In an unexpected move, Tesco bought the UK VOD company Blinkbox. Tesco's are well-known to branching out from simply groceries - this week they were talking about offering mortgages to their customers soon - but is this one move too far?
My thoughts are with all these VOD services, will the public migrate from their traditional viewing habits as these VOD operators are hoping. Sky recently launched Sky Anytime+ which features lots of on demand programmes on their new HD boxes tailored to the subscriptions. Before this, the only service providers offering VOD on TV was Virgin Media and BT Vision. Customers have adapted well to viewing on their PC's with the likes of the BBC iPlayer but this hasn't dented BSkyB's impressive 10m subscribers one bit.
When you look at the online services, such as Blinkbox, there are quite a few players now in the market: Lovefilm (bought by Amazon recently), SeeSaw (owned by transmission specialists Aquiva), and Vudu (which Wallmart bought last year). Working in TV myself I can tell you that buying up content for these online services is very expensive. Getting exclusive content, considerably more so. Sure all the aforementioned companies have deep pockets but at what point will they walk away from the picnic?
BSkyB's Anytime+ service is crammed full of exclusive content linked with their exclusive deal with HBO, plus film studio deals boasting deals that prevented their competitors from showing films when Sky weren't in a position to show them on-demand themselves. Now they are though and the Anytime+ service is a reason for the other guys to start to worry. For instance, Virgin Media sold their channels (Living, Bravo etc) to BSkyB so they could change their focus on building an on-demand product for their customers. Again, BT Vision's main selling point has been on-demand programmes - including an HBO-branded section in the EPG. Now Sky has taken the HBO programming away and on demand is now widely available elsewhere how will they respond to this new threat from Sky?
Sky already offer a good selection of their programming online through their Sky Player service so they are doing a very good job to cover their bases. So if this is the case, and they continue to lock in exclusive studio deals - don't forget the 20th Century Fox connection - then the acquisition of Blinkbox by Tesco could well prove to be a purchase of a great product but without any major content. A battle between Britain's biggest most profitable retailer and Britain's most profitable broadcaster could may be on the cards before long.
Working on the launch of ESPN
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Why has local commercial radio lost the plot?
Commercial radio in most cases has always been a bit of a mess. And right now it's in an even bigger mess. Why? It has a clear problem with its own identity. I started off in BBC local radio and progressed to producing the breakfast show on the UK's largest national commercial radio station so I have always had more than a strong interest in this area.
In the late 1980's and 90's local radio largely was filled with below-par nasal DJ's who weren't too far removed from Alan Partridge. Cheesy, deeply unfunny, and cringeworthy. However back then there was lots of local content in the form of roadshows getting involved with the community, commentaries from the sporting scene, travel-spotting planes (yes really!) and lots and lots of local news. In fact, it was only until recently that Radio City in Liverpool, my local station when growing up, stopped manning a local newsroom with bulletins 24 hours a day. Even stations in London took IRN at 3AM - it was a real landmark when they stopped this.
Move forward to present day and things are very different. There are lots of small community stations and all the other stations have either changed name, changed format, or gone bust. There are a few exceptions but it is not a good future for the industry when it is already fighting against the uber-cool ipod generation.
But the big problem I have with local commercial radio is with the moronic (there, I've said it) Programme Directors. Go and pick a local station and then tell me where the local content is? I was in the car with Heart playing with the local drive programme on when we had a link which went along the lines of "More music non-stop on a Friday afternoon here on Heart". End of.
My massive issue with such links and presenters using them are thus. You are a local station. Don't pretend you are something you are not. Why do these tinpot local stations insist of wanting to playing lots of songs back to back? Why? You are supposed to be giving us local news, what's on and general community issues. Play music non-stop? Nah, my iPod does that nicely and has a far better choice of music than you guys for sure.
The problem is if you want to be a dynamite music machine you can't honestly claim to be local too. You could be coming from London, Los Angeles, or Leningrad. There was a national Top 40 radio station broadcasting from Ireland in the 90's called Atlantic 252 which played the hits and nothing else 24/7. Fine, it wasn't local and therefore covered a niche in the UK which didn't have any other national Top 40 station other than BBC Radio 1 - which was decidedly cheesy at the time you must remember.
We lost dozens and dozens of local stations instantly when the Heart network was introduced across the UK. I should feel sorry for these stations which have been consigned to the history books but in reality I feel they actually have got their comeuppance at last. For years all the stations have been playing "the most music", "more music less talk", "the best music mix", "the most music", "today's best music" and so many more pathetic attempts of Programme Directors 'playing' radio.
The idea of cutting all these small local stations and creating national brands is just common sense to me. The local stations were so keen to be music machines that they lost track of their major USP - their locality. Any presenter who says to me "more music less talk" to me is basically saying to me "I'm a rent-a-gob DJ and don't give two hoots about losing my job 'cos I'm too darn lazy to create local content. All I care about it pretending I work for a big national station and tell you how much music we play." I mean, never mind networking from Leicester Square why not network from New York? Tell me about having fewer interruptions for commercials but fill the time with proper local info.You don't deserve to have that presenting job you have. You can still mix in Top 40 music if your format dictates but please don't neglect your key selling point. In the early 1990's Capital FM was the most dynamic radio station in Europe which screamed "London" so much you almost felt they went overboard. They dominated the airwaves completely and were doing a fantastic job in the community. It wasn't rocket science, they just did their job. It ain't that hard.
Now we have these local stations creating national brands and you read plenty about people complaining about job losses, station's closing down etc. Seriously guys, as soon as these stations started sounding exactly the same then the need for anything other than a national station was never in doubt.
At least the BBC local radio stations continue to offer a fantastic service but these local commercial radio stations are self-destructing all by themselves. Pointless links, a tiny playlist, and local content at an absolute fraction of what it was originally. I mean, who in a million years would willingly choose to listen to this station? Tell me please. I'm going back to my iPod personally... At least there will be more music and no talk. Thankfully.
In the late 1980's and 90's local radio largely was filled with below-par nasal DJ's who weren't too far removed from Alan Partridge. Cheesy, deeply unfunny, and cringeworthy. However back then there was lots of local content in the form of roadshows getting involved with the community, commentaries from the sporting scene, travel-spotting planes (yes really!) and lots and lots of local news. In fact, it was only until recently that Radio City in Liverpool, my local station when growing up, stopped manning a local newsroom with bulletins 24 hours a day. Even stations in London took IRN at 3AM - it was a real landmark when they stopped this.
