August 2008 Archives

From October onwards Comcast, a U.S. cable and broadband provider, announces that it would be limiting the quantity of data its subscribers can receive and send, with a maximum of 250GB each month. The initiative is meant to “improve overall performance for all of its broadband users”, reports MacObserver.com.

Comcast says that even though imposing a restriction may not please some users, nearly all of its customers use much less than 250GB, the norm being two to three GB per month.

U.S. mobile Internet usage skewed to a male, younger demographic with a higher income, According to iCrossing’s study “How America Searches: Mobile” published in April 2007, World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

More than 30 percent of respondents under age 39 access the Internet on their mobiles, especially those ages 20 to 29, with more than 40 percent doing so. Of respondents over age 50, less than 20 percent have online access on their mobiles.

Fairfax Media Ltd. journalists have voted to strike until Monday over the company's plans to cut about five percent of its employees, according to The Australian posted on Bloomberg.

The strike will impact production of its two biggest titles, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age in Melbourne, said Fairfax journalist Gerard Noonan.

The search engine portal Google has announced a new service for its Russian-speaking users. It would now be offering a classifieds search, collected from Russian-language sites, reported Lenta.ru Friday.

The results of the search feature headlines of the classifieds and the contact information. Once the cursor is passed over the headline, an extract of the classified ad appears and if the user clicks on the headline he will be re-directed to the site housing the original.

U.S. Internet users who downloaded podcasts to watch or listen to later increased from 12 percent to 19 percent since last year, according to a study by The Pew Internet and American Life Project. In early 2006, only seven percent of Web users downloaded podcasts for later use.

The study showed that 22 percent of men download podcasts, as opposed to 16 percent for women.

Transcontinental Inc. will print the Toronto-based Globe and Mail for 18 years, according to a new contract, valued at C$1.7 billion, Editor & Publisher reported.

The Globe and Mail took competitive bids from Canadian printers for 18 months, and the new contract will begin in 2010.

Amazon.com will release a new version of Kindle, which will have a larger screen and is aimed at university students, in months to come, BusinessWeek reported.

The new version is rumoured to be thinner and more stylish, with a better screen, and has “fixes to some of the user interface annoyances with the first version,” according to BusinessWeek.

Writers, editors, and advertising sales representatives at The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News Wednesday agreed to postpone a $25 weekly raise in order to help the papers cut $10-million costs by the end of this year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The 700-strong Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia voted, and agreed to push back the raise until Aug. 1, 2009, one month before the current labor contract with Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC expires, according to the article posted on MediaInfoCenter.

Vivendi SA, the biggest media company in France, may sell its 20 percent stake in NBC Universal “one day”. “There's ‘no urgency’ to do so now,” said Chief Executive Officer Jean-Bernard Levy, according to Bloomberg.

“One day we think this shareholding will be sold,” said Levy in a Bloomberg Television interview in France. “There is no urgency. Every year we consider it a little bit, whether it makes sense,” he added.

Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin said that they had asked screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to write screenplay for a film about the creation of social network Facebook, which has over 100 million active users, reported Lenta.ru.

With the help of his assistant, Sorkin has started a discussion group on Facebook to help him understand Facebook more.

Air Canada and Calgary’s WestJet Airlines Ltd. decided to have in-flight Internet for its passengers, following the footsteps of American Airlines, which recently announced to offer a broadband service in collaboration with U.S. network provider Aircell.

Aircell is interested in offering its Gogo Web service to both Air Canada and WestJet, reports the European Journalism Centre (EJC).

The global advertising market has grown by 4.9 percent to US$506.7 billion this year, instead of the predicted six percent, according to Carat. Russia’s advertising market is assumed to become the fastest growing this year, with ad expenditure surging by 22.8 percent to US$11.8 billion, 0.2% higher than expected, Gipp.ru reported.

Carat expected that ad expenditure in the U.S., Great Britain, Spain and China would plunge by five percent, while countries from Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America should experience double-digit growth.

“Morose” economic conditions of the press industry are possibly the reason why Switzerland’s publisher Edipresse Suisse made CHF10 million less than expected in 2008. Revenue figures have dropped by a total of CHF9 million over the last three years, 24 Heures reported.

Edipresse announced 25 job layoffs so far. The general staff would also be reorganised, with Eric Hoesli, former regional publication director, and Peter Rothenbühler, Matin’s previous chief editor, taking over print titles.

Lippo Group, a substantial Indonesian conglomerate, announced the launch of The Jakarta Globe, an English language daily newspaper which will be available both in print and online.

“As the fourth largest country in the world, Indonesia is poised for a period of sustained economic growth. With the middle class expanding, we think this is a great time to be launching a newspaper and website,” said the paper’s senior editorial consultant A. Lin Neumann.

During February and March 2007, 71 percent of the U.S. population used the Internet, while 29 percent did not use the Internet at all, according to data from the Pew Internet Project, World Digital Media Trend 2008 reported.

Twenty-seven percent of the U.S. population does not use computers; they do not use computers at work, school, home or any other place, while another two percent do have access to a computer, but do not use the Internet or e-mail.

Telegraph Media Group will create 40 new permanent jobs for people with new media skills, such as data management and mapping, and will cut casual staff, Press Gazette reported.

Casual staff working for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk have been invited to apply for the new jobs, advertised on the company's intranet.

Newspaper circulation in South Africa is steady, despite a 40 percent increase in transportation costs, as well as higher paper prices and labour costs, Audit Bureau of Circulations SA figures have shown.

Most newspapers “have shown some fantastic developments,” in the second quarter, said Gordon Patterson, of ABC, according to Biz-Community Africa.

