ftm is introducing a new daily column of media news, complimenting the twice weekly 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.

The Tickle File is a time honored journalistic tradition. Invented in 1761 by Urs Tickes, editor of a long disappeared Swiss newspaper, it is an effective tool for organizing article ideas.

To each journalist Tickes would hand 10 file folders saying "Halten Sie Ihre Ideen organisiert und Ihre Schreibtisch sauber, verdammt!"

Unfortunately Tickes met an unfortunate demise. While personally escorting a shipment of 10 million file folders from Sweden, the boat was sunk and all, including Tickes, was lost. Rumors of involvement by a militant Swiss journalists guild - Die organisierte Gesellschaft des Rechtgehirns, durcheinandergebrachte schweizer Journalisten - were never proven.

The legend of Tickes continues...

Here is the ftm Tickle File with notes from the ftm team...and you!

Tickle File Week of November 6, 2006

France National Radio September/October

Axel Springer CEO Keeps Promise

Axel Springer is the next big media company to invest in Turkey, spending €375 million for 25% of Dogan TV. When its deal top acquire ProSeibenSat fell to regulator disapproval in Germany CEO Matthias Döphner said he would likely look outside Germany for the company’s growth.

Dogan Holdings, in turn, is bidding in the ProSeibenSat auction. Confused? Stay tuned!

The Turkish ad market is likely to jump another 20% in 2007.

Two Huge Deals Take Traditional Media Properties Private

If Wall Street doesn’t have enough patience for traditional media companies to grow the business to their liking then it seems that private equity firms are willing to stay the course as proven by two separate buyouts in the billions of dollars.

The biggest by far was Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio station owner in the US, that has sold out to an investor group led by private-equity firms Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners, in an all cash $18.7 billion deal. The deal also assumes $8 billion of Clear Channel debt making the total purchase some $25.7 billion. When all is said and done the controlling Mays family will probably be splitting up around $1 billion. The deal came in a bit higher than analysts had thought.

Clear Channel has only been shopped for about a month which some financial people have said is too short a time to put a bid together so although its management has approved this deal it is still possible, under the deal, for others to make higher offers by Dec. 7 and Clear Channel has the right to negotiate on those higher offers until Jan.5, 2007.

An unexpected surprise also came Thursday when Readers Digest accepted a $2.4 billion bid, including assuming $800 million of debt, to go private from an investment group headed by private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings

In a similar scenario to what happened at Knight-Ridder earlier this year, one of Readers Digest’s largest shareholders, the Blue Harbor Group, announced that over the past year it has been working with Readers Digest’s board and management on ways to optimize shareholder value and it applauded the sale.

Readers Digest has the third largest US magazine circulation of around 10 million, down very slightly from a year before. If publishes 50 editions in 21 languages. Earlier this month, the magazine reported a 9% gain in quarterly earnings that disappointed Wall Street. The shares have fallen 22% over the past 12 months but on Thursday they hit an all-time high of $16.80 before closing at $16.60.

Clear Channel Strategy Clear

US listed public companies must indulge the interests of shareholders and regulators by releasing just about every bit of information. Notable among yesterdays filings was the intent to sell, prior to the buy-out, of all TV stations and hundreds of small market radio stations. The company said these properties contributed about 10% to overall company revenue.

Lowry, Randall and Mark Mays will reinvest “a portion” of their takings in the company and continue to hold their current positions. One source said Randall and Mark Mays’ employment contracts have been renegotiated removing a clause giving them seven years salary in the event of a buy-out.

Clear Channel Outdoor shares are not affected, nor sold…yet.

If anybody cares to, there is still time to bid up the deal…but nobody’s holding their breath. Shareholders with vague memories of $90 per share are scratching their heads.

According to company statements yesterday, any proceeds after paying debt will be applied to what the board agrees is the future for the company – ONLINE.

After the deal closes, baring regulatory interruptions by the end of 2007, all of these public filings will be unnecessary.

US Internet Video Advertising Grows 82% This Year

EMarketer believes that US Internet video advertising will be a $3 billion business in four years time, with the 2006 spend forecast to be 82% higher than in 2005, reaching $410 million this year.

High as those numbers sound the 2006 video advertising spend will only be about 2.6% of this year’s forecast $15.9 billion Internet spend and by 2010 it will still be only 11.5% of the forecast Internet advertising spend, and just 3.3% of projected TV ad spending in that year.