Move forward to present day and things are very different. There are lots of small community stations and all the other stations have either changed name, changed format, or gone bust. There are a few exceptions but it is not a good future for the industry when it is already fighting against the uber-cool ipod generation.
But the big problem I have with local commercial radio is with the moronic (there, I've said it) Programme Directors. Go and pick a local station and then tell me where the local content is? I was in the car with Heart playing with the local drive programme on when we had a link which went along the lines of "More music non-stop on a Friday afternoon here on Heart". End of.
My massive issue with such links and presenters using them are thus. You are a local station. Don't pretend you are something you are not. Why do these tinpot local stations insist of wanting to playing lots of songs back to back? Why? You are supposed to be giving us local news, what's on and general community issues. Play music non-stop? Nah, my iPod does that nicely and has a far better choice of music than you guys for sure.
The problem is if you want to be a dynamite music machine you can't honestly claim to be local too. You could be coming from London, Los Angeles, or Leningrad. There was a national Top 40 radio station broadcasting from Ireland in the 90's called Atlantic 252 which played the hits and nothing else 24/7. Fine, it wasn't local and therefore covered a niche in the UK which didn't have any other national Top 40 station other than BBC Radio 1 - which was decidedly cheesy at the time you must remember.
We lost dozens and dozens of local stations instantly when the Heart network was introduced across the UK. I should feel sorry for these stations which have been consigned to the history books but in reality I feel they actually have got their comeuppance at last. For years all the stations have been playing "the most music", "more music less talk", "the best music mix", "the most music", "today's best music" and so many more pathetic attempts of Programme Directors 'playing' radio.
The idea of cutting all these small local stations and creating national brands is just common sense to me. The local stations were so keen to be music machines that they lost track of their major USP - their locality. Any presenter who says to me "more music less talk" to me is basically saying to me "I'm a rent-a-gob DJ and don't give two hoots about losing my job 'cos I'm too darn lazy to create local content. All I care about it pretending I work for a big national station and tell you how much music we play." I mean, never mind networking from Leicester Square why not network from New York? Tell me about having fewer interruptions for commercials but fill the time with proper local info.You don't deserve to have that presenting job you have. You can still mix in Top 40 music if your format dictates but please don't neglect your key selling point. In the early 1990's Capital FM was the most dynamic radio station in Europe which screamed "London" so much you almost felt they went overboard. They dominated the airwaves completely and were doing a fantastic job in the community. It wasn't rocket science, they just did their job. It ain't that hard.
Now we have these local stations creating national brands and you read plenty about people complaining about job losses, station's closing down etc. Seriously guys, as soon as these stations started sounding exactly the same then the need for anything other than a national station was never in doubt.
At least the BBC local radio stations continue to offer a fantastic service but these local commercial radio stations are self-destructing all by themselves. Pointless links, a tiny playlist, and local content at an absolute fraction of what it was originally. I mean, who in a million years would willingly choose to listen to this station? Tell me please. I'm going back to my iPod personally... At least there will be more music and no talk. Thankfully.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Has Tim Lovejoy given Jonathan Ross ideas for his next move?
Well it had to happen sooner or later - Jonathan Ross departs the BBC. Whether he was pushed or resigned we may never know. However what was clear was that he would never again get the kind of pay packet from Auntie Beeb again. In the depths of the recession headlines such as 'Obscene' £18m pay deal for TV's Jonathan Ross (The Mail - who else?) made unpleasant reading for the BBC Governors as they munched on their Frosties in the morning.
Poor Jonathan was even getting a kicking from his presenter colleagues at the BBC. Newsreader Fiona Bruce attacked the money he was earning as "a hell of a lot". To be fair to him, he got lucky - very very lucky - and must have the best agent in town to have bagged that deal. I mean, if I was offered £6m a year would I say "No thanks chaps"? Would I hell - I'd take it with open arms. Plus another frequently neglected fact is that he also managed to get his own production companies, Open Mike and Hot Sauce, to produce many of the shows. Ross was not only in a win win situation - he was in fact in a win win win situation.
I'm not going to talk about Ross's misgivings and controversies - that's been done to death in every paper already and is frankly boring. We all know what he did and what he said. However the big question on everyone's lips is Where does Wossy go now?
Well there aren't that many channels out there with the money he commanded at the BBC. Sky One has been mentioned a lot in the news as his next destination - but in fact it's really more of a shop window for Sky Sports and Sky Movies without the big budgets the networks have to play with. ITV's worrying financial situation certainly means they won't have the ability to compete on the finances - although they would clearly welcome him back with open arms. Channel 4 and Five also will be unwilling to pay huge sums of money out - although Ross's risque personality would fit in better at Channel 4 and would probably be uncensored in the main which would help the negotiations. However, network TV is not the same anymore - the glory days of 10 million viewers will be confined to history before long. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five will be one of up to 50 Freeview channels available in every household before the year is out. And in the homes which take Sky or Virgin the number of rival channels will be in the hundreds. So TV programme budgets will most likely be cut and not increased as the battle for viewers intensifies.
So where does Wossy go? Well, clearly he's one smart guy - after all he got the biggest salary the BBC has ever paid out - so he won't be sitting on the sidelines for long. As a presenter he is a hired hand and plays to the call of the channel who hire him. However in July 2008 something rather interesting, albeit low-key, happened. Tim Lovejoy, the architect of Sky Sports legendary Soccer AM show quit to launch Channel Bee - a short-lived website he created in partnership with Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment. What Lovejoy realised was as a presenter he had no rights to be employed by Sky Sports, or anyone else for that matter, when his contract came to an end. He would only ever be employed there as a presenter and wanted to own a chunk of his own media. A chance meeting with Simon Fuller after he interviewed David Beckham convinced him the merits of taking ownership of a format and only when you are the brand guardian can you call the shots. Simon Cowell's production company SyCo own the rights to The X Factor and as a result they control the shots and make the real money. If Lovejoy had owned the rights to the Soccer AM format he could have sold it to numerous territories worldwide as well as being the presenter for as long as he wanted to.
