05 Feb 10
Weekly Broadcast News
5th February 2010
Premier League to 'get £1bn TV windfall'
English Premier League clubs will soon receive a £1bn windfall from a new worldwide TV rights agreement, it has emerged. The current rights deal for international broadcasters to show games from the league stands at £645m. However, a new three-year agreement currently being negotiated by Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore is expected to be worth significantly more. According to reports, Scudamore is still negotiating parts of the deal, with key markets in China and Russia yet to be finalised, but he is confident that the resulting agreement will surpass £1bn. If finalised, the recession-defying deal would bring £50m in revenue to each of the 20 clubs in the league, but paid in staggered instalments. Domestic rights agreements with Sky, ESPN and the BBC already bring £1.8bn to the Premier League, helping make it the richest in the world.
Govt reduces TV product placement plan
The government's plan to relax the rules governing product placement on TV has been scaled back following public health opposition from ministers. Under the new arrangement, TV producers will still be banned from featuring any branded alcohol, junk food or gambling products in their programmes. The revision comes after health secretary Andy Burnham and environment secretary Hilary Benn lobbied strongly against certain parts of culture secretary Ben Bradshaw's initiative to free up TV product placement regulations. Echoing similar concerns expressed by the British Medical Association, Burnham and Benn argued that unrestricted advertising could lead to an increase in various public health threats, such as obesity and alcohol addiction. The new proposal means that products by firms such as Coca-Cola and McDonald's will be excluded from product placement on TV, which could represent a major blow for broadcasters hoping to unlock millions in additional revenue. However, Whitehall insiders stated that the public health risks posed from permitting such advertising should take precedence over the need to generate short-term income for commercial broadcasters.
UCL Final edges Super Bowl in TV ratings
The UEFA Champions League final replaced the NFL's Super Bowl last year as the most watched annual sporting event, a new survey has revealed. Staged on 27th May, Manchester United's game against Barcelona pulled in an audience of 109m, growing to 206m when factoring in people who watched just part of the coverage. In comparison, the Super Bowl on 1st February between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals attracted 106m, while its total audience standing at 162m. In third place on the most-watched list was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, which closed the Formula 1 season with an audience of 54m. The men's 100 metres final at the athletics world championships, which saw a world record set by Jamaican Usain Bolt, came in fourth with 33m.
The figures, revealed in a report by London-based agency Initiative Futures Sports and Entertainment, show the ratings power of sporting events in a year without a World Cup or Olympic Games. While acknowledging that both the Champions League and NFL continue to grow in popularity, the report said that the former is showing more energy for expansion. The ability of UEFA's showpiece final to open up the Asian market was noted as the main differentiating factor between the two events.
Free LES readership soars to 1.37m
The London Evening Standard's readership has leapt to 1.37m in the last three months of 2009, up from 556,000 from April to September. The readership figures follow the paper going free on 12th October and boosting its distribution to 600,000 copies. Today's figures were trotted out early by the National Readership Survey, a first for the organisation, which will put out its general release for the last quarter readership of newspapers and magazines on 1st March. The NRS figures show that the Standard's proportion of ABC1 readers was 76.7% and that more young people were reading the paper. The proportion of 15-44 year olds has grown from 56.7% to 62%.
Eurosport HD joins Virgin Media
Subscribers to Virgin Media will soon be able to watch sporting events broadcast in high definition following an agreement between the cable provider and Eurosport HD. Eurosport HD will be a simulcast version of the main Eurosport channel, which delivers high quality sporting events from around the world. Subscribers to Sky TV have been able to view Eurosport HD since the middle of 2008, and Virgin Media’s subscribers will only have to wait until April to see their sporting heroes in glorious HD. The addition of Eurosport HD will join seven other HD channels on the Virgin Media platform, but the provider has plans to add more HD content over the coming months.
Commercial radio sees mixed Q4 fortunes
Commercial radio stations experienced mixed fortunes over the last quarter of 2009, with Classic FM suffering a drop in listeners and Heart and TalkSport performing well. According to data released this week by RAJAR, all commercial stations accounted for 31.4m of listeners in the three months to 20th December, representing a 42.6% audience share, slightly up from 42.4% the previous quarter. However, the most popular national commercial station Classic FM suffered a 10% year-on-year decline in its weekly reach to 5.1m listeners, down 5.7% quarter-on-quarter. Absolute Radio had an average weekly reach of 1.5m over the three months, down from 1.6m on the previous quarter. However, Global Radio's Heart 106.2 and 95.8 Capital FM posted strong listening figures to surpass Bauer Radio's Magic 105.4 as the leading stations in London. Magic, which has dominated the London commercial radio figures for three years, saw its audience share decline to 1.82m over the quarter, down 9.4% on the previous three months and 8.8% year-on-year. In comparison, 95.8 Capital FM pulled in 1.83m listeners, up 12.5% year-on-year, and Heart 106.2 attracted 1.88m listeners, up 4.8% year-on-year. Capital's Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Snowdon remained the most popular breakfast team, with 1.23m listeners for their 6-10am show, up from 1.03m on the previous quarter and 981,000 a year ago. UTV-owned station TalkSport's weekly reach held steady at an average of 2.5 million listeners, down 0.8% on the same period in 2008 but up 0.9% quarter-on-quarter. Launched in October 2008, digital-only station Jazz FM had an average of 446,000 listeners over last quarter, up 7.2% quarter-on-quarter. Planet Rock pulled in an average of 698,000 listeners, up 2.6% year-on-year but down 1.4% quarter-on-quarter. NME Radio had an average of 177,000 listeners, up 16.4% year-on-year but down 18.8% on the previous quarter's results.
ITV4 revs up!
ITV4 has reportedly increased its motor sport output for 2010, including coverage of the British Touring Car Championships. All ten rounds of the tournament will be shown for six and a half hours every Sunday. Highlights and features will then run for the rest of the week. The digital channel is to air a total of 120 hours of motor sport coverage across the year, beating its 2009 record. There is still speculation that ITV4 will become a subscription channel in the foreseeable future, after new CEO Adam Crozier was appointed last week.
Facebook turns 6 years old with 400m users
Facebook has marked its sixth birthday by revealing it has more than doubled its number of users in the last year to 400m. Founder Mark Zuckerberg used The Facebook Blog to announce that the social media site would this week be passing 400m users - which is more than the combined populations of the US, UK, Ireland and Australia. A year ago, in February 2009, Facebook announced it had passed the 175m active users mark and in December last year that stat reached 350m - still 50m shy of today's numbers. A range of new navigation tools have been unveiled to coincide with the anniversary, each designed to improve the user experience and some in direct response to consumer feedback. The physical changes to Facebook, which is available in more than 70 languages, include a drop-down menu on each member's homepage listing their newest notifications, requests and messages.
Sources: MediaGuardian.co.uk / BBC / MediaTel / WARC / Digital Spy / brandrepublic.com / nma.co.uk / broadcastnow.co.uk / Ofcom / T3