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In All Things Digital
When it comes to Google and newspaper web sites publishers around the world seem to be of two minds – that the traffic Google sends to their own sites by linking to a headline and a few words of a story is worth gold in added traffic and thus hopefully higher advertising rates, while others cry out about copyright infringements – the Belgians have already launched a second lawsuit against the search engine asking for some €49 million ($77 million).
Newspapers are being urged to create marketing excitement with new ways of delivering their news and one of the great new ideas -- a newspaper phone that has a special button that takes the user directly to the newspaper’s mobile web site — launched in December in Sweden. After some six months it’s attracting about 50,000 unique users a month
Technology developer Qualcomm bought a respectable chunk of UK radio frequency spectrum with a plan. The price was reasonably cheap and the possibilities are, perhaps, endless. All new media needs spectrum, somehow, and this could be an interesting experiment.
Talpa Digital and PCM Media turned off the lights at citizen journalism website Skoeps. It just couldn’t find that “sustainable business model,” said Reuters. In other words: welcome to the web!
The rise of the internet and new media has sent broadcasters on a search for taking these new tools and creating new listener interest. Leading German broadcaster Radio Hamburg has developed Web programming for specialized music.
A funny thing happened to mobile TV on the way to the marketplace. While experts still believe it will bring in € billions…someday…Europe and North America will need to look to Asia. It’s another media trend moving East to West.
The techno-geeks are winning, or at least they’re keeping their jobs. The digital dividend is also keeping content producers from changing, or losing, their jobs. Turnover in the television sector is highest in Western Europe and the US. But, of course, job turnover at the ‘elite’ level is less than half the rate of the rest of the sector.
You can fault newspaper people for many oft-documented mistakes ravaging their industry. They never quite got over television’s rise and thunder. So, now that the Web has risen it’s a perfect place to dust off that old business plan and try it one more time.
Is Google supportive of the new ACAP protocol developed by various media groups that enables web sites to block indexing of specific pages, or an entire site? There seem to be different answers depending whom in Google is speaking, but CEO Eric Schmidt has told Australia’s ITWire that the issues are only technical. “At present it doesn’t fit with the way our systems operate. It’s not that we don’t want them to be able to control their information.”
Forecasters, not just at Bear Sterns, anointed mobile TV the ‘next big thing’ sometime around the turn of the century. Each year since the high hopes for big money dwindle. Now mobile TV will be ‘interesting in some markets.’
Google continues to say that robots.txt gives newspaper publishers all the protection they need to stop Google accessing their online news, but the publishers, who have developed their own new coding system to give them more control, are getting ever more angrier that Google won’t play ball.
Suddenly broadcasters are speaking the heretofore unspeakable. The digital ‘way forward’ is being met with ‘not now.’
At the heart of media and advertising are young people and their habits. If the young have bewildered their parents since the beginning of time they totally confound media people. More research shows more confusion.
Being a digital radio supporter requires a certain strength of conviction. There’s no ambiguity about digital media’s future. Getting there is less certain.
Mounting interest in Europe for HD Radio is encouraging its supporters. The formation of the European HD Radio Alliance and growing participation in strategy round-tables show that broadcasters digital interest is leading to digital strategies. More than 200 broadcasters attended the two-day HD Radio conference in Lucerne, Switzerland to chart concrete steps for a way forward.
Is the ability of Google News to search a news web site’s content and list that site among search results good or bad for newspapers? Is it good that Google can publish on its news site the first paragraph or so of a news item, fully credited to the referenced site and links the reader to that site? Much of the news media seems to believe all of that infringes upon copyright, limiting profits, and so they have come up with a new protocol that controls what the search engines can and cannot do.
If there is any one politician the world can thank for ensuring that America embraced the Internet it is probably Al Gore. During his political life, and especially as vice-president in the Clinton administration, he moved Congress, and the federal government, to adopt and accept the infant that he called the information highway.
Bandwidth secured, standards endorsed, investors salivating mobile TV is certain to be the next small thing. But small things can prove effective change agents. It may not be exactly what television needs, but it’s close.
Forget DAB, DMB, DRM and all the rest. WiMAX offers quadruple play – audio, video, data and telephony. It will cover an average sized city. It is not expensive, either for the networks or connection devices. You may draw a breath now.