So why should Jonathan Ross go to ITV or Channel 4 only to have the same shackles applied on what he can and can't say, as well as the difficulty in negotiating a new pay deal? Well I don't think he will. I think he is smarter than that - as does Simon Cowell for sure. Simon Cowell and Topshop's Philip Green are launching a global entertainment powerhouse which will be built around moulding popular culture, creating offshoots, and having concert and merchandising deals. The X Factor is just the beginning. If Cowell and Green want to start their new venture with a bang, what better personality would they want on-board as their new star presenter? Ross knows the UK TV industry intimately and brings to the table a guaranteed audience of several million viewers on any show he fronts. If you wanted to create a new global format you need someone with the calibre of Jonathan Ross just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? turned to Chris Tarrant when they wanted to propel the format into the big time. And yes, Tarrant was a major shareholder in the production company Celador too.
So if Jonathan Ross is smart (he is) and gets the right backer on board (he will) then the £6m a year he earned at the BBC will be dwarfed by his next pay cheque if he manages to own the next programme format either outright, or with the backing of either 19 Entertainment or SyCo. But one thing I'm pretty sure of, that he won't be a presenter on his next channel simply because he needs the work. Instead it's more likely he'll be calling more of the shots himself, plus if he has a financial stake in the format he is more likely to be careful on what he says too when we do see him. So we're all winners.
Poor Jonathan was even getting a kicking from his presenter colleagues at the BBC. Newsreader Fiona Bruce attacked the money he was earning as "a hell of a lot". To be fair to him, he got lucky - very very lucky - and must have the best agent in town to have bagged that deal. I mean, if I was offered £6m a year would I say "No thanks chaps"? Would I hell - I'd take it with open arms. Plus another frequently neglected fact is that he also managed to get his own production companies, Open Mike and Hot Sauce, to produce many of the shows. Ross was not only in a win win situation - he was in fact in a win win win situation.
I'm not going to talk about Ross's misgivings and controversies - that's been done to death in every paper already and is frankly boring. We all know what he did and what he said. However the big question on everyone's lips is Where does Wossy go now?
Well there aren't that many channels out there with the money he commanded at the BBC. Sky One has been mentioned a lot in the news as his next destination - but in fact it's really more of a shop window for Sky Sports and Sky Movies without the big budgets the networks have to play with. ITV's worrying financial situation certainly means they won't have the ability to compete on the finances - although they would clearly welcome him back with open arms. Channel 4 and Five also will be unwilling to pay huge sums of money out - although Ross's risque personality would fit in better at Channel 4 and would probably be uncensored in the main which would help the negotiations. However, network TV is not the same anymore - the glory days of 10 million viewers will be confined to history before long. The BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Five will be one of up to 50 Freeview channels available in every household before the year is out. And in the homes which take Sky or Virgin the number of rival channels will be in the hundreds. So TV programme budgets will most likely be cut and not increased as the battle for viewers intensifies.
So where does Wossy go? Well, clearly he's one smart guy - after all he got the biggest salary the BBC has ever paid out - so he won't be sitting on the sidelines for long. As a presenter he is a hired hand and plays to the call of the channel who hire him. However in July 2008 something rather interesting, albeit low-key, happened. Tim Lovejoy, the architect of Sky Sports legendary Soccer AM show quit to launch Channel Bee - a short-lived website he created in partnership with Spice Girls svengali Simon Fuller's 19 Entertainment. What Lovejoy realised was as a presenter he had no rights to be employed by Sky Sports, or anyone else for that matter, when his contract came to an end. He would only ever be employed there as a presenter and wanted to own a chunk of his own media. A chance meeting with Simon Fuller after he interviewed David Beckham convinced him the merits of taking ownership of a format and only when you are the brand guardian can you call the shots. Simon Cowell's production company SyCo own the rights to The X Factor and as a result they control the shots and make the real money. If Lovejoy had owned the rights to the Soccer AM format he could have sold it to numerous territories worldwide as well as being the presenter for as long as he wanted to.
So why should Jonathan Ross go to ITV or Channel 4 only to have the same shackles applied on what he can and can't say, as well as the difficulty in negotiating a new pay deal? Well I don't think he will. I think he is smarter than that - as does Simon Cowell for sure. Simon Cowell and Topshop's Philip Green are launching a global entertainment powerhouse which will be built around moulding popular culture, creating offshoots, and having concert and merchandising deals. The X Factor is just the beginning. If Cowell and Green want to start their new venture with a bang, what better personality would they want on-board as their new star presenter? Ross knows the UK TV industry intimately and brings to the table a guaranteed audience of several million viewers on any show he fronts. If you wanted to create a new global format you need someone with the calibre of Jonathan Ross just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? turned to Chris Tarrant when they wanted to propel the format into the big time. And yes, Tarrant was a major shareholder in the production company Celador too.
So if Jonathan Ross is smart (he is) and gets the right backer on board (he will) then the £6m a year he earned at the BBC will be dwarfed by his next pay cheque if he manages to own the next programme format either outright, or with the backing of either 19 Entertainment or SyCo. But one thing I'm pretty sure of, that he won't be a presenter on his next channel simply because he needs the work. Instead it's more likely he'll be calling more of the shots himself, plus if he has a financial stake in the format he is more likely to be careful on what he says too when we do see him. So we're all winners.
Friday, 1 January 2010
Can product placement save ITV?
It's no small understatement to say ITV is in a real mess. Their annual programme budget for 2009 was £1billion. Their total advertising revenue for 2009 was £1.2billion. It's present market capitalization is, as of today, £2.04billion. OK, to break things down their annual spend on programmes is around half the value of the company. What do they get on this in return? A £105million pre-tax loss for the first 6 months of 2009 - and I am waiting to hear on the second 6 month period in the next few days - this doesn't look too good, does it? But what is the scenario going to be like in a few years time?
The background on ITV - they still the only channel for an advertiser to reach mass-market viewers, however one can't help wondering when this will end. Conceived through the merger of Granada and Carlton, things went off to a rocky start which appeared to be a TV massacre. Heritage names, such as Granada and Tyne Tees, disappeared overnight. The brand was quickly becoming badly damaged through numerous high profile disasters - the ITV Digital collapse a year before hardly inspired much confidence in the brand to investors and advertisers. Then in the height of the phone in scandals, ITV replaced the ITV News Channel with ITV Play - a channel devoted to phone in competitions. You wonder who was making these decisions and whether they fully realized the implications of this.
