text: Colin Morrison 2016-05-28T15:39:50-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=colin-morrison Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Colin Morrison Good old fashioned elbow grease. Are Traditional Media Bosses Too Old to Compete in a Digital World? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6648426 2015-02-22T19:00:00-05:00 2015-04-24T05:59:01-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ While Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have increasingly become trusted news sources, traditional journalism has struggled to engage young people. Sky News recently revealed that only 18% of 16-24-year-olds in the UK trusted mainstream media to provide them with relevant information. It's a media generation gap which is threatening to swallow up decades of newspapers, magazines and broadcast channels. Last month, Barack Obama marked his annual 'State of the Union' address by giving White House interviews to prominent YouTube vloggers. Like the US President's four-year participation in video chats on YouTube and via Google+ Hangouts, the interviews conveyed an unmistakeable message about the shift in media power. Millennials are huge consumers of media - just differently. Deloitte recently forecast an average spend of $750 per millennial in the US, including pay TV and online video and music streaming. They are fuelling the growth of Netflix, Spotify and targeted digital news operators. More than half of all web-browsing millennials in the US visited BuzzFeed in October, according to ComScore stats reported by Digiday. And they accounted for 61% of Vice's 25m news visitors during the same period. The four-year-old Mic was launched "because young people deserve a news destination that offers quality coverage tailored to them" and has rushed to 19m monthly uniques. Elite Daily, the news site which was launched three years ago as a wordpress blog and now claims more than 30m monthly uniques, was recently acquired by the UK's Daily Mail group for a reported $50m. And Snapchat's Discover pitches the highly-popular app to become another major news source for the smartphone generation. BuzzFeed was a pioneer but distinctive millennial news services are now so much broader and deeper. And it's not just news tastes that are different. A US report last month said that only 40% of millennials tune in to live TV each month. The disparity between millennials' perceptions of traditional and native channels is reinforced by the US-based Intelligence Group's Cassandra Report which showed that 77% of 3,000 millennials across 10 countries said it was "important" to be informed about current affairs, but 60% said they depended on social media. For most, though, it really is a tale of two media in which so much of traditional media seems to be getting it so wrong. The reasons are not difficult to find. Flashes & Flames calculates that the leaders of the world's 39 leading media groups have an average age of 57 years. The five largest groups are led by men who average 72. This list includes the 91-year-old Sumner Redstone at the top of Viacom and 83-year-old Rupert Murdoch astride 21st Century Fox/ News Corp. Their respective deputies, Philippe Dauman and Chase Carey, are both 60. Only one of the top 20 media owners has a leader under 50 - the 49-year-old Thomas Rabe of Bertlesmann. Only one of 39 groups has a leader under 40 - magazine heiress Yvonne Bauer(34) who four years ago succeeded her 72-year-old father. It is impossible not to draw the conclusion that, all over the media, 50 is considered young, evidenced by the 'new' generation bosses of Hearst (52), Reed Elsevier (51), Pearson (52), Lagardere (53), Axel Springer (52), Sony (54), New York Times (57), Schibsted (52), Thomson Reuters (54), and Britain's ITV (50). The contrast with digital companies could not be greater. The average age of the leaders of the 16 largest digital groups is 40 - ranging from the 24-year-old bosses of SnapChat and Elite Daily to the 54-year-olds Tim Cook of Apple and Reed Hastings of Netflix, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos (51). No fewer than 9 digital leaders are under 40, and most are in their 30s and 40s. So, traditional media groups are led by people who are , on average, almost 50% (and some 20 years) older than their digital competitors - and almost double the age of the oldest of their millennial readers/viewers. Age does not, of course, define everything about the skills and attitude of individuals or companies. It does not really have to matter very much. But this across-the-board imbalance identifies the handicaps that many companies may suffer in their competition with digital media, namely that their people, power, language and culture overwhelmingly flow from traditional profit centres - not from the future. Future-focused media companies need to be able to think and act young. For all their investment in digital media, many newspaper-centric companies, for example, are tellingly dominated by people with a lifetime in print. This tends to ensure a fairly typical domination of teams by journalists and advertising sales people. By contrast, digital-only companies tend to be dominated by engineers and software savvy people: the style and manner of delivery comes ahead of actual content in their corporate hierarchies and costs. That distinction in staffing and skills influences the whole character of digital-only companies. You only have to reflect on the creativity of low-hierarchy 'new media' firms, many of which allow employees to take unlimited vacations or have all their meals, leisure and even sleep-time in the office, to appreciate that. Firms which pay for their employees' laundry, travel, home cleaning, childcare, rental cars, in-house concerts, and weekend breaks, are doing things very differently. But this is not charity. Looking after enthusiastic ambitious young people at work encourages them to stay longer, work harder and be more committed. Money spent on perks, especially on healthy eating, could be more "productive" than the equivalent spend on higher salaries and pension plans. It's much more than gym membership and staff restaurants. And you would guess that many starting-out millennial employees like their fun-to-funky offices more than their homes. While there are a myriad of ways in which companies compete successfully, we should expect "mature" media groups increasingly to ring-fence digital-only investments from traditional media - and to learn the lessons from the digital independents who are currently making so much of the running. These new subsidiaries need increasingly to be led by digital natives. There's a long way for traditional media to go. Their young competitors are a potent reminder of the scale of media revolution now underway. Take it seriously or else. MediaBlog www.flashesandflames.com]]> 5 Reasons Why DuckDuckGo May End Google Search Dominance tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2015:/theblog//3.6478698 2015-01-15T10:30:50-05:00 2015-03-17T05:59:01-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ What? When hacking group Anonymous disabled a jihadist web site in traumatized France last weekend, it redirected users to a six-year-old little-known internet search engine. For millions of people, that was the first they had heard of the curiously-named DuckDuckGo which employs 25 people and is based in the tiny Pennsylvania town of Paoli (pop 6,000), 30 miles from Philadelphia. Even though you might not have heard of the "search engine that doesn't track you", it now carries out an estimated 600m searches a month and is growing fast. (Still, of course, a drop in the ocean of Google's 750k daily searches). In June, Apple's iOS 8 helped users make DuckDuckGo their default search engine. Named after the traditional playground game "duck duck goose", it doesn't store previous searches and, therefore, doesn't deliver personalised search results. When you do a search, it doesn't know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn't logged. The site doesn't use search cookies to keep track of what you do or where else you go online, and it doesn't save your search history. When you click on a link in DuckDuckGo's results, those sites won't see which search terms you used. Every user is shown the same results for keywords or phrases typed in. DuckDuckGo says it is also targeting those who value quality of search over quantity. It is easy to see that this is the anti-Google of search engines. Who? The founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo is 35-year-old Gabriel Weinberg, who is also an angel investor and co-author of "Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers". Previously, he was the co-founder & CEO of Opobox, which was sold to United Online in 2006, the year that (still in his 20s) he sold social networking company The Names Database to Classmates.com for about10m. Prior to that, he was employed at Cadio, LexisNexis (was VP of product development), Notehall, and WizeHive. Weinberg got a BSc in Physics and an MSc from MIT. He has been a computer nerd since childhood, writing programs for his Mum's home business. He made a name for himself in the US in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about government surveillance, both as the founder of a privacy-conscious search engine and as an advocate for anonymous web browsing. In recent days, Weinberg has been speaking out about the need to develop globally secure browsing. But last month he expanded his stake in the anonymous economy by joining a1.35m investment round in AlphaPoint, a bitcoin startup powering digital currency exchanges. He's quiet, family-centred and chose his small town base as where he and his wife want to bring up their children, near diverse schools and a national park. Nothing Zuckerberg about him. But he says: "We want a cool office: Real Privacy -- Smarter Search -- Less Clutter." How? Weinberg has mostly funded the business himself from the proceeds of earlier startups but has also attracted3m venture-tech money, including from New York-based Union Square Ventures (early backers of Zynga, Twitter and Tumblr). He has also partnered with another Pennsylvania tech firm, Zonoff that has raised36 million for its "Internet of things" software. So he doesn't feel as far away from the hotbed of silicon valley as you might think, although he's only been there for one day in the last 12 years. Why?The obvious motivation is the sheer dominance of Google which has an estimated 70% worldwide market share in search. It does not, of course, make money from its many free services but from tracking what people use them for. Google's57bn revenue and14bn profit in 2013 came mostly from advertising and, therefore, from scraping and using the information of its customers. DuckDuckGo seems increasingly likely to be able to unite the triangulated passion of tech investors, free-spirited information junkies - and pro-competition regulators in the US and Europe. People who already know DuckDuckGo are cheering it on loudly. What's Next? At a time of rising concern about web security, it is easy to believe the sky's the limit for an agile and privacy-sensitive challenger to Google. Apple's endorsement, by giving Safari users the ability to change their default search engine to DuckDuckGo, has provided an obvious turbo-charge - and the web-scare publicity of recent days will have done no harm to user traffic. The assurance that DuckDuckGo doesn't track your IP address, doesn't save your search history and will never share your information with an outside source is a powerful platform. Weinberg punches straight: "When you search Google, and click on a link, your search term is usually sent to that site, along with your browser and computer info, which can often uniquely identify you. That's creepy, but who cares about some random site? Those sites usually have third-party ads, and those third-parties build profiles about