Week commencing 28th July 2008
 Sky added 92,000 satellite pay-TV customers during the three months
to the end of June, keeping it on track to hit its target of 10
million customers by 2010. However, the News Corp-backed company
warned that its ad revenues would fall during the second half of
2008. The company ended June with 8.98 million satellite pay-TV
customers. It acquired 33,000 Sky+ High Definition customers, as
well as 321,000 Sky+ customers in the quarter.Advertising revenue
fell by 7% to £328 million (compared with £352 million
in 2007) and Sky warned that "visibility for the TV advertising
sector remains low, but our current expectation is for an overall
decline in the second half of calendar 2008". Source:Media
Week
ITV2 gets a new look with a revamp on 20 August. It will
coincide with the channel's unveiling of its autumn schedule, with
a celebrity talent campaign featuring Holly Willoughby, Jack Osbourne
and Coleen McLoughlin. An ITV spokesman said ITV2's viewers most
closely associated the lime green colour of the channel's idents
with the channel. ITV2's share of total TV viewing was 1.9% for
June. In the week ending 13 July, ITV2 attracted a daily reach of
3.4 million, or 6.7%. ITV2's top rating programmes are currently
films, America's Got Talent, Katie and Peter, and The Next Chapter.
Meanwhile, ITV is expected to change digital channels ITV3 and ITV4
to improve the differentiation between each of the brands. ITV3
and ITV4 are expected to get their new looks next year. Source:Media
Week
Setanta is set to launch an integrated advertising campaign
in the build-up to the start of the new football season.The sports
broadcaster is launching a new wave of TV ads and a press campaign
as well as advertising across radio and outdoor.Head of marketing
Tim Ryan said that the campaign would highlight Setanta's extensive
football rights this season.'This year we will have the Community
Shield, live FA Cup games, England's home friendlies and away World
Cup qualifiers as well as all of our live Premier League games.
Last year we ran a brand building campaign in the UK to get people
to know us but this time around it's very much about highlighting
our coverage and extended content.'Setanta will this year show 46
Premier League games live. Source:Brand Republic
 Dennis-owned lads' mag Maxim lost about half of its news-stand
circulation in the first half of 2008, next month's magazine ABCs
are expected to reveal, with the men's market as a whole expected
to have shed around 15% of its news-stand circulation during the
same period. According to publishing sources, Maxim's news-stand
sales between January and June 2008 will average 38,000 copies per
month, once the ABCs for the period are revealed. Maxim will be
the hardest hit of the men's monthlies, but Bauer Media-owned titles
Arena and FHM, with news-stand circulation expected to be down 20%
and 17% respectively, IPC-owned Loaded (expected to be down around
20%) and NatMags-owned Esquire (expected to be down 19%) are all
understood to have suffered in the latest ABCs, released on 14 August.
Source:Media Week
Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily Mirror, is developing
a mobile web platform for 12 regional titles and two national newspaper
titles. The company plans to offer readers instant access to national
and local news, information and ads on their mobile phones.The first
two titles to be made available through dedicated mobile sites will
be the Daily Mirror and Scotland's Daily Record. The regional titles
in the line-up include the Evening Chronicle and The Journal in
Newcastle, the Huddersfield Examiner and the Birmingham Post. Source:Media
Week
The Evening Standard is extending the availability of its
Eros Card loyalty scheme after striking a partnership with online
sales providers PayPoint, e-pay and i-movo. Until now, Eros sales
points have been mainly confined to Evening Standard street vendors.
From today (Monday) Eros Cards can also be used at PayPoint or selected
e-pay outlets that sell the newspaper. Eros cardholders will be
able to pick up the latest edition of the Evening Standard in 99.7%
of the postcodes within the Evening Standard's distribution footprint.
The deals with PayPoint, e-pay and i-movo allow Eros cardholders
to buy copies of the newspaper online in advance, which are then
loaded onto their Eros Card using i-movo's digital vouchering system.