I worked on the ITV merger, especially on the ITV News at Ten relaunch - the history behind the previous 50 years of news coverage was awe-inspiring. The footage on the tapes from the Vietnam war, the moon landing (note to Americans: this REALLY did happen...),Locherbie and so on was simply priceless. I watched much of it in complete silence - especially as I had the 'raw' footage and not the edited reports so got the full effect of these emotional pictures. You can't help and think back to what ITV was back in the day. Just think back to Spitting Image, Inspector Morse, The Benny Hill Show, Prime Suspect, Cracker, World In Action, The Avengers, Rising Damp, and now The South Bank Show were all ITV made programmes - alas no more. Fine Ed, things move on and channels evolve, no? Well, yes, channels do evolve but I think ITV's movement into their current programming strategy of celebrity-obsessed shows has done so much damage to the ITV name I wonder whether they can ever recover.
ITV's investments have been questionable to say the very least. They bought the Friends Reunited website for £175m in 2005 and in 4 years did pretty much nothing to it and then sold it for £25m this year. Whilst Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace for $580 in the same year it is clear to see who got the bargain and who overspent on a major scale. The problem with Friends Reunited was it was a website with a huge number of people registered to basically brag about how rich and successful you were now compared to 20 years ago. They made their money from charging you to email your friends which put people off from the start. So the majority of the registered members only ever browsed, infrequently at that, and never spent any money. ITV had a huge database of relatively social-savvy customers but never really used this to their advantage. They could rebranded Friends Reunited as a more Facebook-style site and kept people on the site for longer and incorporated programmes. But they didn't - the most drastic thing they did was to remove the pay wall so people could email for free. By which time Facebook and MySpace have already made deep inroads into the online social networking market and gave no-one a reason to go back to Friends Reunited. Just the logo alone put you off for life:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/friendsreunited-hires.jpg
Digital switchover is already underway and this will make before long ITV just one of many channels available to the 23 million households in the UK. When digital switchover is complete I wonder how many of the viewers will migrate over to the additional channels? The problem ITV will have is that viewers buy into brands - they know what to expect - you want news you put Sky News on, you want a movie then Film 4 will sort you out - you get my drift. ITV is very dependent on a handful of shows which give them both ratings and newspaper column inches - The X Factor and Coronation Street being the obvious two. But in a multichannel world how would things change? Well I'd expect Coronation Street would still be there will healthy ratings and make them a good profit. However The X Factor's future is less secure on ITV. Unfortunately for ITV The X Factor format is owned by Simon Cowell who could sell it to Channel 4, Five, or even Sky, so you can see how badly this would affect ITV should it happen. The point I am making is that the value in ITV is decreasing so much because the shows they owned and created are few and far between when we look back to it's glory years. When we are getting used to using catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer and You Tube to get our TV content it will be harder for ITV to get their new shows in front of the eyes of their viewers as people are more discerning on how they spend their time. The likes of Virgin and BT Vision are already providing catch-up and VOD through the TV so the warning signs will already be flashing over at ITV's South Bank HQ as their shows start to decline at an alarming pace. Less viewers means less advertising rates can be charged onto advertisers, which in turn means less money is reinvested into new programmes and risk-taking will become a thing of the past. Everything made will be aimed to suit their advertisers and not their audience.
It's all very negative so far but there is a ray of hope. After many years of lobbying, first started by Charles Allen, the government gave in and allowed product placement making a very major U-turn on the issue. The bottom line really is that without product placement ITV would have no chance of surviving in the digital-only marketplace. The bill is still being amended and will exclude children's programmes but will be very radical in the way we watch ITV in the future.
It is expected that product placement will be worth around £30million a year to ITV and therefore will be something they simply can't do without. But what will it really be like? Well have a look at American Idol in the US:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/8155/thumbs/s-IDOL-COKE-large.jpg
Advertisers such as Coca Cola, AT&T, and Ford are paying up to $35million a season each to be included in American Idol. The tune is clearly being played by the advertisers here and Fox, the US network airing the show, is clearly delighted with this arrangement. The programme will be aimed so you can fit more sponsor messages around them in future - thus affecting the credibility of the programme. I think it's a real shame that this had to happen as a viewer you want to know when you are being sold things and when you're not - product placement will make it much harder to actually tell the two apart now.
But with catch-up services and PVR's zipping through the commercials becoming everyday items in households nowadays along with the households with 5 channels being confined to history it's very clear that ITV needs a new source of income. And fast. Perhaps, just perhaps, product placement can save them...or is it just delaying the inevitable? With their share of viewership in an all-time low and fewer people watching the ads something has to give. Whatever will happen, only time will tell. This is going to get very interesting...
The background on ITV - they still the only channel for an advertiser to reach mass-market viewers, however one can't help wondering when this will end. Conceived through the merger of Granada and Carlton, things went off to a rocky start which appeared to be a TV massacre. Heritage names, such as Granada and Tyne Tees, disappeared overnight. The brand was quickly becoming badly damaged through numerous high profile disasters - the ITV Digital collapse a year before hardly inspired much confidence in the brand to investors and advertisers. Then in the height of the phone in scandals, ITV replaced the ITV News Channel with ITV Play - a channel devoted to phone in competitions. You wonder who was making these decisions and whether they fully realized the implications of this.
I worked on the ITV merger, especially on the ITV News at Ten relaunch - the history behind the previous 50 years of news coverage was awe-inspiring. The footage on the tapes from the Vietnam war, the moon landing (note to Americans: this REALLY did happen...),Locherbie and so on was simply priceless. I watched much of it in complete silence - especially as I had the 'raw' footage and not the edited reports so got the full effect of these emotional pictures. You can't help and think back to what ITV was back in the day. Just think back to Spitting Image, Inspector Morse, The Benny Hill Show, Prime Suspect, Cracker, World In Action, The Avengers, Rising Damp, and now The South Bank Show were all ITV made programmes - alas no more. Fine Ed, things move on and channels evolve, no? Well, yes, channels do evolve but I think ITV's movement into their current programming strategy of celebrity-obsessed shows has done so much damage to the ITV name I wonder whether they can ever recover.