you, and that's why those ads follow you everywhere. That's creepy too, but who cares about some herpes ads? Your profile can also be sold, and potentially show up in unwanted places, like higher prices and getting insurance." The whole debate about cyber security and privacy - like the global terrorism that is enmeshed in it - has scarcely begun. The same may well be true for DuckDuckGo whose revenue in 2014 may have hit $3m - almost 10-times the previous year. It's a growth rate that starts to encourage those who predict that Weinberg might just - some day - become a Google killer. Maybe or maybe not. But, instead of "Just Google It", many people really are getting used to saying "Just Duck It". Larry Page is not yet feeling the heat, but just wait. Flashes & Flames MediaBlog]]> 15 Media Predictions for 2015 tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2014:/theblog//3.6101286 2014-11-04T12:35:44-05:00 2015-01-04T05:59:01-05:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ BuzzFeed, eBay/Gumtree, Indeed, and Business Insider will launch free newspapers. Google will launch a scrape-free, ads-free subscription emails/ search service. Or Microsoft will do it with Bing/Outlook. Some of the world's major daily newspapers will go free. Others will reduce to Friday-Monday publication. Inspired by London Evening Standard, Metro, 20 Minutes, AM New York, and Australia's mX. Will UK's The Independent, the Daily Express or The Sunday People be next? Some major magazine brands will go free. Inspired by UK's Stylist, Time Out, and Hearst's TrendingNY. Simon Cowell will be involved in a new global entertainment network. His Sony contract expires in 2015. News Corp will launch a global news service online and in print. A combined UK-Australia-US operation? And a global The Sun? Time Inc will launch a Time-People-Sports-Fortune-Money global super site. Washington Post-Amazon will launch a global news service. Jeff Bezos is limbering up for a big splash. Many regional newspapers will go online-only. Linked to shopping offers. Network TV channels will launch web versions with interactive options. Otherwise, their viewers will continue to be distracted by Twitter. Some major books will be published for free download with sponsorship or advertising. Obviously. Facebook will buy BuzzFeed. LinkedIn will launch business (online) TV. Fox/ Sky will launch a rival to Vice News or buy it. After all. Financial Times will merge with Wall Street Journal. Flashes & Flames MediaBlog]]> Harvard Professor Shows Traditional Media How to Cope With the Future tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3514896 2013-06-28T04:59:15-04:00 2013-08-27T05:12:01-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ Clark Gilbert (a hint of Superman there) is the mild-mannered professor who had been lecturing on technological "disruption" when he became an adviser to the American Press Institute on a digital future. Few newspapers took his advice. But someone was listening. In 2009, Gilbert's church came calling and he took control of the Mormon-owned Deseret Media: a chance to put theory into practice. Four years on, his real-life laboratory experiment has produced dramatic results: strong digital growth but also a bounce-back in newspaper revenues. Everyone wants to know the secret. It is almost three years since Gilbert cut Deseret News staffing by 43% (85 people) and merged newsrooms with its KSL television and radio stations. But the professor contradicted the talk of 'cross-platform strategies' that had long consumed media executives across the world. Instead, the professor was making his case for a new media strategy based on two fundamental points about 'disruptive innovation': 1. Only 9% of all companies in 'disrupted' industries survive. "Let's be generous and double that: fewer than one in five traditional broadcasters and publishers will survive if historical trends hold". 2. But 100% of that surviving 9% had set up a disruptive (new) business as a totally separate division of the parent company - "no exceptions." That means a separate location, management, and team - with a significant number of 'digital native' recruits and investment to become "the best in the world". A separate digital company won't guarantee success, Gilbert argues. It is "necessary but not sufficient." So, while newspaper executives everywhere were (and mostly still are), developing new digital businesses cheek-by-jowl with their traditional operations, Clark Gilbert is doing the opposite. He believes, quite simply, that the legacy (hard copy) and the digital (online) operations can each thrive only at a distance from each other, literally. In addition to Utah's leading daily newspaper, Deseret Media is KSL-TV, a leading Utah TV channel, and two radio stations. Just the kind of traditional media business that ought to be hurting. Not a bit of it: • Deseret News' weekday and Sunday circulation was up 23% and 10% respectively in the six months to March 31 2013 - while its close rival was -6% and +3%. Its 23m monthly digital page views make it the fastest-growing combined print and online readership (+33% weekday and +90% on Sunday) among American newspapers • Deseret Digital revenue has grown by an average of 40% for each of the last three years. Page views were up by 50% and unique monthly visitors by 40% in the last 12 months. • The KSL radio and TV website notched up 200m monthly page views and 3million monthly uniques, making it: the country's top broadcast site, with two-third of all Salt Lake City adults visiting at least monthly; one of the first to stream radio and TV content; and the first to offer free classifieds - beating Craigslist in Utah. So far so good. However, the challenge everywhere else, especially for still-profitable traditional media businesses, lies in the potentially expensive idea of 'Chinese walls' between new and old media. Gilbert also insists on a "capabilities exchange" between the two companies: working together without interfering in each other's operations. And its Deseret Connect is a content system that curates stories written by reporters, bloggers and some 3,000 community-based contributors. It provides content for newspaper, online and broadcasts. This is one traditional news operation that takes seriously aggregation (ie 'outside' editorial content). Deseret News is Utah's oldest daily and, indeed, its oldest surviving business, having been launched within a few years of the establishment there of the Mormon church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). 'Deseret' (meaning 'bumblebee') had been the Mormons' chosen name for their 19th century state. Now, the legendary newspaper is part of a media empire at the heart of a church with 14m worldwide followers, assets of $30bn and annual business revenues of $5bn from investments in financial services, property - and media. Its Brigham Young University houses one of the four most popular business schools in the US. The church that earns some $7bn from 'tithes' (10% of members' income) is nothing if not businesslike, a reputation enhanced by its media moves. The company's network of digital media sites and services is focused primarily on the Utah market, but is increasingly national and international, not least to a Mormon congregation that is 40% American but has strong concentrations in South America and the AsiaPacific. The fast-growing digital business now accounts for 25% of the group with broadcast 40% and print 35%. It expects digital to reach 50% within three years. The company's newspaper-based digital services now account for some 45% of its newspaper revenues, compared with the US average of 17%. The increasingly-prosperous Utah's unique position as a state with its own religion (60%+ of the three million residents are Mormons) must give Deseret Media some advantage. And Gallup Poll 'voted' it "the best state to live in". This is a community made for media. Deseret is an unusual blend of national, local, and even international news media - which, arguably, makes it an even more interesting case study for legacy media groups. It has taken an academic and his church to provide the best blueprint so far for the survival of traditional media companies. www.flashesandflames.com Media fortune, fame & folly]]> RNCF Charity Calls for all Boarding Schools to Have 'Social' Bursaries tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1979848 2012-10-21T19:00:00-04:00 2012-12-21T05:12:01-05:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ It is important, however, not to lose sight of the disadvantaged young people who need (and deserve) not only a good school but also a safe, secure, and supportive home. For many vulnerable young people, that is a school-home combination which only boarding schools can offer. The Royal National Children's Foundation is a low-cost, independent charity which has, during the past 40 years, supported almost 3,000 vulnerable young people at state and independent boarding schools across the country. This "Assisted Boarding" has, for many of these needy young people, proved to be a positive alternative to needing eventually to be taken into local authority care. The RNCF has seen, time and again, how boarding school has enabled vulnerable young people - and also their pressured single-parents - to rebuild their lives and prospects. This is life-changing work. Indeed, many Assisted Boarding beneficiaries become outstanding achievers, perhaps partly because they know that their new-found security, structure, pastoral care, education and social opportunity would only be available to them at boarding school. RNCF and partner charities are currently providing long-term (six-seven years) support for more than 300 vulnerable young assisted boarders in 120 state and independent boarding schools. We are also involved in promoting the social benefits of boarding school to local authorities through our Assisted Boarding Network. These hundreds of vulnerable young people are, though, only a fraction of the 1.6million impoverished lone-parent families from whom most of our beneficiaries are drawn. While boarding school would never suit all young people (whether vulnerable or not), many of those in the sights of Mr Milburn and his commission might indeed benefit from becoming Assisted Boarders. And it is believed that up to 3,000 Assisted Boarders could be accommodated in existing boarding school facilities. So, the Royal National Children's Foundation is now calling for the consensus on social mobility to be extended to require the UK's 550 boarding schools to sign up to the following: They should adopt a publicly-stated 'mission statements' on bursary targets for Assisted Boarders, with criteria that are explicitly more social than academic. While a selective school should not choose pupils for whom it is unsuitable, boarding schools should have an explicit commitment to providing additional mentoring and support for young people from 'broken' homes. They should develop formal, consultative relationships with neighbouring local authority young people's services (and charities like RNCF) on Assisted Boarding and would-be beneficiaries. This inclusive approach (which is implicitly supported by some 40% of all boarding schools) should become the norm - in the way that major public companies are expected to have a policy for "Corporate and Social Responsibility". This CSR approach might also influence any future government funding incentives to ensure that the longtime decline of UK boarding school capacity is eventually reversed. The 100-200 boarding schools with which RNCF works most closely testify to the effectiveness of Assisted Boarding for beneficiaries but also for the schools themselves. Everybody now accepts the importance of social mobility for the longterm health and wealth of the country. They should also realise that the same goes for schools, especially the 'home from home' boarding schools which have so much to offer. It's time for action. Colin Morrison is chairman (and a former Assisted Boarding beneficiary) of the Royal National Children's Foundation (www.rncf.org.uk).]]