Posts Tagged ‘cable’
Monday, November 29th, 2010
by Carol Holden*
For me, it’s official – the world has gone totally mobile. The other night a commercial, on a kids’ cable channel my daughter watches, featured a Grandmother giving her little grandson (he looked about six to me) a tablet-reader for Christmas. I’ve been forewarned and won’t be shocked if my eight year old asks for one.
No wonder the rush continues for traditional media to expand to mobile devices, with some innovative apps already rolled out and others on the way:
- The Economist just launched an enhanced version of its publication for the iPad and iPhone. Readers can tweak the layout and graphs so they can receive all the robust content of the magazine, but in a format that makes sense for a small screen. “You’re trying to recreate your print magazine but redesign it to make the most of the medium,” said Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions for The Economist.
- Oprah’s O, The Oprah Magazine has just released its iPad app to much fanfare. As described in the Marketwire release, “’I love the written word, and I love the iPad — to me, it’s another way to experience the intimacy of this magazine and its part of the future of the business,’ said Oprah Winfrey. ‘It’s a new way to connect with our readers, who are on a path of becoming their best selves.’”
- New Corps’ Rupert Murdoch and Apple’s Steve Jobs recently announced they would be teaming up to create a new iNewspaper. “The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world’s first ‘newspaper’ designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple’s iPad, with a launch planned for early next year,” writes Edward Helmore in this Guardian UK article. “According to reports, there will be no ‘print edition’ or ‘web edition.’”
In fact, there are already enough publications with apps (over 700) available to audiences and readers on the iPad that strategic research company McPheters and Company was able to put together a ten best list. “McPheters ranked the print-to-iPad products based on design, functionality and use of rich content.” The list presents an interesting mix of both newspapers and magazines covering the gamut of lifestyle, culture, politics, news, sports, food, fashion, etc. The number one spot went to The New Yorker app, with apps for newspaper circulation heavy-weights USA Today and The Wall Street Journal making the list at number eight and ten respectively. Fashion entrant Net-A-Porter made the list at number five.
Mobile applications are becoming such an integral part of the media landscape that other industry organizations are taking notice. The American Society of Magazine Editors announced that among the changes to the National Magazine Awards 2011, they will include a new award for mobile editions.
In this age of PR 3.0, how are you using mobile apps to connect with your audiences? If you use a mobile device to read newspapers and magazines, what outlets would top your list of best media apps? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Tags: American Society of Magazine Editors, Apple, applications, apps, audiences, BurrellesLuce, business, cable, Carol Holden, circulation, commercial, content, culture, design, devices, digital, Edward Helmore, fashion, food, Fresh Ideas, functionality, Guardian UK, iNewspaper, iPad, iPhone, landscape, lifestyle, magazine, Marketwire, McPheters and Company, media, mobile, National Magazine Awards, Net-a-Porter, New Corps Rupert Murdoch, news, newspapers, Oprah, organizations, Oscar Grut, outlets, politics, PR 3.0, print, publications, research, sports, Steve Jobs, strategic, subscription, tablet-reader, ten best list, The Economist, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, traditional, USA Today, web
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Media Industry, Media Measurement, Public Relations | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 8th, 2010
Image Source: Positive Real Estate Professionals.com
I was about to write my post on how the latest and greatest technology is changing media – until I saw last week’s earnings releases start to roll in from the media sector. Time Warner (TW), Fox and then CBS all posted double digit increases:
- CBS saw a 42 percent increase in third quarter profits.
- Fox cable network unit’s quarterly income improved by $146 million compared to the same period a year ago.
- TW’s better than expected earnings contributed 62 cents per share, compared with Wall Street projections of 53 cents.
(Source: New York Times, “Profit Rises at Time Warner and at News Corporation,” 11.3.10)
The media giants earnings from last quarter are not only good news for shareholders, but for an industry that has seen its share of challenges over the last two years – battling online sites, cord cutting (customers canceling their pricey pay-TV subscriptions), falling TV ad revenues, not to mention the economy. According to this Reuters article, TW and Fox reiterated they saw no signs of cord cutting, a term adopted from the telephone companies to describe the shift from land lines to cell phones. “’I don’t get this cord cutting issue,’ News Corp Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey said on a conference call. ‘I feel it is a fundamental service that for American households is a fundamental part of what they do with their time, and what they value in their life.’”