The first uniform audited data on digital “circulation” for newspapers and magazines in Australia will be out by the end of the year, in an effort to catch up with other areas of the world, The Australian reported.

“We need to be relevant to what is happening in the industry,” said Gordon Towell, chief of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, according to The Australian. “There are massive changes going on and delivery of content through web and digital media is becoming increasingly important. From a media buyer's and an advertiser's point of view it is critical that some sanity be brought to web measurement.”

Fox Interactive Media, the owner of MySpace, has overtaken Yahoo! as the top display advertising property in the U.S, Dow Jones reported.

In June, online users viewed over 56.8 billion display ads on FIM sites, accounting for a 15.2 percent share of the total U.S. online display ad market, according to comScore. However, Yahoo! sites served up 53.1 billion display ads, making up a 14.2 percent share, Smart Money reported.

After years of lagging behind European countries, U.S. is now to take the top spot for mobile Web usage by the end of this month, according to data collected by technology firm Bango, AdWeek reported.

In July, the U.K. topped on mobile Web usage, accounting for almost 19.4 percent of the worldwide total. U.S. followed with about 18.9-percent contribution. Other countries on the top-five list were India (10.8 percent), South Africa (8.8 percent) and Indonesia (4.1 percent).

The leading blog search company Technorati has acquired Blogcritics.org, Media Post reported Tuesday.

Blogcritics.org is an online community with over 2,000 bloggers and authors, and a full-service news and reviews source.

Over one-third of U.S. adult online users read online newspapers, according to the "Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment" report by Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, eMarketer reported.

The report said that 39 percent of respondents watch cable news regularly, while 29 percent regularly watch the nightly network news.

The first ABC quarter audit of Sunday Zulu newspaper Isolezwe ngeSonto, launched in March, shows the newspaper is off to a good start and is gaining popularity in Durban and KZN, Independent Newspapers KZN reported.

The newspaper saw an average circulation of 42,489 in the quarter, and beginning in August, which has been a big news month for the area, circulation has risen into the high 40,000s.

The U.S. dollar is turning around and strengthening against foreign currencies, which could bring down earnings at top Internet firms, paidContent reported.

The most bleak outlook has the dollar firming up by another 10 percent by the end of 2009, which would cut earnings by about 13 percent at Yahoo!. Although Yahoo! pulls only 30 percent of its revenues from outside the United States, it's “actually the most vulnerable to the trend, given its big asset holdings in Asia (a key component of the company's current value),” paidContent reported Monday.

Q3 may be a tough time for the New York Times Co., with its total revenue falling 10.1 percent to US$235.9 million in July, paidContent reported.

Ad revenue in July dropped 16.2 percent, and was weak across all categories.

Fairfax Media Ltd., Australia's second-biggest newspaper publisher, will cut about 5 percent of its staffers, or 550 jobs, in order to save AU$50 million (US$43 million) in annual costs, Bloomberg reported.

The reductions will begin in the later half of this year, with a third of the cuts coming from editorial departments, according to the company statement Tuesday.

A prototype portal site of a worldwide digital library, first announced two years ago by UNESCO, will be launched in April next year, announced Vladimir Zaicev, general director of the National Library of Russia (NLR).

The digital library is expected to have content focusing on the history and culture of different nations, as well as books, maps, musical notes, holiday cards and photographs, Lenta.ru reported. The U.S. Library of Congress devised the concept around three years ago.

The Los Angeles Times Media Group announced Monday that it has established a company, Zetabid, to auction real estate around Southern California, which helps banks and homebuilders unload foreclosed and unsold residential and commercial properties, MediaPost reported.

The first auctions are scheduled for Sept. 27 and 28. Zetabid will be advertised in the paper, and also by Tribune's broadcast properties in Southern California.

Russian authorities have proposed that every region of the country should publish a sports-oriented newspaper so that sports in the country will acquire more dynamism, Gazeta.ru reported Monday.

The article suggested that it was the press that helped hire strong athletes with a lot of potential in order to compete at the Beijing Olympics this year.

A Turkish court has lifted a ban on the video-sharing Web site YouTube, after numerous sites blocked themselves to protest “growing” Web censorship, the Guardian reported.

YouTube was blocked in May, following the release of video content that allegedly insulted Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the modern Turkish state.

McClatchy Co. will offer more buyouts at the Kansas City Star and The Sacramento Bee in an attempt to deal with plummeting advertising revenue at two of its biggest papers.

Mark Zieman, publisher of the Star, announced the third round of voluntary buyouts in an e-mail to employees Monday, but he did not give a specific number of jobs the company hopes to cut.

Regional newspapers in the Midlands, United Kingdom are not the only ones to announce staff cuts in the past week. Across the Irish Sea, the Offaly Independent in Tullamore, Ireland is asking employees to re-apply for their positions as well, the Irish Independent reported Tuesday.

New plans call for the Offaly Independent to cut more than half its employees, keeping three of seven.

The Chicago Sun-Times, although hit hard by the advertising slump and poor U.S. economy, is investing in its has printing and workflow systems, Editor & Publisher reported.

The tabloid-style newspaper has purchased nine prepress systems and workflow components from Belgium-based Agfa Graphics.

Free daily Israel Today will launch a weekend edition in October, increasing publication to six days a week, Newspaper Innovation reported Monday.

Currently, the Israeli paper publishes on Jewish weekdays, from Sunday to Thursday.

Due to the weakening economy, most U.S. marketers will be chopping down on their marketing budgets in the next six months, according to the Association of National Advertisers, Media Post reported.

In a recent survey of its members, ANA said 53 percent of marketers intend to slash marketing budgets, while 87 percent of those are “being scrutinised to show cost savings.”

India's Malayala Manorama Group has launched new cross-media platform vertical Junction Kerala to help brands “extend the reach and impact of their campaigns,” afaqs! reported Monday.

