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A digest of this week's news from the world of media brought to you by Ashley's Team

PRESS

Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), the publisher of the Daily Mail, has reported a 15% fall in pre-tax profits to £146m, after its bottom line was hit by a price promotion for The Mail on Sunday, following the closure of the News of the World. DMGT, which also publishes the national daily title Metro, as well as more than 100 regional newspapers, reported revenues of £1.97bn in the year ending 2 October 2011. Pre-tax profits fell from £146m to £125m. Profits were hit by a number of factors, including higher newsprint prices, a tough advertising market, price promoting The Mail on Sunday, and a £42m one-off exceptional charge relating to the group moving its print operations from Surrey Quays to a new site in Thurrock, Essex. The Mail on Sunday dropped its price from £1.50 to £1, following the closure of the News of the World, and also launched a major DM campaign, as it looked to capture its readers. Across its UK national newspaper unit, Associated Newspapers, operating profits fell from £89m to £76m, while revenues were down from £883m to £862m, partly due to lower display revenues from the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday. Circulation revenues across the Mail titles fell by 2% to £343m, partly due to the temporary price discounting by The Mail on Sunday, as it looked to lure in News of the World readers. It is thought that executives at DMGT had hoped to attract more readers to The Mail on Sunday, than proved the case. (Source: Campaign Live)

TELEVISION

Hundreds of Facebook and Mumsnet users have hit out at the Littlewoods Christmas ad, with over 300 visitors to the parenting website calling for the ad to be banned. The ad, created in-house, features a nativity play with children rapping and singing about their presents bought by their mums. Since the ad launched at the start of this month, a number of threads have developed on the parent networking site calling for the retailer's Christmas ad to be banned. To date, over 400 posts on the Mumsnet site have voiced their antipathy towards the ad, with complaints such as the ad is fuelling consumerism. No official campaign has been launched by Mumsnet itself and not all comments in the thread are negative. Littlewoods had started removing negative comments about the ad from its Facebook page. The retailer has denied this, saying Facebook sometimes marks comments as spam. Additionally, a petition "to ask Littlewoods to stop spoiling Christmas with their TV advert" has sprung up on Facebook and has so far received 281 likes. The ASA has posted a comment on the wall of the group saying there are "insufficient grounds" for intervention because it does not breach its Code. (Source: Mediaweek)

Channel 5 has revealed that close to two million votes were cast during 'Big Brother' and 'Celebrity Big Brother'. Some 1.5 million votes were cast during nine weeks of 'Big Brother ', 47% of which were through the 'Big Brother' Facebook app. Channel 5 received around 500,000 votes for 'Celebrity Big Brother' through its telephone services. 'Big Brother' contributed to a 25% boost in Channel 5's evening audience while it was on air. Channel 5 secured a number of deals around 'Big Brother': the sponsor was the skincare brand Freederm, Domino's Pizza created an eviction-night pizza and Touchstone Pictures held the world premiere of 'Paranormal Activity 3' in the house. (Source Brand Republic)

RADIO

Spotify has reached 2.5 million paying customers, as the company continues its subscription drive. The digital music service has accelerated uptake of its paid-for services this year to help it in its negotiations with record labels, as it capitilises on a successful US launch and a close integration with Facebook. As part of this strategy, it scaled back its free service in May, halving the amount of free music users can listen to. It currently offers two levels of paid-for premium subscriptions and an ad-funded free digital music service. Rival service We7 has adopted a different approach, boosting its ad-funded service as part of a relaunch. The news comes as Spotify continues its international expansion. Last week the service launched in Belgium, Switzerland and Austria, taking it to 12 territories around the world. (Source: Mediaweek)

UK Radioplayer, the cross-industry online radio player, has created two new apps to make it easier to listen to UK radio stations, as it announces that Splash FM has become the 300th station on the platform. UK Radioplayer is a joint industry initiative devised to create a single online player for all Ofcom-licensed radio stations and has grown from 157 stations at launch in March, to 300 with the addition of Worthing-based Splash FM. The first app installs Radioplayer onto the start menu of a PC, Mac or Linux computer and lives in the Start menu to allow users to launch the Radioplayer with one click, even if a browser is not open. The second app adds a Radioplayer widget to the top of Google's Chrome browser. These apps will sit alongside the existing Facebook Radioplayer app. Radioplayer hopes they will lead to commercial tie-ups with computer manufacturers and retailers to "pre-install" Radioplayer on to computers. Radioplayer had 6.7 million unique users in August, according to the latest figures from Radioplayer, which showed the service experiences peak traffic around 9am when people get to work. Digital platforms' share of radio listening hit its highest level to date (28.2%) in the third quarter of 2011, according to Rajar, while internet listening was 3.7%, up from 2.8% in the same period in 2010. (Source Brand Republic)

DIGITAL

Starbucks, the coffee chain, is installing a mobile payment system in the form of an iPhone app into 700 of its outlets across the UK and Ireland, following a successful US roll-out. The Starbucks app will be available for iPhone and iPod Touch users from 5 January and allows consumers to pay for their items through their phone with the aim to reduce transaction time by around 10 seconds. Consumers who own a registered Starbucks Card, part of the chain’s loyalty programme, will be able to link the balance on their reward card to the Starbucks app. Each consumer with a reward card will be given a unique barcode that will appear on the app and can be scanned at the till. Starbucks first launched the app in the US earlier this year across 6,800 stores, which have since processed more than 20 million mobile transactions. Brian Waring, vice president, marketing and category, Starbucks UK and Ireland, said: "We wanted to find a way for them to pay in the quickest way possible. Because our customers want it, we have created our own custom-built mobile payment technology rather than waiting for the near field communication technology which is currently not widely available.” (Source: Marketing)