Week commencing 24th September 2007
 British
Airways, Lexus and L'Oreal will be the first advertisers to appear
on Virgin 1, the general entertainment channel that aims to take
on Sky One when it launches. Virgin Media Television has
signed the brands, through sales house IDS, to appear in the first
advertising slot after the channel launches at 9pm next Monday.
"These high profile brands are representative of the types
of advertisers viewers can expect to see on Virgin 1," said
the managing director of IDS, James Wildman. Source: Media Guardian
The premium-rate phone regulator issued a record £250,000
fine over fraudulent phone-in competitions on GMTV that 18
million callers entered but had no chance of winning. Regulator
Icstis imposed the maximum penalty on phone company Opera Telecom,
after it found the revenue generated by callers who could not have
won appeared to be more than £20m. Opera Telecom ran the competitions
for the ITV breakfast franchise until it was sacked earlier this
year. In what it described as the "the worst case which Icstis
had come across in terms of the numbers of consumers affected and
the amount of money at stake", the regulator found that over
a period of almost four years at least 18 million callers were charged
for entering competitions without any chance of winning. The GMTV
phone-in scandal prompted the broadcaster's managing director Paul
Corley to announce in July that he was resigning. He is leaving
the company on Friday. Kate Fleming, who was in charge of premium-rate
competitions, also resigned. Source: Media Guardian
 An extra 205,000 copies of Associated Newspaper's morning freesheet Metro has hit London pavements. Associated has been gradually
increasing the print run of the morning freesheet after announcing
they would boost circulation at the start of the month.
Friday 21 September marks the first day of more than 750,000 copies
circulating each day in London. An extra 250 stations including
Epsom, Leatherhead, Barnes and Chiswick have been added to the paper's
South East Distribution. Associated's free newspaper division managing
director, Steve Auckland, said 130,000 copies would go to the new
areas, while 70,000 would be used to top up existing areas. "Some
areas have consistently reported that all their papers are gone
before 7am," he said. "Hopefully these extras will mean
more commuters from those areas will be able to enjoy the paper
on their way into work." Source: Media Week
Chris Pharo has been promoted to head of news at The Sun after
15 years at the newspaper. Pharo, news editor at the tabloid for
the past three years, moves into a post that has been vacant since
the departure of Paul Field. But Pharo has not inherited Field's
job title of associate editor (news). "This well-deserved promotion
is in recognition of Chris's hard work and dedication to the paper
which has helped secure a series of brilliant exclusives,"
the Sun editor, Rebekah Wade, told staff recently. Pharo replaced
Sue Thompson as news editor in May 2004, after Thompson quit due
to repeated clashes with Field. Source: Media Guardian
 The
Financial Times has launched the second part of its new brand
advertising campaign, having begun the first phase in April this
year to coincide with the global refresh of the newspaper. The campaign
will incorporate 48-sheet and 96-sheet outdoor advertising at road
and rail locations in the South East, as well as advertising on
600 London taxis. In addition, a 30-second ad will appear in cinemas
across London and the South East, as well as on TV channels including
CNBC, Euronews, BBC World, CNN and Bloomberg. Frances Brindle, the
FT's global marketing director, said that the aim was to bring the
theme, "We Live in Financial Times", to life in a creative
and impacting way. The ad campaign encapsulated "the energy
and excitement of modern global business", she added. Source:
Media Week
 Facebook has overtaken News Corporation's MySpace site as the highest-traffic
UK social networking site with 6.5m unique users last month, according
to data published by Nielsen/NetRatings. The site has seen phenomenal
growth since it opened access to users outside US colleges a year
ago. Since October 2006, Facebook has rocketed from 448,000 unique
users in the UK to 6,506,000 during August 2007. One fifth of the
UK's web population now use Facebook and MySpace, with the two sites
and Bebo attracting a larger share of users' time than all other
social networking sites combined. Facebook's users spent a total
of 991m minutes on the site during August, Bebo users 600m minutes
and MySpace users 540m minutes. The Wall Street Journal reported
that Microsoft has discussed taking a 5% stake in Facebook for between
$300m-$500m (£150m-£250m). The deal would value Facebook
at up to $10bn (£5bn). Source: Media Guardian
Virgin Digital is to close its download store in a series
of stages from the end of this week. The move follows last week's
sale of high street retailer Virgin Megastores which is to be rebranded
and relaunched as Zavvi. The site stopped accepting new customers
last week and is to cease selling tracks from this Friday. Existing
customers can continue to download music until 19 October. In a
statement the company advised that previous customers should back
up tracks which have been purchased as they will no longer be available
for re-download. The subscription and a la carte service launched
in 2004 with backing from all the major labels. Source: NMA
 UK
Cinema Top Ten:
11. Run, Fat Boy, Run
2. Atonement
3. I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry
4. Superbad
5. The Bourne Ultimatum
6. Death Proof
7. Disturbia
8. Knocked Up
9. 3:10 To Yuma
10. Shoot 'em Up
Source: Pearl and Dean
Edited by Fiona Mansfield and Leila Gould
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