoch's News Corp. because of the perceived Republican tilt of Fox News Channel, they are urging the Federal Communications Commission to review the deal.
"The proposed merger between News Corp. and Dow Jones raises the serious question of whether a single company's concentration on a national scale should continue to be unfettered and unchecked," Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) wrote to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin last week. "The FCC should consider studying whether the public interest would be served if media cross-ownership rules existed at the national level." News Corp declined to comment. Near term, a national ban is considered a long shot.
La Times

More time spent with web than newspapers -- study
Less time spent on media overall
Reuters, via Benton: US consumers this year will spend more of their day surfing the Internet than reading newspapers or going to the movies or listening to recorded music, a new report from private equity firm Veronis Suhler  Stevenson. Advertisers are paying close attention to the shift in consumer behaviour and putting more money into areas like digital marketing. Last year, the top two advertising mediums were newspapers, at $55.7 billion, and broadcast television, at $48.7 billion, according to VSS. But it estimates that by 2011, overall Internet advertising will become the largest advertising medium, at nearly $63 billion, describing the shift as "a watershed moment" in the media business. VSS pointed to a potentially worrisome development for the media industry -- the overall time spent with media declined slightly last year, a spillover effect of the consumer shift away from newspapers and other traditional sources of news and entertainment.
For the first time in a decade, the study found, consumers spent less time with media in 2006 than they did in the previous year. Usage per person dropped 0.5 percent to 3530 hours annually, according to the study, which said digital media typically requires less time than traditional media.
Link

Feds move to expand high speed broadband
The Federal Government has released guidelines for the rollout of highspeed broad band across the country.
This a political hot potato, with the Federal Opposition and Telstra effectively ganging up against the Government on this issue. The latter is suing the Minister for Communications, Helen Coonan, over the recent awarding of a $1 billion rural broadband contract, and the relationship between the two seems to be becoming more poisonous by the moment.
The new, bigger, proposal – which mostly affects city dwellers – is expected to be worth around $5 billion.
Link to the guidelines

Multi-function chat is the hot web ticket
From the Online Publishers Association (OPA): Nielsen//NetRatings (USA) says the fastest growing instant messaging destination in the last 10 months was Meebo.com, a Web site where visitors can log in to several different instant messaging services without downloading an Internet application. Meebo’s unique audience increased 354 percent, from 434,000 in August 2006 when it first fell above reporting cutoff to 2.0 million in June 2007 (see Table 1).

Google Talk also saw triple digit growth in this time period, increasing 149 percent, from 904,000 to 2.3 million unique visitors. Both Meebo and Google Talk make it possible to chat anytime and anywhere you’re online, a feature that seems to resonate with consumers.
Other instant messaging destinations that made the fastest growing list offer additional multi-media chat functionalities to drive usage. IMVU, which grew 154 percent from August to June, allows users to create their own interactive avatars to communicate with their friends. Paltalk focuses on live video chat, while Skype’s main attraction is voice over IP. 
“Now that instant messaging has become an established form of communication, providers are seeking to distinguish themselves with expanded access and additional functionalities. These recent trends in traffic indicate that users are excited about seeing where the technology is going next,” said Jason Lee, media analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.
OPA

Could web search kill yellow pages?
From OPA: Many people wonder if Google and other online search engines will eventually make print Yellow Pages obsolete. TMP Directional Marketing decided to test the waters on that question, and found that a third of US consumers still consider their print Yellow Pages to be the primary source for local business info, with 90 per cent saying print directories are a valuable source. Countering that is evidence that people are starting to depend on Internet searches for local business information. TMP found that 60 per cent of people go online first for local searches, and of that amount 30 per cent use general search engines such as Google, 17 per cent use Internet Yellow Pages and 13 per cent use local search sites such as CitySearch. "Print directory advertising is a $15 billion market and fairly static," said TMP Directional Marketing honcho Stuart McKelvey. "But online local search is a $9 billion market and growing. The consumer is there, and the opportunities for marketers to capture a share of this growth are huge."
Media Post article

Scraper sites get the raspberry
News.com.com says scraper sites are driving publishers nuts. They use a software bot technology which automatically aggregates content from news feeds or blogs and then lines it up with relevant ads via context servers such as Google, thus hauling in some income without actually doing a lot for it.
See this story

No web ads for ABC
ABC head Mark Scott announced at a Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association (PANPA) conference this week that the ABC would not be including advertising in its web presence.
His speech covered a wide range of issues affecting the media industry.
See it on our Movers & Shakers page

