Four of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are considering launching an interactive TV channel in Europe. The prospect has caused outrage among some consumer groups, because advertising prescription drugs directly to patients in the European Union is illegal. They warn that the pharmaceutical giants will find it impossible to give unbiased advice about their own products. But the drug companies involved - Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble - insist they are only interested in giving reliable high quality health information which would help patients when they were discussing their treatments with doctors. They have even made a ten-minute DVD of what the new interactive TV channel might look like - although a spokesman for one of the firms concerned said the plan was at a very early stage. ‘The European Patient Information Channel is simply a name given to an interactive information tool,’ he says. ‘It does not exist, nor is it in development. The purpose of creating this model was to provide an example of how quality information might be provided to Europeans in the future. The drug companies also insist they have no wish to challenge the current ban on advertising prescription drugs directly to patients in Europe. Those regulations are currently being reviewed by the European Commission. (BBC News)
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Two free newspapers in London are fighting a circulation battle on the streets.One of the papers, London Lite, sent a video recently to media buyers that showed distributors ostensibly dumping 2,900 copies of its rival, The London Paper, into garbage bins. The London Paper responded by saying that it had pictures of dumped copies of London Lite.
The accusations matter to advertisers because newspaper ad prices are largely based on circulation. The British Audit Bureau of Circulations, an industry group, said that it would investigate.
The London Paper has a circulation of about 502,000, according to the audit bureau, in contrast to 400,000 for London Lite. But analysts say it is hard to know how many of those copies are actually read, because The London Paper and London Lite are distributed by street hawkers who try to press as many copies as they can into the hands of evening commuters, writes the New York Times.
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Joost, the Internet TV company founded by Europe’s top Web entrepreneurs, has taken a big step towards commercial viability by signing up 31 advertisers worldwide ahead of the launch of its free service. The company, aiming to become a new kind of global cable TV network on the Web, was started last year by Niklas Zennstrom and partner Janus Friis, founders of Web phone company Skype, now owned by eBay Inc., and music-sharing site KaZaA. Joost aims to combine TV-like viewing with the wide choice and user control of the latest generation of Web services. Luxembourg-based Joost has already signed broad programming partnership deals with Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. as well as independent producers. It said marketers that have agreed to support its ad-supported network worldwide include Coca-Cola Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., and Nike. U.S. backers include Visa, United Airlines and the U.S. Army, consumer goods suppliers such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Kraft Foods Inc. and technology companies Electronic Arts Inc., Sony Electronics Inc., Microsoft and Motorola. In Europe, advertising partners include General Motors Europe; IBM; L’Oreal Paris; Nokia’s N-series phones; Vodafone; and Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. the company said. (Reuters)
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