Malayala Manorama is present in print, online, TV and radio, but “to leverage the resources and reach all these platforms, we (had) to come up with an additional platform in the form of Junction K, which will act as a cross-media platform for brands,” C Mathew, deputy general manager of marketing and publication at the group, told afaqs!.

U.S. video game spending exceeded movie spending several years ago, and the trend is continuing, according to eMarketer.

Last year, U.S. domestic box office spending for movies totaled US$9.6 billion, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, while spending on PC and console video game software, excluding hardware, accessories and subscriptions, achieved $9.5 billion, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

The Irish Independent's circulation was down 0.9 percent in the first half of this year, Bloomberg reported.

Average daily circulation of the Independent News & Media Plc-owned newspaper declined to 159,363 copies in June, from 160,818 one year earlier, according to data released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Journalists at Trinity Mirror's Midlands newspaper group have called for a strike ballot over the publisher's plans to cut 65 jobs, BBC News reported Sunday.

Staffers at the Birmingham Post and Mail, Sunday Mercury and Coventry Telegraph are also given the choice of voluntary redundancy.

A Web site that aggregates “the highest quality and most credible news online” has launched in beta, Journalism.co.uk reported.

The first paragraph of articles posted on NewsCred, and users can read the rest of the story by clicking on a link that takes them directly to the news source's Web site. Each article is voted on by users to determine credibility.

Interactive marketing spending in the United States will reach US$60 billion in 2012, growing from less than $20 billion in 2007, according to Forrester Research, Inc., World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

In 2007, spending was mostly dominated by search engine and online display, which contributed about $8 billion each, while online video, emerging channels and e-mail were niche groups.

Publishing house Condé Nast will launch Vogue.ru, a Russian version of the popular fashion magazine, in September, Gipp.ru reported.

For the first time, the publisher is presenting an online publication that is built on the same platform for a variety of markets. This means Internet users in different countries where Vogue has a site will be able to access the same information and Web features.

On Wednesday, American Airlines launched in-flight Internet access for long-haul domestic flights, making it the “first U.S. airline to offer full in-flight broadband,” the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported.

Passengers flying on the Boeing 767-200 aircraft can pay US$12.95 for Internet access on direct flights from New York to San Francisco, New York to Los Angeles and New York to Miami.

This year’s Beijing Olympic Games might become the most viewed Games in history, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced, stating that numbers of viewers in countries like the United States are “very promising,” and could lead to records being surpassed, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported.

The opening ceremony on August 8 earned the status of the “highest sports related broadcast event” in China, with 840 million viewers. That number is predicted to reach 1.2 billion once final numbers are counted, according to the EJC.

Trinity Mirror's Birmingham Post will re-launch in the autumn as a weekday, business-focused tabloid with a mobile site, Press Gazette reported.

One centralised production desk and a multimedia content desk will be the new editorial system used to run the Post, as well as the Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury, as part of sweeping changes Trinity Mirror is making to cut costs and keep its regional titles afloat.

The launch of Economia e Financas, an Angolan state-owned economics weekly newspaper published by Edições Novembro-EP, may indicate that there is a growing interest in the Angolan economy, AllAfrica.com reported.

The paper, launched last Tuesday, will "help publicise locally and abroad the advances in agriculture, industry, expansion of the country's electric network and other achievements," according to Manuel Miguel de Carvalho "Wadijimbi,"deputy minister of Social Communication.

Increasing newsprint costs in India mean many publications are postponing launches, as well as raising advertising rates, Rediff News reported Friday.

The price of waste newspaper, which is recycled to make newsprint, was up between 30 and 40 percent during the first quarter. Costs of pulp, power and coal are also up.

Fairfax Media Ltd., the second-biggest newspaper publisher in Australia, reported its full-year profit up 47 percent, mostly driven by revenue generated from online business, Bloomberg reported.

Net income reached AU$386.9 million (US$338 million), or 24.6 cents a share, in the fiscal year ending June 30, up from $263.5 million, or 22.7 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose to $2.91 billion from $2.17 billion, the company said in a statement Thursday.

Yahoo! and Intel have announced they are planning to create a widget-based media platform that unites television and Internet, and will allow for applications and ads to be embedded on High Definition TV (HDTV), PCMag.com reported Wednesday.

"Today we still spend five times as much money on television as we do on the Internet," said Irvin Gotleib, CEO of GroupM, a media investment company. "Fundamentally, however, everyone sees the same ad, which is not the best kind of targeting initiative, and there is a limited ability to delve into content. This changes the whole accountability."

All 300 editorial employees at Trinity Mirror's newspapers in the Midlands area of the United Kingdom were made redundant, and have been asked to apply for new jobs “as part of radical plans to overhaul the company's publishing operation in the region,” MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

Staffers in all editorial jobs at the group's regional dailies, including the Birmingham Post, Coventry Telegraph and the Birmingham Mail, as well as about 40 weeklies, were told Wednesday that their jobs will be obsolete, and they will have to apply for new positions. However, there are about 65 fewer jobs than there are employees who have been made redundant.

Telecom services revenue in Europe are expected to increase from €50.1 per inhabitant per month in 2005 to €52.6 in 2010, according to Exane BNP Paribas.

Revenues generated from voice services, including fixed and mobile, are both in decline. Fixed voice, which brought in €16.1 in 2005, is expected to drop €5.8 to €9.1 per month in 2010. Mobile voice is also dropping, but at a much slower rate, from €23.5 in 2005 to €22.4 in 2010, the group predicts.

The first issue of the Russian edition of Best Life magazine will be released on Sept. 2, Lenta.ru reported. It will be published 10 times a year with a print run of 103,000 copies.

Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, the publishing house that prints Best Life, said the new edition will serve as a guide for men who are “independent” and that it is the only magazine for men which focuses on family, health and career, according to Lenta.ru.

Traffic to consumer magazine Web sites increased 8.5 percent in the second quarter, compared to the same period last year, the Magazine Publishers of America announced Tuesday, MediaBistro reported.

The rise in user numbers is more than double the rate of growth for the entire U.S. Internet audience.

Nation Media Group, the largest newspaper publisher and broadcaster in east Africa, has reported its first-half profit is up 11 percent, Bloomberg reported.

The increase was mostly due to an improved performance by its regional subsidiaries, as well as reduced costs, according to a company statement released Thursday.

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) and The New York Times, owned by The New York Times Media Group, have a European audience of around 1.3 million, according to a study conducted on the readership of daily, weekly and fortnightly titles. The IHT is the most read paid paper in Europe, Gipp.ru reported Thursday.

In Moscow, the IHT is published and distributed by The Moscow Times. The quantity of content written for IHT by MT correspondents has recently increased, which may mean that there is a rising global interest in news about and from Russia, according to Gipp.ru.

China's gross newspaper advertising value was up 8.61 percent year-on-year in 2006, to RMB 77.8 billion (€7.64 billion), according to the latest report by Research and Markets, “China Newspaper and Book Publishing Industry Report, 2007.”

Newspaper ads in China's top 10 cities accounted for almost 50 percent of the total gross volume of newspaper ads, MarketWatch reported Wednesday.

The second quarter of 2008 saw revenue growth for top online media and Internet companies drop 0.8 percent from the first quarter, making it the slowest revenue quarter for digital media ever, paidContent reported Tuesday.

Also, revenue growth was at 3.3 percent in the first quarter, slightly down from the same quarter in 2007, when growth was at 3.4 percent, according to the “Digital Media Index,” a report by Strategy Analytics.

A drop in mobile phone sales may be a signal that the weakening economy is taking a toll on consumers. In the second quarter, U.S. mobile handsets unit sales declined 13 percent to 28 million, compared to the same period one year earlier, according to NPD Group.

This marked the lowest figures since tracking the category began in 2005. “That lends credibility to the argument that the economy appears to be more of a factor than anything transpiring in the industry,” said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, Media Post reported.

Industry experts believe mobile advertising and localised content may be the best way to reach India’s masses, particularly in rural areas since nearly “every farmer has a mobile,” according to Alyque Padamsee, vice president of AP Advertising.

Mobile advertising may be a way to establish a brand’s name in rural areas and “will pick up more than TV commercials in the near-future,” Padamsee told the Hindu Business Line.

The Silicon Alley Insider called the Wall Street Journal's Mobile Reader its favourite to date, due to its software that “makes instant sense the first time you get your hands on it.”

“It delivers all the Journal's content, updated constantly, in whatever form makes the most sense to you,” the Insider reported Tuesday.

Doing business in China means media companies have to take care not to step on any socio-political mine fields, as the recent blocking of the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) has demonstrated.

Apple began selling an album titled “Songs for Tibet” on its iTMS when it was released, around the same time the Olympic Games in Beijing started. About 40 Olympics athletes have bought the album, Silicon Hutong reported Wednesday.

Another study is echoing the sentiment that mobile advertising worldwide is booming. According to a report from Strategy Analytics, global advertisers will spend US$2.4 billion on mobile next year, up from $1 billion in 2008, eMarketer reported.

The company predicted a growing number of brands will place ads on different mobile media.

Northern European newspaper group Mecom is seeing a 63 percent plunge in operating profits, due mostly to Denmark's highly competitive newspaper market, the Times Online reported Wednesday.

The group's income in the first half of the year dropped by £5 million (€6.33 million) to £3 million (€3.8 million), on advertising down 13 percent.

News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch earned US$27.5 million in the past fiscal year, which ended on June 30 – a 14 percent pay cut from the $32 million he earned in 2007, Gipp.ru reported Wednesday.

Murdoch’s base salary is currently $8.1 million, but his cash bonuses surged to $17.5 million, as opposed to last year’s $15.8 million, according to an article posted by Brand Republic Wednesday.

According to a new OPA study focusing on advertising on U.S. local media sites, newspaper sites lead in terms of the percentage of consumers taking action after viewing local ads, Editor & Publisher reported.

Forty-six percent of consumers said they would take action after viewing ads on local newspaper sites, while 44 percent of those on local TV sites said so. That number was 42 percent for local magazine sites, 39 percent for user-review sites and 37 percent for portals.

“Cutting edge” mobile technology in Japan seems to generally remain only in the Japanese market, but the Japanese government plans to boost the market and expand it abroad by giving it an “aggressive push,” the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Japan is hoping to export the FeliCa wallet phone, released four years ago and currently a standard feature in the majority of Japanese handsets. FeliCa is a miniscule chip that is embedded into the phone, replacing smart cards used for payments with a mobile phone.

A 30 to 40 percent increase in waste newspaper prices in India during the first quarter, as well as pressure from rising costs of pulp, coal and power is weighing on newsprint producers, the Business Standard reported Tuesday.

Manufacturers, who recycle waste newspaper to make newsprint, predict input costs will soften before the next review of prices in September.

The paid sports daily AD SportwereldPro, launched in the Netherlands on April 7 this year, will close down at the end of August, following the Beijing Olympics, according to Newspaper Innovation.

The paper was a sports spin-off from paid title AD.

Venezuela intends to launch its first satellite from China in November to “boost is telecommunications and broadcast capabilities,” according to an announcement by President Hugo Chávez, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported.