The biggest reason for their strong earnings could be the most telling – and hopefully sustainable – number of all. All three media giants saw very encouraging increases in ad revenue in 2010. Both CBS and TW were up 10 percent, while Fox News Corp was up a whopping 16 percent from their domestic cable channels. (Source: Reuters, “WRAPUP 1-Media Sector Wrings Hands on 2011 Outlook,” 11.3.10)
Political ad spending was a nice shot in the arm for TV, with 2010 being an election year. In fact, political ad spending, for this year, is predicted at three billion dollars and may top 4.2 billion dollars, notes this Adage Age article.
Any numbers from 2010 should come in higher compared to a dreadful year in 2009. Last year TV ad spending was down by nine percent, led by a shredded car industry with the sectors TV ad spending down 23 percent compared to 2008. However, the increase in ad spending this year is still very impressive and driving revenue for a hard-pressed industry.
As quoted from this New York Times article, “’The takeaway is that advertising is strong,’ said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Nomura. ‘The video ecosystem of affiliate fees and advertising seems to be holding up well.’”
This earnings season is proving to be a rebound year for media companies and is confirming what I have been writing about for the last two years – the same idea Sumner Redstone expressed before delivering very impressive earnings – “Content is King!”
The recipe seems simple for big media: provide great content; find a way to monetize the content; keep costs down; and let the content fall where it may. Then kick back and watch the revenue streams flow regardless of which platform audiences use to consume the content. It certainly is good to be king…at least for the moment.
Tags: Ad, Ad Age, advertising, affiliate fees, BurrellesLuce, cable, car industry, CBS, changes, consume, content is king, cord cutting, earnings, economy, Fox, Fox News Corps, Fresh Ideas, Harry Grapenthin, media, meida, Michael Nathanson, network, New York Times, news, News Corps, Nomura, online sites, platform, political ad spending, Public Relations, Reuters, revenue, spending, subscriptions, Technology, telephones, Time Warner, TV, Wall Street
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Broadcast, Media Industry, News Coverage, Public Relations | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 13th, 2010
Image: www.aftermathnews.wordpress.com
In March 2009 I wrote my first blog post, here on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas, about how emerging technologies and platforms were changing the way we consume news – supported by input I gathered from a media summit I had attended that featured panelists such as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC’s Morning Joe and BBC’s Rome Hartman.
I wrote, “And with the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and this ‘Pro-Am’ partnership that is developing with media, the panel agreed that consumers will have a stronger need for trusted brands, filtering, and editing to help navigate the media.” A year and a half later, the cream seems to be rising to the top in this fragmented media universe.
Today the “trusted brands,” such as The New York Times, are beginning to abandon the old business model of offering free content in exchange for paid advertisements. They are instead looking to generate additional revenue by putting their text, audio, and video behind pay walls or by offering their content as an app for a small fee. “I think we should have done it years ago,” said David Firestone, a deputy national news editor commenting on the NYT’s decision to put some of their content behind paywalls beginning in 2011. “As painful as it will be at the beginning, we have to get rid of the notion that high-quality news comes free.”
The Times Co. Chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. added, “This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going…This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”
In fact, no one is sure where the web is going; this undeniable shift away from free content will certainly make life more difficult for the Googles of the world who rely on free content to fuel their search engine. Consumers may turn to company’s like Apple for their media, who adopted the “paid content” model early on by making content available for small fees through iTunes and more recently showing consumers how convenient it is to access a magazine or newspaper digitally for a small fee on their iPad.
Fox News this week launched its new iPhone political app, available through iTunes for 99 cents. “The idea is that this is your essential guide to daily political news,” says Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, “to put power into peoples’ hands to give them the opportunity in this history making, nation shaping election, to have the tools at hand so that they can really understand and add to the depth of their experience.”