Headline of the week
Crocodile falls 12 floors in escape bid
Reuters

Churches use web for broadcast 3 August
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is making the most of the internet as a broadcast medium, when this month it shows a live debate between Prime Minister John Howard and opposition leader Kevin Rudd. While the debate itself happens in Canberra, it will be watched by parishioners in churches across the nation.
ACL says: Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition leader Kevin Rudd have both expressed interest in the Christian constituency. This is why at the Federal Election 2007: Make it Count we have invited them both to address a representative group of church and para-church leaders at the National Press Club, Canberra Thursday, 9 August, 7.00-9.30pm. However, the event will not be limited to those attending the Canberra gathering. We want as many Christian voters as possible in Australia to also listen to Mr Howard and Mr Rudd live via webcast.
See this link
ACL web

Telstra to sue Coonan
It may not have seemed possible that the relationship between the Federal Government and the country’s largest telco, Telstra, could have sunk any lower.
It has, with the company now taking the Minister for Communications, Senator Helen Coonan, to court over the decision to award a rival consortium a major broadband contract.
Coonan has responded angrily, saying, “It doesn’t surprise me to learn via media release today, that Telstra has taken sour grapes to a whole new level and has initiated Federal Court proceedings.
“It’s always been the Australian way to respect the umpire’s decision, particularly if you have been beaten fair and square by a superior bid.
“Quite frankly, I would be much happier if Telstra put this sort of effort into rectifying the rising level of consumer concerns with the rollout of their new Next G network,” she said.
Telstra meanwhile has declared: Telstra Country Wide Group Managing Director, Geoff Booth, said Telstra could not stand by and quietly watch $1 billion of taxpayers' money being wasted under a process that has lacked transparency and fell short of its stated purpose.
"Let's shed some light on this behind-closed-doors process and see how the Minister arrived at this decision." Mr Booth said.
Coonan statement
Telstra statement

Possums and the art of blogging
Crikey commentator Dennis Muller today writes that the proliferation of blogs specialising in watching the political polls is a good example of how the web democratises the media.
He suggests the commentary is often more daring and insightful than mainstream, while keeping the latter on its toes.
“It is a tight and arcane symbiosis – bloggers, media, pollsters – but it is enriching our public debate and exerting some refreshing accountability,” he says
Here are his top four.
Mumble
Poll Bludger
Possums Pollytics
Oz Politics

Time on Murdoch
Time magazine has just produced an insightful article on how Rupert Murdoch sees the current media landscape.
Interviewed just after he had acquired Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, he speculates at one point, “"What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global — a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks. How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you'd make ... a little bit of money. Then again, the Journal and the Times make very little money now."
See this link

Kid Nation echoes Lord of the Flies 2 August
A new ‘reality’ (we prefer to refer to them as “lab rat”) show from CBS in the United States has started a debate over whether this style of TV has gone too far. The series is based around 40 children aged eight to 15 being put in a deserted town for 40 days, and left to run their own government and economy. It has more than a little in common with William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.
The CBS version: 40 children, 40 days, no adults—eager to prove they can build a better world for tomorrow in the new reality series Kid Nation. Settling in Bonanza City, New Mexico, once a thriving mining town but now deserted, these kids, ages 8 to 15 and from all walks of life, will build their own new world, pioneer-style. They will confront grown-up issues while coping with the classic childhood emotions of homesickness, peer pressure and the urge to break every rule. Episodes end with a town meeting in which the kids award one child a gold star worth $20,000, all leading to the grand finale, with an unimaginable test, the biggest awards and a special surprise for every child.
CBS site
From The Independent…
For America's stage mothers the pitch could not have been clearer: send your children - 8 to 15 years old - to an abandoned ghost town in the boiling heat of the New Mexico desert for a reality TV show Survivor meets Lord of the Flies.
The children were asked to perform on camera for more than 14 hours a day, seven days a week, during the school year without any studio teachers or parents on the set. Such practices are already banned across much of America, but in New Mexico a loophole exempted television companies from normal child protection laws.
Full story
Lord of the Flies info

Speaking of lab rat TV…
Network 10’s Big Brother finished off with a whimper recently, with a shambolic final episode which ran a staggering 50-plus minutes over schedule. Which might have been forgivable if it had been anything other than universally panned as turgid.
There is speculation that we may have seen the last of the series, which has been experiencing relatively ‘soft’ audience numbers. Nevertheless, its peak figures were still respectable – hitting 1.9 million at times.