Murdoch Causes A Stir Back Home, Down Under

Eyes rolled a bit last month when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, that already owns about 70% of the Australian metropolitan newspaper market, bought a 7.5% stake in principal rival Fairfax Media.

Is it allowable that for a company that already has such a large proportion of a market be allowed to have a say in what happens to his main competitor. Just what was Murdoch up to?

He answered that question this week at a shareholders meeting by stating quite openly that he bought the shares “just to make it difficult for anybody to take them over, to be honest.” And he said he was prepared to buy another 3% for that same purpose, if necessary.

The former head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wrote in a recent article in the Australian Financial Review (published by Fairfax) that such a purchase was against competition law. The current head of the commission has not made a statement on the issue.

OJ Simpson To Tell How He Would Have Done It If He Had Done It

It seems hard to believe it has been 12 years since the 1994 slayings of OJ Simpson’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

In a 1995 trial that played out on television screens around the world Simpson was found not guilty but in a later civil trial he was ordered to pay $33.5 million in a wrongful death suit filed by Goldman’s family. Very little of that judgment has been paid.

Now OJ is coming out of the closet and has written a book, “If I did It”.  His publisher says it is a confession. The book, however, is said to have been written on a hypothetical basis. Lawyers say that unless he admits killing anyone else besides his wife or Goldman he cannot be charged again for the same crimes.

The interview is thought to be creating as much interest as the 2003 interview with Michael Jackson before his trial for molesting children on which he was found not guilty. Fox plans on splitting the interview over two nights, Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, at the end of the November sweeps.

Visitors From Outside The UK Viewing BBC Web Sites Will Soon See Something Different – Ads

A final decision is expected December 13 from the BBC Board of Governors allowing BBC web sites accessed from outside the UK to contain advertising.

Two main groups below the Board of Governors have given the green light to the project.

But BBC journalists oppose the plan mainly based on principle that the BBC operates without advertising. But David Moody BBC Worldwide director of strategy, said, “It’s a different set of rules for non-license fee payers and the BBC has taken a view that it should seek to maximize the revenue back to license fee payers from international users.”

US Internet Ad Spending Growing By More Than 30% Year-To-Year

Q3 set a new Internet ad spend record of $4.2 billion, beating the previous $4.1 Billion record set in Q2, according to the late4st Internet Advertising Revenue Report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

That means the $12.1 billion spent in just three quarters of this year is just $4000 million short of the $12.5 billion spent in all of 2005.

Search is still the leading online revenue earner, taking in 40% of revenues during the first half of the year. Display took 41% and classifieds had 20%.

License Fees Slow Radio Revenue Growth in Europe, Asia

Digital broadcasting is a double-edged sword, according to global financial brain Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC), with new ad opportunities tempered by increased market fragmentation. Radio revenues in India and China will grow fastest, though the regions global share will remain far below North America and Europe.

“The public radio license fee will hold down increases in Europe and Asia Pacific to 3.3% and 4.2%, respectively, while compound annual increases of 8.8%, 8.1%, and 7.4% are projected for Canada, Latin America, and the United States, respectively,” revealed the PWC report.

Global radio revenue is estimated at €34.8 billion, about 60% of which is found in the US and Europe.

WAZ Group Plans Russian Daily in Germany

Rheinskaja Gazeta will be offered to the estimated 700,000 Russian mother tongue readers in the German Länder North Rhine-Westphalia. WAZ Group expects the first issue in the spring next year.

WAZ will partner with publisher Reline, which already publishes the weekly Russkaja Germanija and operates a Russian language radio station. And, of course, WAZ is rumored to be buying Reline anyway.

Al-Jazeera English Launches

Auspicious or not, Al-Jazeeras’s delayed first broadcast in English will be today (1200 GMT). The Associated Press (AP) notes at least one last minute change: the name. Last week the new network was called A-Jazeera International, in yesterdays’ press release it’s called A-Jazeera English.

Barring other unforeseen changes the networks’ first major event will be broadcast Friday as Sir David Frost interviews British PM Tony Blair.

Clear Channel Buy-out Still Brewing

It would seem private equity groups have made their play for Clear Channel Communications. The Mays family, company founders and 7% owners, are under no obligation to accept any deal though it seems highly likely they will accept the best their financial advisor Goldman, Sachs can negotiate.

Latest reports (Financial Times) indicate the leading bid of just under $36 per share was made by Providence Equity Partners, Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, about $26 billion which includes $8 billion in debt. If accepted, the Mays family would walk away with about $1 billion.

Insiders moan that once upon a time CC shares traded at about $90.

