News Summary: 2nd February 2010

February 2nd, 2010 - 
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Macmillan Publishers seem to be quite successfully capitalising on the bitter rivalry between America’s technology giants, Apple and Amazon, to strike a blow for old media by forcing through price increases on digital versions of its books.

Macmillan is one of five publishers – along with Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette – to have signed up with Apple to make ebooks available through its online iBookstore. Last weekend, Amazon removed Macmillan books from its US website (more in the Guardian HERE and FT HERE) in protest at the publisher’s demand that they match the $12.99 and $14.99 pricings suggested by Apple. Protestations by the publishing industry then forced Amazon into a U-turn hours later (more in the Telegraph HERE and HERE and in the FT HERE). Amazon told readers:

‘We want you to know that ultimately… we will have to accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you, even at prices we believe to be needlessly high for ebooks’.

Is the use of the term ‘monopoly’ accidental, or a flagging up to regulators potential price-fixing between publishers and Apple, and/ or a gearing-up for a legal battle? More in the Guardian HERE and Independent HERE.

Google Books’ plans to carry ‘substantial extracts’ of books that are out of print but still within copyright, with buyers then paying to download the title in full, continues to be criticised as a ‘massive rights’ grab’. Revenue generated would be split, with 63% going to the rights holder and the rest to Google. Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, has said:

‘Just because a book is out of print doesn’t mean it belongs to Google. It belongs to me. And if I want to sell my rights to anybody, why the hell should I have to go and ask Google first?’

American authors, publishing organisations and Google are currently trying to agree the settlement, which has yet to be ratified by a New York court and could be one of the most important agreements in digital publishing. Google insists the proposed settlement ‘is not about acquiring rights to books… It is about creating a new revenue channel for rights holders, and opening up access to these books’. More in the Guardian HERE, with British author’s reactions so far in The Times HERE.

Does Habermas have a Tweet for you?! The German social theorist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas apparently tweeted the following ‘It’s true that the internet has reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public sphere of writers and readers’. But, alas, when asked if he had indeed joined Twitter, the 80 year old Frankfurt School doyen is said to have responded ‘No, no, no…This is a misuse of my name.’ see more HERE. We however like to take this opportunity to happily inform you that Ed’s Twitter Page is bona fide and that he can be found merrily tweeting away every day, and does so like to be followed…

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Weekend News Summary: 30th/ 31st January 2010

February 1st, 2010 - 
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Poetry

Ruth Padel – Oxford’s first female Professor of Poetry until a dirty-tricks scandal led her to resign only 9 days in – talks about sex, lies, poetry, and her ‘moment of lunacy’, in the The Times’ Saturday Review HERE. The Padel interview formed part of Saturday Review’s Poetry Special, which also ran pieces by The Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, on reading for Haiti and ‘the music of being human’ HERE; Christopher Reid, on his surprise Costa win for an ‘intimate expression of love and grief’ HERE; and former Laureate, Andrew Motion on disproving the contention that there is no audience for poetry; stimulating its teaching in schools and generally extending audience reach HERE. Motion talks of the success of The Poetry Archive (www.poetryarchive.org), which enjoys a regular monthly audience of a quarter of a million people, listening to about 1.25 million pages of poetry.

Theatre

The news just keeps getting better and better for the West End. Further to last week’s announcement of a record-breaking box for 2009 (see our coverage at the time HERE), Sir Cameron Mackintosh has announced his plans to use some of his £635m fortune to endow each of his seven London theatres with enough cash to ensure that their lifespans outlast his own. The lucky theatres now safely tucked under this super-sheltering wing are the Prince Edward; Prince of Wales; Novello; Queen’s; Gielgud; Wyndham’s and Noel Coward. More in The Sunday Times HERE.

Heritage

 

English Heritage received a last-minute appeal on Friday to save The Foundry – a bar, community radio station, and performance venue. The building has played a key part in the contemporary arts boom and features graffiti and murals by the likes of Banksy, Jake and Dino Chapman and Damian Hirst. Despite the protestations of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, developers plan to replace the building with a hotel. More HERE.