The satellite will provide coverage for numerous South American countries. It is to be lunched from Chinese Sichuan province in the southwest of the country.

Schibsted ASA, Norway's biggest media company, reported its second-quarter profit is down more than analysts had anticipated, mostly due to real estate and recruitment advertising growth weakening and a one-time gain which inflated earnings one year previous, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Net income dropped 54 percent from 382 million kroner a year earlier to 177 million kroner (US$32.7 million), or from 5.69 kroner to 2.73 kroner a share, according to the company statement. Revenue increased 3.6 percent to 3.57 billion kroner.

Online customers have given Google high ratings, stating it is one of the most satisfying Web sites to visit out of all search engines and news sites, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.

The scores are produced by data from the University of Michigan, which publishes a quarterly report, The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). NYTimes.com and USAToday both received high marks for their sites in the news and information category, with scores of 75 and 73, respectively. Google's score was 86.

Few editors or publishers have responded to Mygazines.com, a site that lets users upload and flip through magazines online, Zataz.com reported.

The site lets users diffuse and copy print magazines for free, even though this is illegal.

YouTube, the worldwide leading video sharing site, has started to attract advertising from media companies, including CBS Corp. as well as video-game maker Electronic Arts Inc., The New York Times reported.

The ads, which show up on only a small portion of all the videos played on YouTube, may improve relations between Google and these video copyright owners, who had complained about unauthorized posting of their content on the site, according to Bloomberg.

Mobile advertising seems to be gaining popularity in Britain, the United States and India, according to research conducted by GfK Technology, Marketing Media Review reported.

The most common platform for mobile advertising may be text messaging, the research has discovered.

One of the three daily English-language newspapers in Cambodia will close, due to financial troubles, Agence France-Presse reported Monday.

The Mekong Times, also published in Cambodian, launched in February.

Seacom’s 15,000km international underwater fibre optic cable is expected to go live in June next year, providing high capacity bandwidth that links Southern and East Africa, South Asia and Europe, the European Journalism Centre reported.

Seacom President Brain Herlihy said the company will be able to fulfill Africa’s “urgent requirements for cheap and available bandwidth,” according to the EJC.

Young consumers in the United States spent more time on the Web than on any other media in May 2008, according to a study by DoubleClick Performics and ROI Research, eMarketer reported.

The study targeted children in the United States, between ages 10 and 14, and found that 83 percent of respondents surf online for at least one hour every day.

Representatives from the UK National Union of Journalists at main publishing centres for Johnston Press have organised a group-wide day of actions that will aim to show just how badly local newspapers are hurting, the NUJ announced on its Web site Monday.

The actions are being taken at the UK's largest regional publishing company due to increasing amounts of redundancies, budget cuts, recruitment freezes and closures of titles and offices across the United Kingdom and Ireland, the announcement stated.

French TV channels are benefiting from the Olympic Games in Beijing, Le Figaro reported last Friday.

Four out of five viewers chose the public France Télévisions (FT) channels, with France 2 and France 3 attracting an average of 1.3 million viewers between 3 a.m. and 8:20 p.m. (CET).

About half the people watching Olympics-related mobile videos or finding information on the subject from their mobile phones are doing it for the first time, according to U.S. media company NBC Universal.

Although the number of mobile phone users who are interested in mobile Olympic coverage is under half a million, NBC said that it was “stunned” that more people had not used their phones in such a way before, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported.

McClatchy announced Thursday it will freeze employee wages for a year starting Sept. 1, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Publisher Cheryl Dell stated in a memo to employees that the freeze will apply to all McClatchy’s operations, including corporate executives and Internet staff.

In 2001, Germany's economy was suffering, and the newspaper industry was going through everything the U.S. newspaper industry is going through now. Ad revenue was down, staff were cut and newspapers were sold. Yet, the crisis seems to have made newspapers in Germany stronger, and today, most are thriving, BusinessWeek reported.

German newspapers were forced “to take a hard look at their businesses before the Web started to hurt big time.”

Online readership growth is decelerating and circulation of most print editions is down across Australia, yet readership of just over half the country's metropolitan dailies and their colour magazine inserts is on the rise, according to the latest Roy Morgan Research data, The Age reported Friday.

In the April to June quarter, online newspaper readership growth was a bit slower than in the previous quarter. Unique users of the most popular newspaper sites were up 32.5 percent (smh.com.au), 6.9 percent (National Nine News) and 27.9 percent (theage.com.au).

Apple Inc. has overtaken Google Inc. in market value for the first time, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

On Wednesday, the iPod and iPhone maker surpassed Google, making it the number three technology company in Standard & Poor's 500, only behind Microsoft Corp. and the International Business Machines Corp.

Telegraaf Media Groep will cut at least 425 jobs and other “more drastic” cost reductions, in an attempt to offset low advertising revenue and higher energy and wage costs, Reuters reported Friday.

The Netherlands' largest newspaper publisher announced Friday that due to an impairment charge and low ad revenues, it has recorded a net loss in the first half of €175.5 million. In the first half of 2007, it saw a profit of €39.7 million.

With continuously high growth, the world's online video market is expected to reach US$4.5 billion in revenues by 2012, according to a new report released by In-Stat, Information Week reported.

In-Stat pointed out in its “World Report on Online Video” that Netflix’s flat monthly fee model will be the mainstream for purchased/rented videos in the next few years. The market is expected to generate $1.2 billion sales this year.

Almost £5 billion worth of ads were taken out in UK newspapers last year, according to the latest figures from Ofcom, AllMediaScotland reported Thursday.

At £4.7 billion last year, newspapers continue to attract more advertising spend than television, radio or the Internet in the United Kingdom.

