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Radio news faces the music
Fog of information
Much has been written – here, there and everywhere – on the state on broadcast news. Online news portals, certainly, have had an impact. And, too, there’s economics. Programmers also reflect on unpredictable news cycles.
News on radio bares scant similarity with television. European public broadcasters carry most of the weight in providing news and information on radio. Nearly all have a dedicated news channel with national coverage. Private sector radio news stations exist and community stations add value to their offerings with local news. But radio news is expensive, staff-intensive, and mostly the domain of public radio.
Arguably the first rolling-news radio channel in Europe was France Info, launched in 1987. It has been all-news, all the time, tightly formatted and focused on delivering lots of information quickly. Similarities with American all-news radio stations are obvious.
France Info has been suffering. In the national survey its market share has fallen to 3.4%. Ten years ago the market share was 4.6%. Public broadcasters, protestations notwithstanding, pay great attention to audience surveys. In Paris, residence of all the people who matter, France Info has performed better; 5.0% market share most recently but far from the 6.2% of ten years ago. (See French national audience trend chart here and Paris audience trend chart here)
Change, thus, is coming to France Info. The channel will be “deformated” this fall, said Radio France General Director Jean-Luc Hees as he updated assembled media watchers this week. For the first time, long-form newscasts – 30 minute blocks – will appear in midday, afternoon and evening. M Hees also said main general interest channel France Inter will be adding more humor.
“Times have changed,” said France Info director Pierre-Marie Christin, quoted by Nouvel Observateur (August 29). “People are not satisfied. This accumulation of information creates a kind of fog.” M Christin, who arrived a year ago from RTL, also said the channel will allow “time for reflection, longer stories and more lengthy explanations.” There will also be a new set of morning news hosts.
Television news being television attention is always focused on the visual and most headline grabbing. Radio news being radio the advantage has always been the story and immediacy. The next Médiamétrie radio audience survey will be released in about 90 days. (JMH)
Online ad people report more online ad growth
The East is East and the West is West
New figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), support group for digital advertising, shows that 2012 was yet another banner – no pun intended – year for ads in the digital sphere. This particular annual increase in Europe was 11.5%, still in double digits but not soaring as it was pre-recession. Online advertising, says the IAB AdEx report, comprises 25.6% of all advertising in Europe. In 2006 the share was but a tad over 10%.
Europe being quite diverse and markets reaching maturity at different times, growth rates range from 6.3% in France, spending €2.77 billion in 2012, to 34% in Russia with €1.54 billion. The report estimates that online ad spending in Russia will best the French sooner rather than later. UK advertisers spent the most online in 2012, €6.64 billion, and grew 13.3%. German media buyers followed, spending €4.56 billion, growing 8.6%. Online ad spending in Turkey grew 30.4%.
“On the whole, our industry has remained strong and had a notable growth rate, especially compared to general economic growth,” snapped IAB Europe CEO Kimon Zorbas in a statement. “Even more remarkable is the growth in the Central and Eastern European markets, which now show their great potential.”
Internet advertising in Poland grew 9.6% from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013, roughly €127 million, according to a separate study from IAB Poland. “This is not the spectacular growth we had seen a few years ago,” noted IAB Poland research manager Pawel Kolenda, quoted by wirtualnemedia.pl (August 28). “But given that the internet is the only medium to record increases we can talk about a solid growth rate, which maintains its pace despite GDP volatility.” (JMH)
Media investors seek friendly territory and escape from the res
There’s a lesson here
The stampede out of Western media investors out of Eastern Europe has, finally, slowed to a trickle. After spending time, talent and a significant amount of cash since the last decade of the last century most have run and not walked or been run out. RTL Group announced last week its exit from a minority state in Russian media house National Media Group. Russian news portal expert.ru headlined the story as “Foreigners do not belong here.”
NMG is large among Russian media holdings, principally controlled by billionaire banker Yuri Kovalchuk. The company owns all of REN-TV, all of Channel Five, one-quarter of the Channel One television channel, a three-quarters stake in newspaper Izvestia and all of national radio channel Russian News Service. It also owns 100% of Video International, the biggest and most influential ad sale-house in the Russian-speaking sphere. And it owns one-quarter of Russia’s largest non-State broadcaster CTC Media. Modern Times Group, which holds a stake in CTC Media, and The Walt Disney Company remain in Russia. RTL Group’s production arm FremantleMedia will remain active in Russia. (See more on media in Russia here)
Earlier in August RTL Group and the US producer CBS Studios announced plans to jointly launch two entertainment channels in southeast Asia distributed on cable, satellite and the web. The new venture will be operated from Singapore and utilize both the FremantleMedia and CBS catalogues.
Press freedom and uncomfortable questions
“Deep concern”
Press freedom supporters have rallied around reports of UK authorities demanding the destruction of computer hard-drives owned by the newspaper Guardian followed by recent detention under terrorism laws of a journalist’s civil partner at London’s Heathrow airport.
“Events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern,” wrote a group of Scandinavian newspaper editors in an open letter addressed to UK Prime Minister David Cameron published in The Observer (August 24), sister publication to the Guardian. Chief editors of Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), Aftenposten (Norway) and Politiken (Denmark) admonished PM Cameron to “reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press.” (See background article here)
Newspaper publisher lobby WAN-IFRA called on PM Cameron to “provide his assurance that the necessary inquiries will be made to ensure that any inference of association between journalism and terrorism is not part of official policy that puts the UK on the same level as Turkey and Ethiopia, whose governments misuse anti-terror legislation to silence critics.” (See WAN-IFRA statement here) The group also noted that 59 journalists in the UK have been arrested in various police investigations, largely stemming from the now defunct News Corporation-owned tabloid News Of The World phone hacking and pay-off scandals, though “none have been convicted,” putting the UK on par with Turkey’s record of arresting media workers.
Unrelated to the Guardian’s tiff with the British government, the German Journalist’s Association (DJV) tangled with Bavarian CSU party chairman Horst Seehofer’s demand that news crews from public broadcaster WDR “get out of Bavaria,” reported Abendzeitung München (August 27). “He should understand that (press freedom) is valuable and politicians have to face uncomfortable questions in the service of democracy,” said DJV chairman Michael Konken. (JMH)
Regional public broadcaster out of money, vows to continue
Almost dried up
Radio Television Vojvodina, a regional public broadcaster in Serbia, hasn’t paid salaries, can’t pay the electricity bills and doesn’t have enough cash to send out reporters, said Belgrade daily Danas (August 22), which suggested the broadcaster could fade to black at the end of August. The broadcaster acknowledged difficulties but said, in a statement quoted by B92 (August 23), “the utmost effort” was being made to keep going.
Radio Television Vojvodina (RTV) serves the semi-autonomous province of Vojvodina in northern Serbia and is separate from Radio Television Serbia (RTS). RTV operates three radio channels and two TV channels. Vojvodina borders Hungary, Croatia and Romania as well as Serbia to the south; thus, RTV broadcasts in several languages.
“Bearing in mind that the revenue obtained through subscription fees almost dried up during August, the RTV management expects the Serbian government to, in the shortest term, secure a solution that will enable us to produce our program under the same conditions as the Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS),” said the RTV statement.
The household license fee, which partly finances RTS and RTV, is set to be abolished, the debt-laden national budget to pick up the bills. RTV’s estimated annual budget is about €20 million. RTS costs about €60 million annually. (JMH)
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