> West London TV Revolution Threatens to Change Everything tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1926469 2012-10-01T11:47:01-04:00 2012-12-01T05:12:01-05:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ The inevitable conflict starts with the debate about what television actually is. If we define it as 'video programming', there are three broad types of TV: 1. Broadcast: free-to-air or subscription or pay-as-you-go; and terrestrial or satellite or cable 2. IPTV (Internet Protocol Television): web programming by network operators like British Telecom or Telstra or Verizon. 3. OTT ('Over The Top'): web services provided independently of network operators, like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, LoveFilm, and BBC iPlayer. Either free or pay-as-you-go. Taking those broad definitions, it is worth reflecting on some of the TV-related developments of the past few months: The hotel-room naked images of Britain's Prince Harry in Las Vegas were broken by Time Warner's TMZ. This is the entertainment internet channel that, three years before, was first with news of Michael Jackson's death 250 miles down the road in Los Angeles. TMZ (named after 'Thirty Mile Zone' - the LA-centred world of film studios) has 3million US viewers and at least 1m worldwide. They devour TMZ celebrity news and gossip presented with split-screen video, photos and graphics. Waitrose, the UK's powering upmarket food retail co-operative, announced the launch of its first online TV channel covering food, drink, health, ideas and interviews. The chain and its department store parent John Lewis are marching across the frontier that has long separated media from retail - in just the same way as fashion digitals Net a Porter and ASOS. (Media content will increasingly oil the wheels of ecommerce - and vice versa.) BskyB, the News Corp-controlled world-best pay TV business, has launched NowTV. It's (initially anyway) a film channel to compete with the rampaging Netflix, Amazon's LoveFilm, and new movie channels from Tesco's Blinkbox, and Dixons' KnowHow Movies. HBO, the Time Warner-owned movie channels, has moved into the Nordic countries in a different way. Australia's National Basketball League has started selling its live coverage direct to viewers for A59 per season. The common link between those recent developments is that they are all OTT services, showing how the internet is starting to be a new home of TV and not just a promotional (and catch-up) channel for it. Further evidence for the growing importance of such web TV came from the Google-owned YouTube with the milestone news that it had sold one of its best-watched 'programmes', "Recipe Rehab", to America's ABC network. YouTube can increasingly be seen as Google's trojan horse for its invasion of mainstream TV viewing. Its 100 channels certainly now include a large amount of high-quality programming like "Everyday Health" and it dominates music-video. YouTube is becoming the ultimate modern - and truly global - TV group, increasingly featuring the work of leading companies and producers. "Recipe Rehab" itself is the brainchild of award-winning broadcast TV producer, one Mark Koops, who previously gave us "The Biggest Loser" and "Masterchef". He hailed the ABC deal as a breakthrough: "It's a sign of the emerging times. Television is no longer just the television". Words to savour. But there's plenty more evidence of the growing importance of such internet services, especially in capturing difficult-to-reach young audiences for whom TV viewing is more about laptop than lounge. Enter the UK's largest online 'broadcaster' with a stunning story to tell. SBTV was created six years ago by the then 16-year-old Jamal Edwards. His Mum had given him a video camera for Christmas, and Jamal went out filming urban music and dance from his Acton, West London home. Now, SBTV (after SmokeyBarz, a former alias for his experimental video clips and the name of his booming YouTube channel) claims more than 100million hits on YouTube, is oozing advertising and sponsorship - and is cool cool cool. The whole operation is much more than a web site. Its combination of funky news, music and edgy video represents a real blurring of media channels, the shape of things to come. Is it TV? Well it's watched by milllions of young Brits. Is it a web site? It is great online source for news and gossip about music, fashion and urban stuff. Is it radio? Well, its a good place to listen to new music. Ask Ed Sheeran, who was "discovered" by SBTV. And Kelly Rowland, Jessie J and Tinie Tempah who were thrilled to be part of it. "JamEd" is a fascinating if slightly confusing blend of the radical and the mainstream. His rap world is spliced with commercial success and hob-nobbing with David Cameron,Richard Branson, and Simon Cowell. He's written columns for daily newspapers, and has appeared at festivals and on platforms where people hang on to every under-stated word about the way of the world and young people's place in it. He was a Spirit of London Ambassador and carried the Olympic Torch at the invitation of Coca-Cola. The fast rising success of Jamal Edwards' SBTV means different things to different people. But this is a major media "channel" that has been created completely beyond the world of regular broadcasters. It is slick and uses a thrilling multimedia approach that has captivated millions of young people in ways that are beyond the regulated, strait-jacket worlds of broadcast TV and radio. Hundreds of thousands of young people are watching more SBTV than ITV, the UK's largest commercial channel. This is how more and more TV is going to look, feel and be delivered - and Edwards is not the only one who understands that. BskyB has launched its own OTT service because (for all the acclaimed success in winning 11m subscriptions for its £7bn cable-satellite network), the UK market still has 13 million households that don't have pay TV. Sky already has 4m broadband internet customers, so OTT is a real opportunity, as it is also for the retailers who are dying to develop truly interactive TV linked to home shopping. But the major result is sure to be a proliferation of TV-like formats on the web, multimedia channels that will challenge conventional media demarcation - and also, of course, defy traditional cross-media ownership restrictions. These new channels will increasingly be able to offer the kind of split-screen, interactive, and social networking opportunities sought by the multi-tasking generation. Unfettered by regulation, the channels will attract ever more creative use of advertising, product placement and sponsorship. Many of these new channels (like SBTV itself) will benefit too from the kind of buccaneering spirit that made pirate radio stations so appealing to an earlier generation. And for every youth TV channel, there will be many others to further crowd the market for movies, news, business - and sport. How many sports organisations will be watching Australia's basketball marketing of its own live channel direct to the consumer? Such OTT applications may come to rock the world's traditional broadcasters, with all the potential for interactivity, ecommerce - and gambling. Tens of millions are now watching broadcast TV on iPads and smartphones in ways that were so recently thought to be beyond the technological frontier, let alone consumer taste. Other seemingly improbable things will come along and captivate people who are increasingly hungry for choice, change and mobility in their entertainment and information. Whether viewers have internet-connected televisions, web-enabled set-top boxes (like the UK's newly launched YouView)or make their viewing choices on something more mobile and versatile, creative new channels will flood the web - and some will become huge right around the world. http://flashesandflames.com Media Fortune, Fame & Folly]]> Commercial Radio Faces Digital Fight With Internet Music 'Streamers' tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1698860 2012-08-01T19:00:00-04:00 2012-10-01T05:12:03-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ It is easy to see why. FM/AM radio looks pretty "flat" in a world of social networks and mobile internet. But the expensive switch to digital will expose the broadcasters to competition for which they may be ill-equipped. Music-based radio stations, after all, don't even own their content. And listeners have plenty of other ways to hear the same music. But, even while online advertising has ripped out profits from newspapers and magazines, radio has so far seemed to defy the odds and (mostly) maintain its hold on listeners and advertising. US radio (now heavily in private equity ownership), is expecting to grow again in this Presidential election and Olympics year and to increase its world-best 11% share of all advertising. In Australia, the year of sports is boosting audiences, and advertising share is holding steady at 8%. Even in the UK, where commercial radio has to compete for audiences with the BBC, the stations are expecting modest growth in revenues and in their 4% share of all advertising. The radio industry is full of the wonders of digital in a year when (finally) a decent proportion of new cars across Europe will have DAB radio fitted as standard. Digital radio can give broadcasters the opportunity to transmit (and collect) data for specific customers, provide weather, traffic and even shopping offers: radio can become truly interactive for the first time and perhaps in video too. The UK, which had once hoped to be able to switch most radio broadcasting over to digital by 2013, is talking up DAB. And industry-wide adoption of the nifty "RadioPlayer" app has boosted radio listening on the internet to a record 42m hours weekly. UK radio listening is now 29% digital - via digital radio, internet, cable/satellite TV and, increasingly, by mobile phone. And rival broadcasters, who are asking the OFT effectively to stop the Irish-owned Global Radio from snaffling a dominant 50%+ share of the UK market by acquiring Guardian Media Group's radio stations, are positively purring about this year's increases in listening, with growth across the board. Too soon... The US market shows the scale of the impending threat from music streaming. There, weekly usage of 'internet radio' (much of it from pure-play music streamers) jumped by 30% which means that 29% of all 12+ Americans are now non-broadcast, internet music listeners. Mobile phone listening to radio increased three-fold in 2011. And 'internet radio' advertising revenues are now equivalent to 40% of those for broadcast radio. Much of that surge in US music listening comes from the growth of music streaming by 'personalised radio' stations, like Pandora, Rhapsody, Rdio and, more recently, Spotify which offer music listening tailored to a listener's specific requirements, genre, artist or even mood. On market-leading Pandora, a 'station' is created by a listener specifying an artist or song or multiple items of any kind. Listeners can tune into pre-made genre stations and can also respond with a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' to any or all music tracks as they are played. These are stations that "learn" how to keep individual listeners satisfied. California-based Pandora is the brainchild of Stanford politics graduate and sometime music producer Tim Westergren whom Time magazine described as "one of the 100 most influential people in the world". Pandora subscribers pay a monthly subscription for unlimited music streaming or the service can be free - with advertising. Although most music streamers are still loss-making, Pandora may soon be profitable. During May, it recorded 1.1bn listener hours - an increase of almost 87% year-on-year. It now has 53.3m active listeners - 52% up on 