Author Archives: Laura Oliver

Local TV operators criticise new service YouView in letter to Times

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Plans for YouView, a new TV service offering on-demand and internet-connected features from BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, BT, TalkTalk and Arqiva, have been criticised by local TV operators and production firms.

Geraldine Allinson, chairwoman of KM Group and Helen Philpot, managing director of north Lincolnshire TV channel Channel 7 CIC, were amongst the signatories of a letter to the Times late last week that said YouView had been “parachuted” into the “new and exciting market” of internet-connected television sets.

The full list of signatories:

  • Peter Williams, Peter Williams Television;
  • Jim Deans Global Digital Broadcast/Devlin Media;
  • Graham Cowling, TVChichester;
  • Rodney Hearth, the UK Entertainment Channel;
  • Geoff Kershaw, Channel Green TV;
  • Alan Cummings, Channel 9 TV/UC Business;
  • Marilyn Hyndman, Northern Visions / NvTv;
  • Dave Rushton, Institute of Local Television;
  • Daniel Cass, SIX TV;

Jaqui Devereux, United for Local Television.

The objections from the group echo those made against the BBC’s proposals to expand its local video content, which were rejected by the BBC Trust in November 2008.

The letter says that YouView could “hijack the fledgling local TV market” and calls for a thorough competition investigation of the platform:

Collectively these organisations control nearly three quarters of all television viewing and the entire digital terrestrial TV transmission network.

The BBC and its partners claim that YouView offers a common set of technical standards that will help everyone get the best out of this exciting new world. But it can equally be interpreted as an attempt by some of the biggest players in the business to hijack this fledgling market, impose their own vision of how it will operate and dictate the viewers’ experience.

The joint venture partners will control all aspects of the platform and its operational policies. If any third parties wish to participate, they will have to do so on the terms dictated to them by the UK’s largest free-to-air broadcasters.

Full letter at this link (subscription required)…

paidContent:UK takes a look at why local TV providers should work with YouView…

TheMediaBriefing: What news publishers can learn from supermarkets

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Patrick Smith maps out “the [Tesco] Clubcard model for news”:

To stretch analogy out to news, what’s for sale on your shelves? The kind of thing you think consumers are after, or what you know they want to buy? In a print age there is only hope and focus grouping: the call is made by the editor and publisher each day what goes into the paper both editorially and commercially, largely based on flimsy research and an instinctive understanding of a title’s brand.

Full post on TheMediaBriefing at this link…

Knight Center maps Mexico gangs’ violence against journalists

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The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas is tracking incidents of violence against journalists working in Mexico using Google Maps.

The map identifies direct attacks on media and journalists during 2010, demonstrating the wave of violence that has shaken the Mexican press. Many of these attacks are linked to organised crime and the majority of these cases still remain unpunished.

Last month Mexican newspaper El Diario published an open letter to drug cartels operating in the country pleading with them to end violence against journalists.

Click on the pins to show more information.


View Knight Center map of threats against journalism in Mexico in a larger map

Full map at this link via Google Maps…

Stephen Glover: The Guardian can’t go on like this

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Interesting take on the Guardian’s business model from Stephen Glover in the wake of Trader Media Group (TMG) writing off £463 million of the value of its magazine – TMG is part owned by Guardian Media Group.

Maybe GMG will be able to bankroll its national papers for ever. Personally, I wouldn’t count on it, especially if more of its investments go wrong. The trouble is that there seems to be no one in the Scott Trust or Guardian Media Group or on the papers themselves able or prepared to stand up and say what is blindingly obvious to everyone else in Fleet Street – that these newspapers are continuing to live dangerously beyond their means.

Full piece on Independent.co.uk at this link…

Update: A GMG spokesman has told Journalism.co.uk: “The write down Stephen Glover refers to is an accounting adjustment with zero impact on the overall value of TMG or its main brand Auto Trader (…) The write down reflects a transfer of value from print to digital rather than a drop in the actual value of the company. The net book loss arises simply because accounting rules don’t allow you to ‘write up’ the part of the business that has grown.”

RWW: Who owns a fired staffer’s Twitter account?

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Who “owns” a Twitter account when a presenter gets fired? ReadWriteWeb asks the questions following CNN and presenter Rick Sanchez’s parting of ways over comments he made about Jon Stewart and Jewish control of the media.

His Twitter account @RickSanchezCNN has more than 146,000 followers at time of writing. Asks RWW:

Did CNN lose out on the social media investment they put into Sanchez’s personal account over the years? Ought they have driven all followers to an official company account instead, in case something like this happened? Presumably some people would see it that way, but social media is so personality-driven that wouldn’t likely have worked as well.

Full post at this link…

Mail Online: Johnston Press chief rules out more paywalls

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John Fry, head of Johnston Press, has ruled out future paywalls for JP’s newspaper websites, following the unsuccessful trial on selected sites late last year.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Fry says:

While a respectable number of users were prepared to pay, it wasn’t enough to offset the slump in ad revenues.

As Fry says: “With the internet it’s free and has been from the beginning. After 15 years of free it’s hard to change people’s habits.”

Apps and media mergers are more likely to help the regional press, he says.

Full interview on Mail Online at this link…

The Australian: News Limited to create centralised sub-editing hub for Australian titles

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Plans for a new sub-editing hub for News Limited’s titles in Australia, part of News Corporation, have been announced. More than 100 sub-editors and designers will move to the centralised production operation.

Full story on the Australian at this link…

Headlines and Deadlines: My first death knock

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Liverpool Daily Post and Echo digital journalist Alison Gow recalls one of her first “death knocks”:

I saw the boat, and it stopped being a lark. The Double R was a corpse – a beached wreck with her paintwork sandblasted away and holes punched in her keel. She lay, tilted to the side, with the cabin smashed in. That was when I truly understood I was reporting on the aftermath of a tragedy. Someone I vaguely knew had gone out, buttoning his coat against the storm, to secure his boat and means of employment, and he had died an unimaginable death.

Full post on Headlines and Deadlines at this link…

Boston Globe joins New York Times in paywall plans

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Not much of a surprise perhaps – the Boston Globe, also owned by the New York Times company, has announced plans for a new paywalled website in the second half of 2011.

The paid-for site BostonGlobe.com will feature news, features, photojournalism and full stories from the daily and Sunday editions of the paper; the current website Boston.com will remain as part of the subscription and registration model and will focus on sport, local news, arts and culture.

Full story on Media Decoder at this link…

AOL buys TechCrunch

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AOL has bought leading technology news site TechCrunch. The deal was signed on stage at TechCrunch’s Disrupt conference ahead of an interview with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.

According to a blog post by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington about the sale, the site will be free to criticise AOL in its coverage.

Arrington explains his reasons behind the sale:

The truth is I was tired. But I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software. And when we did find those engineers, as we so often did, how to keep them happy. Unlike most startups in Silicon Valley, the center of attention at TechCrunch is squarely on the writers. It’s certainly not an engineering driven company.

AOL of course fixes that problem perfectly. They run the largest blogging network in the world and if we sold to them we’d never have to worry about tech issues again. We could focus our engineering resources on higher end things and I, for one, could spend more of my day writing and a lot less time dealing with other stuff.

According to an FT report, Arrington gave no comment on the value of the deal, but has been given “various incentives” to remain at TechCrunch for at least three years following the sale.

(Hat tip to GigaOm, who saw it coming way before us…)