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Digital radio has made exciting advances over the last decade, leaving little doubt of a digital future. Broadcasters have invested in a range of technologies, which continue expanding into their own universe. A UK consultancy has taken exception to all the happy talk.
Broadcasters have long cast a wary eye toward the digital realm. Even with grudging acceptance that ‘the world is going digital’ the unease is endemic. And the answers from consumers only reinforce every digital fear.
It seems like a different century. Digital broadcasting could offer everything to everybody…and more. There was enthusiasm. There was hope. It was a different century.
No story ftm has written in our three years of existence has raised as much reader comment and mail as our story a couple of weeks back asking if Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks – in our media world can those who are approaching senior citizenship within a few years learn the new digital trade? And more than one correspondent asked directly whether this writer is himself “an old dog”.
Anybody who is anybody in the broadcast technology biz was in Amsterdam for the IBC. The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) opened with more mobile (everything) and HD (anything) buzz than the casual geek can capture on a memory stick.
As summer began digital broadcasting passed a significant milestone. The UK’s last analogue FM license was issued in May. When the license for GCap’s XFM in South Wales expires in 2019 digital radio broadcasting in the UK will be the dominant broadcast platform.
Is it really possible to teach old dogs new tricks? Can you take an older traditional media employee and make that person fluent in digital media needs? Or should the old just take the payoff and pack it in? It all depends on the perceived value of that “Human Capital”.
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British newspapers are falling over themselves in trying to make their web sites attractive to US readers and they spin that some of those sites have more regular American readers than British. So the sites are being aimed now not just for a British audience but for a much larger international audience, and with more eyeballs in front of those newspaper web screens, the newspapers hope that translates into more advertising money, if they can attract advertisers interested in more than just domestic campaigns.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that by reading Reuters or Bloomberg on the Internet that you know what is going on in the financial world as quickly as financial institutions around the world. The financial people pay hundreds of millions of their currencies globally to buy their news directly from information providers so they can get the market breaking news first and make their trades ahead of the competition.
The mouth watering riches of the Chinese mobile GSM market to foreign companies saw one of its first returns this week when China signed a $1 billion agreement with Sweden’s Ericsson to provide networking equipment to China Mobile Communications Corp.
There’s a spat going on in northern Europe – between tiny Estonia and huge Mother Russia -- which the entire world should note with alarm for one of the weapons used is a very sophisticated attack on Estonia’s Internet infrastructure. It nearly crippled the country’s Internet infrastructure so just think what it could do to your favorite news media site if someone doesn’t like what it says and has the technical know-how to do something about it -- a direct attack on democracy itself!
On-Demand television via the Internet is what the UK public wants and on-demand is what the UK’s largest broadcasters are going to give them, and mostly for free. The BBC Trust (basically the board of directors) gave the BBC the go-ahead for its system this week, and not to be outdone ITV, the largest commercial broadcaster, announced a £20 million makeover of its website so it can provide all of its channels not only streamed, but also video-on-demand including archived shows.
Wizzard Media is a podcast hosting network. Last year they distributed 360 million episodes, individual podcasts. And you think podcasts are but a tiny grain in the great media content desert. In March this year Wizzard distributed 70 million podcasts.
ftm has prepared a special summary of the NAB Las Vegas Convention and Expo to assist those who attended and, sometime soon, must explain what happened, those who didn’t but want to make a case for attending next year and the rest of the universe who understand why “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
Digital uptake in Europe seems a rough if not bone-jarring journey. Exceptional in many ways, Switzerland’s digital development mirrors its geography; peaks and valleys, many languages and occasional strong winds. And the trekking has been bright, fair and pleasant, with so many attractive - though narrow - byways. It's been a fantastic trip. Unfortunately, it has only gone around in circles.
US Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez took the occasion at the recent consumer electronics show to blast China for its delay in introducing 3G mobile licenses and developing its own technology rather than accepting global standards.
The mobile telecom numbers coming out of China are already staggering and they’re about to get a whole lot bigger. Cell phone users grew to 455 million last year, they sent 12 billion text messages during the 2006 seven-day Lunar New Year Holiday and on December 31 Shanghai Mobile alone handled 194 million text messages. China Mobile alone added some 50 million new users to reach 300 million subscribers. And they haven’t even started 3G yet!