Woolworths tries news-style ads
National supermarket chain Woolworths is to begin trialling 60-second news style ads, in place of the more conventional retail approach.
The Australian reports: The 60-second ads, similar to the finance updates broadcast by stockbrokers, will feature Woolworths fresh food buyers delivering market updates, such as why particular lines of produce are rising or dropping in price, or when they are in good supply, as part of a bid to educate consumers about fluctuating prices.
Full story

Amateurs reshape mapmaking
New York Times: With the help of simple tools introduced by Internet companies recently, millions of people are trying their hand at cartography, drawing on digital maps and annotating them with text, images, sound and videos.  In the process, they are reshaping the world of mapmaking and collectively creating a new kind of atlas that is likely to be both richer and messier than any other. They are also turning the Web into a medium where maps will play a more central role in how information is organized and found.
Already there are maps of the best BBQ joints in Manhattan, yarn stores in Illinois and hydrofoils around the world. Many maps depict current events, including the detours around a collapsed Bay Area freeway and the path of two whales that swam up the Sacramento River delta in May.
Full story
(requires registration)

Political ads stage newspaper comeback
Wall Street Journal: At a time when many categories of newspaper advertising are declining, the political message is making a comeback. As overall spending on campaigns doubled to $3.1 billion between 2002 and 2006, the amount spent on newspapers, including their online editions, tripled to $104 million, according to PQ Media.
 The rate of growth appears to be highest in races for local posts, such as mayor and state legislator, because newspapers boast greater penetration and influence in small- to medium-size markets.
Newspapers are still far from their status in pretelevision times as the premier vehicle for political advertising. Even with the recent gains, they are receiving less than 5 per cent of the advertising dollars spent on political campaigns.
And some of their recent political gains are merely a by-product of the surge of campaign ads on television: As political ads clog the airwaves, newspapers have become a way to stand out.
Newspaper readers vote at above-average rates. Even amid circulation declines, newspapers in many markets reach an audience that is competitive with any single broadcast channel, a
strength that online editions are bolstering.
Online editions also are reaching a demographic group that their print editions have been losing -- the young reader. Newspapers also allow for more sophisticated arguments than are delivered in the typical 30-second television campaign.
Full story
(requires subscription)

Online newspaper audience rising fast
Newspapers’ online audiences are rising at twice the rate of the general Internet audience, according to research by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America.
An average of more than 59 million people (37.6 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspapers online each month during Q1, a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen//NetRatings NetView custom analysis. During the same time period, the overall Internet audience grew just 2.7 percent.
Full story

Web business picks up the pace
This item from a USA PR firm illustrates how hot the pace is getting for internet publishers.
Realtor.com, which recently added a Windows Mobile offering for those seeking real estate information, announced today they would be more frequently updating listings in participating metro areas. It currently updates listings from nearly half of the 900 MLS systems across the US multiple times per day.
Realtor.com is shooting to increase listing updates every 15 minutes. The company hopes to increase the number of properties being updated in 15 minute increments from more than 500,000 every 15 minutes today to more than a million later this year.
Realtor.com

Where is community media heading?
(USA) The Media Justice Fund of the Funding Exchange explores the changing landscape in its new journal, Imagining the (UN)Thinkable: Community Media Over the Next Five Years.  This collection of essays pushes the boundaries of current research on media policy and provides critical information on the potential power of the Internet, radio, and community-access TV to enhance social justice movements.  Written from perspectives of people of color, low-income people, women and other marginalized communities, the report offers useful tools and  strategies for media justice advocates.
Full report
Benton report

Murdoch gets Dow Jones 1 August
From The Guardian: Rupert Murdoch has finally won control of the Wall Street Journal after News Corporation and Dow Jones today released a joint statement saying the publisher had agreed to a takeover by the media giant in a deal valued at $5.6bn. This will bring to a close the ownership by the Bancroft family
Full story
History of the bid -- Guardian
See this Dow Jones backgrounder from IHT
Wall Street Journal coverage
Washington Post op-ed on the WSJ

News Corporation statement
News Corporation and its Board of Directors are grateful to the Board of Dow Jones & Company for its strong vote of support in favor of our offer to acquire Dow Jones for $60 per share.
Dow Jones boasts some of the world’s strongest media brands and assets, including The Wall Street Journal, and News Corporation is confident that, in combination with its global content and distribution platforms, Dow Jones will become an even more formidable and respected company.
News Corporation (NYSE: NWS, NWS.A; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) had total assets as of March 31, 2007 of approximately US$62 billion and total annual revenues of approximately US$28 billion. News Corporation is a diversified entertainment company with operations in eight industry segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; direct broadcast satellite television; magazines and inserts; newspapers; book publishing; and other. The activities of News Corporation are conducted principally in the United States, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia and the Pacific Basin.

There will be local implications
At a recent conference, News's Australian editors were understood to have been told to consider how the Journal and Dow Jones could be used in tandem with their mastheads, with online content expected to be a crucial element of any strategy.
Full story at The Australian

Murdoch embraces media shift
(Opinion) Murdoch isn't an agent for evil or good, he's a very efficient agent for change. The media industry is rapidly transforming, and Murdoch is one of the few in the business to have sense enough to clean up from it," writes Kevin Kelleher. Read full story

Headline of the week
Stoned young rats fail memory test -- ABC

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