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Ford has succumbed to a two-year boycott orchestrated by the American Family Association (AFA) and has pulled its advertising from US Gay media outlets. The boycott was said to be particularly hurting Ford sales in the southern US.
Given the current US economic climate any boycott can hurt seriously. In Ford’s case its sales were down by 13.6% last year, although it doesn’t know how much of was due to the boycott. Ford said it experienced "difficult business conditions."
The AFA also has Procter & Gamble, the country’s largest advertiser, in its sights. P&G produces the CBS Soap Opera As The World Turns whose story line a few months ago started featuring a romance between two young men. That caused the AFA to issue an “Action Alert” -- that’s short of a boycott call, but a warning to P&G that the AFA is taking a close look.
The French for years have been more avid readers of magazines than they have been of newspapers and 2007 was no exception, according to Audiopresse, the French news trade association.
No doubt President Sarkozy’s divorce and then subsequent marriage helped boost magazine sales. According to Audiopresse 22.7 million French people -- some 59% of the population aged at least 15 -- read at least one magazine a week, up 1.2% from the year before. By comparison Audiopresse says that French regional daily newspaper readership rose 8.8% last year and national newspaper readership was up 1.9% meaning some 22.7 million French – 46% of the population over 15 – read a daily newspaper.
Italian businessman Giuseppe Ciarrapico owns several newspapers that Silvio Berlusconi wants supporting him and his center-right coalition in the April 13-14 Italian general elections, so he says he doesn’t pay much notice to the fact that Ciarrapico, a candidate for the Senate, calls himself a “cultural fascist” and remains an admirer of Mussolini to this day.
Showing that politics makes for strange bedfellows, Berlusconi told journalists, “We are in this election campaign to win it. Mr. Ciarrapico owns some important titles and it would help us if they weren't hostile to our cause."
Berlusconi's main rival, centre-left leader Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome, sees it a bit differently. “The aim is to win the elections come what may - so if you own lots of newspapers, then get on board. It doesn't matter what your politics are - all you need is to be a media boss." Veltroni said.
Berlusconi’s coalition is maintaining its lead in the polls.
Still a perennial comedy favorite in the UK even though the 85-episode series was made in the 1980s and 90s, Allo Allo makes fun of the Nazis in occupied France in World War II. So would this BBC series make Germans laugh?
Until now no German TV outlet would touch it, but ProSieben Sat has bitten the bullet and is dubbing the entire series into German to show later this year. The fear by German stations previously had been the series might offend older viewers.
Those who know the series – it has run in the US on PBS – will attest it is going to take a German with a very strong sense of humor and with few sensitivities about the war to laugh as his countrymen are continually made fools of by the French resistance.
But if it works it will give a whole new meaning to Television Without Frontiers.
With unrestrained hyperbole Randy Michaels has created a new position of Chief Innovation Officer at Tribune Company and installed fellow radio veteran Lee Abrams. The “remarkable opportunity,” said Abrams in the press statement, is to “design the future of American media with passion, intellect, and imagination that meets the spirit of the 21st century.”
Clearly, Michaels very, very, very senior position within the length and breath of the Tribune Company gives huge latitude to design and implement “the sweeping change underway.”
Abrams arrives April 1st. His responsibilities will be “across Tribune's publishing, broadcasting and interactive divisions.” April Fools!
Press release hyperbolics notwithstanding, Abrams became rich and famous designing – and selling – a short play-list music-only rock radio format. Many of those stations limited live voices to ‘shock jock’ morning shows. Like Michaels, Abrams was an ardent subscriber to music research. Like Michaels, Abrams is an absolute control-freak.
More recently Abrams has been head programmer with XM Satellite Radio. He’s also been a vested company officer. With the long awaited merger of XM Satellite and Sirius Satellite dragging its way through US regulators Randy Michaels gave Abrams a chance to leap.
Anybody at the Tribune Company thinking of saying to either of these radio guys “that’s not the way the newspaper business works” should think again… and fast. (JMH)
Harry Potter author JK Rowling has asked an appeals court to overturn a judgment last August that it was okay for paparazzi to shoot pictures of her then 18-month-old child and her husband with a long range lens. She wants an injunction against further publication of the picture and financial damages.
Richard Spearman, Rowling's lawyer, told the appeals court, "This claim is not about the rights of adults, this is about the rights of the child." But paparazzi lawyer Mark Warby said Rowling has never been able to show any way in which her child had been hurt by the taking and publication of the pictures.
The original trial judge had ruled, “I have considerable sympathy for the claimant’s parents and anyone else who wishes to shield their children from intrusive media attention. But the law does not in my judgment allow them to carve out a press-free zone for their children in respect of absolutely everything they choose to do.”