Following the bulldozing of the 1936 Art Deco Regal cinema in King’s Street, and fears that more that 20 others of Britain’s 1930’s cinemas could face a similar fate, David Trevor-Jones, chairman of the Cinema Theatre Association, has said:

‘We’re losing swathes and it’s a tragedy. We live in a world of corporations and cheap architecture, but these buildings take you to another place. They’re all about grandeur and supreme fantasy… I think cinemas are still undervalued; no town would willingly lose its Victorian theatre, but the same isn’t the case for iconic cinema buildings… They’re part of our social and cultural history, but they have no protection.’ More in the Independent on Sunday HERE.

 

Television

David Lister writes about this week’s recording of the South Bank Show Awards (which we covered at the time HERE) at which consensus set around accusing ITV of philistinism for axing The South Bank Show. ‘But if ITV now seems a lost cause on serious arts programming, I can’t say I always get a warm glow from the approach of the BBC or Channel 4’ voices The Independent HERE.

‘Godless liberals’ are beside themselves with horror as a result of an opinion poll suggesting Fox News is the most trusted news operation in America; 49% of Americans trust Fox. Great analysis of the success of ‘news-o-tainment’ in the Guardian HERE.

Rock films look set to take on TV talent shows, and what Peter Hook is calling their ‘singing prostitutes’. Ten films chronicling the lives of musicians have been released or gone into production in recent months, to include the stories of John Lennon, Ian Dury and Joe Meek so far. This week sees the release of Oil City Confidential, an account of Canvey Island pub-rockers, Dr Feelgood. The film’s director, Julien Temple, says ‘We want film to provoke questions… Why can’t we come up with this kind of passion anymore? Now it’s the blandest of the bland who reach whole new audiences on shows like the X-factor’. More in The Observer HERE.

Adam Crozier could get £15m if he successfully turns around the fortunes of ITV. He will get a basic salary just below the £800,000 of his predecessor, but his annual bonus has the potential to reach more than double that. The biggest incentive though takes the form of a parcel of shares he will be awarded on arrival, but will only be allowed to collect after two years at the helm, making 2014 and 2015 the key years in the plan. More in The Observer HERE and The Sunday Times HERE. Assessment of Crozier’s chances of success can be found in the Observer HERE and Sunday Times HERE; The option of an ITV pay-per-view in The Sunday Telegraph HERE; And The Observer cites the latest threat of an ITV break-up bid, posed by rebel shareholders HERE.

TalkTalk is to launch television and mobile services, informed not least by the rapid maturation trend in the fixed-line broadband market and the fact that TalkTalk’s rivals in the broadband market already have TV services; BT, Virgin Media and BSkyB all sell broadband and phone services in discounted bundles. TalkTalk is involved in Project Canvass, a BBC-led consortium preparing to launch an internet-connected TV set-top box before the end of the year. More in the FT Weekend HERE.

Film

Highlights include Pulp Fiction; The English Patient; Good Will Hunting; and The Queen – could it really now be the end for Miramax? The studio is credited with bringing arthouse to huge audiences, but now reports have it that it is to scrapped by Disney. Disney claims it is not closing the business entirely; it is still in possession of six unreleased films, including The Tempest, with Helen Mirren as Prospero. Co-founder Harvey Weinstein has responded by saying he and his brother would ‘love the opportunity’ to buy back the name – an amalgam of their parents, Miriam and Max. More HERE.

The first black Disney heroine is greeted as ‘an opportunity missed’ by The Observer HERE.

Digital media

We covered immediate reaction to the hyper-hyped launch of the iPad HERE. Come Saturday calm, and the latest tablet is in receipt of a positive, if somewhat muted, review in the FT Weekend, which concludes that it will find some degree of success, and help define the emerging media tablet market HERE. Elsewhere in the FT ‘charismatic returnee’ Steve Jobs is observed, to the deduction ‘if his record is anything to go by, consumers could yet find it hard to live without their iPads’ HERE. The potential trickle-down effect for apps companies is covered in The Sunday Times HERE.

With the iPad still two months away though, there remain many unanswered questions. For example, in relation to digital rights management (DRM), it is unclear whether Apple intends to add software which could render consumers unable to transfer content across devices; critics of DRM argue such restrictions prevent consumers ever really owning their books HERE. Yet might it be the case that as Apple usurp not only other major companies, but also consumer choice, their legions of fans will grow only more loyal still? Yes, says The Telegraph, which supposes Apple is taking over the world HERE, The Observer agrees, but fears this will be the realisation of an Orwellian nightmare HERE.