U.S. newspaper publishing giant Gannett will eliminate 1,000 jobs, about 3 percent of its workforce, according to a memo from the publisher of USA Today, The Washington Post reported Friday.

About 600 of the employees will be laid off, and 400 job cuts will come from attrition. The layoffs are expected to be completed by the end of the month.

Newspapers serving suburban communities are generating more revenues than those in big metro areas, according to second quarter figures released by Suburban Newspapers of America, MediaPost reported.

Total ad revenues for community papers in the United States reached US$482 million in the second quarter, slightly down 2.4 percent from the same period last year, according to SNA.

Google has closed down its FeedBurner Ad Network, and is offering publishers its AdSense instead, paidContent reported Wednesday.

Google bought FeedBurner in June 2007 for about US$100 million.

Mobile TV providers in China hope citizens there who are not able to watch the games on television will be able to do so with the help of their mobile phones, Reuters reported Thursday. Although mobile TV platforms were introduced about four years ago, they have not yet reached their full potential.

Some events such as the Olympics require immediate updates and not necessarily quality images, said Yun Weijie, president and chief executive of Telegent Systems, a firm based in Silicon Valley that manufactures semiconductors. The Olympics could be just the boost Chinese mobile TV needs to propel it forward.

Online advertising in the United Kingdom surpassed TV ads in 2007, occupying 19 percent of the total market, Gipp.ru reported Thursday.

Last year, Internet ad expenditure grew by 40 percent to reach £2.8 billion, according to data from Ofcom, the body that regulates the telecommunications industry.

To reduce its debt, McClatchy Co. has sold an advertising network for local newspaper sites to online ad-buying software provider Centro, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

The purchase of the Real Cities network was completed Tuesday. However, financial terms were not disclosed, according to a statement from Centro.

Most 3G mobile phone users came from the Asia Pacific region and Western Europe, followed by North America in June 2006, according to research firm IDATE, World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

Also during that period, half of the global 3G customers came from the Asia Pacific region. Western Europe, in the second spot, contributed 36 percent, while North America brought in another 11 percent.

Tribune Co. reported a US$4.53 billion loss in the second quarter, due to a $3.84 billion accounting charge, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

However, the Chicago-based company did make good on a promise to reduce its debt, paying $807 million on the $1.4 billion it must pay off by June 2009. Overall, the company's debt is at nearly $13 billion.

Atlanta-based media company Cox Enterprises will sell dozens of its daily and weekly newspapers, retaining ownership of just three flagship newspapers, in order to pay down debt and make new investments, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Wednesday.

Cox will continue owning newspapers in West Palm Beach, Fla.; Dayton, Ohio; and Atlanta, Ga., including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It will sell newspapers in Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, including its largest newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman, which has a daily circulation of 150,000.

As part of its PressClick initiative, the UK Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) has launched a tool that measures data about national newspapers' online readership, the Market Research Industry Online reported.

The Newspapers Online Analytics (Noa) system collects traffic data, and sorts by overall monthly traffic, as well as by day and time of day. It also takes out users visiting multiple sites, so monthly data is not duplicated.

Mobile subscriptions in the Asia Pacific region increased from less than 600 million in 2003 to over 1.3 billion in 2007, according to Informa Telecoms & Media.

In 2003, almost half of the market was dominated by China, while India only accounted for a niche amount. Other countries, including mobile-advanced Japan and South Korea, made up another half, according to SFN's World Digital Media Trends report 2008.

The Firefox browser is not planned for release on iPods and iPhones, John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corporation announced last week, CyberSecurity.ru reported.

“Apple makes it too hard. They say it’s because of technical issues — they don’t want outsiders to disrupt the user experience. That’s a business argument masquerading as a technological argument,” said Lilly.

The economic recession in New Zealand and the 12-year high interest rates in Australia are curbing demand for radio and TV advertising, both playing a major part in APN News & Media Ltd.'s announcement that its profit was down for the first half, Bloomberg reported.

Radio and television ads contribute nearly 95 percent of the Australia and New Zealand-based publisher's sales, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Africa must find a way to “harness' mobile technology, as technology and services are increasing on the continent, said Ham Mulira, Ugandan minister of Information and Communications Technology, IDG News Service reported Tuesday.

To grow mobile, “sustainable social and economic development” must take place, he said.

Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has launched a new Web TV site to pull in a younger audience, as newspaper circulation growth falls flat, AFP MediaWatch reported.

The Straits Times Razor TV focuses on local topics, such as crime and transportation, as well as entertainment and lifestyle news, and does so in an informal, “chatty style.”

U.S. advertisers will spend US$24.9 billion online this year, according to an eMarketer prediction, slightly lower than the previous estimate of $25.9 billion, released in March.

Based on the new estimates, spending will be up 17.4 percent over last year.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut and Bebo are growing on a global scale, even if they might be be in decline their home country, the United States, according to a ComScore study, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported Wednesday.

As markets become more saturated, ComScore figures indicate that social networks may be approaching their peak in North America.

iToday.ru, an online newspaper focusing on the Web and IT industry, was launched in Russia last Tuesday, gipp.ru reported Wednesday.

The Russian IT market is expected to boom until 2011, according to the Russia IT and Outsourcing Industry Forecast.

Bangalore newspapers The Deccan Chronicle, DNA India and The New Indian Express are all making a new push to target young readers, Exchange4media reported Wednesday.

Youth “need to be caught when they are in their late teens or as young adults before they enter the corporate world,” said PR Satheesh, COO of Tag Media Network.