With more people opting to have their media pushed to their smart phones and iPads rather than retrieving information over the Internet it will be interesting to see how this affects web browser traffic. As free content slowly disappears, news websites and aggregators such as the Drudge Report and the Daily Beast may have a tougher time filling their sites with the hyperlinks that contain the raw material that drives much of their sites traffic. Instead the eyeballs will be looking in other directions – with more people willing to pay for content this may ultimately prove to be the antidote that saves a hemorrhaging newspaper industry.
It appears we are on the verge of coming full circle on how we get our news. We’ve gone from relying on newsstands and subscriptions to searching and accessing free content online, only to return to paying the publishers directly once again for their content through app fees and online subscriptions.
Paperboys and newsstand operators may be on the verge of extinction; however, content providers like newspapers, network, and cable TV and movie studios may have the final say in how their product is consumed after all.
As public relations and marketing professionals, how are you getting your news? How do you think the evolving media landscape will affect your ability to successfully conduct media relations and assess the value of your efforts?
Tags: Apple, apps, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, assess, audio, BBC, brands, BurrellesLuce, business, cable, Chris Stirewalt, Citizen Journalism, consumers, content provider, Daily Beast, David Firestone, digital, Drudge Report, editor, efforts, fee, financial, Fox News, free content, Fresh Ideas, Google, Harry Grapenthin, hyperlinks, information, Internet, iPad, iTunes, Joe Scarborough, magazine, marketing, media, Media Relations, model, movie studios, MSNBC Morning Joe, national, network, news, newspaper, newsstands, online, paid advertisements, Paid Content, panel, paperboys, parternship, pay waylls, platforms, Pro-Am, Public Relations, publishers, revenue, Rome Hartman, search engine, searching, sites, smart phones, subscriptions, success, technologies, text, The New York Times, traffic, trusted, TV, video, web, web browsers
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Industry Events, Media Industry, Public Relations | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
The 24 hour news cycle is nothing new. It started in 1980 with the launch of CNN, the very first 24 hour news channel. Prior to cable news we relied on the newspaper, radio, or the evening news broadcast to find out what was happening in the world. And if a big story broke during the day or after the news broadcast chances were we would be informed by having our favorite TV show interrupted with a special report from the affiliate’s newsroom.
Over the last few years, however, the rate at which we receive the news has been accelerating and, believe it or not, promises to become even more immediate. Some news organizations are applying extreme and sometimes controversial business practices to keep up with this increasing pace and to survive in the highly competitive online news space.
With more pressure to deliver content to their followers, organizations like Politico and Gawker are helping to ratchet up the intensity to an even higher level when it comes to reporting the news. Pre-dawn start times at agencies 
along with bonuses tied to the number of pageviews a reporter’s story garners are adding to the sense of urgency in which a story is posted online. Tracking how many people view articles online is becoming a higher priority not only at new media, but old media as well – creating an environment to see who can post the most exclusive stories the fastest.
As a result, when a major national story is in the midst of breaking news, the rules of engagement sometimes become a bit blurred, with more outlets favoring “cut and paste reporting” over actual journalism. Last month Rolling Stone magazine was about to post the General McChrystal story in which he and his aids were critical of the White House – first sending an advanced copy of the story to the Associated Press (customary for magazines trying to promote a story) with some restrictions. But before Rolling Stone had a chance to publish the story on their website, on their scheduled date, two major websites (Politico and Times.com) decided to post a PDF of the entire story to their respective sites.
Although it was seen by some as a breach of copyright and professional best practices, both companies explained that they posted the story as it was unfolding. Since Rolling Stone didn’t immediately post the article itself they decided to move forward on their own. Eric Bates, executive editor of Rolling Stone, didn’t see it that way. Voicing his concern not only from his magazine’s perspective but from an industry perspective, he called it a “transitional moment,” adding, “What these two media organizations did was off the charts. They took something that was in pre-published form, sent to other media organizations with specific restrictions, and just put it up.”
