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Digital radio: maybe 'going to the birds' isn't such a bad idea
garden variety genius
Bringing digital radio to the forefront of listeners’ consciousness has been the subject of great and continuous debate. Selling points rise and then fall. Remember interactivity?
Actually, the great digital debate – muffled somewhat by dismal economics – has been and continues to be on mass or near-mass markets, somewhat counterintuitive considering the state of marketing and advertising. Digital radio operators in the UK are facing now a decline in the digital share of radio listening, shows UK media analyst Grant Goddard graphically in a recent blog post. (Read here) And broadcasters seem disinclined to invest in digital-only channels.
Then, sometimes, when all the hyperactivity is channeled into one more species of the endless music format possibilities a tiny chirping breath of fresh air sails by.
It seems that for the last year and a half or so multiplex operator Digital One has been broadcasting 24 hours and seven days a week a simple half hour loop of bird songs. That ended abruptly and without notice this past weekend. In its place is Amazing Radio, a music format featuring unsigned artists, sort of like the last ten years of the UKs Eurovision Song Contest entries in high rotation.
Let the complaints begin. Somehow hundreds, reportedly, unhappy bird song lovers found Quentin Howard, the former GCap executive who made the recording in his English garden some 20 years ago. “A five-year-old girl said she listened to it at bedtime,” he told The Guardian (June 2), one of “literally hundreds.”
“We run a business,” explained Digital One’s Glyn Jones.(JMH)
Work on Temptation Island
Reality TV not recreation
Contracts between reality TV show participants and production companies are employment contracts, ruled a French court (June 3), affirming several lower court rulings.
Three participants in French reality TV show Temptation Island (L'île de la tentation) sued producer Glem Productions in 2005, claiming being on the show was work, essentially suing for overtime. The court agreed. Participants’ contracts must be considered short-term employment. The producer, owned by French television broadcaster TF1, appealed.
Last year the Paris Appeals Court affirmed the decision, ordering the producer to pay each participant €27,000 plus fining the producer for under-the-table (black) employment. The producer, now faced with a heavy fine, appealed again.
In April the Prosecutor General sided with TF1, arguing that show participants agreed to appear on the show “for personal and non-professional reasons.” The lawyer for the participants argued that his clients had been “enslaved.” TF1 Productions’ lawyer argued that participants agreed to be on the show “not to draw a salary but to live a personal experience and being filmed does not change this.”
The court then affirmed that appearing on the reality TV show is work, the deciding factor being “subordination” to the production company even if the “activity” is “recreational.” French employment rules, including overtime pay, will be enforced. The court did, however, quash the conviction for “concealed employment.”
"This is a real disruption to the production that goes beyond the Temptation Island and reality TV," said TF1 Productions President Edouard Boccon-Gibod. Low cost TV production, the hallmark of reality TV, could be a thing of the past. (See more on reality TV here)
Temptation Island was created by Endemol. (JMH)
NYSE Changes Compliance Rules
McClatchy had been in trouble with two compliance rules of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and with so many companies having financial problems these days the NYSE has done what any business would do – it has changed its rules so companies have an easier time of being in compliance.
McClatchy still needs to get its share price above $1 for 30 days (it closed Tuesday at $0.81) but the NYSE changed capitalization rules means a company no longer needs to be worth at least $75 million but rather at least 50 million, and even at $0.81 a share McClatchy can make that coming in at $67.75 million.
Mind you, when you figure it paid some $2 billion when all was said and done for the 20 Knight Ridder newspapers that it kept three years ago it really goes to show how the mighty have fallen.
VOA Broadcasts Interview With Taliban Leader
A row is brewing in Washington after the Voice of America’s (VOA) Pashto language that broadcasts into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region refuge for al Qaeda and the Taliban interviewed a top Pakistani Taliban leader.
It’s the old fight between the politicians who don’t like to see government-funded services giving a voice to the enemy, against a VOA says that to maintain credibility in the region it needs to conduct such interviews.
Representative Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican, who usually supports the Pashto service known as Deewa Radio, took umbrage at the interview with Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud who claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings in Lahore in March.
"The U.S. taxpayer should not be subsidizing free air-time for al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban leaders," Kirk wrote to the State Department. VOA Director Danforth Austin said Deewa Radio was simply reporting the news.
US Special envoy Richard Holbroke has testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Taliban is winning the communications war in the area, and he would like to see US "counter-programming" to Taliban FM stations.
Because of its meager annual $3.2 million budget, Deewa Radio only broadcasts between 6 p.m. and midnight. When you think of the billions spent on GM and Chrysler it makes one wonder how Washington decides its spending priorities. Ah, got it – the Taliban don’t vote in US elections!
The automobile and the media
many questions
The news people are all over stories about changes in the automobile industry. And there's certainly a knock-on effect for media. Many questions arise, all of them hard.
Advertising by big (or shrinking) car brands, dealers and the after-market has been as much as a third of all ad spending in some markets. Major brands are still on TV, other media less so. What are automobile brand managers thinking?
Radio effectively captured the automobile as a listening location. How has that changed?
Here's a breakdown of listening hours share by location in the UK. (JMH)
Promotional spots for Orange TV’s gems of programming like “The Vampires” and “Monsters versus Pigs” drew over 300 complaints to French media regulator CSA in March and April. The CSA looked into it and decided the spots were, indeed, “potentially frightening” to children. The media regulator also noted the spots had been running during the school holidays.
So, Orange TV and other channels have been asked to refrain from broadcasting these and similar spots before 8:30 pm.
Complaints, said the CSA, mostly came from parents of young children upset about “the negative impact of these images on their children; nightmares, fear and crying.”
The promo campaign had been submitted in advance to advertising self-regulation watchdog Autorité de Régulation professionnelle de la Publicité (ARPP), which gave its approval.
The CSA made its decision April 21st and published it officially on its Website May 30th. Go figure. (JMH)
French broadcaster to top up
Be smart, buy now
French broadcasters TF1 and AB Groupe are in “exclusive” negotiations, they said (May 28), to transfer two French digital TV channels to TF1 for €192 million. If all the details are completed and approvals are granted TF1 will hit the French ceiling for channel ownership adding 100% ownership of NT1 and an 80% stake in TMC.
TF1, primarily owned by Bouygues, already owns namesake channel TF1, TV Breizh, 40% of TMC (Télé Monte Carlo), and 50% of TF6 as well as pay channels Eurosport and LCI.
In the transaction TF1 will raise its stake in WB Television, owned by AB Groupe founder Claude Berda, to 49% from 33.5%. WB Television operates Belgian TV channels AB3, AB4, Videoclick and others. TF1 paid €230 million for 33.5% of AB Groupe in 2006.
Media history buffs will note that TMC is Europe’s oldest television channel, founded in 1954 by Prince Rainer of Monaco. The Principality will continue to hold its 20% stake in TMC.
TF1 chairman Nonce Paolini seems to have fallen under the spell of buying market share, not to forget more available ad time and program rights. A Credit Suisse analyst, quoted but not named by Boursier.com (May 29), called the price “high” and the deal “not surprising.” Six weeks ago at a painful shareholders meeting Paolini resolutely rejected the idea of selling TF1’s international rights business to anybody, including AB Groupe. Discussions between TF1 and AB Groupe along various paths have been continuing for months.
The company statement said TF1 Group has a €950 million unused credit line. And that pile of cash will grow by about €746 million when TF1 sheds its stake in Canal+. (JMH)
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