CC shares traded slightly lower on Wall Street yesterday.

Europeans Access The Web From Their Mobiles More Than Americans

About one-third of Italians and Germans who have mobile phones use them to access the Internet, according to a recent study by ComScore Networks. That compares with just 19% of US mobile users.

And the most popular phone used in Europe to access the Internet is Nokia, taking, for instance, 50% of the Italian market, whereas in the US homegrown Motorola leads the way.

Men are more likely than women to make mobile Internet access, according to the Mobile Tracking Study.

Ad Industry Executives Expect Broadcast Budgets To Shift To The Internet

The American Advertising Federation in a new report says that 53% of respondents to a survey said they expected that at least 20% of their broadcast budget would find its way online by 2010 because of the large number of online opportunities that will be available.

And the survey said that online ad budgets were expected to grow by 42% in 2007, with 23.2 % of the total budget spent on the Internet compared to 16.3% this year.

And when it comes to integrating an advertising buy between traditional and new media, about 22% of the respondents said they thought television would do that better than newspapers and magazines, whereas 18.5% thought traditional print would do better.

And which traditional medium drives eyes to the Internet the most? Some 26% thought magazines do it better, followed by broadcast TV, cable TV and only then newspapers.

Berlingske Tidende Editor and Two Reporters On Trial For Printing Alleged Intelligence Secrets

Niels Lunde, The editor of Berlingske Tidende, and two of his reporters are on trial in Copenhagen accused of publishing intelligence secrets. An intelligence officer who was subsequently jailed for four months had leaked the information to the newspaper.

The three, if found guilty, could receive jail times ranging from six months to two years.

The published information in 2004 was about the Danish assessment of whether there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The information was published after the newspaper determined the information was true, it did not endanger lives, and was information in the public interest.

Timothy Balding, CEO of the World Association of Newspapers, testified for the defense. He told the court, “Convictions in this case would not only be a stain on the served reputation of Denmark as a country with a strong tradition of upholding the free press (the government refused on press freedom grounds, for instance, to take any actions against Jyllands-Posten, during the cartoon crisis earlier this year), but would send very negative signals to other governments, particularly in authoritarian and totalitarian countries, that it is acceptable to punish journalists for publishing information of high public interest that they wish to withhold from their citizens.”

More FM Frequencies Added in Paris Region

As French regulator Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) redraws French FM frequency allocations, those living in Ile de France – the broad area encircling Paris – will have more to listen to.  The CSA noted that the FM stations per capita in Ile de France is actually lower than other parts of France.

None of this means Paris will have more stations, already 57 stations on 48 frequencies. In fact, power output for Paris stations will drop to 10Kw from 40Kw.

All Ile de France FM licenses expire in September 2007. The frequency optimization plan will allow about 70 new FM stations in the region. Those interested in applying are encouraged to contact the CSA before December 18th.

WorldDMB Arrives

The World DAB Forum, promoters of Eureka 147 tech standards, officially changed its name to WorldDMB.

“We’re recognising that while radio will always be the main focus for many of our members, we also need properly to represent countries and companies who see mobile TV and multimedia as the core proposition,” said President Quentin Howard from the groups’ General Assembly in a press release.

EuroParl Votes on Ads and Product Placement

Meeting at their stunning palace in Strasbourgh yesterday, members of the European Parliament Culture and Education committee reluctantly approved advertising and it’s more modern form, product placement, as concepts.

Once harmonized language among each EU Member State and the EC is negotiated product placement will be banned – making German members happy – but allowing each Member State to opt-in – making the UK members and EC Info Commissioner Vivaine Reding happy.

French socialists were pleased at no changes in TV ad break rules.

"Ad breaks every 35 minutes or every 30 minutes would undermine the integrity of programs and works, and would lead Europe towards an American style of television," said French Euro-MP Henri Weber. 

Most Popular US Sites Visited More By Those Outside The US Than In

They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing – the five top US sites have more visitors from outside the US than inside.

Yahoo draws 75.9% of its visitors from outside the US; Time Warner, 50.9%; Microsoft 79%; eBay, 70.4%; and Google, 79.8%, according to new data from comScore.

How Long Do You Stand In An Elevator Every Day Wasting Your Time?

Now we no longer have to just stand there in an elevator wasting precious seconds outside of the information world.  The Captivate Network for elevators is on-air and according to the company some 57% of viewers use the network as their primary news source.

