Week commencing 22nd October 2007
 Five is set to radically revamp its video-on-demand offer, Five Download,
early in the New Year with a rebranded mixed subscription and ad-supported
service available both via PCs and pay-TV platforms. Launched last
October, Five Download offers downloads of a small selection of
Five shows such as CSI, up to seven days before they are aired on
TV. The service lags behind the VoD developments of broadcasting
rivals ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC. Source: Mediaweek
ITV has tried to resuscitate interest in
interactive advertising by promising to produce a guide to help
TV buyers sell the concept to potential advertisers. Gary Knight,
ITV's brand partnerships director, assured the TV buying community
at a session held last week, entitled "Active Advertising",
that ITV will produce more hard facts within the next two weeks
to reinvigorate interest in the potential of red-button advertising.
Source: Mediaweek
Gary Digby, managing director of ITV Customer
Relations, has rejected claims that ITV's motive in taking control
of airtime sales for its children's strand, CITV, from GMTV is to
hike up advertising prices. He has also ruled out the possibility
of the broadcaster bringing the rest of the GMTV sales operation
under ITV's jurisdiction, saying: "It's not currently on our
agenda". Digby said the rationale behind bringing the ad sales
of CITV back to ITV was that, since CITV is an ITV channel, ITV
should be supplying the advertising solutions. However, Digby retorted:
"We don't even know what the GMTV prices are yet. The decision
has nothing to do with hiking up the ad prices. The loss of CITV
airtime sales comes at a difficult time for GMTV, which was recently
hit with a £2m fine from Ofcom over misconduct relating to
viewer phone-ins. Source: Mediaweek
UKTV has hailed the launch of the Dave channel
as a success, with ratings for the company's overall Freeview offering
up 27% in the channel's first week. Dave attracted a share of 2.2%
in Freeview homes in its first full week after its debut on October
15, UKTV said. Across all multichannel viewing, including cable
and satellite homes, Dave reached 10.7 million viewers last week,
representing a 1.33% share of the total multichannel audience. By
contrast, the channel's previous incarnation, UKTV G2, reached around
10 million viewers a month on satellite and cable. Dave's debut
week makes it the fifth biggest channel - discounting the five analogue
terrestrial channels - among all multichannel viewers over 16. Among
ABC1 males and 16- to 44-year-old males, only Sky Sports 1 outranks
Dave in the multichannel ratings outside the big five of BBC1, BBC2,
ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel Five. Source: Media Guardian
 A football magazine, Open Goal, with a free 250,000 distribution
outside football stadia, is set to challenge Sport and ShortList
in the growing men's free market. The independently produced 48-page,
glossy magazine will be published monthly from January and will
be distributed outside Premier League grounds every week during
the football season. The title will be produced in a slimline A5
format that will fit into a pocket. The editorial team is being
led by entrepreneur and founder Richard Stonehouse, who is backed
by Newcastle-based investment group NStar. Stonehouse said: "We
want the magazine to become a part of the match-day experience for
fans. They can pick up a copy before they go in the gate and then
read the first sections in the half-time break, or the pub later
with their mates over a drink." The first giveaway was carried
out last Saturday at the Arsenal v Bolton game at the Emirates Stadium.
Source: Mediaweek
The Financial Times has hired historian
Niall Ferguson to be its contributing editor. Reporting to the FT's
editor, Lionel Barber, Ferguson will write a "lively and proactive"
blog on the FT.com website about international finance. He will
also provide essays and reviews for the FT Weekend edition and contribute
to the paper's op-ed page. Ferguson, who will now give up his Sunday
Telegraph column, has specialised in the history of finance, writing
books about the Rothschild banking family and a study of money over
the past 300 years, The Cash Nexus. His book Empire, a robust defence
of the British empire and its legacy, was accompanied by a series
on Channel 4, cementing his reputation as one of the UK's foremost
"media dons". "I am delighted to welcome Niall as
a contributing editor," Barber said. "He is a hugely respected
commentator on finance and foreign affairs who possesses a rapier-like
wit and a cutting-edge intellect." Ferguson said he was "hugely
excited" by the job. Source: Media Guardian
 CBS
Outdoor has retained its £100m five-year advertising contract
with Arriva for the operator's 6,500-strong fleet of buses. The
deal, which covers major UK cities including Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow
and Manchester, means CBS now has all of the major bus fleets contracted
for next year. Arriva operates 1,500 buses in London, covering 19%
of the capital's bus fleet, and runs fleets in Wales, the Home Counties
and the Midlands.CBS has also pledged to plough fresh investment
into the Arriva inventory, which will include the introduction of
illuminated formats and digital signage this year. Jason Cotterrell,
commercial director of CBS Outdoor, said the contract win was "a
great endorsement of our proposition and ability to capture and
captivate consumers on the move". CBS has held the Arriva contract
since 1995 and faced competition for the contract from Titan. Source:
Media Week
 Google continues to leave online rival Yahoo! in the shade, with its third-quarter
financial results showing the search outfit continues to increase
profits at a record pace. Google again delivered above expectations
by reporting pre-tax profits up 41.6% to $1.47bn (£719.8m)
and turnover up 57% to $4.43bn (£2.17bn) in the three months
ending 30 September. Google's UK business remains a key part of
the overall operation, posting revenues of $661m during the quarter
- 16% of overall revenue, as it was in Q3 2006. Meanwhile, pre-tax
profit at Yahoo! was $151m (£74.2m) during Q3 2007, down 5%
from the same period in 2006. Following the performance dip, chief
executive and co-founder Jerry Yang said Yahoo! would now focus
on three key strands to improve performance: becoming the starting
point for consumers using the internet, to be the "must buy"
for advertisers and to deliver open platforms that will attract
the most developers as key "multi-year" objectives. Market
watchers also expect Yahoo! to deal with the growing threat to its
traditional area of online dominance - display advertising, which
some believe is under threat from the potential takeover of DoubleClick
by Google. Source: Media Week
Five is set to radically revamp its video-on-demand offer,
Five Download, early in the New Year with a rebranded mixed subscription
and ad-supported service available both via PCs and pay-TV platforms.
Launched last October, Five Download offers downloads of a small
selection of Five shows such as CSI, up to seven days before they
are aired on TV. The service lags behind the VoD developments of
broadcasting rivals ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC. Five will expand
the range of content, providing a free ad-supported catch-up service
and an archive. The revamped VoD service could be rebranded, although
a final decision has yet to be taken. Additionally, the new Five
VoD service will follow BBC iPlayer and C4's 4oD into the TV space,
with talks underway for a VoD "channel" with the UK's
pay-TV platforms. "We are in the middle of building phase two
for our VoD presence," a senior Five source said. "We
have done our deal with [independent producers' association] Pact
to secure more VoD rights, plus we have cleared more rights around
our various acquisitions. We are building out a broader consumer
offer that will cover a range of models from paid-for to free ad-supported.
We will have a combination of catch- up and archive content."
Source: Media Week
 UK
Cinema Top Ten:
1. Ratatouille
2. Stardust
3. Rendition
4. The Heartbreak Kid
5. Resident Evil: Extinction
6. Run, Fat Boy, Run
7. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
8. The Kingdom
9. Atonement
10. Nancy Drew
Source: Pearl and Dean
Edited by Fiona Mansfield & Leila Gould |