That decision seemed at odds with European case law, especially the Princess Caroline ruling, that basically says that celebrities while “off-duty” have the right to privacy.
Jordanian Islamic activists say they are going to file suit in Jordanian courts against 17 Danish newspapers and magazines for republishing last month a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that the Islamic world believes is insulting.
The newspapers and magazines reprinted the cartoon after Danish police said they had uncovered a plot to kill the cartoonist, whose drawing of Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban had sparked riots in the Islamic world in 2006.
Besides going after the Danes the Jordanians also have Al-Jazeera television in their legal sights. They’re protesting a program in which an Arab woman, being interviewed from Los Angeles, criticized Muslims for rejecting opposite points of views.
Meanwhile in Tehran Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami has urged Islamic countries to cut economic relations with “those who desecrate Prophet Muhammad”. Condemning the cartoon reprint, the Ayatollah Khatami urged members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to cut economic relations with countries which have done this.
Brussels lobbyists are wary of media and journalists, reports their lobbying group. The spin doctors (also known as lobbyists and public affairs specialists) fear “losing control of the story” when dealing with media. All of this was reported in EurActiv, one of the study’s sponsors, with no apparent sense of irony.
Over the course of ftm’s four year existence I’ve noticed a measurable blurring of lobbying with public relations. This is certainly not limited to those in and around Brussels. Spin, it seems, is in.
If it is the job of lobbying and public relations to present information to their employers or sponsors advantage it is also the job of journalists to sort through the spin. The survey conducted for the European Public Affairs Directors (EPAD) might also be read as indicating that journalists are doing their job rather than simply regurgitating favorable press releases.
German journalist Inge Seibel-Mueller tried to make sense of all the spin while writing about the recent release of radio audience results. Only sales-houses and individual broadcasters release the AG.MA figures, each with particular spin. “Even when a station loses popularity,” she writes, “the PR departments report jubilation.” Kein Problem!
The survey was presented last week (March 5) at the annual meeting of the European Center for Public Affairs. Business is good, the lobbyists were told. “Economic times are tough but less tough for public affairs,” said one presenter. (JMH)
Reviews are a part of a newspaper’s remit but those being reviewed are increasingly taking legal action if they’re not happy, and juries have been showing some sympathy for those criticized but now there is a bit of a victory given by the Chief Justice in Northern Ireland.
It was on an appeal by the Irish News that had been nailed in 2006 by a seven-person jury that took just 90 minutes to decide the newspaper’s review of Goodfellas Restaurant was defamatory and it awarded £25,000 in damages plus legal costs which could have been considerable. Back in 2000, the newspaper’s restaurant critic gave Goodfellas just one star out of five, criticizing the food, drink, staff, and the cigarette smoke.
The Chief Justice did not, however, just throw the case out. Instead he ruled that the instructions given the jury by the trial judge were at fault and therefore there should be a new trial. The Chief Justice concluded, “Although I consider it likely that a properly directed jury would conclude that sufficient factual substratum existed for the comment which constituted the preponderance of the article, I cannot be certain that this is so and I would therefore order a retrial.” In other words, a fudge, but at least a fudge which gives the newspaper another chance.
Rupert Murdoch has made clear he’s not about to get into a fight with Microsoft over Yahoo. “They have a lot more money than us,” he told the Bear Stearns Media Conference in New York.
Microsoft has offered $41.4 billion for Yahoo, a bid the search engine has so far rejected. Yahoo has been talking with News Corp and Time Warner (AOL) to see if there are possible deals to be had.
Murdoch also took the opportunity to criticize Yahoo management for failing to invest in Overture, keyword-based pay-per-click or sponsored search which it bought in 2003.
“We’re very happy to be in the Google camp’; they sell our search advertising and pay us well for it,” Murdoch told the conference.
American public radio broadcaster NPR (National Public Radio) announced Friday (March 7) that CEP Ken Stern is out. NPR’s statement gave no details other than saying the departure was by “mutual agreement.”
NPR has lost several key executives in recent months, many ‘lifers’ who joined the fledgling broadcaster in the 1970’s. Stern has been with NPR for ten years, the successor favored by NPR President Kevin Klose.
Stern reportedly rattled fee-paying local station affiliates – and therefore the NPR board – with digital expansion plans. NPR receives about 10% of its annual revenue from the US Federal government, the rest coming from station fees and endowments. (JMH)
The Swiss Office for Communication (OFCOM) authorized SwissMediaCast AG to construct a new DAB multiplex in the Swiss-German speaking region. The new multiplex will offer 18 channels in DAB+ coding. SwissMediaCast is a joint venture between private broadcasters and public broadcaster SSR-SRG. (JMH)
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