Zenith Optimedia has released their annual report: The top 30 global media owners.
Quick facts:
The top 30 global media owners generate a total of US$215 billion in media
Top-ranked Time Warner generates US$30 billion, 13% of the total
The US has by far the most media owners in the ranking, followed by – in
order – Japan, France and the UK, Germany, Italy and Mexico
Two new-media companies – Google and Yahoo – make the top 30.
Here is the list:
Asahi Shimbun Company
Advance Publications
Axel Springer
Bertelsmann
BSkyB
CBS Corporation
Clear Channel Communications
Cox Enterprises
DirecTV
DMGT
Fuji TV
Gannett
General Electric
Google
Grupo Televisa
Hearst Corporation
ITV plc
Lagardère
Mediaset
New York Times Company
News Corp
NTV
TF1
Time Warner
Tribune Group
Viacom
Vivendi Universal
Walt Disney Company
Yahoo!
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Read the press release here: Link
The Israeli defences have begun breaking into local radio and TV programmes as an alternative to dropping leaflets informing residents of their activities. According to a report from the Jerusalem Post, an operation took place Monday in Nablus. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops sealed off the centre of Nablus’s old city with cement blocks and trash containers and moved from apartment to apartment in search of seven Palestinian fugitives. In a new tactic, troops broke into transmissions of local TV and radio stations yesterday and broadcast the names of the men, all residents of the old city. Soldiers warned civilians against hiding the fugitives. Abir Kilani, director of the local TV station Gama, told the Jerusalem Post that her broadcasts were interrupted several times by the army. Kilani noted that this method is much more effective and cheaper than the military’s previous tactic of dropping leaflets with messages to residents. (The Jerusalem Post via Media Network Weblog,February 27, 2007)
CPJ condemns Cuba’s decision to ban three foreign correspondents
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Cuban government’s decision not to renew visas of three Havana-based foreign correspondents. Earlier this week, Cuban authorities informed Havana-based foreign correspondents Gary Marx of the Chicago Tribune, Stephen Gibbs of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of the Mexican daily El Universal that their press credentials would not be renewed, according to international press reports. The government’s decision was based on the journalists’ negative reporting on Cuba, the international press said. According to the regulations of the International Press Centre (CPI), journalists’ visas are extended by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a one year period, after which it can be renewed following the presentation of an application at year’s end. In December, the Cuban government issued a document updating regulations on foreign correspondents’ work. The document said that the CPI may temporarily suspend or withdraw a journalist’s press credential ‘when [the reporter] carries improper actions or actions not within his profile and work content.’ (Committee to Protect Journalists, February 26, 2007)
The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has launched an initiative to develop a new measurement standard for newspaper readership, both print and digital. A media measurement integration task force has been established by the organisation to explore the possibility of global standards for combined print and digital measurements. The group intends to survey hundreds of media buyers worldwide and hopes the survey will identify ways agencies and newspaper companies can collaborate more effectively on buying advertising across platforms. A standardised, combined print and digital currency, WAN claims, would assist with planning cross-media advertising campaigns. The task force will meet in June in New York to discuss the results of the survey and proposed strategies. (Journalism.co.uk,February 23, 2007)
The Baltic state of Estonia plans to become the world’s first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet next month. E-voting will be introduced for a parliamentary election on March 4, for the first time after it was used in more limited local elections in 2005. It is a fresh sign of Estonia’s strong embrace of technology since it quit the Soviet Union in 1991. The voting will take place by people putting their state-issued ID card, which has an electronic chip on it, into a reader attached to a computer and then entering two passwords.
