Hot topics click link for more
Complex arrangements among media enterprises, financial and otherwise, are now accepted practice. This century’s digital dividend has yielded, if anything, clever accountants and smarter lawyers. Everybody wins, particularly the later.
A new one was announced this week, Dutch media house Telegraaf Media Groep (TMG) and media genius John de Mol forming a new company. It is, essentially, a radio deal. Sky Radio, Classic FM and Veronica from TMG will be combined, regulatory approval pending, with Radio 538 and Slam FM into Talpa Holding. John de Mol, who sold Talpa TV last year to ITV for €500 million, will have a 77.2% stake in the new company with TMG holding 22.8% and investing €27 million in the new company. Last year the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs allowed that individual companies could own more than four FM radio stations, the new rule effective January 1st. (See more about media in the Netherlands here)
“I find radio the most interesting medium that exists,” said Mr. de Mol in a statement, quoted by adformatie.nl (January 15). “It is interactive, dynamic and always live and advertisers can be on the air in an hour. Everyone may see me as a TV man but my career began in radio and that’s where my heart still lies. By broadening the ownership limitation… the road is open for the consolidation of the radio industry and we can realize our dream to create a strong radio business.”
Mr. de Mol bought Radio 538 in 2005, sold it and TV assets to RTL Group in 2007, retaining a small stake. When he and Finnish publisher Sanoma acquired the Dutch assets of ProSiebenSat1.Media in 2011, renamed SBS Broadcasting, he sold his stake in RTL Netherlands back to RTL Group, keeping Radio 538. Are you with me so far?
Newspaper publisher TGM is in this for a 15% stake in the SBS Broadcasting TV assets; SBS 6, Veronica TV and Net 5. “We are taking an important step in the dutch TV landscape that is very fast moving,” said TMG CEO Geert-Jan van der Snoek. The company previously announced plans to develop two online (OTT) TV channels this year. In an advisory note to stock traders in December TMG indicated organizational restructuring would be completed in 2016 and the costs would be reflected in negative results for 2015 “as previously communicated.”
There was always the sense that Al-Jazeera America, the US-centered cable news channel of Al-Jazeera Media Network, was not ready for prime time. After two and a half years on-the-air it’s fading to black, announced chief executive Al Anstey to staff this week. “Our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the US media marketplace,” he said.
Though ratings and ad sales have been paltry Al-Jazeera America’s team produced award winning documentaries. The six-part “Hard Earned” documentary about middle class poverty in America earned an Alfred I. duPont award for broadcast and investigative journalism in December. That was just days before the channel aired an investigative report on sports doping, strongly implying big name football and baseball players using forbidden substances. Needless to say, the report from a TV channel with a Middle Eastern name and owners didn’t sit well among some Americans.
Journalism aside, a myriad of organizational problems plagued Al-Jazeera America. A “culture of fear” work environment chased away several employees, discrimination accusations and a lawsuit following, lead to acting CEO Ehad Al Shihabi being replaced by Mr. Anstey, who transitioned from Al-Jazeera English, reported the New York Times (May 15, 2015). The last work day for the 400 Al-Jazeera America employees will be April 30th. (See more about TV news here)
Coincident with the closure announcement, Al-Jazeera Media Network, owned by the Qatari royal family, announced “its intention to expand its existing international digital services to broaden its multi-platform presence in the United States.” The Al-Jazeera Arabic channel will be 20 years old this year. Al-Jazeera English, originally Al-Jazeera International, was launched in 2006 just as BBC World Service prepared to relaunch BBC Arabic. In 2011 Al-Jazeera Balkans, based in Sarajevo, followed, then the web-only Al-Jazeera Türk. When Al-Jazeera America was launched access in the US to Al-Jazeera English was frozen. Presumably, that will change.
In the midst of that expansion, Al-Jazeera Sport was launched in France with a respectable investment in rights packages. The name was changed to BeIN Sports and channels were set-up in the US, Canada and Spain as well as Asia, North Africa and the Middle East with appropriate rights acquisitions. Al-Jazeera Media Network spun-off the sports channels into a separate company, same owners, in 2014, called BeIN Media Group.
Digital-only radio channels have caught on. Danish public broadcaster DR, in a research note released this week, credits the rise in listeners to the P5 channel to a shift in programming as much as older listeners embracing the DAB platform. P5 is a digital-only channel targeting older listeners. Last year programs popular with older listeners on regional network P4 were moved to P5. Listeners moved with them. Listening to P4 stations, historically available on the FM platform, fell.
"The restructuring of P4 and P5 must be said to be quite successful and also helps to demonstrate that radio listeners are not so conservative that change cannot be done,” said DR audience research director Dennis Christensen. DR has experimented with digital-only radio channels for several years and currently offers four mixed platform channels and four DAB-only channels. The Media Trends 2015 report noted that listening to public radio channels, including semi-public Radio24Syv, on “other than FM” rose in 2015 to 31% of the measured audience from 29% in 2014.(See more about media in Denmark here)
"Listening growth among Danes, however, is not equally distributed,” he said. “While listening among young people under 30 years of age decreased, all age groups over 30 increased their listening time. It is perhaps not so surprising as Radio24Syv, P5 and P7 Mix experienced listener growth in the course of the year.” P7 Mix is DR’s DAB-only easy listening channel. Radio24Syv is a privately-owned national news-talk channel operating under a public service license. Last summer one of its show hosts clubbed to death a baby rabbit live on-the-air as a statement about animal welfare, illiciting considerable media coverage.