India’s advertising market outlook is the brightest in Asia, as the country's media and entertainment business is expected to generate an annual spending growth rate of 19 percent through 2012, even higher than China's predicted 15 percent, consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Most of the big names in Western ad agencies have been operating in India for years, but they now face new competition from smaller agencies. At least four boutique firms have recently opened, or announced plans to open, offices in India, including Portland-based Wieden + Kennedy, London-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Naked Communications, and New York-based StrawberryFrog.

APN News & Media shares fell more than 4 percent Tuesday, due to a slump in advertising and flat earnings in the first half, the Melbourne Herald Sun has reported Wednesday.

APN publishes 23 regional daily newspapers and more than 100 non-dailies in Australia and New Zealand. APN Chief Executive Brendan Hopkins said the company has been hurt especially by a slowdown in New Zealand's economy, which has also caused several large advertisers to cut their ad spending.

UK television advertising viewers have increased in the first half of 2008 compared to the same period last year, the European Journalism Centre (EJC) reported Tuesday.

“Commercial impacts,” ads that last for 30 seconds at normal speed, saw a 6 percent growth in audience, according to research conducted by The Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board.

A 130-year-old newspaper in Michigan, United States, launched an online shopping site two months ago in an attempt to create new revenue streams. So far, the site has helped the newspaper build new relationships with non-traditional advertisers and created incremental revenue from current advertisers, Business Wire reported Tuesday.

The Petoskey News Review, owned by Schurz Communication, Inc., created shopsmartupnorth.com, which mixes display advertising and opt-in e-mail campaigns for local shoppers.

Amazon is expected to sell more than 380,000 of its Kindle e-readers by the end of 2008, Citigroup analysts have predicted, The (UK) Register reported Tuesday.

Analyst Mark Mahaney compared Kindle sales to those of the iPod in its first year on the market. Although the Kindle is only sold in the United States, as it needs the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network to operate its whispernet connection, sales numbers for the year are impressive nonetheless, Mahaney said.

Indonesia's advertising expenditure in the first half of this year saw the most growth in four years, driven mostly by increased spending from mobile phone operators as well as political party ads for regional elections, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Total spending reached 19.56 trillion rupiah (US$2.1 billion) in the six months ending June 30, which was up 24 percent, the fastest rise since a 50-percent increase in the first half of 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research Indonesia.

The United Arab Emirates is closer to becoming a better place to practice journalism, as the government is closing in on passing a federal media law that would eliminate jail terms for press violations, Oxford Analytica reported Tuesday.

The law is part of a 10-year effort the UAE has made to attract outside media companies, as well as increase the number of domestic media players.

By 2012, more than 12 million users in China will be using 3G technologies, which was recently launched prior to the Beijing Olympic Games, a study by EJL Wireless Research predicts.

Government figures indicate that there are currently more than 600 million mobile phone users in China. However, it is still unclear how many of those are using 3G technologies, Lenta.ru reported Monday.

While Google dominates the online search market, the traditional Yellow Pages business has been shifted to online as well. Its online revenue, especially among those who remember when it was the main tool for phone searches, is growing, eMarketer reported.

More than six out of 10 U.S. Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) users were female, according to the latest 2007 full-year comScore data produced for the Yellow Pages Association (YPA).

News Corp. will be pulling out of the Russian media market, Rupert Murdoch has announced, Gipp.ru reported Monday.

Russian public firm Gazprom-Media is eyeing News Outdoor Group (NOG), the largest outdoor advertising firm in Russia, but the sole owner is still News Corp.

Ireland's largest advertising agency, McConnells, has promised to also be the market's biggest digital agency, and is creating McConnells Interactive, which will operate in-house, the Sunday Business Post reported.

“It’s not just about having to go digital - digital is everything. Increasingly, what we’re about is creating content and where that content goes is sort of irrelevant - it just has to get to the consumer,” Fiona Scott, managing director of McConnells, told the Sunday Business Post.

Free daily MediaMatinQuébec, published by Le Journal de Québec, released its last issue on Friday, Newspaper Innovation reported

According to a final agreement reached on August 7 between the Canadian journalists trade union and publisher Quebecor, the locked-out workers of Le Journal de Quebec would return to their jobs on August 18, and the free daily would close down on August 8.

Instead of one static article after another, what if newspaper Web sites offered Wikipedia-type articles, updated by reporters and editors that combined all previous articles on the same topic that had appeared in the print edition? This could be the future of online news, Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, told a forum on Sunday at the Aspen Institute, The Aspen (Colorado) Times reported Monday.

The forum, part of a Knight Foundation study on the information needs of a democracy, is part of a three-day conference, Media and Democracy. Participants include former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark; and Philip Bennet, managing editor of the Washington Post.

Ad networks accounted for 30 percent of major publishers’ online sales, a huge increase from 5 percent in 2006, according to a study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Bain & Co.

The report reiterated that the use of remnant ad networks could erode premium prices. At least for last year, the price disparity between CPMs for unsold inventory generated by ad networks versus the direct sales publishers remained wide. CPMs on remnant ad networks charged from US$0.60 to $1.10 on average, compared to $10 to $20 in directly sold display inventory, or only 6 to 11 percent of direct pricing, paidContent reported.

As online giant Google Inc. buys up an increasing amount of content properties – YouTube, newly acquired encyclopedia site Knol and Blogger, to name a few – as well as holding the “keys to directing users around the Web,” critics say doubts over Google's claims that it is not a media company are getting bigger and harder to ignore, The New York Times reported Sunday.

“Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case,” Jason Calacanis, chief executive of search engine Mahalo, told The New York Times. “They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users.”

Advertisers will spend more than US$400 million (£208 million) on television commercials in China during the Olympics, which is expected to push the Asian economy closer to becoming the second largest ad market worldwide by 2010, according to Group M’s forecast published Monday.