Four newspapers have been crowned ‘World’s Best Designed’ by a panel of judges at the 28th annual The Best of Newspaper Design Creative Competition of the Society for News Design (SND). The winners are: Äripev (Tallinn, Estonia); El Economista (Madrid, Spain); Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Frankfurt, Germany); and Politiken (Copenhagen, Denmark). Meeting at Syracuse University in New York, the judges selected the winners from 351 entries representing dozens of countries. The judges evaluated newspaper issues published in 2006. The judges have awarded more than 1,700 individual awards in the competition. The judges said in a statement, ‘the challenge was to find excellence from cover to cover. We learned that a significant percent - even among high circulation dailies - neglected basic typography. […]In the end, we chose four very different newspapers that excelled above all others. We found elegance, visual virtuosity, raw energy, grit and innovation.’ About Äripev, the judges said, ‘The paper is everything but business as usual. Dynamic, playful, and full of energy. Äripev feels much more open and spacious than its physical size. Typographic layering and a full range of scaling - all from one family of fonts - provides interest, movement and vitality. Double page spreads dominate. So does a subtle palette of blues, greys, and olive greens. We love the use of ‘pink’ space and the sense of volume and pacing throughout. This paper has rhythm. Play on.’ Äripev is published from Talinn in Estonia and has a circulation of 25,600. (Newswatch India, February 21, 2007)
If you want to know where the fattest Europeans live, where to get the cheapest petrol or in which country more women smoke than men, then help is at hand. The Eurostat Yearbook, published Tuesday, may not be everyone’s idea of a page-turner but if league tables are your thing then it could be for you. Of course the statistics are not devised to be some kind of European Book of Records, but are a research tool made available to governments, politicians, NGOs, journalists for free, and to the general public for EUR 30. ‘The yearbook is a window on our statistics and an invitation for people to look in more detail at what we have to offer,’ said Tim Allen in the Eurostat Press Office. ‘The vast majority of our data is available free on our website,’ http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
Axel Springer, publisher of popular German tabloid Bild, is launch a tabloid in the French market, which will have to contend with France’s tough privacy laws. The plans include a three-year investment of EUR 120m and Axel Springer believes it can sell a million copies of the tabloid a day. The French version of Bild is yet to be named and will come up against its nearest rival Le Parisien, covering politics, daily life, sport and celebrities. However, the publisher plans to undercut Le Parisien by EUR 0.40 by charging only EUR 0.50. The launch is planned for the second half of 2007 and Axel Springer is currently recruiting a staff of 300. The title will have to contend with France’s strict privacy laws that effectively ban the types of photographs and gossip that traditional tabloids, such as Bild, sell newspapers on. Distribution may cause a problem as well. The dominant French press distribution system has just 28,000 newspaper sales outlets in France, compared with 120,000 in Germany, where Bild currently sells 3.5m. The launch comes as part of a busy programme of international expansion that has seen the publisher push out across Europe. (Brand Republic,February 20, 2007)
Turkmenistan’s first internet cafes opened in the capital Friday as the new president of the tightly controlled country declared that all schools soon will have internet access. The move came two days after officials confirmed as president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, who has pledged make other changes from the path set by the late autocratic leader Saparmurat Niyazov. Located in downtown Ashgabat, the two cafes equipped with five computers sat empty for most of Friday, said cafe administrator Jenet Khudaikulieva, since very few people had heard about them. But she insisted that no websites would be blocked, and there was no visible attempt to register visitors or log the sites they were surfing. It was unclear exactly how popular the cafes will be - or how accessible, given that one hour of computer time cost about USD 4 (EUR 3)in a country where two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line and the average monthly income is less than USD 100 (EUR 76). Under Niyazov, who ruled the gas-rich nation for two decades, access to the internet was tightly restricted to state and officially approved groups, embassies, accredited foreign journalists and international organisations. (The Independent,February 19, 2007)
A new form of electronic paper demonstrated at 3GSM in Barcelona could bring newspapers to mobile phones in the coming year. The invention, patented by Philips but built by spin-off company Polymer Vision, consists of a layer of small spheres, coloured grey on one side and white on the other. They are rotated to display text and images on the paper, but critically use no power when not creating a new image. This technique has been manufactured in a thin strip that is perfectly flexible, allowing the screen to be wrapped around a mobile phone. The screen on show at 3SGM had been wrapped and unwrapped 750,000 times with no degradation in quality. ‘We have talked to the BBC and Reuters and they are happy using a technology like this,’ said Ewan Ward-Thomas, a consultant at Polymer Vision. ‘After all, newspapers used greyscale printing like this for over 400 years.’ Ward-Thomas envisioned mobile newspapers that could be broadcast via a built-in Sim card and downloaded for consumption, or connecting wirelessly to an existing mobile screen. (VNU Net,February 15, 2007)