2011. It claims some 70% of 'online radio', whose key player Sirius XM is now planning to launch into 'personalised radio'. More important, Pandora's May 2012 share of total US radio listening (broadcast and streaming) is now 6% - almost double that in 2011. Crucially, it claims to be the largest "radio" network for 18-49 year olds. Advertisers have started the stampede: ad revenue was up 6% in the first quarter of 2012. With $138m revenue and a $1.8m loss in 2011, Pandora is on course for profits this year. Pundits predict that by 2020, the word 'broadcasting' will be foreign to anyone under 40, with listening domination then by the streamers whose revenue includes paid subscriptions, advertisements directed at non-subscribers, and music sales on behalf of labels and retail partners. It is obvious why Spotify wanted to conquer America. With some $900m of revenues (and still loss making), the London-based company was founded six years ago in Sweden where streaming now accounts for 89% of all music sales. It is the world leader among streamers - outside the US - and claims to be the second largest music 'retailer' after iTunes. Across the world, it has some 10m listeners up to 3m of whom are paying subscribers. But, one year in the US, Spotify is not having an easy time. However, you can only imagine how relieved are record companies: Just a few years after digitalisation and music-sharing piracy slashed profits and prospects, recorded music is bouncing back with fast-growing licence revenues from streaming. And streaming is becoming increasingly international. This month, Pandora launched into no-recession Australia alongside at least five other global services and two local ones. They're starting to scare Aussie commercial radio broadcasters which have traditionally been able to secure 8-10% of all advertising revenue. The UK may be next for Pandora. These streamers clearly compete with iTunes, music retailers - and broadcast radio. Expect hyper-competitive streaming launches too from Apple, Amazon, and Google. In the UK, where streaming still only accounts for only 4.5% of music sales, broadcasters are abuzz with the promise of digital broadcasting and rising sales of DAB radios. The BBC is testing "RadioTAG", which features: "live pause"; the ability to Tweet a track to a friend on your mobile who can listen to the song and then (if they want) buy it; and listen to a MacDonalds ad while getting a discount coupon (in the form of a QR code) sent to your phone. It is also developing RadioVis with 'sidebar' signalling of images and text messages for broadcast audio services. But radio execs who (just like print publishers before them) love the idea that digitalisation can bring them into the world of moving pictures, may instead find themselves squeezed between 'personalised radio' from the streamers, and hundreds of new web 'channels' from existing TV broadcasters and new operators. It is only 40 years since the launch of the UK's first legal commercial stations after stormy, romantic years of music piracy courtesy of Radio Caroline in the North Sea and Kiss in a bedsit. Ownership has become heavily consolidated by Global and German-owned magazines giant Bauer. Just as commercial radio pushes on into digital, Ofcom is looking forward to auctioning the vacated FM radio spectrum for smartphones, TV and community radio. Ironically, it is that coming wave of web-based interactive services which could eventually leave many commercial radio networks for dead if the streamers haven't already done it. Digital broadcast radio may become a smaller, predominantly localised, and (frequently) social network-linked medium. But there's going to be a lot more music, exactly as you want it. www.flashesandflames.com Media Fortune, Fame & Folly]]> Newspaper Groups in Four Countries Show How to Thrive in the Digital Era tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1675388 2012-07-17T19:00:00-04:00 2012-09-16T05:12:12-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ 1. Axel Springer In 10 years, the Berlin-based Axel Springer has been transformed from a spluttering old-fashioned, German press group (with almost 100% of profits coming from a single daily newspaper) into a hugely profitable international, multi-media business spanning newspapers, online, magazines, broadcasting and classifieds. Last year saw profits rise by 16% with EBITDA margins reaching 19%. A straight third of revenues (and half of all advertising) are from digital and about the same proportion of profits comes from outside Germany, with profitable operations right across Eastern Europe, France, Spain, Switzerland, and also India. The transformation has been wrought by CEO Mathias Doepfner, who has been following the Schibsted lead (see below) in expanding Springer's online classified skills. But no one can forget that Springer's media market domination in Germany grew from Bild, Europe's largest selling tabloid. The paper's conservative views last month prompted Greek politicians to label it as "the most powerful newspaper in the world". Or at least their world. As Germany wrestled recently with Greek debts, Bild ladled up stories of lazy Greek workers and corrupt, welfare-dependant politicians. That approach probably helps the racy, hawkish tabloid maintain copy sales of three million copies daily - and why it also has 100,000 iPad subscribers. The Axel Springer difference in this century is that Bild is but one part of an increasingly successful, future-proofed media group which understands the digital economy. Its recent £110m acquisition of the market-leading Totaljobs.com from Reed Elsevier marks Springer's belated arrival on the UK's main stage. Like its country's economy, Axel Springer is on an altogether different trajectory to most of its peers. 2. New York Times Media Group Rupert Murdoch is, to say the least, irked by the owner of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe and 16 other newspapers. It out-competes News Corp's perennially loss-making New York Post and is now facing a fierce battle with his Wall Street Journal to (sort of) become the nation's daily. Its 2010 coverage (believe it or not) reignited Murdoch's UK phone hacking scandal, at the prompting of his nemesis The Guardian. But, more than anything else, the 160-year-old New York daily is audaciously showing the world's largest news organisation (and proprietors everywhere) how to compete in the digital age. Look at the scale of this unlikely success. The New York Times has generated almost $250m from its digital services during the 12 months to March 2012, about one-third subscriptions, two-thirds advertising. It now has almost 500,000 digital subscriptions. The average daily circulation of the New York Times increased dramatically by 73% to 1.6m in the 12 months ended 31 March 2012. The New York Daily News was 9% down in the same period. Circulation revenue has increased by 6% in the past four years. 75% of 2011 weekday circulation came from subscriptions (hard copy and digital) rather than single copy sales. The significance of these numbers is that they are the clearest indication yet that digital revenues could become substantial enough to fund the high-cost, high-quality journalism that has long been the staple diet of (many) newspapers. There is still a way to go of course - and there will have to be fewer news providers generally for the remaining players to generate substantial profits. But the New York Times is also finding that bundling digital and hard copy subscriptions can be a successful strategy: sales of the daily print edition were actually 1% up during the six months up to March this year. Those results show crucially that quality newspapers can shift their revenues towards readers and away from advertising as they push into digital. Which is just as well, given the seemingly permanent loss of advertising market share being suffered by most newspapers. US analysts have predicted that New York Times' copy sales/subscriptions revenue will have fully replaced lost advertising by 2014. Rupert Murdoch may have been reading NYT's digital achievements through gritted teeth, but he is taking notice alright. In a sign that News Corp is testing just how readership revenues can make up for lost advertising in the UK, The Times recently doubled its iPad edition price from £2 to £4 per week. 3. Schibsted Media Group Oslo-based Schibsted is variously touted as "the world's smartest media company" and is still storming through its journey from news domination in Norway and Sweden to growing media operations and web classifieds in 20 countries including the US where it is giving Craigslist a run for its money. In the first quarter of 2012, like-for-like profits were up 10% and revenues 5%. Almost 50% of the business is now outside Norway. More than half of all revenues are online advertising. Its web classified is up 19% so far this year. Like all our early winners in the digital race, Schibsted's traditional newspaper business is getting stronger too in important ways: newspaper subscriptions are 4% up, compensating for the fall in retail copy sales. 4. Daily Mail and General Trust Britain's most successful newspaper group is not a newspaper group at all. The family-controlled, listed group now derives 75% of profits from business media including Euromoney, online information, and events. A single, hardly-known business Risk Management Solutions delivers profit equivalent to two-thirds of the Daily Mail - at three times the margin. The gilded Euromoney (70% owned by DMGT) last year accounted for more than one-third of all operating profit. DMGT is an enviable collection of business media with operating profit margins of 20-30%, and consumer newspapers struggling to reach 10%. First half profits 2012 from its eponymous national newspapers were 26% down due to lower print revenues and digital promotional activity. National paper revenues were virtually stable. That was a clue to the fact that Mail's 50million (75% ex-UK) online audience is cranking up the revenues but is still a good way from profitability. It is now the world newspaper site leader (ahead of the New York Times, but still behind the Huffington Post). But it is different. The Mail Online realised early on that huge audiences can be delivered by search engines. It, therefore, uses web analytics slavishly to guarantee that, whatever or whoever is "trending" at any one time are to be found right up there on Mail Online, which is not really the Daily Mail at all. The jury's out (waiting for the profits) but nobody can doubt the spirit of DMGT enterprise it represents. DMGT is a fascinating £2bn group of semi-autonomous media businesses across the spectrum and in many parts of the world. It manages these with a light (i.e. low-cost) touch from the centre. In its traditional newspaper territory, DMGT's still-growing Metro free dailies have also been successful across the UK. And the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday continue to be strong competitors in the paid-for newspaper market. It is inspiring (even reassuring) to see how these strongest and most agile newspaper-centric companies have been able to leverage their brands, content and traditions to reform their businesses. But most will have no such opportunity as the digital revolution continues to shake the foundations of media organisations everywhere. www.flashesandflames.com Media fortune, fame and folly]]> How Boarding Schools Can 'Save' the Lives of Vulnerable Young People tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1607240 2012-06-18T18:09:40-04:00 2012-08-18T05:12:12-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ The conference marks the launch of the Assisted Boarding Network which seeks to give hundreds of vulnerable children the opportunity of a boarding school education. It is being organised jointly by two national charities, the Royal National Children's Foundation and Buttle UK which together are