Week commencing 14th April 2008
 Channel 4's main channel made an operating loss last year
for the first time since 1992, according to the broadcaster's annual
report published today. The channel was hit by falling ratings for
Big Brother and the loss of phone-in revenue as a result of the
premium-rate TV competition scandal. Channel 4's chairman, Luke
Johnson, warned that the broadcaster had reached a "tipping
point" with a new public funding solution now "urgently
required" if it is to continue to compete with the BBC. The
core Channel 4 service recorded an operating loss of £7.8m
after programme costs grew faster than advertising, according to
the report. Source - Guardian Media
ITV is to make a range
of classic programmes including Brideshead Revisited and Inspector
Morse available for sale through iTunes. The deal, which will be
the first time that ITV has made TV shows available for sale via
a third-party website, will see more than 260 hours of archive shows
made available via Apple's iTunes UK store. ITV shows available
on the iTunes service from today include Lewis, Cold Feet, Brideshead
Revisited, Goodnight Mr Tom, and Gerry Anderson's puppet classic
Captain Scarlet. Later this year ITV will make shows including Inspector
Morse, The Prisoner, The Saint and adaptations of Jane Austen's
Northanger Abbey and Emma available via iTunes. The shows will be
priced at from £1.89p per episode and fans will be able to
download complete series. Source - Guardian Media
Kangaroo is gearing
up for a possible August launch. Monday, the joint venture of BBC
Worldwide, Channel 4 and ITV announced the appointment of BBC online
chief Ashley Highfield as Kangaroo's chief executive. The commercial
director will be responsible for negotiating third-party content
deals and overseeing commercial development of the platform, including
all advertising on the site's landing page. Source - Mediaweek
 News
International is to cross-sell advertising across its stable
of tabloid and quality newspapers for the first time, as part of
several possible changes to its commercial operations. The company
is thought to be contemplating several options as it looks to cut
costs from the sales operations of its newspapers The Times, The
Sunday Times, The Sun and the News of the World. According to sources,
however, News International is more likely to opt for retaining
its existing, separate ad sales teams and instead set up a specialist
unit to cut single deals with advertisers for campaigns to run across
all of its newspaper titles. Source - Mediaweek
The Sun was the only
UK national daily paper to post a year-on-year rise circulation
last month, according to the latest ABC figures. The News International-owned
red top posted a March circulation of 3,096,086 copies, a jump of
2.12% year on year, helped by the continuation of its discounted
20p cover price in London and the South East. Arch rival the Daily
Mirror saw its March circulation fall by 3.80% year-on-year to 1,483,739
copies, its lowest circulation since the red-top's first audit more
than 40 years ago.
Source - Mediaweek
Guardian Media Group subsidiary MEN Media is relaunching its Urban Life Magazine to provide
more lifestyle and entertainment news. Urban Life currently focuses
on news, sales and rental listings from Manchester's estate agents,
as well as providing an entertainment guide for the week ahead.
The newly revamped Urban Life, which will be available from 23 April,
will now include features around fashion, sport and TV. Entertainment
will be covered in a new section, Urban Live. Urban Life is distributed
with the Manchester Evening News and has a circulation of 18,000
copies. Source - Mediaweek
Mediaforce, the independent
regional sales house that represents Johnston Press and North Wales
Newspapers, has won the ad sales contract for Surrey & Berkshire
Newspapers from Clacksons. Surrey & Berkshire Newspapers, owned
by the Guardian Media Group, publishes free and paid-for weekly
and daily titles in the South of England. Its newspapers include
the Surrey Advertiser, Reading Post and Reading Evening Post. Mediaforce,
whose clients also include Independent Newspapers Ireland, will
represent Surrey & Berkshire Newspapers' digital and print advertising.
Source - Mediaweek
Archant Life, the
regional magazine publisher, is to launch a monthly magazine, North
East Life, to be circulated across the region. North East Life launches
this month, priced at £1.95, with an initial circulation of
around 10,000. It will be sold in supermarkets and newsagents. The
title is a replacement for Durham Country Life and will cover subjects
including food, wine and poetry. Source - Mediaweek
Rival freesheets London
Lite and thelondonpaper face having their distribution
slashed across Camden by the local council, as concerns mount over
litter problems caused by the papers. With discarded newspapers
accounting for around 25% of all street waste across the borough,
Camden Council is threatening to cut distribution of the Associated
and News International-owned titles by around one-third in key areas,
such as King's Cross station and Camden Town. Such a move would
deal a major blow to both papers. It is understood thelondonpaper's
distribution across Camden borough is 70,000. London Lite's distribution
in Camden is not known, although it is thought to be higher than
that of its rival.
