followthemedia.com - a knowledge base for media professionals
ftm Tickle File 13 April, 2007

 

 

The Tickle File is ftm's daily column of media news, complimenting the feature articles on major media issues. Tickle File items point out media happenings, from the oh-so serious to the not-so serious, that should not escape notice...in a shorter, more informal format.

We are able to offer this new service thanks to the great response to our Media Sleuth project in which you, our readers, are contributing media information happening in your countries that  have escaped the notice of the international media, or you are providing us information on covered events that others simply didn't know about. We invite more of you to become Media Sleuths. For more information click here.

See Today's Feature

Those Sleeping Giants -- Local Television Web Sites -- Are Waking Up To Do Battle With Newspaper Web Sites – Witness The New Expanded TV Co-Branding Deal With Monster.Com For Classified Job Ads

Local Television Production Swells

A documentary on Thai prostitution in Denmark “Trapped in Prostitution” was awarded Circom’s Grand Prix for locally produced documentaries. The trophy and even a little cash went to TV2 Ostjylland, Denmark and producer Irene Thyrri.

European regional television association Circom puts together an awards competition each year for locally produced productions. Eight awards form regional television productions were given in seven categories.

Other producers cited were TVP Poland for “RE:ACT,” NRK1 for “Dangerous Mountain,” France 3 Alsace for  “The Beautiful Game: Footballers and Beauty Queens,” MDR Leipzig for “Do Communists Have Better Sex?,” HRT Zagreb Croatia for “I Love You” and BBC South East for “On Tour in Iraq.”

BBC London was cited for its website.

DJ Fired. Watch The Radio Stocks!

The firestorm surrounding New York City DJ Don Imus moved to the explosive as CBS CEO Leslie Moonvies finally relented and fired the DJ. Imus attracted significant and unwanted attention for a racially insensitive comment about a women’s university basketball team. Imagine that! (What did Imus say?)

CBS, owner of WFAN where Imus In The Morning is broadcast, followed by a day MSNBC’s decision to kill the televised portion. All of that followed, by a day, major advertisers distancing themselves (read: canceling the ads) from the program.

American ftm Media Sleuth’s point out (a) Imus has been a management nightmare for years (b) Imus is out of control (c) nobody condones racist talk (d) not even Imus’ high profile friends have come to his support and (e) Imus has an iron-clad contract and the payoff will be huge.  American troglodytes – in the minority – whinge about “political correctness.”

Still others, sufficiently in the mainstream, howl when "programming" is subjugated by ad sales. Advertisers, it seems, regularly dictate programs and programming policies. How can that be?

And, then, a few point out that Don Imus is being singled out because he's a LIBERAL (that's the American understanding of "liberal"). Right-wing talk show hosts are, it seems, immune to criticism for their blatantly disgusting tirades and insults.

Firing DJs almost always has a direct and immediate effect on broadcasters share prices. Usually, share prices soar when those unnecessary and expensive bodies are tossed under the train.

Don’t expect it today: Friday 13th.  Imus – like Howard Stern (Who is Howard Stern?) – is enormously popular with Wall Street stock traders – fellow travelers, so to speak. Expect them to punish broadcast shares.

US Magazines See 6.9% Rise In Q1

Overall revenue at US magazines rose 6.9% in the Q1 this year, totaling $5.2 billion, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, but ad pages grew on average just 1%. The drugs and medicine category increased its ad pages the most (19.5%) while the biggest decline came from home furnishings and supplies (down 15.5%).

Time, Inc., the largest US magazine group, had a mixed bag. Sports Illustrated saw revenue up 19.8% and ad pages up 11.5%, but at Time Magazine revenue was down 8.2% although pages were up 5.6%, and at People revenue was down 4% with pages down 11.5%.

The country’s largest circulation magazine, AARP – The Magazine, aimed at the over 50s kept growing from strength to strength with revenue up 16% and ad pages up 12.3%.

In the news weekly area, the Economist also did well, seeing revenue up 25.4% (but still only one-quarter of Time Magazine’s) and ad pages up 12.1%.

US Advertisers Plan To Spend More On Search

Some 25% of companies with annual revenues exceeding $50 million say they are going to increase their search engine advertising by more than 25% this year, according to a study from Jupiter Research. Another 28% said their increase will be somewhere between 11% and 25%.