responsible for the long-term support of more than 300 disadvantaged young people in 100 independent and state boarding schools throughout the UK. The charities' target is dramatically to expand the level of Assisted Boarding with the support of boarding schools, local authorities, charities and grant-making organisations. It is believed that up to 3,000 places for vulnerable young people could be available in existing boarding schools, funds permitting. The Assisted Boarding Network is being launched at a time when Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has called for troubled youngsters to be "sent" to boarding school and when politicians on all sides support so-called "Assisted Boarding" as an option for young people whose capacity for ordinary development has been compromised by particularly adverse home or family circumstances. It also chimes with Charity Commission demands that independent schools justify their charitable status by opening up to the needy and disadvantaged. It sounds like an idea whose time has come. But, in fact, until the 1980s, tens of thousands more vulnerable young people were funded at boarding schools across the country. A subsequent shift in council preferences and in support for boarding schools led, among other things, to a dramatic decline in boarding education. Where boarding once comprised the majority of places in independent schools, today it accounts for less than 10%. There were once hundreds of thousands of boarders in Britain, today there are just 73,000. Even in the last 20 years, boarding school places have declined by almost 30%. Nobody is advocating that all (or even most) young people would be suitable for boarding school, whether vulnerable or not. But the Royal National Children's Foundation has carried out research that makes two powerful points: 1. Assisted Boarders frequently outperform their new boarding school peers across a range of social and academic criteria, not least because they know how fortunate they are and tend to grasp their golden opportunity with both hands. 2. Many of these Assisted Boarders once seemed destined to be taken into local authority care. These boarding schools not only help transform the lives and prospects of Assisted Boarders but also can help keep together many a troubled single parent family. It can help to take the pressure off a pressured parent and other siblings. Two of the speakers at this week's Assisted Boarding Network conference will talk with particular passion about the benefits of boarding school for the vulnerable young. One is Lord Adonis and another is.... me. Andrew Adonis was funded by Camden council to board at Kingham Hill in the Oxfordshire countryside. Essex County Council paid for me to attend the Royal Wanstead School, in Snaresbrook. We and thousands of other more recent Assisted Boarders know what we owe to the security, structure, pastoral care and individual attention that is a hallmark of so many of the country's boarding schools. This truly is a crusade whose time has come. Will you support us? Colin Morrison is Chairman of the Royal National Children's Foundation www.rncf.org.uk Transforming young lives]]> iPad Comes to the Rescue of Magazines (Sort Of) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1592533 2012-06-13T06:51:35-04:00 2012-08-13T05:12:05-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ It all happened in October. 18 months after the launch of iPad, Apple introduced its Newsstand app. Meanwhile, 5,000 miles away from California, the UK hobby-tech magazine publisher Future Plc was rocked by another of its periodic crises: profits down, share price slides, CEO quits. Former ITN chief executive Wood took the helm as Future flooded the new iTunes Newsstand with 65 titles. The fragile but funky Future characteristically bounced back from the 2011 profit warnings to report iPad Newsstand sales of 12 million apps, 500,000 'magazines', and digital growth compensating for hard copy losses. US and UK magazines are positively purring about a device that meets the needs of... "magazine journalism that is all about packaging information beautifully and usefully. Digital magazines look simply gorgeous on a glass iPad screen". Hearst is celebrating its race to 600,000 iPad edition sales. The Economist predicts that 70% of its subscriptions will be digital within two years. The reviving Reader's Digest sees 400,000 digital sales exceeding print in 2012. What's more, the iTunes Newsstand has given publishers a dramatic boost in international revenues especially for specialist magazines. Future's T3 gadget monthly's 270,000 downloads in February, produced sales of 25,500 monthly iPad editions - 48% from outside the UK. The Newsstand is clearly set to have a similar impact on magazines as the launch of iTunes itself had on music. It's already changed the face of the iPad app economy and transformed the rank and visibility of magazine brands, which now comprise nine of the 10 highest grossing iPad apps in the US. Of these, eight are digital editions of magazines. No fewer than 34 of the top 50 iPad apps now are magazine editions. The second biggest grossing lifestyle app is Hearst's Cosmopolitan, the world's largest selling magazine. As if to reinforce the perfect 'fit', a recent US study showed that owners of tablets and e-readers spend 50% more time reading magazines than the general population. The iPad Newsstand fever follows a tormenting period during which magazine publishers feared all but oblivion due to falling copy sales, cover prices and advertising yields. Celebrity coverage which turbocharged sales of weekly magazines and profits across the whole market has now been eclipsed by Twitter. If you're interested in this celeb, why not follow her/him yourself - fast and for free? Most other magazine sectors also suffered heavy losses of readers and advertising. Suddenly, the clouds have lifted. But these are still early digital days for magazines, which face some major challenges, viz: Content. Most current iPad editions are (more or less) facsimiles of the printed magazines. Hearst's international magazines chief Duncan Edwards told a recent London conference that what is now the world's largest women's magazine publisher has no plans to include interactive content in digital editions, and that readers will pay more for digital editions: "People thought we'd re-imagine the magazine to take advantage of the technology behind the device but consumers prefer the replica version and, in reality, we're much better at doing this." It actually seems a safe bet that these iPad magazines will become more adventurous and increasingly push the technical boundaries. That will involve video, 'rich media', and smart ways to improve navigation. Advertising will become more (not less) of a challenge for magazines right across the world. You can start with the warning enshrined in a recent piece of US research which showed that print media gets 25% of all adspend but accounts for only 7% of consumer time spent on media. It highlighted the extent to which the fast-growing areas of mobile and internet advertising have yet to reach anything like their potential; and digital audiences are still growing, at the expense of print. This advertising 'gap' may have a dramatic on digital editions and the bundled price of digital/hard copy advertising. Ecommerce. Magazine publishers are convinced of their need to develop ecommerce operations to help retailing substitute for lost advertising. And the magazine-like digital successes of Net a Porter and ASOS are stark reminders of the urgency of the task. It is clear that magazine brands, loyal audiences, and genuinely deep levels of engagement can help build highly-profitable ecommerce operations. The trouble is that many of the most desirable, high-income consumers simply do not want to 'click through' to make online purchases when reading. Publishers must develop imaginative ecommerce models able to use their best brands and address audiences in distinctive ways. Logically, these should be in partnership with 'bricks and clicks' retailers. Although US department store chain J.C.Penney recently closed its "CLAD" ecommerce partnership with Esquire magazine (having "invested" a cool $38m), the same group has just announced a new in-store, hard-copy, digital deal with Martha Stewart Living. Way to go. Platforms. So, Apple's Newsstand has been transformational and at a time when iPad has seemed to wipe the floor with its rivals: its share of the global tablet/ ereader market jumped from 55% to 68% in the first quarter of 2012, while Amazon's Kindle fell from 17% to 4%. But the market will not remain this simple. The approaching rush of new Android tablets may radically change the market for selling digital editions, and the expectations of consumers and advertisers. Will consumers want to buy individual magazine articles like they buy single tracks on itunes? How far will digital aggregators like Flipbook, Zite, and Hitpad - or even Twitter and Facebook - become competitive with digital magazines? Profits. Magazine and newspaper publishers once believed that the digitalisation of the production of their hard copy businesses would (one day) make web operations more profitable - without the cost of print, paper and distribution. Now, they know better. And, try as they will to limit the "new" costs of technological improvement, digital editions will require development far beyond that necessary for hard copy editions - continuously. And so many of these magazine businesses, even if/when they reach the promised land of digital viability, will never match halcyon days. That is why publishers must find new ways of using their famous magazine brands to develop partnerships. They will have to learn to share. www.flashesandflames.com Media Fortune, Fame & Folly]]> Is This Little Swiss Company the Future of Newspapers Everywhere? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1519129 2012-05-16T19:00:00-04:00 2012-07-16T05:12:04-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ There are many different types of newspapers. We might just reflect en passant that one of the (many) failings of the sad and sorry of Trinity Mirror Plc is that it was a merger of at least two quite different businesses (one in regional and one in national newspapers) that only shared the descriptor "newspapers". Consequently, the merged company has depressed shareholders across a decade, vainly trying to unlock the synergies dreamt up by the deal's long-departed advocates. Power rises as sales fall When it comes to daily newspapers, the debate can become more complicated. And nowhere more than in the UK. The country's national dailies rest in the British national consciousness somewhere between football, the Monarchy, the BBC, and Shakespeare. Daily newspapers have dominated UK public life for more than 150 years, courtesy of a pioneering rail network that made national papers possible. Even now, when daily newspaper sales are falling by some one million copies a year, the famous mastheads are everywhere: the country's news channels devote hours of airtime every evening to discussing the following day's front pages. That's why the influence of the popular newspapers over which politicians have fought for favour, has hardly been undiminished by the decline in their sales. When The Sun calls 'time' on a government, its front page screamer is seen much more widely than the newspaper ever was. A neat trick that partly explains how Rupert Murdoch's influence had been rising, even while his newspaper sales (like most others) were falling calamitously. It is that scale of profile and influence that arguably gives newspaper proprietors (in the UK, Australia and elsewhere) confidence that, somehow, they will find their prosperous future role in a changed media world. It gives them a sense of entitlement. It is ironic, then, to conclude that the daily newspapers actually trashed their own prospects. Let