The Beijing Olympics will be a main driver to the annual ad spending growth in China by 22 percent this year, to $35 billion. According to Group M, TV and the Internet are the main contributors of ad growth in the country, the Guardian reported.

General and political news underwent a “positive evolution” in 2007, according to the most recent study by the Direction du Développement des Médias (DDM), a French state organisation headed by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Culture and Communication, Le Figaro reported Friday.

The boost in print readership is mostly due to breaking news coverage of the presidential and the general elections, which could be “interesting” for the current discussion about the Internet, the DDM pointed out.

As China cracks down on demonstrators, limits Internet access and curbs journalists' freedoms, the country's officials are welcoming advertising from companies paying unprecedented amounts to be part of the Beijing Olympic Games, beginning today.

Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Visa, General Electric, Panasonic, Lenovo, Atos Origin, Samsung, Manulife and Omega have spent about US$80 million each to be one of the 12 exclusive global sponsors, while an estimated $6 billion will be spent on advertising related to the Games, Yahoo! Sports reported.

Thai multimedia company Jasmine International Plc is expanding its broadband activity by going into Internet protocol television (IPTV) in October, the Bangkok Post reported.

In addition, Jasmine International will also offer online games and voice-over Internet protocol (IP) to add more channels.

North America will surpass the Asia-Pacific in 2009 as the biggest mobile gaming market, and by 2012, revenue from games played on mobile devices will reach US$3.4 billion worldwide, according to a forecast from research firm Screen Digest, eMarketer reported.

Additionally, Screen Digest has predicted the iPhone will remain the main driver to mobile gaming revenues in North America, which is expected to exceed $1.5 billion in 2012, up from $930.5 million this year.

Hearst Corp. has bought the Connecticut Post and seven other weekly newspapers from MediaNews Group Inc., the companies announced Friday, The News-Times reported.

Hearst has also taken over management of three other dailies, The (Stamford) Advocate, Greenwich Time and The News-Times of Danbury.

Malaysian firm Stanton Technologies Sdn Bhd announced it will use its technology at this year’s Beijing Olympics for the telephone company China Mobile, by broadcasting the games to its 400 million subscribers and Internet users around the globe.

"The launch of 3G services in 10 cities ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games has jump-started mobile TV in China and 15 million new users are expected to use it to access the various sporting events," said Sheikh Sultan Al Qasimi, Stanton chairman.

The London Evening Standard and The Sun were the only UK newspapers to record increases in circulation, according to ABC's July newspaper figures, Press Gazette reported Friday.

The Standard's year-on-year circulation was up 6.28 percent to average 275,186 in July. However, it did give away 126,790 copies to airlines, hotels and trains, or 43 percent of its entire average circulation.

Search has become one of the most common activities among U.S. online users, 49 percent of which use search every day, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Search trails only e-mail, which is accessed by 60 percent of respondents, according to the survey of 2,251 adults on their online habits in April and May 2008, Media Week reported.

China’s second-biggest phone operator, China Unicom, announced it will use Celltick’s LiveScreen Media technology to provide mobile content, beginning Friday, the first day of the Olympic Games.

Celltick, headquartered in the United Kingdom, will provide technology that will act as a content management platform as well as manage mobile advertising, Haartz.com reported.

Eight percent of U.S. mobile subscribers and three percent of European subscribers accessed maps on mobile devices in the last three months ending May 2008, according to the latest comScore data. It grew 82 percent and 49 percent in terms of the number of users, respectively, MediaPost reported.

According to the study, iPhone is the leading device used to access maps in the United States, while in Europe, more people use Nokia N95 and N70.

For mobile advertising to be financially worthwhile, it must have three key elements: reach, interaction and measurement, according to a report issued by Grapevine Media.

Reach means the number of users or subscribers, interaction refers to the necessity of “space for a personal and interactive advertising medium” and measurement has to do with being able to determine how popular the ad campaign is.

Online ad expenditure in Russia has risen to US$260 million for the first six months of 2008, a 73 percent increase from the same period last year, ePlus reported on Thursday.

The figure is expected to rise to $600 million by the end of this year.

Hungary's leading free newspaper has changed its name from Metro to Metropol beginning today, Realdeal.hu reported Thursday.

The newspaper, which has been in Hungary for 10 years, had to change its name after losing a lawsuit brought on by a news chain with the same name.

In 2007, nearly half of the U.S. population (47 percent) had broadband access at home, according to Pew Internet & American Life Project. The user profile is skewed more towards males – half of male respondents said they have broadband access at home, while only 44 percent of females said so, World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

There is also a relationship between higher broadband adoption and younger age, higher education and higher income.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group on Wednesday announced an agreement to print The Washington Times beginning in September, which will help The Sun offset some of its advertising revenue declines, the paper reported Thursday.

The Times, with 100,000 copies produced a day, plans to shut down its printing plant in Washington, and transfer the work to The Sun's Port Covington printing plant, known as Sun Park.

The Straits Times in Singapore on Friday will finish its year-long gathering of readers' viewpoints with a complete revamp of its content and a new look – both in print and online. However, makeovers of its print and online platforms will have to be maintained and continually updated, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

“It's a ceaseless, ongoing job to keep improving,” ST Editor Han Fook Kwang stated in the article, posted by AsiaMedia.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch announced despite growth in Russia's investment market, he is not satisfied with the status of the country's media industry, Gipp.ru reported Wednesday.

The Russian investment market has seen year-on-year growth of 20 percent (to US$30 billion) in foreign direct investments in the first half of 2008.

French network provider Orange announce it has teamed up with mobile ad provider Amobee Media Systems (AMS) in Switzerland in order to test out text message advertising, La Vie Financière reported Wednesday.

The purpose of the experiment was to study the potential that mobile phone ads might have in European markets.