An Ericsson executive boasted last week that about one-third of the world’s mobile phone users could be watching TV on their handsets within two years, but he may not have read a new study that indicates a weakening customer interest in new mobile technologies because of cost. If mobile vendors want customers to use their phones for more than just talk then they need to embrace low-cost fixed-price plans.
Are you the type of executive who feels naked if you’re out of the office and your trusty Blackberry wasn’t close at hand to check not just for the necessary e-mail messages, but also to look at web pages, visit chat rooms and the like? Do you have the stamina not to access the web, or your e-mail, for a few days? Just how important is frequent Internet usage a part of your daily life?
Mobile media is all the rage. Telecoms and hand-set makers say it’s the future, a pay-to-play future. Even Germany’s conservative publishers are throwing their weight around. It could be another one-way trip, say German broadcasters, with a wink and a nod: remember the 300 million receivers already in households.
Interest in HD Radio received a boost from Swiss broadcasters after a successful demonstration in and around Luzern. Over 200 broadcasters, technical specialists and regulators from six countries attended the two days of discussion and explanation. Swiss technical consultant and broadcaster Markus Ruoss, a strong proponent of HD Radio, organized the event as the first public HD Radio demonstration in Europe.
NRJ Group launches more internet radio channels. Yes, one of them is Chérie FM Zen.
Two separate surveys on each side of the Atlantic confirm – as if it really needed confirmation – that the young are giving up their newspapers and television and spending ever increasing time on the Internet and using their mobile phones. Plus one other problem -- the older folks are getting the hang of the Internet now, and they’re also spending more time online.
 No doubt the fact that Italy won the World Cup had a lot to do with it, but 3 Italia’s DVB-H Mobile TV service (digital over the air via TV transmitters) launched for the tournament’s start attracted 111,000 customers and the company expects 500,000 by year-end.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) recently presented its annual Multimedia Meets Radio and TV workshop for member public service broadcasters. With each year not only does this event attract more participants – over 100 this year - but also the subjects covered now advance management issues.
It’s a simple logarithm: As broadband usage goes up, television usage as we know it today goes down. And broadband usage is going way up!
Our media world is just one big laboratory now. Experiments are continuous. All the new platforms are getting the test; sometimes in public, sometimes not. Here are early results on the Stern trial.
Ask Americans the one feature they would like on their mobile phone and the answer is not video, music, audio or the like. What they really want, according to a recent survey, are maps. Not exactly what Hollywood and other program makers wanted to hear.
Munich radio station 95.5 Charivari joins other German stations and UK broadcaster Virgin Radio in the rush to entice cellphone radio listeners with the clever software – Spodradio – produced by Liquid Air Lab, powered by Nokia’s 3G handsetline.
Everybody in “new media” relishes this meme of “old media” sinking slowly, or not so slowly, into history’s swamp, heaving, moaning and perishing. Rarely do “old media” executives risk life, limb and their jobs uttering – in public - any suggestion of heat rising and nourishment – audience – disappearing, Rupert Murdoch exceptionally noted. So this little reported headline from a small venue speech by US radio executive of the year Harvey Nagler caught the attention – and ire – of more than a few US broadcasters.
Europe’s broadcasters wept and moaned when forcibly relocated from “broad-casting” to “narrow-casting.” Now arrives anew that great cleansing agent called change. Get set for “inter-casting.”
Last year CBS sold a $19.95 broadband streaming package for the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament and got about 20,000 subscribers. This year it has offered the opening rounds played during the day for free via advertising support, and at one time had 268,000 concurrent streams passing through its CBS Sportsline.com.
Five long years after the bubble burst the consumer technology sector is regaining its confidence and CeBIT is the place to show and glow. The Hannover, Germany trade show has also regained its reputation as the world’s largest celebration of consumer technology. Beyond tantalizing every geek impulse with Origami (Microsoft), 8 megabytes storage (Samsung) and cellphones preloaded with Skype (BenQ) it is a technology summit where the digital world assesses its progress and plots its future.
The statistics coming out of China recently has staggered the mobile telephone world. China expects to add 48 million mobile subscribers in 2006, which actually means things are slowing down a bit –it added 58,604 million new mobile subscribers last year. And according to the Information Industry Ministry that means a third of China’s population will have a mobile phone by the end of the year. Is it any wonder that you mention China to content and equipment providers and their eyes glaze over?