me explain. The major obstacle to daily newspapers everywhere being able to find a new economic model online is the simple fact that readers are no longer (mostly) willing to pay for online news. That situation came about more than 10 years ago when newspapers in the UK and elsewhere panicked about the growth of online, built web sites - and offered free access, while they continued to 'prosper' from hard copy sales. Thus began the pervasiveness of free online news whose lasting effect will be that only the very best national and international news organisations will ever be able to charge meaningful prices for their content. The answer for some daily newspapers in the UK must now be to forget about news as a way primarily of earning profits and, instead, use their current promotional power to establish strong ecommerce platforms. Which is why the major 'bricks n clicks' retail chains should start developing content to occupy the same ground - or, alternatively, establishing powerful alliances with the media companies themselves. One answer is in the Alps Given these trials and the death spiral of so many regional newspapers and their debt-laden owners, it might seem surprising to identify realistic new growth opportunities. But, deep in the Swiss Alps is a business which may point the way to a profitable future for newspaper publishers everywhere. The town of Brienz is in the shadow of the Jungfrau mountain, near Interlaken. It is home to a population of 45,000 and a pioneering family-owned, local media business built round a 100-year-old newspaper Jungfrau Zeitung. This is now a multi-media 'hub' which delivers local news and content via mobile, web TV, and a twice-weekly newspaper. All content goes online as soon as it is written and, crucially, advertisers cannot choose the platform but must book their ads across all media. The business model has been developed by Urs Gossweiler, CEO of Gossweiler Media and grandson of the company's founder. This is a very local business: the newspaper sells 9,000 copies and the web site has 60,000 page views. But Gossweiler is not a media experiment: the company makes profit margins of 30% and plans to roll out its model across Switzerland and then across Austria and, perhaps, Germany. The engaging Gossweiler has been busy regaling industry audiences across Europe with his Swiss recipe. The key ingredients are simple enough: strictly local content of the kind which doesn't appear anywhere else, multi-media channels, and multi-platform advertising bookings. A strong emphasis on local content and media platforms. And there can be no doubt that the localised 'web TV' element will grow in importance as broadcasters switch their focus to the web in coming years. But it is easy to see that, for Gossweiler, the hard copy newspaper plays a vital, supporting role in delivering readers and advertisers in a way that can beat the Google onslaught. It is similarly, easy to identify the opportunity to cover 'parish pump' news and information that has been neglected by 'bigger' media. Going 'hyper local' The Gossweiler success is prompting regional publishers everywhere to use phrases like 'hyper local' to drive their strategies. And there are all kinds of micro-newspaper activities being developed in the UK and US, where such small local markets have often been less ravaged by the loss of classified ads and copy sales that have decimated regional press profits. But one interesting sidelight is how far ahead of the curve some European publishers have been, compared with the newspaper-obsessed UK. The ultra-smart Schibsted's powerful cross-border online classified business began in Norway way back in 1999 and now accounts for more than one-third of the international group's total revenues. Sanoma, of Finland, was one media group to eschew the free online model and now has almost 30% of its newspaper readers paying an annual subscription. In the UK, where newspapers are seemingly a source of national pride, it's time to catch up. Will the legacy publishers be up to maximising the opportunities, or will it be left to a new wave of 'hyper local' entrepreneurs? www.flashesandflames.com Fortune, Fame & Folly in Media]]> Winners and Losers in Media and Three Things Every Publisher Must Have tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1505427 2012-05-10T06:10:04-04:00 2012-07-10T05:12:16-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ >Despite the sharp declines in revenue and profitability, relatively few newspapers and magazines have actually closed. This reflects: strategic confusion about what to do, or misplaced optimism about future revenues, or formidable closure costs - and sometimes all three. The worst-hit sector is regional newspapers (fleeced of classified profits from property,cars and jobs) which has seen a cull of some 200 titles in the past 10 years and a 20% fall in regional dailies. But that's a fraction of what is still needed. In consumer magazines, things are stranger still: despite huge losses in advertising revenue and copy sales, only a handful of monthly magazines have closed. Similarly, for the UK's legendary national dailies, a cull awaits the post-Murdoch divestment of News Corp's third of the market. The resulting consolidation may include: some papers becoming freebies, some publishing at weekends only, some web-only, and some being closed. >Few magazine and newspaper publishers are generating sustainable profits from digital activity. The claims of page views, digital subscriptions, iPad and mobile readership come thick and fast. But it is clear that most of these claimed successes are being costed "marginally" with origination and marketing being expensed against the "core" (i.e. hard copy) activity. For some publications (e.g. The Economist and The Week) in which the existing product translates readily into digital form, this may be a route to a profitable longterm. But, for many other magazines, which require much more re-working of content, the digital versions will simply not be sustainable after the demise of hard copy, least of all if Apple takes 30% of the revenue. It is clear that many of these quasi-digital products and services will only survive long-term as much smaller businesses - if at all. And many publishers will have to find partners in order to cope with the growing need for video content and ecommerce. For some newspapers, this may mean alliances or mergers with broadcasters. Almost everywhere, publisher web sites are growing revenues at less than half the 20-25% growth rates of online generally. Here are some predictions for the 10 losers and winners in the media race to become (or remain) relevant, durable and profitable in the 21st century: Losers Paid-for daily newspapers. Regional dailies will lead the way to the graveyard as newspapers pay the price for: falling copy sales, the loss of classifieds, the erosion of display advertising - and soaring oil-based costs of paper and ink. The squeeze is compounded by the collapse in the 'value' consumers place on 'news'. Paid-for weekly magazines. The UK sector, which once accounted for more than 100% of all magazine profits, is in agony from the loss of readers prepared to pay for celebrity 'news', and the fall in advertising revenue. Expect some weeklies to become free and others to close. Local weeklies. Traditional paid-for weekly newspapers may almost completely disappear- or go free. But many of the casualties will be gradually replaced by a new wave of micro-newspapers (see below). Monthly magazines. The general interest magazine model has been broken by falling sales and advertising. Magazines have been squeezed by their inability to raise cover prices which, even in halcyon days, seldom covered production costs. The downward spiral is visible in price promotions, cover-mounted gifts and bundled cut-price magazines screaming from newsstand and supermarket shelves. International magazine franchises, though, are a class apart (see below). Academic publishing. Profit margins will be slashed by a 2013+ explosion in 'pre-loaded' tablets at schools and universities to replace bags of books; and by accelerating 'free access' attacks on publishers of scientific journals. Like book publishing generally, digitalisation poses not so much a threat to authors and content providers as to the traditional role (and profitability) of publishers. Record labels know the story. Winners International magazine brands. Magazines like Cosmopolitan (published in 63 countries) , Vogue (19), Elle (42), Marie Claire (36) and even T3 (22) will be the ultimate beneficiaries of an advertising industry which is increasingly cross-border on the back of the worldwide web. The increasing trend towards global media planning will actually grow advertising revenues for these franchises. This could become a new golden age for international magazine brands, digitally and in hard copy. 'Click through' magazines and magalogues. Net-a-Porter, ASOS and John Lewis are pointing the way towards mediatailing and are clearly poised to grow customer loyalty through expanded 'editorial' content. Publishers who do not recognise the threat of such ecommerce media that allow customers to read about (and then click through to order) products and services will find themselves operating in a much smaller, less profitable market. Free daily newspapers and weekly magazines. The success of City AM, Metro and London's Evening Standard confirms the appetite of readers (and advertisers) for bite-sized reading. Even more impressively, Shortlist Media (sparky publishers of free weeklies ShortList and Stylist) now has higher profit margins than all but the largest paid-for magazines. There's clearly space for even more well-targeted, free newspapers and magazines especially in the UK's major cities. Expect an existing newspaper or magazine goliath to snap up the vibrant Shortlist Media as a platform for new media growth. Specialist magazines. Premium-priced magazines for special interest groups can clearly be long-term winners but too many are still hooked on the UK's once so-lucrative retail network rather than posted subscriptions with rich databases. Falling magazine and newspaper sales will lead to sharp range-reductions in supermarkets. The race is on for sub-50,000 circulation magazines to convert into posted subscriptions, free distribution or sponsorship by retailers. While the iPad seems to offer promise to such publishers, the hard copy connection might be necessary, for some time yet, in order to retain advertising revenue. Local, local newspapers. Regional newspaper groups bemoan the UK monopolies regulations that frustrates consolidation. But it will come. And when it does, new opportunities will open up for a return of very localised media spanning online, web TV - and free newspapers. Micronewspapers and micromedia will be the buzz from 2013. There is great scope for localised media-led ecommerce operations that can help independent retailers compete with the national chains. The 3 Cs That list of winners and losers is viewed through the prism of existing media types. But it is easy to predict that the ultimate winners across all media will be characterised by mastery of the "Three Cs"... 1. Content. User loyalty will be secured by original information (including self-generated content) that is targeted, creative and accessible. 2. Community. Users need to have a sense of belonging, "ownership" and participation. Think Facebook, LinkedIn, ASOS, Net-a-Porter and Twitter. 