ITV's investments have been questionable to say the very least. They bought the Friends Reunited website for £175m in 2005 and in 4 years did pretty much nothing to it and then sold it for £25m this year. Whilst Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace for $580 in the same year it is clear to see who got the bargain and who overspent on a major scale. The problem with Friends Reunited was it was a website with a huge number of people registered to basically brag about how rich and successful you were now compared to 20 years ago. They made their money from charging you to email your friends which put people off from the start. So the majority of the registered members only ever browsed, infrequently at that, and never spent any money. ITV had a huge database of relatively social-savvy customers but never really used this to their advantage. They could rebranded Friends Reunited as a more Facebook-style site and kept people on the site for longer and incorporated programmes. But they didn't - the most drastic thing they did was to remove the pay wall so people could email for free. By which time Facebook and MySpace have already made deep inroads into the online social networking market and gave no-one a reason to go back to Friends Reunited. Just the logo alone put you off for life:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/friendsreunited-hires.jpg
Digital switchover is already underway and this will make before long ITV just one of many channels available to the 23 million households in the UK. When digital switchover is complete I wonder how many of the viewers will migrate over to the additional channels? The problem ITV will have is that viewers buy into brands - they know what to expect - you want news you put Sky News on, you want a movie then Film 4 will sort you out - you get my drift. ITV is very dependent on a handful of shows which give them both ratings and newspaper column inches - The X Factor and Coronation Street being the obvious two. But in a multichannel world how would things change? Well I'd expect Coronation Street would still be there will healthy ratings and make them a good profit. However The X Factor's future is less secure on ITV. Unfortunately for ITV The X Factor format is owned by Simon Cowell who could sell it to Channel 4, Five, or even Sky, so you can see how badly this would affect ITV should it happen. The point I am making is that the value in ITV is decreasing so much because the shows they owned and created are few and far between when we look back to it's glory years. When we are getting used to using catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer and You Tube to get our TV content it will be harder for ITV to get their new shows in front of the eyes of their viewers as people are more discerning on how they spend their time. The likes of Virgin and BT Vision are already providing catch-up and VOD through the TV so the warning signs will already be flashing over at ITV's South Bank HQ as their shows start to decline at an alarming pace. Less viewers means less advertising rates can be charged onto advertisers, which in turn means less money is reinvested into new programmes and risk-taking will become a thing of the past. Everything made will be aimed to suit their advertisers and not their audience.
It's all very negative so far but there is a ray of hope. After many years of lobbying, first started by Charles Allen, the government gave in and allowed product placement making a very major U-turn on the issue. The bottom line really is that without product placement ITV would have no chance of surviving in the digital-only marketplace. The bill is still being amended and will exclude children's programmes but will be very radical in the way we watch ITV in the future.
It is expected that product placement will be worth around £30million a year to ITV and therefore will be something they simply can't do without. But what will it really be like? Well have a look at American Idol in the US:
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/8155/thumbs/s-IDOL-COKE-large.jpg
Advertisers such as Coca Cola, AT&T, and Ford are paying up to $35million a season each to be included in American Idol. The tune is clearly being played by the advertisers here and Fox, the US network airing the show, is clearly delighted with this arrangement. The programme will be aimed so you can fit more sponsor messages around them in future - thus affecting the credibility of the programme. I think it's a real shame that this had to happen as a viewer you want to know when you are being sold things and when you're not - product placement will make it much harder to actually tell the two apart now.
But with catch-up services and PVR's zipping through the commercials becoming everyday items in households nowadays along with the households with 5 channels being confined to history it's very clear that ITV needs a new source of income. And fast. Perhaps, just perhaps, product placement can save them...or is it just delaying the inevitable? With their share of viewership in an all-time low and fewer people watching the ads something has to give. Whatever will happen, only time will tell. This is going to get very interesting...
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Is commercial radio doomed?
Prior to working in television I worked in radio for some years - both at BBC local and national commercial radio which was tremendously enjoyable to say the least. The buzz I got out of working on a live event - especially a big derby like Everton v Liverpool - was unparalleled. Back in the days (circa 1992) I started of working on a live Sunday sports programme across the North West airwaves. The audience was huge, the content was awesome, and the presenters and reporters now working at the likes of Sky Sports, ESPN, and the BBC.
To give you an example of the team who I was either working with, or who had worked at the radio station previously, the list reads like a who's who of sports broadcasting:
Ray Stubbs (ESPN), Marcus Buckland (Sky Sports), Rob Palmer (Sky Sports), Rob McCaffrey (Showtime Arabia), Eddie Hemmings (Sky Sports), Graham Beecroft (Talk Sport), Alan Parry (ESPN), Jonathan Legard (BBC Radio 5 Live), John Gwynne (Sky Sports), Ray French (BBC), Tim Caple (Eurosport), Kevin Keetings (IMG Media - world feed of the FA Premier League).
And THAT was just the station I worked for! On the commercial rival they also had Richard Keys (Sky Sports) and Clive Tyldesley (ITV Sport) - so as you can see it was a real hot-bed of talent and an unrivaled place to start a career in the broadcast industry.
Back when I started (aged 16!) I used to produce highlights packages for the Premier League games as well as for Rugby League - which was actually much more popular when you started to move out towards Lancashire. I did this by having three massive tape machines next to each other. Now anyone who has been working in radio for the past 10 years will never have seen or used these machines so to give you and idea this is what they look like: http://tinyurl.com/ydw3qyu
As you can see these are huge machines and I had the live feed, or feed from the stadium, on one machine. Then as soon as a goal was scored I switched over to using the second machine to record whilst using the third machine to compile my edit. It sounds complex but it wasn't once you got the hang of it. However in a computer-led world now the editing was painfully done through marking the edit point with a chinagraph pencil, and using razor-blades and tape to do the work. The amount of cuts on my fingers was huge and would have been a Health and Safety Executive's field day! But that was simply how it was done. Grafting long hours to produce a piece of audio which was listened to by hundreds of thousands. Literally.