Deals are beginning to be signed In Europe for mobile phone operators to enter the TV business in a big way. In the UK, Virgin Mobile has signed up for BT’s Movio system with the hope one of the five terrestrial TV stations on offer will have World Cup coverage. But Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, a World Cup sponsor, is in talks with FIFA to see if it can show England games live, or at the very least highlights.
The European Commission’s 2012 deadline for digital TV conversion only gets closer. And with RRC-06 looming large, digital frequency allocations are threatened by a lack of national legislation.
“I listen to the radio everyday,” said Swiss International Airlines CEO Christoph Franz opening his keynote address to broadcasters at Swiss RadioDay.
Since November Sky Television has provided more than 5 million live-TV streams in its Vodaphone 3G service, so there certainly is an interest in using mobile phones to watch some television. But in a just concluded trial by BT with Virgin Mobile users said they preferred listening to digital radio on their phones than watching TV and they were not wiling to pay as much as operators wanted. And in yet another trial, this one by O2, 78% of users said they would buy a TV service.
 Trend spotting is a no luxury. Media makers mine this diamond of knowledge like caviar before the well-heeled gourmet, the stuff of life. What will the world be like tomorrow: the best to get there before somebody else and hoard the spoils?
As a regional broadcaster Canale 7 hardly showed on the ratings scene, out powered by multi-channel programming from state broadcaster RAI and from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s family-run Mediaset empire. But there was a hidden attribute to Canale 7 – it owned a national digital terrestrial TV license – exactly what a mobile telephone operator could do with as its plans introduction of digital video broadcast -- handheld (DVD-H) to mobile phones via signals from television transmitters.
Radio listeners are making the digital switch in 2005 according to a special RAJAR survey. Total hours listening increased to all digital platforms – DAB, DTV and internet – increased from a comparable 2004 survey. The number of hours listening to DAB jumped 165%.
Baden-Württemberg broadcaster bigFM announced last week that they are set to become first in Germany to offer “Visual Radio,” a download system offered by Spodradio. It is not the “Visual Radio” system offered by Nokia and Hewlett-Packard (HP), launched earlier this year in Finland, the UK and radio station FFH in Frankfurt, Germany. One might think the lawyers would have checked out trade names.
BT, the largest British telephone company, is teaming with Philips and Microsoft, to turn itself also into a television company next year offering 30 digital terrestrial channels via aerial reception plus a video on demand library and a “catch-up” service covering the past seven days delivered via broadband. Not to be outdone, satellite broadcaster BSkyB is paying £211 million for broadband supplier Easynet that puts the company, 37.2% owned by News Corporation, into the telecom and broadband business.
Swisscom Mobile now offers 21 television stations in four languages to its Vodafone Live mobile phone subscribers in Switzerland. Need a news fix --- watch CNN; sports – then its Eurosport, and if it’s the latest music hits there’s always MTV. Add the six national Swiss stations in the three main official languages (two each in Swiss German, Italian, and French) plus other stations from France, Italy, and Germany and with coverage available in 99.8% of the country – not bad considering the Alps – and there’s no reason why anyone should be out of touch.
A decade after the unveiling of digital radio technologies, European commercial radio broadcasters continue to hesitate. There are exceptions, notable, but few.
With more and more program makers eyeing broadband Internet as the overall video delivery preference within the next five years, and with broadband experiments on the verge of opening vast new pipelines into the home the obvious question is then what happens to television as we know it today?
Mark Cuban, the respected Internet entrepreneur who made more than $1 billion selling his broadcast.com to Yahoo says Podcasting is a fad. Have fun with it, he says, but don’t expect to make money. The very respected Wharton School of Business, on the other hand, isn’t so sure. “Some will do Podcasting well and be rewarded for it,” says a Wharton marketing professor.
CNN.com last month made video available for free on the advertising model, reversing its $4.95 monthly subscription model. Three weeks later it had its first really big international breaking news story -- the London bombings -- and CNN said it served more than 3.8 million videos on the first day.
When the bombs hit the three London Underground sites last week Londoners knew it was no use trying to use their phones to contact the outside world because there are no signals within the underground system. But that didn’t stop them from using their phones, and many became on-the-spot video journalists.
Danish and Swiss private, commercial radio broadcasters announce new DAB plans. But a UK broadcaster resists more multiplexes.