3. Commerce. Product sales and services will be the essential engine of profitable media. Media=Retail and Retail=Media. Think Net-a-Porter. Content, community and commerce: three words that will increasingly separate the winners from the losers in 21st century media. www.flashesandflames.com Fortune, Fame & Folly in Media]]> How Randolph Hearst's Modest Successor Will Out-Pace Rupert Murdoch tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1230583 2012-01-25T08:48:01-05:00 2012-03-26T05:12:01-04:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ Citizen Kane. Hearst certainly knew how to use his newspapers: he supported arch-democrat Franklin Roosevelt one year and the Republican Herbert Hoover the next. Before the 1939-45 war, Hearst was even suspected of supporting Hitler but his newspapers were probably the first anywhere to go big on the seeping, unimaginable rumours of Holocaust in the early 1940s. This huge man with a tiny voice - a warmonger in Cuba and Mexico but a pacifist in Europe - was the world's first media mogul, building a chain of newspapers and magazines that stretched from San Francisco to London. If Hearst was the first of his kind, his 21st century counterpart may be the last. Rupert Murdoch, lest we forget, is the man who created the very idea of an international business spanning all media and all countries. But, while these two media pioneers shared the common language of popular journalism and political activism, Randolph Hearst was a two-term US congressman who tried to become President. Murdoch has never liked politicians enough to want to be one. They each built a mighty media empire from a single, inherited small-city newspaper, (Murdoch in Adelaide and Hearst in San Francisco). But that is where the similarities end. The company Randolph Hearst founded 125 years ago is now a rare example of an optimistic traditional media group. Hearst Corporation is a $7bn revenue, still privately-owned business spanning television, newspapers, magazines and digital media. It has grown in a steep straight line since William Randolph Hearst died in 1951. Part of the secret is a family trust trust through which the company is controlled by a 13-member Board, eight of whom are non-family. And Hearst's will includes a clause that allows the trustees to disinherit any heir who contests the trust structure. But the longterm trust ownership is only part of the Hearst Corporation secret. The real key to its success over the past 33 years is a man hardly known outside America and who, unlike either Randolph Hearst or Rupert Murdoch, has few critics and no visible enemies. That man is Frank Bennack and, you guessed it, he will be 80 next year. He has been a Hearst faithful virtually his whole working life, since joining his San Antonio, Texas local paper as a classified ads salesman in 1950. He was Hearst Corp President and CEO for a soaring 23 years (1979-2002), during which the burgeoning group increased revenues seven-fold, profits 13 times, and made transformational deals, especially in TV. An estimated 85% of the current Hearst profits are from businesses added during that golden era. Bennack jokes that he "flunked retirement"and, one long-knives night in 2008, he moved back to replace his amiable successor Vic Ganzi. This past 12 months has seen two striking examples of the modest and still-ambitious Bennack's moves to chart a new course for Hearst. Recently, there was his $919m acquisition of the Hachette worldwide magazine business (outside France). This deal made Hearst the world's largest women's magazine publisher. Before that, there is Bennack's latest move in what may be his succession strategy. Amid un-Hearst-like intrigue, CEO Victor Ganzi had stepped down over "irreconcilable differences" and longtime magazines boss Cathie Black quit. The departures happened either side of Bennack's swoop to sign David Carey as Hearst Magazines president from bitter rivals Conde Nast. Hearst's Hachette deal has certainly loaded it up with magazines. It was the kind of deeply unfashionable deal resonant of Hearst's snaffling of newspapers just as everyone else seemed to be bailing out. But Hearst has an almost religious conviction about the longevity of hard copy magazines magazines. Bennack jests that when people finally land on Mars, they will find a magazine and a cockroach. He is only half joking. Indeed, some of their best results have been in their world-best international licensing network of US-originated brands. Cosmopolitan is Hearst's flag-waving example of a magazine with real international clout: no fewer than 64 editions published in 35 languages and distributed in more than 100 countries. Hachette brings Elle, the world's most successful fashion magazine, with 42 editions in 60 countries. The whole deal gives Hearst a portfolio of more than 300 magazines in over 80 countries; and makes its international portfolio a match for the US one. David Carey waxes lyrical about the fast-developing countries where (it is true) magazines are still growing. Thudding, heavy copies of Elle from China or Harpers Bazaar from Russia make the point. Many wunderkind countries are salivating over their Western-style magazines crammed with Gucci and Rolex ads in a rewind from 1980s Europe. But digital migration in China, for example, will take hold quickly enough. And move at warp speed. The Hearst corporate composure is at least partly due to the breadth of its earnings and success. Its annual profit is believed to be some $1.5bn, with perhaps two-thirds coming from investments in cable and satellite TV. The star performer is ESPN, the sports TV network controlled and managed by Disney but 20% owned by Hearst. Bennack bought the stake for $170m in 1990; it may now be worth at least $6bn. Frank Bennack's position is one that Rupert Murdoch might just envy. For all the showy Tweets of the past few weeks, we know that Murdoch has no more command of today's technology than any other 80-year-old. But the capital-destruction of News Corp investments in My Space, The Daily, and Beyond Oblivion, might just show the 'new media' dangers of a hands-on-everything mogul who is err a bit older. The collegiate leader Frank Bennack runs no such risks. www.flashesandflames.com]]> Is This Californian Geek the Future of TV Everywhere? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1192224 2012-01-08T05:26:13-05:00 2012-03-09T05:12:01-05:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ The 55-year-old dropped out of Yale to get into radio and TV, specialising in talks on technology. He stumbled into podcasting, even now an overlooked corner of the media world where some 150,000 regular shows are dispensed by the iTunes store. Within a few years, Laporte was producing 30 hours of podcasts per week, with his flagship 'show' notching up some 250,000 of downloads. Now, his TWiT network ("The Week in Technology") is being downloaded more than 5million times a month. TWiT streams video all day long that captures Laporte's podcasting and a weekend show on computers, 'The Tech Guy', which adds 500,000 more listeners through 140 radio stations across the US. It has all (seemingly) been nicely amateur with Laporte hosting TWiT from his old wooden California cottage. But there's nothing make-shift about the audience - and the profits. Laporte started out by eschewing advertising and asked listeners instead for contributions of up to $10 a month. But, as his audience grew, so did his ambitions. He took on a business partner and started selling advertising. Today, companies like Ford, Visa, Microsoft, and AOL, are paying a premium price (of some $80 per 1,000 viewers/listeners compared with the US average CPM of $15) to reach Laporte's loyal, tech-savvy audience. His revenue has doubled for each of the past five years. As one of the first to tap into the real business potential of podcasting, Laporte has been able to market a niche audience that advertisers love, 30% of it outside the US. Revenue reached $6m in 2011, the year when Leo Laporte's true ambitions - and potential - became clear. He established a purpose-built studio (called the Brick House, to distinguish it from his cottage down the road) and declared his goal of becoming "a 24-hour technology news network, the CNN of technology". Leo told his 'aw shucks' story to a TED conference in Dubai two years ago, where he spoke of " a little podcast network which I have built into an internet television and radio station in this little cottage in the middle of nowhere in Northern California. Now, we've decided to go with our 5million audience and develop it into a full broadcasting business." TV professionals have long talked about the way that their content will weave itself through the web; and the latest internet-connected televisions point the way to computer integration. But TWiT tells us something else about how "alternative" TV might develop. The TWiT network is significant because: The technology is relatively simple, highly-effective and brings together TV, the internet, podcasts and social media. The operations are, by TV standards, stunningly low-cost. Laporte has been making a profit since he hit 2,000 regular viewers in his first year. At $6m and rising, he could have pocketed more than $1m in 2011, if not for one-off investment in the new studio. This is dynamic, open-access TV where viewers Skype in and engage in dialogue online and on-screen. In the age of Twitter and worries about the way that "business" is taking over Facebook, TV channels operated by their viewers (sort of) could become huge. TWiT offers its viewers friendliness and also authenticity: controversial views are challenged and corrected in real-time in ways which might appeal to consumers reared on the untouchability of mass media. Like the web itself, it is seamlessly international Laporte has been able to prove the viability of this real-life cottage industry TV because he is a geek discussing the technologies that have millions riveted. But it is easy to believe that there can soon be hundreds if not thousands of specialist and/or local networks operated just like TWiT. Perhaps it is the name which prompts the thought that someone, somewhere will right now be planning a Twitter-like TV, perhaps 'Mr Twitter' Jack Dorsey himself. Just as the internet has been variously touted as both the future and the finish of traditional media, it is easy to believe that TWiT will become the inspiration for tens of thousands of networks. And a whole new way of doing TV. Just watch. www.flashesandflames.com ]]> James Packer Wins His Casino Bets and Heads Back to Media tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1145180 2011-12-13T05:06:23-05:00 2012-02-11T05:12:01-05:00 Colin Morrison http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-morrison/ Many Brits remember Jamie Packer as a 1980s playboy. His late father Kerry was the rough-tough TV mogul who turned sport upside down in the 1970s with his piratical launch of World Series Cricket which ushered in day-night games, non-white outfits, and many of the variants that have since revitalised the once so-conservative game. And the world's media revelled in stories about his massive losses on the world's gaming tables, reportedly down A$28m during a three-week losing streak in London in 1999. A larger than life father The polo-playing Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer was larger and louder than life. He was either an Australian hero who deserved to be honoured by the great and the good at a packed-out 2006 State memorial service at the Sydney Opera House two months after his death. Or he was a power-crazed bully who intimidated politicians in the pursuit of his business interests. You take your pick. But he unarguably created strong, successful businesses and played a major role in the popular culture and economic life of Australia across 30 years. Kerry Packer was populist to his fingertips, juxtaposing foul-mouthed outbursts with attacks on his executives for over-explicit advertising or 'adult' programmes. He could be crude or a prude. The man who objected to adverts for tampons and suggestive commercials for Cosmopolitan, and who once pulled the plug on a live 'sex' programme, was also responsible for publishing Australia's biggest-selling soft porn magazines. Is James as smart as Kerry? Packer's towering image is conjured repeatedly by everyone who has a view on whether or not