Readers can then pick up their daily copy by using their Eros Card
at thousands of sales locations across London. Source:Media Week
 TalkSport has hired ITV presenter Jeremy Kyle to host a weekly sports
show. Kyle, best known for his eponymous talk show on ITV, will
join the UTV-owned national speech radio station from September
21. He will host a weekly programme on Sundays between 12pm and
2pm called the Jeremy Kyle Sports Show. TalkSport said the new show
would see "the talented and unique presenter apply his well-honed
interview techniques to his chats and debates with guests from the
sporting world". Kyle has previously presented shows for stations
including Birmingham's BRMB, Virgin Radio and a syndicated programme
across the GCap One Network. Source: Media Guardians
Virgin Radio is launching a new ad break format consisting
of just five advertisers instead of the usual seven. Each of the
advertisers will have category exclusivity in the break - for example,
if an airline was to take one of the five slots, it would be the
only airline brand featured in the ad break. There will be five
of these ad breaks throughout the day. The special format break
will be topped and tailed by a piece of production highlighting
the deals available for Virgin Radio listeners in the upcoming ad
break. The initiative is the first key move by Chris Goldson, who
was promoted to commercial content director at Virgin Radio last
week. The company is working on the launch of an entirely new radio
brand to replace the Virgin name, backed by £15m. Source:
Media Week
Magic's Neil Fox has beaten Heart's Jamie Theakston and
Harriet Scott to become the number one commercial breakfast show
in London. Fox's radio show attracted an average weekly audience
of 868,000 listeners between 6am and 9am, according to Rajar listening
figures for the quarter to the end of June. This is a 5.4% year-on-year
improvement and a 4.5% uplift in listeners on the previous quarter.
Fox achieved an audience share of 5.7% in London, putting the "more
music, less talk" breakfast show ahead of Heart on 5.6% and
Capital on 5.2%. Source: Media Guardian
 Google's planned Street View service - which will
offer ground-level pictures of every UK street - has been given
the all-clear to launch, after the Information Commissioner said
it had no more concerns. The Street View system takes pictures of
streets and adds them to online Google maps to allow users to see
what locations look like. But the proposed launch has attracted
opposition from UK civil liberties campaigners, concerned that the
service infringes individuals' privacy. Street View tool was launched
in the US in May 2007 featuring a handful of major cities. Since
then, it has been expanded overseas. Source: Media Week
Video search engine Blinkx has launched a web service that
allows users to search for all British TV shows that are legally
available online. Blinkx Remote allows users to find TV shows from
the numerous online video-on-demand services provided by the BBC,
ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Through tv.blinkx.com, users searching
for full-length episodes of programmes can search for specific shows
by title, genre or network, and sign up for alerts about new programmes
available. Blinkx said Remote filters out illegal clips and spam,
and currently offers legally available free programmes, including
My Name is Earl, Neighbours, Banged Up and Eastenders. The video
specialist also plans launch a US version of the site. Source: Media
Week
Websites offering consumers discounts were among the fastest growing
UK sites over the past year, as concerns about the economy impacted
consumers decisions, according to Nielsen Online. 5 of the 10 fastest-growing
websites over the past 12 months were money-saving, classified and
shopping sites. Following its Brit Trips promotion offering discounts
on UK trips, Walkers Snack Foods was the fastest growing UK website
over the past year, increasing 2575% from 17,000 UK unique users
in June 2007 to 444,000 in June 2008. Nielsen Online's top 10 fastest-growing
websites also contains two coupon/reward sites (MyVoucherCodes and
Fair Exchange), a shopping comparison site (FindStuff) and a classifieds
site for jobs, cars and homes (Trovit). Source: Media Week
 CBS
Outdoor has won a five-year contract to sell advertising on
Newport Buses in Wales. This is the second consecutive deal between
the outdoor firm and the Welsh bus operator - which has an 86-strong
fleet of buses - and is worth £1.3m. Effective from 1 January
next year, CBS will be responsible for all interior and exterior
ad opportunities, and will have the opportunity to target several
thousand journeys every year. Jason Cotterrell, commercial director
at CBS Outdoor, said that as part of the new contract, all buses
in the fleet would be fitted with ad frames. Source: Media Week
 Bebo,
the social network bought by AOL in May, is to integrate its popular
online drama Sofia's Diary with Paramount Pictures' teen comedy
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. The deal, which is Bebo's first
movie integration deal, will see the film featured in the Sofia's
Diary plot in two key episodes, one of which airs on the day of
the film's release on 25 July. The episode sees Sofia interviewing
a new online phenomenon, the lead character from the film Georgia,
whose daily video blogs on Bebo have proSofia visits Georgia's Bebo
profile www.bebo.com/GeorgiasWorld, watches her blogs and conducts
an interview with her via the Bebo messenger service. The profile
was created in advance of the integration to enable the Bebo community
to familiarise themselves with Georgia and the movie. ved popular.
Source: Media Week
UK Box Office Top 10
1. The Dark Knight
2. Mamma Mia!
3. Wall-e
4. Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging
5. Hancock
6. Kung Fu Panda
7. Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
8. Meet Dave
9. Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian
10. Baby Mama
Source: Pearl and Dean
Newsletter edited by Raluca Efford, Lizzie Thomas, Soe Choudhury
& Pedro Martin
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