And if you think that’s a joke, think again – Gannett owns Capivate and the largest US newspaper group is not in the habit of throwing good money away. And Federal Express seems to think it’s a good idea – it has signed on as an advertiser.

The company is active in 23 US markets, claims 2.3 million viewers daily, and has just signed agreement with 11 new partners for providing programming.

Here’s Something That Would Really Get The Federal Censorship Commission (FCC) In A Tizzy

Indians got a bit more than they could chew during the primetime showing of the cricket Champions Trophy match when an advertisement appeared for flavored condoms – your choice of strawberry, chocolate or banana with the tagline, “What is your flavor of the night?”

“Somehow, it got in,” said censorship board chairwoman Sharmila Tagore. The Television Cable Networks Regulation Act, 1995, says that indecent, vulgar, suggestive, repulsive, or offensive themes or treatment should be avoided in advertising.

Condom ads themselves are actually welcomed, but not these particular ads. “I want to make it quite clear that we are not against condom ads because we all realize that is a very important matter where awareness is concerned. It is one of the things that can save you from AIDS or HIV. We don’t want to take away or stop advertising condoms, but we certainly don’t want to have silly, titillating ads,” Tagore said.

Stand By For The Biggest Media Leveraged Buyout

Two private equity consortia are said to have bid around $17 billion for Clear Channel Communications, the largest US radio station chains. Bids were due at the weekend.

And if the business is to be broken up then look for JCDecaux, the second largest outdoor media company in the world, to go after Clear Channel Outdoor.

Is Gannett Sniffing Around Tribune?

Other media companies have been noticeably absent from possible bidders for the Tribune Company, but private equity groups and billionaires from Los Angeles have come forward. But now the Chicago Tribune reports that Gannett, the largest newspaper group in the US, is showing some interest in the newspaper properties and its executives were in Chicago last week to hear a presentation by Tribune executives.

Gannett and Tribune have a pretty close working relationship. They are partners in Internet sites Topix, and CareerBuilder, and Gannett recently bought Tribune’s Atlanta TV station for $180 million. 

NTL To Bid £5 billion For ITV?

UK Sunday newspapers had different stories about NTL’s interest in ITV, Britain’s largest commercial TV network, but the common thread throughout all of them was that a £5 billion bid was imminent.

The general theme seems to be that NTL – in which Richard Branson is the largest single shareholder after NTL bought Virgin Mobile – is ready to make the bid but only if the ITV board supports it

If such a bid were to come a main question would be how NTL structures it, t considering it already is servicing a debt of around £6 billion, much of it Virgin Mobile buy.

ITV’s share price ran up about 8% last week to close at 111 pence, valuing the company at £4.3 billion.

Texas Investors Seek French Broadcaster

Texas Pacific Group and AXA Private Equity teamed up to take a majority 60% stake in French broadcast infrastructure company Telediffusion de France (TDF). The European Commission will rule on the deal December 8th.

TDF owns and operates towers and transmitters for broadcasters and mobile phone operators. The estimated €3 billion plus deal reduces the equity of French State-owned Caisse des Depots et Consignations and British venture firm Charterhouse Capital Partners

Texas Pacific Group, based in Ft. Worth, Texas, made an unsuccessful bid for Cable & Wireless in 2003 and is known for turn-arounds in North America and Europe. TDF needs over €1 billion to complete digital upgrades.

New MDR Rock Radio?

The press release from the German Association of Private Broadcasters (VPRT) says public broadcaster Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) plans a new rock music channel, and Hans Dieter Hillmoth, VPRT Vice President for radio, cries foul. (see VPRT press release – in German)

MDR wants to expand, charges VPRT, with a new channel targeting 45 to 55 year olds. Mr Hillmoth says this would “offend” the current law. MDR serves the German Länder of Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.

But an MDR spokesperson told radiowoche.de that there are no plans for such a channel. MDR’s new general director Johann Michael Möller has been on the job since November 1st, hardly time to unleash a new radio channel.

Private and public broadcasters have an agreement, dated from April 1, 2004, that public broadcasters will not increase their distribution output. Private broadcasters want that agreement extended to internet radio channels.

Emap’s City Talk Wins Liverpool License

UK regulator OFCOM awarded Emap its third Liverpool area radio license for an all-talk station called City Talk. This is the first all-talk station for Emap which will pool resources with its magazines to produce content. The station should launch in mid ’07 with a 12 year license.

OFCOM entertained nine other proposals, including one by ex-GCap boss David Mansfield and Communicorp for the Jack FM format.

notes:

What is Jack FM?