James has his Dad's smarts. It's a debate fed by milestones like these: 15 years ago, James Packer signed the ground-breaking 9MSN joint venture with Microsoft that still dominates Australia's online landscape 10 years ago came the 'you-saw-it-coming' collapse of OneTel, the racy Aussie phone company that James Packer and Lachlan Murdoch had persuaded their dads to support. The Murdoch-Packer public companies blew A$1bn on the adventure, recounted painfully by a bestselling book "Rich Kids". It was 6 years ago this month,that the irrepressible Kerry Packer died aged 68, from kidney failure, 15 years after first cheating death with a heart that stopped beating for 6 minutes on the polo field: "I've been to the other side, and let me tell you son, there's f...ing nothing there," he chirped a few days later. He suffered up to eight heart attacks, kidney cancer and transplants across 20 years of near-death scares. Nothing seemed to slow him down - or halt his addiction to cigarettes and junk food. 5 years ago, James sold his family's main media interests (in magazines, online and free-to-air TV) to the private equity firm CVC for some A5.5bn. The deal was structured to give Packer a cool A4.5bn in cash, most of which went into the expansion (and internationalisation) of his already-powerful casino business. Now, we know that the Packer heir almost called the very top of the market for media company values. Those are just a few headlines in the life and times of James Douglas Packer. But more recent events might just inform the debate on the mettle of Australia's most famous son, including: The striking success of his City of Dreams casino resort in Macau. China's home of casinos has been growing at 35% a year and now has five times the revenue of Las Vegas. Packer's Melco-Crown joint venture is one of six authorised casino operators in Macau and is now building its third complex. The US-quoted company floated on the Hong Kong stock exchange last week, which will help increase the company's value over time. The400m profit on his 25% early-stage stake in Seek.com, bought in 2003. The400m sale of the Packer cattle ranches to UK private equity firm Terra Firma The forthcoming sale of his 25% in Jurlique cosmetics for80m CVC's panicky attempts to refinance the indebted media group it acquired from Packer in 2006 for a price more than double its current value. It is that CVC purchase of his family's media business which, more than anything else, defines James Packer the businessman. A casino empire is born The genesis of the deal was in the 1999 purchase of the Crown Casino in Melbourne by the Packer-controlled, then quoted company Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL). Kerry Packer had invested privately in Crown Casino, launched by his closest friend Lloyd Williams. Hundreds of millions of dollars of losses later, costs were way out of control and the casino was in deep trouble. Kerry and James Packer came to the rescue, staging an unlikely merger of Crown with their quoted PBL media company. Even Kerry's normally compliant non-executive directors were aghast at the dramatic shift in the media company's strategy, sprung on them by phone conference one Saturday morning. But he silenced them by invoking the legendary deal which had "returned" Channel 9 to him for just $200m after the earlier sale of $1.1bn had bankrupted Alan Bond in the early 1990s. Then, he had gloated: "You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime and I've had mine". Now, Kerry claimed his second 'Bond' and the legendary gambler added for good measure:"I can tell you, because I know, that the house always wins." And so it proved. The combination of Crown's cost-cutting turn-round to profits and the transfer of huge Crown tax losses to offset against then-soaring media profits gave PBL shareholders what became their most profitable business (now with 3 hotels and 3,000 gambling machines) effectively for a price of not much more than a single year's casino profits. Next, came the Burswood casino in Perth, and a lucrative Australian joint venture with online gambling company Betfair. For James Packer, who had navigated PBL early into online media past his sceptical father, it was a short step from forming an unlikely media+casino group to recognising that the gaming business was the more durable and cash-generative. In the last months of his father's life, James' ambition to switch out of Kerry's beloved magazines and free-to-air TV must have been one of those deeply private, heir-apparent plans - up there with Prince Charles' whispers about turning Buckingham Palace into a museum after his mother dies. For all the wild stories (and despite flipping Channel 9 to Bond and back), Kerry Packer's media employees had come to see him as dependable as the Christmas hampers he bought them each year. So, when James Packer sold Channel 9, ACP Magazines and 9MSN to CVC in 2006, just months after his father's death, journalists started dusting off their stories about "clogs to clogs in three generations" and "selling the family silver". No sooner had the ink dried on the CVC purchase of PBL's magazines, online and TV network than the newly-unshackled son embarked on an investment splurge that saw him loading up with casino investments in the UK and US. He was a young man in a hurry. And, sure enough, by 2008, people were writing his business obituary. That year, for the first time in 21 years, the name Packer (shock, horror!) was not at the top of the list of Australia's richest people. The pundits were variously estimating that the man who had inherited $7bn barely two years before, had already lost $4bn of it, much of it on the kind of foreign investments which Packer Sr had always been wary of. Traditional media under fire But, by then, strange things had started happening to the media industry Kerry had left behind. The internet that James Packer had been captivated by as far back as 1996 (when there were few sites and fewer profit makers) had started to weave its magic. And traditional media began to feel the heat. Advertising revenue wobbled, magazine sales plummeted and the TV networks started to suffer at the hands of newly-emerging pay TV. And Channel 9 (many of whose key executives had decamped to the rival Channel 7 during Kerry's tumultuous final 18 months) spectacularly lost its longtime market leadership. By 2008, the closure of the 128-year-old The Bulletin seemed to symbolise the changed era for media that had been forecast by Macquarie Bank and others who had advised James Packer's bold business moves. Significantly, though, he kept hold of the erstwhile PBL investments in pay TV companies, Foxtel and Fox Sports, and online job site Seek. Even at the height of the stable-clearing, the Packer heir kept his eyes on media futures. But his next three years was ecstasy followed by agony. The CVC coup was followed by the pain of new fast-paced casino investments that themselves proved to be hugely over-priced as the world dived into banking crisis. And he had his own corporate near-death experience over commitments to acquire American casino businesses. But, by the time he had paid his way out of some potentially ruinous deals in the US, divested his father's farming interests and some of his own trophy assets, James Packer was able to relax and watch the just-starting seismic shakes in traditional media. CVC under water CVC's $5.5bn deal for the PBL media businesses was the stuff of legend. It had been marked by cock-a-hoop private equity executives publicly enjoying the limelight in media-obsessed Australia. The cocky Brit who sealed the deal could not believe his luck: he was a media baron and such a close friend of Australia's most famous man. But, soon enough, the mood changed as everyone realised the declining business was worth nowhere near what CVC had paid for it. The bankers moved back from the social pages to the business ones - and wished they had never claimed the credit for out-negotiating a Packer. PBL Media (which was renamed Nine Entertainment Company in 2010) has become a private equity basket case. The magazine and TV profits are fractional (just enough to cover the interest charges). Channel Nine has to be content with the No.2 position in an under-pressure market it had long dominated; and ACP Magazines' profits were down almost 20% last year. CVC has already been forced to inject more cash in order to prevent a default and, now four years after the original purchase, they are faced by needing to reschedule some $2.6bn of debt - or face losing their entire investment as the business is snatched by the lending banks which will then scramble to get back as much as possible of their $2.6bn. That now seems the unavoidable fate. CVC has effectively already lost all its $1.9m equity. It's just a matter of time before it loses control as well. Like traditional media everywhere, much of the old PBL Media group will survive the CVC debacle, but it will be a smaller, less illustrious business - unless it is used effectively as a platform for major new media. But, unlike many of the media winners in the next decade, the CVC-owned business has been unable to invest for the future during times when it has been scrambling to pay the bills. Although, there are some smaller assets CVC can sell to raise cash (and it has cashed in most of these) the still-strong Channel 9 and the increasingly weak ACP Magazines are bound together by the 9MSN partnership which owns rights to their content and promotion. Packer's far-sighted early-internet deal with Microsoft is now effectively a poison pill for CVC. James Packer going great For James Packer, it is all turning into a great middle chapter. His Crown quoted casino business is hugely profitable and the Macau joint venture is expanding fast, both exploiting the expanding Chinese economy. His UK Aspinalls group is also starting to recover, with a big new casino opening at the heart of Westfield's Olympic City shopping centre. His many private investments in Jurlique et al are coming good, his pay TV and 'new media' media investments in quoted company Consolidated Media Holdings are also performing well. Dad's opportunism James Packer is already showing some signs of his father's opportunism. Having sweetly divested Channel 9 ahead of the slide, last year he returned to the free-to-air TV fray by snatching a slice of the second-tier Channel 10 - with his erstwhile OneTel partner Lachlan Murdoch. Some now believe that his instinct for a smart, opportunistic deal will lead him (either alone or in a consortium) to buy back his family's former media business if /when CVC loses it to the banks in the next year or so. An eventual sale back to Packer was, ironically, something that CVC executives used to talk optimistically about in the halcyon days when they were contemplating rising values and big gains. But not like this. A second 'Alan Bond moment'? James Packer has always been a fair bit more PR conscious than Kerry and would enjoy media coverage of how his family had sold and bought Channel 9 so lucratively not once but twice. It could be a steal, and his own first 'Alan Bond moment'. And it would be a nice way of showing that he is every bit his father's son. One outstanding question will be whether Kerry's old media business, now called Nine Entertainment Co. (whose CEO David Gyngell is James Packer's best mate and Kerry's godson) will change hands before or after Australia's Channel Nine starts screening "Howzat: The Kerry Packer Story" in August. The big budget mini-series may be crucial to the channel's 2012 results. So, the Big Fella may still be calling some of the shots from the grave. Whatever the score, just watch James Packer move back into the media mainstream... Declaration of interest: Colin Morrison was CEO of ACP Magazines and a director of PBL Ltd 1995-99; and CEO of ACP-NatMags 2004-8 www.flashesandflames.com ]]>


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