19 Feb 10
Weekly Broadcast News
19th February 2010
Absolute Radio scores with Premier League commentary
Absolute Radio is to broadcast live Premier League football commentary for the first time, breaking the BBC and TalkSport stranglehold. The station will broadcast 32 Premier League games at 3pm on Saturday afternoons. The three-year deal begins in August this year with the start of the 2010-2011 season. Absolute has picked up one of three Saturday afternoon rights packages being offered by the Premier League. It has secured the "second pick" of matches. Currently Saturday afternoon games are divided into two rights packages, with BBC Radio 5 Live taking first pick, and TalkSport the second. The live football commentaries will be broadcast on Absolute's national AM frequency, while its London FM licence will continue to broadcast its current Rock n Roll Football Show. Absolute plans to split its national DAB signal to allow listeners to choose either service. The plan still has to be approved by Ofcom. Both streams will be available in the UK online. Absolute Radio's weekly reach fell to 1.49m listeners in the fourth quarter of last year, down from 1.59m in the previous three months. But the average number of hours its listeners tune in increased to 7.6 hours, the highest in the station's history, including its previous incarnation as Virgin Radio.
European Commission says yes to Microsoft & Yahoo deal
Microsoft and Yahoo’s proposed search deal has been approved by the European Commission. It said the ten-year deal, which will see Yahoo’s search service powered by Microsoft’s Bing, “wouldn’t significantly impede effective competition”. The deal was struck by the two companies last July to allow Microsoft and Yahoo to compete more effectively against Google, which has almost 90% market share in the UK alone. It’s also being assessed by the US Department of Justice, with a decision expected by June. If approved, for the first five years Yahoo will take 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales and will be given the chance to sell ads on some Microsoft sites. For the remaining five years Yahoo will retain 93% of revenue earned. The deal was announced a month after Microsoft launched Bing, its latest attempt at breaking the search market. In the six months since rollout Bing has gained traction, being the fastest growing search engine in the US in December.
Online brands increasingly turn to TV advertising
TV advertising by online brands has increased by £170m in the past five years as more web companies look to television to boost their presence, according to new research. Data from Nielsen Media Research, which has been analysed by Thinkbox, suggests TV spend now accounts for 71.5% of online brands' advertising investment, when online search is excluded. The figures including search were not disclosed. In 2009, online brands accounted for 5.5% of all TV spot-advertising revenues and more than 20 programme sponsors were online brands. The rise in TV spend from online brands is equivalent to an average of 172% a year, over the past five years. Thinkbox said the number of online brands advertising on TV had jumped from 34 to 289 in the same period. In 2004, TV ad spend by online companies was just £10m. High profile internet companies have recently looked to TV advertising. Google spent $5m for a slot during the Super Bowl and online TV venture SeeSaw says it intends to spend big on TV advertising.
Sky Movies Screen 1 to become Showcase
Sky Movies has announced that a new Showcase channel will soon replace Screen 1 as part of planned changes to its channel lineup. Launching on 26th March, Sky Movies Showcase/HD will carry box sets, collections and seasons, starting with The Mummy Weekend featuring all three movies in the series. Over the course of 2010, the channel will carry various other seasons showcasing a genre, director or star, including a Tim Burton weekend, Canine Capers and Need For Speed - The Ultimate Car, all in HD. Sky Movies also plans to reshuffle its bouquet of ten channels to achieve greater "clarity" for subscribers. The changes include Sky Movies Action & Thriller becoming Sky Movies Action & Adventure/HD, Sky Movies Drama will change to Sky Movies Drama & Romance/HD and Sky Movies Screen 2 will be rebranded as Sky Movies Crime & Thriller/HD.
Amazon launches free Kindle app for BlackBerry
Amazon.com has launched new free Kindle application for the BlackBerry that will give access to more than 420,000 books. Imaginatively named not, the "Kindle for Blackberry" app is likely to spur Apple to greater heights in sourcing content deals for its incoming iPad, a key selling point for which is expected to be e-book access. The e-book sector looks to be taking off, with a number of big players looking to take a junk of the market. Google is appearing in a US court to debate its plan to scan millions of books and create an online digital library – a scheme some publishers have objected to.
Soft launch for SeeSaw
Online TV service SeeSaw fully launched on Wednesday (17.02.10) in the UK today following a brief beta test, which started at the end of January. The TV streaming service - built on the blueprint of Project Kangaroo after it was blocked by the Competition Commission - had around 20,000 users for the trial. It launched with over 3,000 hours of free-to-view content, from partners including BBC Worldwide, Five and Channel 4, and is funded by 60-second ads before and during shows. SeeSaw aims to offer a further 2,000 hours of programming on the service in time for the launch of a premium paid-for model, which will take place in Q2, with more details to be confirmed.
CNBC to launch on Freesat
CNBC has announced plans to launch next week on Freesat after it recently went free-to-air in the UK on the Sky platform. From 23rd February, the business and financial news channel will be available on Freesat at position 210 in the electronic programming guide. CNBC broadcasts seven hours of live programming every day to EMEA markets from its main studio in the City of London. Since it commenced broadcasting in EMEA in 1998, CNBC is now available in 110m households in these regions, including 12m in the UK. Alongside Freesat, CNBC is also carried on Sky (channel 505), Virgin Media (613) and TalkTalk TV (510). There are just over 600,000 Freesat homes.
NPA to challenge BBC mobile apps
The Newspaper Publishers Association has claimed that the BBC's forthcoming applications for mobile devices will undermine the emerging market for commercial players. The BBC yesterday unveiled a range of free applications for delivering its online services to mobile devices and smartphones, starting with BBC News in April and BBC Sport in May. At first, the apps will be made available on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch, before expanding to RIM's Blackberry and all Google Android-enabled handsets. However, the NPA said in an emailed statement that the apps will "undermine the commercial sector's ability to establish an economic model in an emerging but potentially important market". The trade body, which represents major publishers such as Associated Newspapers, the Financial Times and Guardian News & Media, also claimed that the apps will reduce its members' "ability to invest in quality journalism" over the longer-term. Many newspapers have already launched their own mobile apps or are in the process of doing so. Before the BBC apps can go live, the NPA plans to lodge an objection with the BBC Trust calling on the governing body to apply its Public Value Test to the service. It will also actively lobby the Department for Culture Media and Sport and House of Commons media select committee to block the apps from launching. In response, the BBC said that it does not require clearance from the Trust as the apps are merely a repackaging of existing services rather than being a wholly new initiative. The Trust also expressed its satisfaction that the plans meet all requirements in the BBC's online service licence.
and finally…
EastEnders plot suspense in first live broadcast
Archie Mitchell’s killer will be told of their guilt only 30 minutes before tonight’s live episode of EastEnders is broadcast, soap bosses have revealed. Scriptwriters have penned 10 possible endings to the episode, with each of the different suspects rehearsing their scene unaware of which will make the show. The first ever live episode is to mark the soap’s 25th anniversary, and brings to an end the guessing game which began when Archie (Larry Lamb) was murdered in the Queen Vic on Christmas Day. There will be a slight time delay before the episode appears on screen in case of difficulties, but a soap spokeswoman stressed it would be “a matter of seconds”.
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