 Dubai Media City, the custom built media hub that its owners hope will make the tiny emirate a major information crossroads, is keen to expand its cooperation with European companies, the City’s director Muhammad al-Mullah told Adnkronos International (AKI) in an interview. ‘European companies currently represent 35 per cent of the 1,213 companies working here’ the DMC director said. To keep standards high, the City ‘has developed a series of directives for television companies, and also for publishing houses’. Any complaints or issues are referred to an independent judicial body made up of British and Emirate jurists whose task is to assess the problems on the bases of Emirates and international law. Dubai’s media cluster has developed dramatically over the past six years. It now houses some 150 television networks and 120 publishing houses. Business friendly regulatory frameworks and a world class technological and real estate infrastructure have prompted more than 1,200 regional and international media companies to set up operations in Dubai Media City. Dubai Studio City and the International Media Production Zone are two new platforms that have been launched to further strengthen Dubai’s position on the global media scene. (AKI News,February 14, 2007)
A Belgian court ruled on Tuesday that Google may not reproduce extracts from a variety of Belgian newspapers, imperilling one of the web search leader’s most popular services if other courts follow suit. The case was brought by Copiepresse, which manages copyrights for Belgium’s French- and German-language newspapers and has also demanded that the French division of internet portal Yahoo stop displaying Belgian press reports. Copiepresse argues that versions of news articles stored on Google can be seen on its service even after the articles are no longer freely accessible on a newspaper’s website. The Belgian court on Tuesday upheld an existing injunction, although reduced the penalty that Google would face if it chose to publish material from a variety of Belgian French- and German-language newspapers. Following a ruling in September, Google faced a potential EUR 1m per day fine for reproducing articles and was also forced to publish the judgement or pay a further EUR 500,000 per day. The court on Tuesday cut the potential fine to EUR 25,000 per day, Reuters reports.
 Playboy, one of the oldest of the men’s mags, is entering the digital age. Every story, every picture, that has been in the magazine since it was launched by Hugh Hefner in 1953 - including the famous nude picture of Marilyn Monroe that ran on the cover of the first issue - will be accessible on DVD later this year. All 630 issues of the magazine are to be transferred on to six discs - one for each decade - which will be available for USD 100 (EUR 77) each. It is believed to be the first time that a magazine known for its sex and nudity has been digitalised. Playboy has for some time had a website, but no archival system. Old copies of the magazine, if anyone wanted to look up an article or picture, were until now only accessible in bound volumes. To digitalise the magazine more than 115,000 pages had to be ‘converted’ - which meant typing up all the text. Then breaking down each page into such elements as cartoons, advertisements, photos and captions, writes Press Gazette.
Journalists at almost half of Sweden’s newspapers received personal threats in 2006. Two thirds of all newspaper editors were threatened with physical injury or damage to property during the same period. In some cases the threats had the desired effect, as newspapers decided to drop their coverage of sensitive issues, according to a study carried out by Mid Sweden University in Sundsvall. The report details a number of specific incidents, including that of a journalist whose post box was blown to pieces. In another case, an editor was threatened in his office by an unwanted visitor bearing a pair of scissors. Over the last few years, studies have shown that local politicians are exposed to more threats than ever before. According to the report, politicians and journalists often find themselves used as pawns in the same game. (The Local,February 13, 2007)
The British Observer has begun experimenting with a web-first strategy for news. The Observer published a story on its website at 6.30pm Thursday which revealed that the Suffolk bird flu turkeys may have caught the virus from a batch of imported Hungarian birds. Kamal Ahmed, executive editor, news, said the newspaper broke with the tradition of saving exclusives for Sunday’s paper because it had lost too many scoops in the past - but he stressed that breaking news online would not be a regular practice. ‘But we’ve got to be careful - it’s not something we are going to do day by day. We’re about giving our readers the best stories and analysis every Sunday. If we turn ourselves into a news organisation that sprays out stories all the time then we lose the very value of what we do on a Sunday.’ (Press Gazette,February 12, 2007)
