09 Apr 10
Weekly Broadcast News
9th April 2010
Government forces through Digital Bill
The government has forced through its digital economy bill, with the controversial measures, including a blocking of persistent online copyright pirates, now expected to become law. Despite opposition from the Liberal Democrats and former Cabinet minister Tom Watson, the bill passed through the committee stage with help from the Conservative party. After two hours of debate during its third reading, the legislation was voted through by 189 to 47 shortly after midnight. However, culture secretary Ben Bradshaw was forced to ditch clause 18 of the bill, which would have enabled large-scale new powers to block offending websites. The measure was instead amended in clause 8 to give the secretary of state power to get an injunction against "a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright". The government also dropped its proposal for a 50p monthly levy on all UK landlines to help fund the rollout of high-speed broadband networks. However, the bill's new powers to cut off the internet connections of persistent online copyright pirates in a 'three strikes' process were voted through without amendment. Numerous MPs complained that the bill was too important and its ramifications too great for it to be pushed through in this "wash-up" period in which bills are not given the usual detailed examination.
ESPN to offer Premier League mobile clips
ESPN has secured mobile rights to highlights from all Premier League games from next season, after beating Sky to the deal. The Disney-owned sports broadcaster has won a three-year deal for short-form mobile highlights from all 380 Premier League games. It is thought that ESPN paid under £10m for the rights in a blind auction. Under the new arrangement, ESPN will deliver in-match, post match and customised highlights to mobile smartphones in the UK. The clips can be issued during any matches not kicking off at 3pm on Saturdays, with highlights from those games only being permitted for release after 4.45pm. Sky previously held the mobile rights after picking them up two years ago from Vodafone and 3. The satellite broadcaster offered the highlights on its 24-7 Football service, with users asked to pay £5 per month or 50p per clip. The platform also carried Champions League highlights, along with Sky Sports News and Soccer AM clips. Despite losing the short-form coverage, Sky will continue to show full live games on mobile phones via its Sky Mobile TV app.
Premier League to fight Ofcom pay-TV move
The Premier League is reportedly preparing a legal challenge against Ofcom's ruling that Sky must reduce the price of its premium sport channels for rival operators. Last Wednesday, the media regulator said that Sky must offer Sky Sports 1 and 2 to rivals at 23.4% under the current price of £13.88 to just £10.63 per subscriber per month. As most consumers currently purchase packages including both channels, the wholesale price for service bundles has also been reduced by 10.5% from £19.15 to £17.14. Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore has tasked law firm DLA Piper with analysing Ofcom's 650-page pay-TV consultation document to check its legal viability. Scudamore also joined the ECB and Rugby Football Union in decrying the watchdog's ruling, which he described as "misconceived and unjustified". UK sporting bodies believe that Ofcom's model will result in broadcasters paying a reduced amount for media rights, which would therefore mean less money being available for grassroots sport development in Britain. In February, Sky paid £1.62 billion for rights to broadcast 115 out of 138 live Premier League games for the next three seasons, starting in August.
Murdoch wants papers to exclude Google & Microsoft
Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and Managing Director of News Corporation, which is the second largest media conglomerate in the world, has asked Google and Microsoft to refrain from using news sites owned by News Corp., for their search engine news services. Speaking at a conference in the National Press Club, the media mogul told journalists that media forefronts owned by his company, like the Wall Street Journal, will do whatever it takes to stop internet companies like Google and Microsoft from using their news content for powering their own news services.
Rallying for the entire news publishing community, Murdoch declared that it was about time that they 'took a stand' against the free viewing and usage of their stories and news features by major internet companies, which, instead of sharing revenue, make money at their expense. Interestingly, when asked whether or not people will be willing to pay for news content, Murdoch, said that people had nowhere to go except for paying for news online or buying newspapers like they used to.
91.4% of UK homes have digital TV
Sales of HD-ready TVs reached almost 23m by the end of 2009, with digital TV now reaching 91.4% of UK homes, according to new research from Ofcom. The regulator's Digital Progress Report for Q4 2009 reveals that around 70% of the total TV sales for the quarter were HD ready (2.3m). Q4 also saw the highest quarterly sales of TV sets so far (3.4 million). High Definition receivers accounted for 80% of BBC/ITV Freesat sales by the end of the quarter, equivalent to around 720,000 sales. In March this year, 4.5 million homes received Freeview HD coverage for the first time, including the cities of Birmingham, Leeds and Cardiff. Freeview officially launched its HD service last week, with Channel 4 HD joining ITV1 HD and the BBC HD channel on Freeview HD.
Apple unveils 'one-billion-a-day' iPhone ad platform
Apple has revealed details of its new mobile advertising platform, allowing advertisers to run campaigns that "combine the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web", as the company targets delivering one billion ad impressions a day. The platform, called iAd, will be pre-installed in the new iPhone 4.0 operating system, set to be released this summer, and will give advertisers the ability to run full-screen video and interactive ad content without requiring the user to navigate away from an app. iAd will also make it much easier for developers to embed new ad executions into their apps, and gives them greater scope to produce more interactive and better quality content.
Developers will receive 60% of iAd revenue, while Apple will handle all sales and inventory. The new platform follows Apple's acquisition of Quattro Wireless in January, a company that specialises in creating targeted mobile advertising.
It is estimated that an average iPhone user spends around 30 minutes each day using apps, which would mean that around one billion ad impressions would be generated every 24 hours.
Snippets usually taken from the following sources: MediaGuardian.co.uk / BBC / MediaTel / WARC / Digital Spy / brandrepublic.com / nma.co.uk / broadcastnow.co.uk / Ofcom / T3 / FT