However, the exhausting pace of online news isn’t just taking its toll on the media organizations themselves. It is also coming at a price to the individuals supplying the content. The longer hours and added pressure to constantly come up with exclusive stories has contributed to an increased turnover of staff at online news organizations with more journalists facing burnout at a younger age. A dozen reporters recently left Politico in the first half of this year and it’s very common for an editor to leave Gawker after just one year.
While some may debate the future of the media, one thing is certain: The online media race is on. I’m just not sure if slow and steady wins this one.
Do you think that the media and their audiences, are biting off more news than they can chew? As a public relations professional, what do you think about news organizations bending the rules of engagement to keep up with today’s frenetic pace of news and how does this impact the way you conduct media relations? If you’re a journalist or blogger, how are you handling the added pressure of constantly having to deliver? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
Tags: agencies, articles, Associated Press, best practices, blogger, bonuses, Breaking News, Broadcast, BurrellesLuce, business practices, cable, CNN, competitive, content, Copyright, cut and paste reporting, cycle, Engagement, Eric Bates, Fresh Ideas, Gawker, General McChrystal, Harry Grapenthin, immediate, impact, journalism, journalists facing burnout at younger age, magazines, media organizations, Media Relations, new media, news, newspaper, old media, online news, online news space, pace, pageviews, Politico, price, professional, Public Relations, radio, report, Rolling Stone, rules, Times.com, tracking, transitional moment, TV, White House
Posted in Broadcast, Media Industry, Media Outreach, Media Relations, News Coverage, Public Relations, Technology | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Image: www.ev1.pair.com
As a kid I remember hearing the voice-over announcement, that would precede NBC color television shows, “The following is brought to you in Living Color on NBC,” and watching the peacock spread its colorful feathers, thinking wow this is pretty cool.
This week the first step was taken into a new era of television. When Comcast and General Electric (GE) finalize their deal that will give Comcast a controlling 51 percent stake in NBC Universal (NBCU), it will spawn a media behemoth. As reported in the New York Times, Comcast is agreeing to pay GE $6.5 billion in cash and contribute its own cable channels, such as E! and Style, estimated at $7.25 billion for a total of $13.75 Billion. The new joint venture will be headed up by the current head of NBCU, Jeffrey Zucker.
The significance of this deal lies in the potential derived from combining a TV and movie content creator with a media distributor. Comcast will now offer its extensive customer base to cable channels such as Oxygen and Bravo, NBCU’s movie studio Universal Pictures and the NBC Network.
The integration of Comcast’s internet, mobile phones, and cable with their shiny new toy box filled with NBCU’s extensive library of movies and TV shows is unprecedented.
“In the next five years, more people will be seeing ‘The Tonight Show’ online than on their television sets,” says Paul Levinson, a media analyst at Fordham University in New York. “The convergence will be so extensive that in 10 or 15 years, we won’t be talking television screen versus online because they’ll all be the same screens.”
This deal still has several hurdles ahead; a long regulatory review by the FCC and anti-trust regulators is expected. Several unanswered questions remain, particularly “How does Comcast intend to provide their ‘exclusive’ content to its competitors, like Verizon and Dish Network.
How will this deal affect network TV from a consumer standpoint? Will this mark the beginning of the end of “free TV”? While we wait to see, one thing is certain though: the peacock is once again spreading its wings, only this time it’s to an audience of about 45 million Comcast customers.
Please share your thoughts with the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
Tags: Bravo, BurrellesLuce, cable, changes in the media, Comcast, consumer, content provider, Dish Network, E!, Entertainment, Fordham University, Fresh Ideas, GE, General Electric, Harry Grapenthin, Internet, Jeffrey Zucker, Media Industry, mobile phone, movie, NBC Universal, NBCU, Online Video, Oxygen, Paul Levinson, Style, television, The New York Times, The Tonight Show, Verizon
Posted in Broadcast, Media Industry, News Coverage, Online Video, Public Relations | 2 Comments »
