Recently by Uma Dixit

Johnston Press is aiming to boost its online offerings by signing a deal with the UK's Highway's Agency to provide real-time traffic and travel data to its regional newspaper Web sites, journalism.co.uk reported.

The deal will allow the UK regional publisher's 323 Web sites to find a centralised content source that can be segmented and used at a local level, Mark Woodward, group editorial content manager, told Journalism.co.uk.

Mobile technology company Ericsson has unveiled a new social networking portfolio for its network operators aimed at allowing user-generated content to be shared across networks, Telecompaper reported Monday.

The Pixl8r initiative is an open-standard solution and allows real time interaction between photo sharing sites, enable mobile customers to share social media across operator portals and receive notification of friends' activities via text message. The other initiative, the Social Media Portal, aids operators in delivering a social networking service compatible to the Pixl8r.

Whether speaking English or Spanish at home, 44 percent of U.S. Hispanics read local Spanish-language newspapers, and more than 50 percent of  U.S. Hispanics watched an English-language programme on TV, according to a new Ipsos U.S. Hispanic Omnibus study, MediaPost reported Monday.

Surprisingly, 54 percent of younger viewers (ages 18 to 34) said they prefer English-language programmes over Spanish, while 61 percent of those ages 55 years and over prefer English-language TV. Meanwhile, 52 percent of those between ages 35 and 54 prefer English-language programmes and 80 percent of college educated Hispanics prefer English language TV.

In the face of criticism from commercial media groups, the BBC has shuttered ad-funded Web site BBCGreen.com; however, the decision to close the site was "completely commercial," a BBC Worldwide spokeswoman told Press Gazette, the site reported Monday. BBC Green was operated by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, and gave users advice on environmental issues.

"(Guardian Media Group) has argued that BBC Worldwide should not be allowed to launch sites such as BBC Green - which have no connection to existing programming - because they have the potential to distort the market and compete unfairly with commercial players," a GMG spokesman told Press Gazette.

A mixture of changes in ad rates and adspend has been forecast for European countries and for emerging economies like India ad China, which will likely cause TV advertising rates to fall 7 percent in the United Kingdom this year, according to the World Advertising Research Center's Global Media Inflation Benchmarks Survey, out Friday.

Meanwhile, TV ad rates in China and Russia are expected to increase by 12 percent and 16 percent, respectively, while India's will increase by 6 percent. In the United States, TV ad rates are forecast to rise by about 2 percent in 2009, even as overall adspend levels drop by 3 percent, according to the survey.

In a bid to weather plummeting ad revenues and falling print readership, UK newspapers are adopting a variety of tactics. These changes come in a variety of forms, including improving online editions and Web site designs.

In the United Kingdom, the Ipswich daily Evening Star, owned by Archant Suffolk, has made over its Web site, EveningStar24. The Evening Star's sister title, the East Anglian Daily Times is also expected to follow suit in the coming months, holdthefrontpage.co.uk reported Friday.

As more readers turn to the Internet and mobile telephones for news, Japanese media groups, including newspaper Asahi Shimbun and wire service Jiji Press, will launch an online advertising network, AFP reported Thursday.

Other participants include AFPBB, an interactive Web site; Creative Link, a technology company; Thomson Reuters, CNN and three top financial magazine Web sites.

Tata Communications will invest US$430 million in data and cable systems in the Asia Pacific region, Telecompaper reported Thursday.

The Indian communications services provider will develop a new Internet data centre in Singapore, and also announced the completion of its $250 million TGN-Intra Asia cable system, which connects Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Most current affairs magazines in the United Kingdom reported increased sales for the second half of 2008, even as the global economy continued to spiral, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

The Economist grew 3.1 percent year-on-year, to a weekly 186,995 copies; however, 20 percent of those copies were given away for free, as part of a the magazine's "monitored free distribution" scheme. The Spectator also reported a record circulation of 77,146, although it, too, distributed 20 percent of its copies for free.

In a bid to enable a transition to a nationwide digital television service, Taiwan's National Communications Commission promised to amend the obsolete cable Television Act, the Taipei Times reported Wednesday.

The commission is looking at possible factors like the price of the set-top box that might have prevented households from switching to DTV services. Against the target of 20 percent that were expected to have made the change, only 3.99 percent are using DTV.  Amendments to the Cable Television Act will be presented to the Legislative Yuan and will be based on a report to be released next month.

More than 100 million unique viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on Google sites in December 2008, with YouTube accounting for almost 100 percent of the views, according to comScore Video Metrix, eMarketer reported Thursday.

However, marketers are questioning how much high levels of traffic will translate into revenue increases.

Although sales have performed below analyst expectations, Activision Blizzard, the largest video game publisher, has reported record revenues and profits, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

Although Activision is seeing much better results than its rivals, its share prices slid by 9 percent yesterday, due to its first quarter sales forecasts falling to US$550 million, lower than analysts' expectations of $628 million. Shares dropped to $8.60.

As advertising markets weakened, Paris-based advertising firm Publicis Groupe SA, owner of Saatchi and Saatchi, posted a 1.1 percent decrease in organic revenue growth for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2008, compared to the 4.2 percent growth posted a year ago, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report, posted by CNN Money. The growth beat an average forecast of 0.4 percent from seven analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires.

The decline was mainly due to losses at recently closed Web TV channel Honeyshed and other non-recurring impairments.

UK-based News International announced it will cut about 65 jobs across its four national titles, the Sunday Times, the Times, Sun and News of the World, Media Guardian reported Wednesday. The publisher also plans to reduce the amount it pays some news agencies.

"We have identified areas where we can improve efficiency and speed up the production of our titles and Web sites. This will allow us to strengthen editorial by reinvesting savings into our title," James Murdoch, News Corporation's chairman and chief executive of  Europe and Asia, told staff.

Publishers and media groups that started restructuring their businesses before the economic downturn will be able to better weather the economic storm, and be better equipped to adapt to new challenges in the future, according to a new study by advisory firm Ernst & Young, journalism.co.uk reported Wednesday.

"Advertisers will be quicker to increase adspend during the recovery this time around," the report stated. "With advertising rates expected to fall throughout 2009, with the recovery, many advertisers will see some traditional platforms as good value for money."