OK, now what is the point to all this history and reminiscing, Ed? Well firstly it shows how much I love, and miss, the immediacy of live radio. The buzz to breaking stories whilst they happened, having CNN calling you up for the news so they can update the world, the big talking points of the day taking place on the show you were working on, and generally mucking in doing whatever needed to be done to get the show bigger audiences and deliver better content. So that's the background set - I love making and hearing great radio.
Nowadays, with the exception of the BBC locals, radio needs reshaping pretty badly. With the commercial stations providing less original content than ever before there are some real worries about the future of the medium. Take the London marketplace where I live and work where the main commercial radio stations (in no particular order) are Capital FM, Magic 105.4, Heart 106.2, and Smooth Radio. Now each of these radio stations offer a very tightly formatted format each with a relatively small playlist, lots of 'speed-links' and substantially less content than was catered for in previous years. The audiences are pretty stable and the top three tend to swap places every year so it's fairly safe to say that the audience pretty much like what they are given right now and have no complaints. So what's the problem Ed? They have a lot of radio with a small amount of songs, plenty of adverts, and the lack of local content means they could be anywhere in the UK - or even the world. So what? They keep listening so why shall we change? The old phrase "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" should apply, should it not Ed? I think we should look carefully at radio as a matter of real importance or I believe we will create huge damage to the heritage brand's as well as hemorrhaging huge number of their audience.
What I have personally witnessed from working in large offices is how the way people get their entertainment to get through their working day has changed. Years ago it was commonplace to have a radio in the office which in turn migrated to CD's being played in their desktop computers. Then came the killer ingredient to keep them going - iTunes. I have seen how personal iTunes collections have been put onto shared networks creating huge music libraries at their disposal. So where local radio has turned Heart not becoming a quasi-national brand in the past year alone with a playlist of a four to five hundred songs we now have the situation where the listener can choose their favourite music all day long by importing their own iTunes libraries onto their work PC's. Why put up with hearing Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol for the 10th time in a day when you can instead hear your new Manu Chao CD which never gets radio airplay anywhere in the UK. And this exact scenario is what I have witnessed take place. And the latest way to keep your workers happy comes courtesy of Spotify - a website which streams entire albums in superb quality with a 30" commercial inserted after every three tracks. It's like your ultimate radio station playing the music you want - albeit devoid of news, jingles, and pointless waffle.
Now I understand why a radio station will have a playlist of a tiny percentage of songs from the era - it's all down to the targetting and research but it's the lack of killer content that will be the downfall of the brands. The quality content coming out of both BBC Radio 1 and 2 is perhaps the only justification to publically fund the networks. But I wouldn't change a thing in the slightest - until there is are radio stations producing quality content on the same level of quality as the BBC let's keep funding them in this way. And I personally disagree with the very notion of a licence fee for our TV and radio stations.
I know there are a few commercial radio stations with quality content - LBC in London is a great example - but in the main it is the music-based stations which are the real offenders. So unless the commercial stations shape up their acts and work on the value of their brands their audience will slowly migrate over to iTunes and Spotify. And we all know how hard it is to regain trust in a tarnished brand too. In this online world we are fully immersed in I wonder whether commercial radio will last the next decade? Don't be silly...I doth jest here. I actually meant five years...which is a real shame.
To give you an example of the team who I was either working with, or who had worked at the radio station previously, the list reads like a who's who of sports broadcasting:
Ray Stubbs (ESPN), Marcus Buckland (Sky Sports), Rob Palmer (Sky Sports), Rob McCaffrey (Showtime Arabia), Eddie Hemmings (Sky Sports), Graham Beecroft (Talk Sport), Alan Parry (ESPN), Jonathan Legard (BBC Radio 5 Live), John Gwynne (Sky Sports), Ray French (BBC), Tim Caple (Eurosport), Kevin Keetings (IMG Media - world feed of the FA Premier League).
And THAT was just the station I worked for! On the commercial rival they also had Richard Keys (Sky Sports) and Clive Tyldesley (ITV Sport) - so as you can see it was a real hot-bed of talent and an unrivaled place to start a career in the broadcast industry.
Back when I started (aged 16!) I used to produce highlights packages for the Premier League games as well as for Rugby League - which was actually much more popular when you started to move out towards Lancashire. I did this by having three massive tape machines next to each other. Now anyone who has been working in radio for the past 10 years will never have seen or used these machines so to give you and idea this is what they look like: http://tinyurl.com/ydw3qyu
As you can see these are huge machines and I had the live feed, or feed from the stadium, on one machine. Then as soon as a goal was scored I switched over to using the second machine to record whilst using the third machine to compile my edit. It sounds complex but it wasn't once you got the hang of it. However in a computer-led world now the editing was painfully done through marking the edit point with a chinagraph pencil, and using razor-blades and tape to do the work. The amount of cuts on my fingers was huge and would have been a Health and Safety Executive's field day! But that was simply how it was done. Grafting long hours to produce a piece of audio which was listened to by hundreds of thousands. Literally.
OK, now what is the point to all this history and reminiscing, Ed? Well firstly it shows how much I love, and miss, the immediacy of live radio. The buzz to breaking stories whilst they happened, having CNN calling you up for the news so they can update the world, the big talking points of the day taking place on the show you were working on, and generally mucking in doing whatever needed to be done to get the show bigger audiences and deliver better content. So that's the background set - I love making and hearing great radio.
Nowadays, with the exception of the BBC locals, radio needs reshaping pretty badly. With the commercial stations providing less original content than ever before there are some real worries about the future of the medium. Take the London marketplace where I live and work where the main commercial radio stations (in no particular order) are Capital FM, Magic 105.4, Heart 106.2, and Smooth Radio. Now each of these radio stations offer a very tightly formatted format each with a relatively small playlist, lots of 'speed-links' and substantially less content than was catered for in previous years. The audiences are pretty stable and the top three tend to swap places every year so it's fairly safe to say that the audience pretty much like what they are given right now and have no complaints. So what's the problem Ed? They have a lot of radio with a small amount of songs, plenty of adverts, and the lack of local content means they could be anywhere in the UK - or even the world. So what? They keep listening so why shall we change? The old phrase "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" should apply, should it not Ed? I think we should look carefully at radio as a matter of real importance or I believe we will create huge damage to the heritage brand's as well as hemorrhaging huge number of their audience.
