12 Feb 10
Weekly Broadcast News
12th February 2010
Absolute Radio to broadcast live Premier League matches
Absolute Radio has signed a three year deal to broadcast live Premier League football matches at 3pm on Saturdays, starting from the 2010-2011 season. Premier League rights packages are currently split into two, with BBC Radio 5 Live and talkSPORT taking first and second picks respectively, but from next season there will be three packages, with Absolute securing the second pick. The station's current Rock n Roll Football Show will continue to be broadcast on Absolute's London FM frequency, with the live commentaries on its national AM frequency, and, if Ofcom approves, it will split its DAB broadcast, allowing listeners to choose between shows.
£350m hit for Sky
Sky has lost £349.5m on its ITV investment after reducing its 17.9% stake to 7.5%, following a final ruling by the Competition Commission. On Monday night (08.02.10), just over 404m shares were placed on the market by Morgan Stanley, achieving a price of 48.5p per share, totalling £195.9m. More than one bidder is understood to have been involved. Sky had paid 135p per share, valuing the shares sold yesterday at £545.4m. Former chief executive James Murdoch bought the 17.9% stake in a surprise move in November 2006, intending to keep Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster away from a merger with pay-TV rival NTL. Concern about Sky's influence over ITV led to the intervention of the Competition Commission, which ruled in December 2007 that Sky should reduce its stake to 7.5%. After spending two years appealing against the decision, Sky yesterday gave up on its last possible option of appealing to the Supreme Court and divested 10.4% of the broadcaster. However, the broadcaster said it intends to retain its remaining 7.5% investment in ITV "for the medium term, and to remain a committed shareholder of ITV".
Record Touchdown for Super Bowl
This year's Super Bowl has become the most watched television broadcast in US history, attracting a US audience of over 106m people. According to Nielsen, Monday (08.02.10) night's 44th Super Bowl between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints on CBS broke a 27-year year record, held by TV comedy MASH.
The final episode of MASH, screened on 28th February 1983, attracted 105.97m viewers. Last year's Super Bowl, in which the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Arizona Cardinals, drew a then-record audience of 98.7 million.
Of the nearly 60 ads shown during Monday's game, a BBDO-created Snickers spot topped a USA Today poll of America's favourite commercials. Other brands to advertise included Doritos, which ran four spots, Google, and Bud Light. Google used the Super Bowl to break its TV silence by airing their first TV commercial . In the UK, just 800,000 tuned in to watch the Super Bowl live on BBC1.
Evening Standard goes Kindle in the US
The London Evening Standard has launched a Kindle edition of the newspaper in the US. For $9.99 a month, Kindle users can sign up to receive a daily copy of the Evening Standard via wireless as hard copies hit the news-stands in the UK. The London freesheet has launched its electronic version with a 14-day free trial period in a bid to attract US readers. It joins other British titles to be made available on Amazon's e-reader, including the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, the FT and The Independent. Most UK titles run with a higher monthly subscription fee of $22.99, with the exception of the Financial Times' UK edition, which is priced at $27.99. The Evening Standard is also understood to be planning a UK launch, although a time-frame for the roll out is still to be confirmed. With new devices being released all the time, publishers are expected to be working on new digital formats which are compatible with e-readers, the iPad and iPhone, as a means of reaching more consumers, boosting circulation figures and generating extra revenue streams.
C4 to drop Friends after 15 years
After 15 years Channel 4 has announced that it is to drop the smash-hit sitcom, in order to free up cash to “refresh its schedule” with original programming and US buy-ins. The station has agreed with Warner Bros, the programme's distributor, to end its rights to the series in the autumn of 2011 - around the same time as the final series of Big Brother draws to a close. The Manhattan sitcom first aired in 1995 and became a ratings hit for the channel, with viewers soon hooked on the daily banter, the will-they-won't-they relationships and the haircuts of Rachel, Phoebe, Chandler, Joey, Ross and Monica. After ten series, the final episode of Friends which aired in 2004, drew an audience of 8.6 million viewers. E4 has screened two repeat episodes of the series every night for the past six years, still drawing an average of 400,000 viewers.
In 2009 - Friends contributed 2% of all Channel 4's programme impacts (actuals) and E4 contributed 31%.
(AdvantEdge / All Individuals / UK Terrestrial Network - All Chs)
Freeview HD 'could take 350,000 Sky subs'
New research has indicated that around 350,000 Sky+ HD households could make the switch to digital terrestrial television when Freeview HD reaches the market. According to a YouGov survey of 2,063 adults commissioned by Freeview, 17% of Sky subscribers with the Sky+ HD service said that they were "likely" to change their main set to Freeview HD when it becomes available. Last month, it was announced that over 10 million UK households currently have Freeview on their main sets, with 18.2m sets in total receiving the service. Freeview HD will be commercially launched within the next six weeks, including a range of set-top-boxes, PVRs and IDTVs coming on to the market. Early price reports suggest that a Freeview HD receiver will be around £130 but a Freeview+ HD box will cost over £300. At first, BBC HD will be available on the platform, along with Channel 4 HD and ITV HD, which is a new up-scaled simulcast of the ITV1 channel. A HD simulcast of Five is expected to follow by the end of the year, with the service hoping to have five HD channels available by 2012. However, the available HD content will be much less than the over 30 HD channels currently available on Sky. The YouGov survey indicated that 18% of UK homes still receiving analogue TV services intend to switch to Freeview HD, with an equivalent amount of existing Freeview households also planning to upgrade. Only 12% of Virgin Media subscribers said that they would switch. Freeview intends to launch a major marketing push for its HD platform, including a coverage check database for users to find out when they will get access to the service
One in five UK consumers owns a smartphone
Approximately one in five UK consumers now owns a smartphone that can check email and go online, according to a new report from Deloitte. Deloitte's annual survey, State of the Media Democracy, found that 21% of consumers are using smartphones and that they ranked fourth among owners in terms of the product they value most. The survey examines how British consumers aged 14 to 75 are currently consuming media, and what their preferences might be in the future. Overall mobile phone ownership has held up well, Deloitte found, with nearly nine-in-ten (88%) consumers owning a mobile of some type. The use of mobile internet access is up from last year, driven primarily by consumers in their teens, 20s and 30s. However, text-messaging, followed by digital camera use, remain the most frequently used mobile phone features (92% and 79%, respectively) across all age groups.
100m dial up Facebook
Facebook has reported that more than 100m users are now accessing the social networking site via their mobiles, following a steep pick-up since September. The new figure means the company's mobile user base has almost doubled in the past six months, thanks in part to the improved simplicity of access to the site from all the major handset manufacturers. The rise also follows a redesign of the Facebook mobile site, which has now been made available in more than 70 languages. In December, Nielsen ranked Facebook as the third most popular mobile site in the world, behind Google Search and Yahoo Mail.
And finally …the daily national newspaper market managed to boost its total circulation in January, up by 1.1% period on period. Titles from all three categories - quality, mid-market and popular - recorded increases in the month:
Sources: MediaGuardian.co.uk / BBC / MediaTel / WARC / Digital Spy / brandrepublic.com / nma.co.uk / broadcastnow.co.uk / Ofcom / T3