Source - Mediaweek
 GCap
Media is halting the previously announced sale of two of its
regional Xfm stations - Xfm Scotland and Xfm Manchester - but is
proceeding with the sale of Xfm South Wales. A GCap spokesman said:
"It is a decision the GCap board has come to in light of the
fact we are to become part of a bigger company [Global Radio], and
these stations will fit well within a larger portfolio." Source
- Mediaweek
Channel 4 and Global Radio are reported
to be exploring how to combine their digital radio transmission
services. Global will inherit the first digital audio broadcasting
- DAB - multiplex of digital stations with its takeover of GCap
Media and Channel 4 leads the consortium that won the Ofcom licence
to launch a second multiplex. However, Channel 4 is not expected
to launch its DAB multiplex for a year and needs to organise the
transmission infrastructure, while Global Radio may be looking to
fill gaps in its digital radio broadcasting spectrum. Source - Guardian
Media
 Clear
Channel Outdoor-owned taxi advertising
company, Taxi Media, is expanding beyond London with the establishment
of a new regional sales team. A team of field sales executives has
been recruited to sell across the Taxi Media portfolio in Scotland,
the North, the Midlands and South of England. Taxi Media offers
a range of products, such as liveried taxis, supersides, megasides,
tip seats, rear windows and branded receipts. Source - Mediaweek
CBS Outdoor will next month launch
a co-branded portal with MediaEquals, the soon-to-launch trading
platform for offline media, to sell poster space to local advertisers
around the UK. The move pits the two companies in competition with
WPP's outdoor trading initiative Signposter.com. The CBS portal
will seek to target local advertisers looking to buy four-sheets
in their vicinity. It will be hosted on CBS Outdoor's website, encouraging
local advertisers to click through to view and purchase inventory.
CBS Outdoor intends to launch a direct marketing campaign, targeting
local advertisers, to boost take-up of the venture. Source
- Mediaweek
 Google's
UK revenues accounted for 15% of the search engine's total net income
according to its first-quarter results, down 1% on the same period
last year but up 1% on last year's fourth-quarter results. Google
revealed a total rise in net profits of 31% to $1.31bn (£655m)
while revenues for the UK totalled $803m (£402m). Total revenues
from outside the US accounted for 51% of first-quarter revenues
at $2.65bn (£1.3bn) - a 4% rise on last year's first-quarter
results. Total revenue from Google's Network websites came to $1.7bn
(£830m), compared to $1.3bn (£650m) a year ago. A 20%
rise in the number of paid-for-clicks - including those related
to ads served on Google sites and those of its AdSense partners
- has surprised the industry, following a number of reports that
suggested a sharp reduction in click-throughs in the three months
to March 2008. In a trading statement, Google chief executive Eric
Schmidt said that as the company integrated DoubleClick - the online
ad company bought last year for $3.1bn (£1.5bn) - into its
ad platform, he envisaged "exciting new ways to improve the
user experience and increase value for advertisers and partners."
Source - Mediaweek
Thinkbox is relaunching its website next
month to reflect the growing area of emerging TV technologies. Thinkbox
said the new website, which goes live in May, will help provide
agencies and advertisers with detailed information about emerging
TV technologies. New content will include a TV Technology Zone,
in collaboration with Decipher, including content provided by interactive
specialist Weapon7. In addition, the site will host a new specialist
planning area and a "Hot Topics" section, addressing the
latest TV issues. The site will also be the home of the thinkboxes,
the recently launched monthly awards to celebrate the UK's TV ad
creativity, in association with Haymarket Brand Media, owner of
Media Week. Source - Mediaweek
Microsoft's investment in its UK sales support
has paid dividends, with agencies ranking it the best- performing
digital media owner on sales service performance. The third Digital
Media Owners Image Survey, commissioned by the Institute of Practitioners
in Advertising, asked digital planners, strategists and buyers in
agencies to rate their overall experience of dealing with digital
media owners. The results for March 2008 show that MSN UK improved
its performance by seven percentage points on last September's survey,
scoring an approval rating off 58% of respondents saying their experience
of dealing with MSN was good. Microsoft commercial director Chris
Ward attributed the company's success to its emphasis on staff investment.
"Over the past five years, we've built up a team of 94 people
working on our display team - with a third of this team looking
after sales support. I don't think there is a team that would match
that in terms of size," he said. And while Yahoo - whose ad
reach includes Blue Lithium and Flickr - fends off a Microsoft takeover,
it would appear many digital agencies would welcome such a move
from a customer service point of view. Only 38% of respondents agreed
or strongly agreed that Yahoo's level of service was good - a fall
of seven ratings points since the last survey. Source - Mediaweek
 UK Box Office Office Charts 18th - 20th April
1. 21 (12A)
2. Fool's Gold (12A)
3. In Bruges (18)
4. Street Kings (15)
5. Son Of Rambow (12A)
6. The Spiderwick Chronicles (PG)
7. Step Up 2 (PG)
8. 27 Dresses (12A)
9. Happy-go-lucky (15)
10. Horton Hears A Who (U)
source : Nielsen EDI
Edited by Total Media Direct |