What I have personally witnessed from working in large offices is how the way people get their entertainment to get through their working day has changed. Years ago it was commonplace to have a radio in the office which in turn migrated to CD's being played in their desktop computers. Then came the killer ingredient to keep them going - iTunes. I have seen how personal iTunes collections have been put onto shared networks creating huge music libraries at their disposal. So where local radio has turned Heart not becoming a quasi-national brand in the past year alone with a playlist of a four to five hundred songs we now have the situation where the listener can choose their favourite music all day long by importing their own iTunes libraries onto their work PC's. Why put up with hearing Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol for the 10th time in a day when you can instead hear your new Manu Chao CD which never gets radio airplay anywhere in the UK. And this exact scenario is what I have witnessed take place. And the latest way to keep your workers happy comes courtesy of Spotify - a website which streams entire albums in superb quality with a 30" commercial inserted after every three tracks. It's like your ultimate radio station playing the music you want - albeit devoid of news, jingles, and pointless waffle.
Now I understand why a radio station will have a playlist of a tiny percentage of songs from the era - it's all down to the targetting and research but it's the lack of killer content that will be the downfall of the brands. The quality content coming out of both BBC Radio 1 and 2 is perhaps the only justification to publically fund the networks. But I wouldn't change a thing in the slightest - until there is are radio stations producing quality content on the same level of quality as the BBC let's keep funding them in this way. And I personally disagree with the very notion of a licence fee for our TV and radio stations.
I know there are a few commercial radio stations with quality content - LBC in London is a great example - but in the main it is the music-based stations which are the real offenders. So unless the commercial stations shape up their acts and work on the value of their brands their audience will slowly migrate over to iTunes and Spotify. And we all know how hard it is to regain trust in a tarnished brand too. In this online world we are fully immersed in I wonder whether commercial radio will last the next decade? Don't be silly...I doth jest here. I actually meant five years...which is a real shame.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Predictions for 2010 - specifically for Rupert Murdoch
OK, this is my first ever blog. So pardon any particular etiquette that I am supposed to adhere to. Give me time and I'll be using all the buzz-words and be officially part of the blogging gang.
I'm a real media enthusiast - I've been working for over half my life in this astonishing sector of business - and yes I am only 33... But one person I admire more than anyone, perhaps controversially, is Rupert Murdoch. In fact, whenever I refer to him to anyone - either in the office or with friends - I still refer to him as Mr Murdoch. I know it's quite odd but I've read so many biographies on the chap that quite simply my awe for him is pretty high. Don't misunderstand me, I don't think he is the kindest, or most polite man round - far from it - however his dedication and ability to get around watertight red tape has been more than impressive. Plus, it's fair to say that many of his ventures are far from clean when it comes to controversy - Fox News, The Sun, and Star TV in Asia to name but three. However what amazes me is the power this man has amassed and how the power he wields and ability to shape opinion is greater than our own Prime Minister. Whilst many believe this to be a bad thing I personally would always prefer Mr Murdoch (see, I've done it again...) to have his agenda. Why? Well, whatever he does is done for the gain of his media empire and you can always see the agenda. Whereas anything the governments do in any of the territories he is based in may not find that their agendas are always in the best interests of their people. For example, Silvio Berlosconi - the Italian Prime Minister and owner of Mediaset - gave himself immunity by changing the rules when he was on trial for false accounting. The current state of the expenses controversy surrounding the British Members of Parliament shows how corrupt the political system is at present. So whilst I am not, and never will, claim that Mr Murdoch is cleaner than clean, we are always aware that any change in policy in his organization is done to benefit News Corporation. Well, usually. I say this as I simply have to mention the frequently forgotten issue of the amount of money that The Times newspaper loses year after year (it is only The Sunday Times that is profitable). Mr Murdoch keeps the paper running due to the pride of owning such a prestigious quality paper. He has lost over £50m on this title in the past year alone and can't see how this debt can be reduced with online news everywhere for free. My point here is that he continues to support an unprofitable title to curry favour with the establishment - something that he also did for over a decade at Sky News before it started to make a small profit.
I heard Mr Murdoch on BBC Radio 5 Live a year or so ago talking to Jeff Randall on the Money Programme. What I found interesting was how the focus moved to politics - in particular his support to the Labour party over the Conservatives. Since that programme was broadcast things have moved on dramatically. After being knee deep in recession News International's lead title, The Sun, came out to support David Cameron and the Conservatives - switching from over 12 years of support for the Labour Party. This came as little surprise to me as The Sun always backs 'a winner' and wants to be part of the team which shapes the victory. Remember the public support The Sun had for Tony Blair on it's front pages? To clarify things, The Sun will never win the election for the party. However they can be a significant influence and swing things in the favour of the incoming party. The fact that the Ashes was put back onto the 'listed events' and therefore unable to be seen exclusively on Sky Sports was seen as the Labour Party retaliating to the loss of support from Mr Murdoch and to hurt him where it hurts deepest - sports rights.
The influence that The Sun and the News of the World have is quite frightening to be blunt. The circulation, although significantly greater than the last election, is still enough to influence even the safest of seats. A recent example of the case of the Gordon Brown's handwriting case where it was claimed he misspelled the surname of the mother of a dead serviceman. This attack was the first public attack on the Prime Minister since The Sun announced it was to support the Conservatives. Many media commentators and myself all saw this as the first sword drawn in the lead-up to the likely March elections. But why? What is gained? Going back to the beginning of this article it comes back to the agenda of News International.
News International's biggest success of the past 17 years has been the successful launch of Sky Sports. It's fair to say that Murdoch bet the business on the success of Sky Sports - especially the FA Premier League which it enjoyed 15 years of exclusive live coverage on the channel. After the intervention from Brussels no one broadcaster could hold a monopoly to this prize sporting right - hence Setanta getting an all-to-brief foothold. Things have moved on a bit and ESPN have got a good set of rights under their belt for their new UK channel (which I must state my conflict of interests here as I Produced and Directed the channel launch campaign). However there are a significant number of rivals who are complaining on competition issues that BSkyB is abusing it's dominance. The biggest cries are coming from Virgin Media, Top Up TV, and BT Vision - again I must state my significant work at both Top Up TV and BT Vision - just in case you think I'm taking sides here. I'm not, don't worry.