Jupiter did not say where the additional spend was coming from, but in the past it has been diverting from traditional media rather than new money.

US Internet Radio Listening Doubles in Past Year

Coinciding with our item Wednesday of the huge increase in French listening to radio over the Internet (see here) comes a report from American Media Services (AMS) that 67% of Americans have listened to radio online – a doubling of the numbers when the survey was last taken a year ago.

Most of the listening is done at home (71%), but an appreciable amount is done also in the office (42%) and 6% said they stream it ion their mobile phone or other portable device.

“There’s no question that listening to the radio over the Internet is well on its way to becoming the rule rather than the exception. While most people still listen to radio via traditional over-the-air signals and receivers, it’s also apparent that more and more consumers are finding the Internet a convenient way to tune their favorite stations,” according to AMS President/CEO Edward Seeger.

It should be noted that AMS is in the business of consulting with radio properties on developing their digital streaming.

French Websurfing Explodes, +50% Increase in One Year

French websurfers are surfing more, according to Médiamétrie’s March 2007 figures. In one year site visits increased 55.7%.

And time on-line increased to an average of just under 14 minutes, a half minute more than February.

Sites related to radio network Skyrock dominate French websurfing; 163 million visits in March, nearly twice the visits of number 2 – Dailymotion.

Lordi, More Lordi!

Finnish glam-rock band Lordi rocked the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest with “Hard Rock, Hallelujah.” Also stunned was a generation of bland-pop.

Lordi – currently on a North American tour –  will star in “Dark Floors,” filming to begin in May.

“It will not be for kids,” explained Lordi leaderTomi Petteri Putaansuu, co-writer of the monster movie. He said it will be a combination of American-style slasher thriller sprinkled with Japanese.

Helsinki hosts the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in May, with special performance by Lordi.

It might not be great music but it will be great television.

Americans Spent $20 Billion On TV Sets in 2006

Americans spent $20 billion on TV sets in 2006 and another $24 billion on home video rentals and purchases, according to the NPD Group and the Digital Entertainment Group.

And according to Nielsen Media Research, 92% of US households own more than one TV, with 51% of such households  owning three or more TV sets. Because of cable, the average household now has access to 104 TV channels.

New York Times Has Most Popular Newspaper Web Site in US

The New York Times is the most frequently visited US newspaper web site, but the statistic that really stands out is that visitors spend more than 50% more time on its site then they do on the second most popular site, USA Today. But the New York Times site scores only fifth in popularity if all current events/news destinations are taken into account with Yahoo! News number one, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings

A Times visitor averages 37:09 (minutes:seconds) on the site compared to USA Today’s 22:08.The Times has 12.96 million visitors, more than one-third more than USA Today at 9.05 million.

After those two the top 10 newspaper sites are the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and The New York Post.

The five top general news/current event sites are Yahoo! News, MSNBC, CNN, AOL News, and the Times. Yahoo with 17.6 million unique visitors scores three times more than the Times at 5.598 million.

Washington Post Tries Loyalty Points

Corporate loyalty programs have been around for more than 20 years – one of the first big ones being American Airlines Aadvantage Program – but newspapers have been slow to catch on. Now the Washington Post online site is joining the loyalty circus. And it has taken on the former head of United Airlines’ loyalty program to run it, so it it’s taking this new marketing endeavor very seriously.

The idea is simple --  click on a Post story on its web site  and earn PostPoints that can be redeemed for merchandice, but for our global readers we should point out most of the merchandise apparently has to be picked up from local Washington DC shops.

Apparently the retailers like the idea, too. To join the program they had to be a Post print advertiser and apparently the demand was so great for launch that the Post actually turned away merchants.

And the Post will be using the click throughs to see which stories are of the most interest, and the reader who, for instance, always clicks on the movie reviews, could well get an email from the Post’s movie reviewer offering free tickets to screenings.

Of course, there are always people out there who will ruin a good thing – what’s to stop someone from clicking on the stories just to get the points, the very fraud problem that Google and others wish would just quietly go away?

New York City DJ Calls Women’s Basketball Team “Nappy Headed Hos.” How Insensitive!

In the world’s never ending quest to banish media insensitivity, famed and fabled New York City DJ Don Imus faces a two-week suspension for a deliriously insensitive on-air comment. The usual suspects lined up to call for Imus’ eventual firing. Newly appointed CBS Radio President Dan Mason now has a test. The Imus in the Morning Show of WFAN and MSNBC draws huge audience – and ad revenue.