Satellite radio pioneer WorldSpace wants to launch a European subscription radio service in 2007
But unfortunately the killer application doesn’t involve the media professional – It’s Peer-to-Peer transmission of audio, still pictures and video.
Back in 1971 Intel developed its first memory chip – it stored all of 128 letters. Today a Samsung 8-gigabyte memory card can store one million newspaper pages – equivalent to about 90 years of a daily newspaper. And such changes in the semiconductor industry are only the tip of that iceberg that will help newspapers to continue reaching the masses.
With phase one of its modernization program complete, Romanian transmission services provider Radiocomunicatii was the natural host of a two day symposium on what the future holds for radio broadcasters
By September access to opinion columnists on the New York Times web-site will come with a charge. This newspaper has decided that there’s money in weblogs.
In the UK telephone operator BT announced it has reached its milestone of 5 million broadband clients a full 12 months early.
The number of people reading newspaper web sites is increasing while visits to other news and information sites is decreasing. Can you put the puzzle together?
Governments are attacking the digital media problem and warming, again, to analogue shut-off dates for radio.
If you’re in Finland Nokia’s new killer application puts pictures together with FM radio in a cellphone.
That’s Still Better Than the US -- the Only Country to See Negative Growth!
No, not that DRM. Digital rights management means more APRU.
Europe’s first digital dividend arrives as Berlin-Brandenburg hands over TV channel 39 to mobile phones, PDAs, digital radio and more.
From initially hoping that web news sites would just go away, to then adopting the “if you can’t beat them join them but with as little as possible” strategy to then jumping in with no holds barred, the media has grappled since the Internet began to define its rightful place on the web.
Radio broadcasters visiting the Le Radio conference in Paris this week were all atwitter when TDF radio director Alain Delorme suggested a pan-European satellite radio service might soon be launched.
European radio’s transition from analogue to digital broadcasting is moving forward, but very slowly. Despite rich promised benefits, advocates have discovered that neither they nor anybody else can force something new to happen.
When the Berlin media regulator said it was dumping DAB, icy scorn rained down from WorldDAB.
Speaking at the annual Mediatage Nord conference, ULR (Independent regional institute for broadcasting and new media) Director Gernot Schumann thanked public and private sector broadcasters at the launch of DVB-T (Freeview) in Schleswig-Holstein.
The two Toms leading the world’s two largest news agencies – Glocer at Reuters and Curley at Associated Press (AP) – are agreed upon the future of news, or more specifically where the majority of news junkies will go for their news. The Internet.
The IBC opened and closed last week in Amsterdam. Most than 40 thousand visitors and exhibitors stoked the flames of the digital media revolution, 12% more than 2003 according to the IBC. As usual, it’s a visual – as in TV - event.
Reuters Television has begun delivering its television product via digital files over its satellite system. Reuters hopes to convert all of its television clients to the new delivery system by early 2005.
No single concept is more fundamental to radio broadcasting than building audiences. As digital replaces analogue and multimedia redefines the marketplace, the idea of audience is also challenged. Community is the new term.
Europe's Media Rules
Media rule makers are taking strong positions on competition, State aid, public broadcasting finance and advertising. and that's only for starters. As the Audiovisual Media Services Directive takes effect, national rules are changing. Europe's Media Rules has all the background and latest developments. 82 pages PDF (June 2008)
Free to ftm members, others from €39
Media Searches for Business Models
The search for effective business models challenges traditional media and new. From broadcasting to publishing, Hollywood to China, media outlets confront change after change in new terms for revenue creation and value. Media Searches for Business Models is 30 articles on what's real and what's not. 76 pages PDF (May 2008)
Free to ftm members, others from €39
The Beijing Olympic Games and China
The Beijing Olympic Games is the most anticipated media event of the 21st century. ftm is following the run-up to the Games, Brand China, Digital China, media business in China and the state of China's media freedom. 25 articles 60 pages PDF (April 2008)
Free to ftm members, others from €39
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When a news powerhouse like Reuters talks about giving special Nokia mobile phone fitted with keyboard, microphone and tripod with some 20 hours of video storage to all its reporters then maybe the time of the mojo (mobile journalist) has finally arrived. And judging from presentations made at an international editors convention this week that mobile phone may well become the standard tool that journalists can’t leave home or office without.