One of the big talking points is that the rival platforms want to buy Sky Sports at a wholesale price so they can offer premium sports content on their own platforms. An Ofcom investigation is currently taking place and the belief in the industry is that Sky Sports will be made available to rival operators at a discount. Personally I think this won't happen - and if it does it won't be for a long time. Why? The support Mr Murdoch has given the David Cameron will surely come at a price and already he has claimed that Ofcom will have it's powers cut as it is too big and powerful. So who will benefit mostly of this new 'lighter touch' super-regulator? My money is stacked high on the Murdoch side. I will expect BSkyB's appeal against it being forced to sell their ITV plc shares to be successful. At present they are sitting on an extimated £650m loss on this investment - a deal done by James Murdoch to prevent Richard Branson's Virgin Media from buying it. Oh, and expect the Ashes to quietly come back off the listed events too before long as well...
So when you look at the broader picture you can see how the sprawling media landscape of Mr Murdoch is so intertwined that unless you know the full background it's so hard to actually see exactly what is the real motive. One thing is for sure though, there always is a motive behind it. Always.
I'm a real media enthusiast - I've been working for over half my life in this astonishing sector of business - and yes I am only 33... But one person I admire more than anyone, perhaps controversially, is Rupert Murdoch. In fact, whenever I refer to him to anyone - either in the office or with friends - I still refer to him as Mr Murdoch. I know it's quite odd but I've read so many biographies on the chap that quite simply my awe for him is pretty high. Don't misunderstand me, I don't think he is the kindest, or most polite man round - far from it - however his dedication and ability to get around watertight red tape has been more than impressive. Plus, it's fair to say that many of his ventures are far from clean when it comes to controversy - Fox News, The Sun, and Star TV in Asia to name but three. However what amazes me is the power this man has amassed and how the power he wields and ability to shape opinion is greater than our own Prime Minister. Whilst many believe this to be a bad thing I personally would always prefer Mr Murdoch (see, I've done it again...) to have his agenda. Why? Well, whatever he does is done for the gain of his media empire and you can always see the agenda. Whereas anything the governments do in any of the territories he is based in may not find that their agendas are always in the best interests of their people. For example, Silvio Berlosconi - the Italian Prime Minister and owner of Mediaset - gave himself immunity by changing the rules when he was on trial for false accounting. The current state of the expenses controversy surrounding the British Members of Parliament shows how corrupt the political system is at present. So whilst I am not, and never will, claim that Mr Murdoch is cleaner than clean, we are always aware that any change in policy in his organization is done to benefit News Corporation. Well, usually. I say this as I simply have to mention the frequently forgotten issue of the amount of money that The Times newspaper loses year after year (it is only The Sunday Times that is profitable). Mr Murdoch keeps the paper running due to the pride of owning such a prestigious quality paper. He has lost over £50m on this title in the past year alone and can't see how this debt can be reduced with online news everywhere for free. My point here is that he continues to support an unprofitable title to curry favour with the establishment - something that he also did for over a decade at Sky News before it started to make a small profit.
I heard Mr Murdoch on BBC Radio 5 Live a year or so ago talking to Jeff Randall on the Money Programme. What I found interesting was how the focus moved to politics - in particular his support to the Labour party over the Conservatives. Since that programme was broadcast things have moved on dramatically. After being knee deep in recession News International's lead title, The Sun, came out to support David Cameron and the Conservatives - switching from over 12 years of support for the Labour Party. This came as little surprise to me as The Sun always backs 'a winner' and wants to be part of the team which shapes the victory. Remember the public support The Sun had for Tony Blair on it's front pages? To clarify things, The Sun will never win the election for the party. However they can be a significant influence and swing things in the favour of the incoming party. The fact that the Ashes was put back onto the 'listed events' and therefore unable to be seen exclusively on Sky Sports was seen as the Labour Party retaliating to the loss of support from Mr Murdoch and to hurt him where it hurts deepest - sports rights.
The influence that The Sun and the News of the World have is quite frightening to be blunt. The circulation, although significantly greater than the last election, is still enough to influence even the safest of seats. A recent example of the case of the Gordon Brown's handwriting case where it was claimed he misspelled the surname of the mother of a dead serviceman. This attack was the first public attack on the Prime Minister since The Sun announced it was to support the Conservatives. Many media commentators and myself all saw this as the first sword drawn in the lead-up to the likely March elections. But why? What is gained? Going back to the beginning of this article it comes back to the agenda of News International.
News International's biggest success of the past 17 years has been the successful launch of Sky Sports. It's fair to say that Murdoch bet the business on the success of Sky Sports - especially the FA Premier League which it enjoyed 15 years of exclusive live coverage on the channel. After the intervention from Brussels no one broadcaster could hold a monopoly to this prize sporting right - hence Setanta getting an all-to-brief foothold. Things have moved on a bit and ESPN have got a good set of rights under their belt for their new UK channel (which I must state my conflict of interests here as I Produced and Directed the channel launch campaign). However there are a significant number of rivals who are complaining on competition issues that BSkyB is abusing it's dominance. The biggest cries are coming from Virgin Media, Top Up TV, and BT Vision - again I must state my significant work at both Top Up TV and BT Vision - just in case you think I'm taking sides here. I'm not, don't worry.
One of the big talking points is that the rival platforms want to buy Sky Sports at a wholesale price so they can offer premium sports content on their own platforms. An Ofcom investigation is currently taking place and the belief in the industry is that Sky Sports will be made available to rival operators at a discount. Personally I think this won't happen - and if it does it won't be for a long time. Why? The support Mr Murdoch has given the David Cameron will surely come at a price and already he has claimed that Ofcom will have it's powers cut as it is too big and powerful. So who will benefit mostly of this new 'lighter touch' super-regulator? My money is stacked high on the Murdoch side. I will expect BSkyB's appeal against it being forced to sell their ITV plc shares to be successful. At present they are sitting on an extimated £650m loss on this investment - a deal done by James Murdoch to prevent Richard Branson's Virgin Media from buying it. Oh, and expect the Ashes to quietly come back off the listed events too before long as well...
So when you look at the broader picture you can see how the sprawling media landscape of Mr Murdoch is so intertwined that unless you know the full background it's so hard to actually see exactly what is the real motive. One thing is for sure though, there always is a motive behind it. Always.
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