Only a few weeks ago the UK gaggle descended on ITV for racist comments made on Celebrity Big Brother.

And, lest we forget, Muslims the world over burned Danish flags after a newspaper published insensitive cartoons.

“I’m a good person,” said Imus during a 2 hour television grilling by equally entertaining Rev. Al Sharpton.

“That’s not the issue,” said Rev. Al. “You’re a racist.”

Mobile TV Tests in Hungary

Antenna Hungaria, majority owned by Swisscom Broadcast, and Magyar Telekom, majority owned by Deutsche Telekom, announced mobile TV technical tests. Public broadcaster Magyar Television (MTV) will be offered in the trials to determine whether or not watching television on tiny screens will become the rage in Hungary.

Meanwhile, free-to-air digital radio and television remains stalled.

Talk About PR Spin

Same story, different headlines. Which One do you think tells it straight?

From a Tampa (Florida) Tribune News Release: “The Tampa Tribune Announces Plans For Product Enhancements and Performance Improvements”

Same Story but as told in the headline at Editor & Publisher Magazine: “Tampa (Fla.) Tribune Laying Off 70, Shrinking Circ Area and Page Width.”

Spin is taken to a new level!

New York Mayor Has A Gripe Against Newspapers

Here’s a quote to remember from Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York. It needs no further comment from us:

"Newspapers can never find anything good enough. They're in favor of change, but they've never yet in their whole publishing history seen a change that was good enough."

Number of US Journalists Falling

The Columbia Journalism Review reports that “a systematic, national survey of journalists, conducted by a team of Indiana University scholars led by David H. Weaver, shows that the total number of US print and broadcast journalists fell from an estimated 122,000 to 116,000 between 1992 and 2002. That’s a real drop in journalists per 100,000 people from forty-eight to forty, with radio and daily newspapers accounting for the greatest losses. Few can doubt that the pace of decline has quickened over the past several years.”

Dutch Newspaper Circulation Down

De Telegraaf remains by far The Netherlands’ largest circulation daily newspaper, but its circulation sank 4.7% in Q4, 2006, to sink below the magic 700,000 circulation figure to 699,000. De Volkskrant's circulation declined 2.3% to 287,168 and NRC Handelsblad's shrank by 2.8% to 244,131.

Total circulation of national and regional newspapers in the Netherlands fell in the fourth quarter of 2006 to 3,768,964, down 2.2 % from the same year-earlier period, according to figures released by the Institute for Media Auditing.

Circulation of free newspapers rose by 1.4% to 980,294.

Hispanic Media Becoming A Major US Media Player

US Hispanic media is becoming ever more important to the advertising community. Consider these numbers:

  • According to Arbitron, in the US there are more than 700 radio stations and 200 television stations broadcasting in Spanish.

  • According to Western Publication Research, there are nearly 600 Hispanic print publications in the US, including 33 Spanish-language dailies.

Hispanic media has come a long way since El Misisipi, published in New Orleans in 1808, was the first Spanish-language newspaper in the United States.

Raúl Tovares, who teaches journalism and mass communication at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., said in a Scripps-Howard News Service article, “Rather than encourage isolation, the Spanish-language press is constantly feeding valuable information to its readers and listeners that helps members of that community remain proud of their culture and traditions as well as embrace the culture and traditions the United States has to offer. “

The Chinese Give A New Definition to “Big Money” When It Comes To New Media

New Media in China generated some 118 billion Yuan (about US$15 billion) in 2006, according to the Chinese Media Research Center.

It also reported an annual growth rate of 56% with the bulk coming from SMS messaging.

There are estimated to be some 140 million Internet users in China and about 450 million mobile phone users.

Apple Ships Its 100 Millionth IPod

Apple says it has shipped its 100 millionth iPod, just 5 ½ years after its debut. It probably financially saved the Mac.

Although there are competitors, Apple still holds a 70% share in the portable music market. The iTunes service is said to have sold some 2.5 billion songs, 50 million television shows and more than 1.3 million movies.

The iPhone is expected to be released in a couple of months.

copyright ©2004-2007 ftm partners, unless otherwise noted Contact UsSponsor ftm