Rooting out hate speech falls to media regulators when that ugliness appears on television and radio channels. Broadcasters can be sanctioned in a variety of ways, from fines to outright bans. As with all legal matters the first stop is jurisdiction after which more obvious matters can be settled.
Lithuania’s media regulator LRTK has for several years pursued RTR Planeta, the international channel of Russian Federation state broadcaster VGTRK, for content meeting its definition of hate speech. Last year the channel was banned for three months from the Lithuanian satellite TV space, perhaps hoping the tone of talks shows would be toned down. European Union member Lithuania has asked the European Commission to yield some clarity.
RTR Planeta and other Russian TV channels are offered in the Baltics through the Viasat pay-TV system. Viasat is owned by big Swedish media house Modern Times Group (MTG) and has had for several years a distribution arrangement with VGTRK, meaning the channels in question are licensed under Swedish law. The LRTK has asked Swedish authorities to intervene.
Swedish authorities are “investigating the information we sent,” said LRTK chairman Edmundas Vaitekunas, quoted by agency BNS (January 12). The Swedish radio and TV review board was supplied details of an RTR Planeta talk show broadcast in late November “repeatedly inciting hatred and war thus violating Lithuanian laws” and has referred the matter to Swedish law enforcement because of a possible violation of Swedish hate speech laws. The review board is an independent agency within Swedish media regulator MRTV.
Shortly after an explosion ripped through central Istanbul Tuesday morning the Turkish prime minister’s office requested a “temporary publication ban” limiting news reporting. Broadcast regulator RTüK issued the order under a 2011 law allowing the government to prohibit “live broadcasts, recordings and images” when national security dictates “serious deterioration of public order is possible.” Official State Anatolia News Agency informed subscribers of the order less than a hour after the explosion.
Police on the scene, near the famous Blue Mosque, ordered photojournalists and news crews to put away their cameras, reported CNN Türk (January 12). Images from the scene, however, have circulated widely on social media along with criticism of the publication ban. The Turkish government has restricted news coverage “dozens of times in recent years,” noted hurriyet.com.tr (January 12), recently after a suicide bomber killed nearly 100 people at an Ankara peace rally last October. Press gag orders have been imposed more than 150 times in the last five years limiting coverage of terrorist attacks to corruption trials. (See more about media in Turkey here)
Seizing the opportunity, opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu took to Twitter, reported the English-language hurriyetdailynews.com. “A bomb explodes at the heart of Sultanahmet (tourist area) and you have taken no measures. Then what do you do? You impose a ban on reporting even before ambulances arrive.”
Digital radio transition in Flemish Belgium received a boost from Media Minister Sven Gatz who wants commercial operators to step up to the DAB+ platform. “The reign of analogue FM radio will still not be abolished,” he said to daily newspaper De Tijd (January 9), “but there will come a point of no return.” He’s planning to introduce a transition timetable this spring.
If the government finds it acceptable no new analogue FM licenses will be granted putting pressure on big regional operators Medialaan (Q-music and Joe FM) and Mediahuis, which operates the Nostalgie franchise with NRJ Group. Regional public broadcaster VRT has been offering radio channels on the older DAB platform along with a few local stations. Commercial digital radio multiplex operator Narkring currently offers DAB+ coverage in the Brussels area and has plans to complete coverage in Flanders next year. (See more about digital radio here)
Minister Gatz also said privatising public broadcaster VRT’s radio channel MNM is less than likely. “If you sell that station, you create a hole (in VRT revenue) that increases every year. As I look at the whole media landscape… a sale of MNM would actually create more problems than it would solve.” MNM is a pop music channel available on FM in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent as well as regionally on the DAB platform.
Big news stories eventually fade, the next blunting attention fatigue just in time. People seeking refuge from the horrors of war and deprivation in places deemed safe and, even, generous continues to be a big story. It is a huge story in Germany, which accepted 1.1 million migrants in 2015. News outlets in Germany - and elsewhere - find no shortage of attention for headlines about migrants, particularly when conflated with terrorism, crime and sex.
This past weekend German news magazine Focus and newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung splashed cover features adding to the story about New Year’s Eve attacks on women in Cologne perpetrated by male suspects of foreign origin. Cover illustrations, so very important to setting a tone as well as selling copies, depicted white female figures obtruded by black hands. Editors were widely excoriated for “latent racism.” (See more about media in Germany here) Der Spiegel also ran a article following the Cologne New Year’s Eve attacks the cover illustration being a blurred photograph of young men.
Profusely, Süddeutsche Zeitung editor-in-chief Wolfgang Krach apologized “if the illustration hurt the feelings of readers” in a Monday morning editor’s note. “Sexual violence has nothing to do with skin color.” By contrast - in the extreme - Focus editor-in-chief Ulrich Reith, quoted by tagesspiegel.de (January 11), said he has “no reason to justify ourselves for our cover” and that critics “are afraid of the truth” - whatever that means.
|