China’s Communist Party’s propaganda department has set up a points-based penalty system for the print media in a stepped-up effort to tighten its grip on the sector ahead of a crucial party congress this autumn, according to sources. Media outlets will be allocated 12 points each and subject to closure if all their points are deducted. The party sources said a taskforce - comprising officials from the party’s publicity department and the General Administration of Press and Publication, a government media watchdog - would determine point deductions based on the severity of wrongdoing. It is not known how the severity of a wrongdoing would be determined, but each penalty would attract a 1, 3, 6 or 12-point deduction, sources familiar with the process said. Senior state media executives confirmed they had been briefed on the penalty system but said they had not been given details. (South China Morning Post via Asia Media,February 12, 2007)
The average unique audience for newspaper websites grew by more than 10m in 2006, an increase of 22 per cent from 2005, according to a report by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America. The unique audience for newspaper websites increased to 56.4m in 2006 from 46.1m in 2005. Unique visitors in the fourth quarter rose 6.9 per cent, to 57.6m, from 53.6m in the year-earlier period. The NAA’s membership accounts for 87 per cent of the daily newspaper circulation in the US (BtoBonline.com,February 09, 2007)
Read the NAA pressrelease here: Link
A book claiming that executed former dictator Saddam Hussein is actually alive and well has become a best seller and is reported to have sold more copies than any other title at the Middle East’s foremost literary event, the Cairo International Book Fair, which ended on Sunday. ‘Saddam was not executed’ is the title of the work published just two weeks ago by Egyptian journalist and writer Anis Al-Daghidi. The book, which satellite channel Al-Arabiya claimed had outsold the novels of the late Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz at the recent book fair, argues that the former Iraqi dictator is not only not dead, but that he had never even been captured and that a double was hung in his place on 30 December. The theories of al-Daghidi are not limited to Saddam Hussein alone. In the 365-page work, even Uday and Qusay, Saddam’s two notorious sons, are still alive and well - their deaths in a US raid in Mosul in July 2003, for Al Daghidi, were an American invention. (AKI News, February 08, 2007)
A Swiss military court’s announced Tuesday that it has indicted three Swiss journalists working for the weekly SonntagsBlick for publishing a leaked document on 8 January 2006 ‘dealing with supposed places of detention and interrogation methods used by the US foreign intelligence service (CIA).’ The three journalists will face up to five years in prison for ‘violating defence secrecy’ when they are tried in April. According to the indictment, publication of the leaked document caused considerable damage to Switzerland’s strategic intelligence service. Reporters Without Borders questions the legitimacy of the decision to try the journalists before a military court after the idea of a civil prosecution was abandoned. The offending SonntagsBlick article confirmed the existence of US detention centres in Europe and was based on a fax from the Egyptian foreign ministry which had been intercepted by Swiss military intelligence and then leaked to the three journalists. Classified as a ‘defence secret,’ it was the first confirmation of the existence of CIA prisons in Europe. A separate military prosecution is bring brought against the persons who allegedly leaked it. (Reporters Without Borders,February 08, 2007)
The number of daily newspaper titles published worldwide has risen above 10,000 for the first time ever, according to the World Association of Newspapers. The WAN World Press Trends survey shows that global newspaper circulation has risen almost 10 per cent over five years, 2.36 per cent of which was last year, while European growth was 2.12 per cent over five years: some 4.18 per cent of which was in the past year. CEO Timothy Balding said: ‘What we are seeing completely contradicts the conventional wisdom that newspapers are in terminal decline.’ The number of free dailies circulated has more than doubled in the last five years from 12m copies in 2001 to 29m in 2005. Europe has shown the strongest combined paid-for and free newspaper circulation increase, with a rise of almost 15 per cent over five years and 3.31 per cent in 2005. According to Balding, the newspaper industry is worth USD 180bn (EUR 139bn) globally and employs more than 2m people. (Press Gazette,February 07, 2007)
All editors like to think they know their readers. A former editor of The Daily Telegraph claimed to be able to identify a reader at a hundred paces, generally with a wince. But the executives at British publisher IPC have taken reader-research to new lengths in Tuesday’s delivery of their weekly glossy, Look. Look is IPC’s biggest launch, to which it is committing GBP 18m (EUR 27m) with the help of Groupe Marie Claire. For periods in the two years preceding the launch, editors and executives were required to go way beyond conventional procedures and actually move in with potential readers, bunking up in spare rooms round the country, going down the pub, and sharing the meals, dreams and lives of ordinary young women. It’s called ‘immersion research’, or ethnography - the need not just to understand your reader, but to ‘know their DNA’, as IPC puts it. While IPC’s research reflects the highly competitive nature of the market now facing magazines, the technique has also been used by other media outlets, including the BBC, where director-general Mark Thompson and Tim Davie, the Corporation’s marketing director, have booked in whole days with ordinary people, noting exactly what they do, say and watch. (The Independent,February 05, 2007)
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