Fairfax Media Deputy Chairman Mark Burrows has been forced off the publisher's board by his fellow directors, The Age's Business Day has reported Friday.

The investment banker officially resigned Thursday over “perceived conflict of interest” due to being Lachlan Murdoch's chief adviser in his AU$3.3 billion bid to buy Consolidated Media Holdings, according to the report.

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The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, The Asahi Shimbun and The Yomiuri Shimbun have launched a joint Japanese-language Web site, called Aratanisu, on Thursday morning.

The three papers have come together to form the Nikkei-Asahi-Yomiuri Internet Business Partnership. The new site allows readers to read stories originally written for front and domestic news pages and editorials side-by-side online. Deputy managing editors for each of the three papers will also write essays for a featured section of the site, Henshu-kyoku kara (From the Editorial Bureau), The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday.

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Media General Inc. saw profits plummet by 86 percent in 2007, as its Florida ventures, including The Tampa Tribune and television station WFLA-Channel 8, continue to labour in the anaemic Florida media market, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported Thursday.

The media company earned US$10.7 million (47 cents per share) in 2007, just a slice of the $79 million ($3.35 per share) it earned in 2006.

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Average television daily viewing time has increased in the United States since 2000, although viewing during primetime has remained almost the same, according to research firm eMarketer.

In 2000 and 2001, an American household spent on average seven hours and 39 minutes watching TV, which grew to eight hours and 14 minutes in and after 2005. TV viewing time for an individual American aged two and above grew from four hours and a quarter during 2000 and 2001, to four hours and 34 minutes during 2006 and 2007.

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The Polish online market is rapidly growing, according to a report published by Internet Standard.

According to SMG/KRC NetTrack, online penetration in Poland reached 42 percent in 2007, or 12.8 million users aged 15 and above. And nearly 65 percent of these users logged on every day.

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Amazon announced Thursday it will buy Audible, an audiobook specialist, for US$300 million.

Audible sells nearly 80,000 audio products, across radio shows, newspapers, magazines, books and exclusive programmes, which Amazon will be able to push to its vast userbase of the audio book market.

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Fourth quarter profits fell eight percent for E.W. Scripps Co. due to a slump in advertising sales at its newspapers and televisions, the media company said Thursday.

Scripps profit of US$123 million (75 cents per share) for the quarter ending Dec. 31 was down from the same period of 2006, when profit was $134 million (81 cents per share). Revenue fell from $683 million in 2006 to $679.2 million in 2007, the company stated in a press release.

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Although Belo Corp.'s pace of revenue decline increased during the last three months of 2007, that pace will slow in 2008, Robert Decherd, Belo chairman and CEO, announced Wednesday.

Decherd made the announcement in New York, where he is attempting sell his plan to spin off Belo's newspaper divisions into a separate publicly traded company from its television stations. Overall in 2007, Belo's newspaper revenue dropped 9.7 percent. During the last three months of the year, however, that revenue dropped 11.5 percent, according to preliminary figures, The Dallas Morning News reported late Wednesday.

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Newspapers around the globe are extending their reach through the internet and other media, yet print circulation generally remains the standard for measuring newspaper audience.

New global initiatives to provide a more complete picture of newspaper audience through cross-media measurements are the subject of a major session at the upcoming World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo.

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