But can the iPad rescue newspapers from ‘oblivion’, in the words of the Guardian Editor in Chief? Absolutely not, responds The Observer HERE, citing the fact that, against industry losses of about $10bn last year, the newspaper US subscription and advertising revenue across all existing e-readers and ‘at a mighty optimistic stretch’, reached new circulation funds of only $325m a year, plus $150m in ads. The Observer is however much more optimistic about the potential of ‘a paywall nobody will notice’; which comes bundled with pay-tv packages HERE.

Media freedom

Standing against the ‘creeping’ culture of secrecy in Britain’s courts, Mr Justice Tugendhat revoked a privacy injunction obtained by John Terry, the England football captain, ruling that there were no grounds for a gagging order preventing the disclosure of an extramarital affair with a former team-mate’s girlfriend. The ‘super-injunction’ had been granted last week after Terry’s legal team used Human Rights Act legislation to argue the public had no right to know about his private life. The injunction has been criticised as the latest example of courts bringing in a backdoor privacy law at the expense of freedom of expression in the media. This weekend Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice, said he hoped Terry’s case would discourage celebrities from making spurious attempts to gag the press. More in the Guardian HERE; Sunday Times HERE and HERE; and Telegraph HERE.

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News Summary: 26th January 2010

January 26th, 2010 - 
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Bill Gates has joined the Google.cn debate echoing Microsoft CEO’s criticism of Google’s position [as covered in yesterday’s News Summary HERE]. Gates has now brushed aside accusations that Microsoft is complicit in helping filter the web by saying that it was not an issue because any censorship could be circumvented with technical knowledge. ‘Chinese efforts to censor the internet have been very limited… It’s easy to go around it, so I think keeping the internet thriving there is very important.’ More in the Guardian HERE; Independent HERE; and Gates is branded a ‘shameless opportunist’ in the Telegraph HERE.

Bill’s isn’t of course a widely held view; the US government has associated itself with Google’s position [as covered in our Jan 22nd News Summary HERE; Chinese state media’s latest ‘US conspiracy’ response HERE] which has also drawn widespread support from human rights activists and freedom of speech campaigners. Efforts to censor the internet in China – or project ‘Golden Shield’ – do not seem to us ‘very limited’; they are in fact among the most extensive in the world. The country’s estimated 300 million internet users are almost all affected by the various blocks and filters, which include direct censorship of anti-government protesters; members of the Falun Gong religious group; Tibetan independence campaigners and the Taiwanese media. At various points, Beijing has also blocked access to international news websites including the BBC, and around 50 Chinese bloggers are in prison as a result of their postings. Google’s VP, David Drummond, explains Google’s decision to pull out HERE.

The Editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has called for caution in rolling out paywalls, saying it could lead the industry to a ‘sleepwalk into oblivion’. His fear is that universal charging for newspaper content on the internet would remove the industry from a digital revolution which is allowing news organisations to engage with their readers more than ever before. This is in the context of Rupert Murdoch’s announcement last year that he would introduce charges for all his news websites by this summer (more HERE), and the announcement last week by the New York Times that it would introduce a paywall by 2011 (as covered in the New York Times HERE and Guardian HERE). For Rusbridger, this is a time to focus on journalism:

‘If you think about journalism, not business models, you can become rather excited about the future. If you only think about business models you can scare yourself into total paralysis.’

Interesting video discussion with Rusbridger on the future of digital journalism can be found HERE and the Guardian’s report HERE.

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News Summary: January 21st 2010

January 21st, 2010 - 
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Further to our wonderings (hither forth ‘sure-minded predictions’) yesterday about whether the New York Times is to install an online paywall, the NYTimes.com has today gone official:

‘Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.’ More in the New York Times HERE and Guardian HERE.

We can only congratulate Arts Council England for its ambition to go ‘politician-proof’. ACE has this week published Achieving Great Art for Everyone, a consultation paper putting forward its priorities for the next ten years. The arts sector is being asked to voice its own views on the plans, which will be taken into account by ACE, before a final strategy framework is published later in 2010, after the general election. Chief Exec Andy Davey said:

‘What we’ve put up is something to be shot down or talked about… We want lots of discussion about it. That takes place over three months, we absorb it and, when there’s a new government, we’ll come back with what people have said and we’ll say what we think [which] we’ll then convert into a framework for the next investment strategy and beyond… If you look at companies in the commercial world who have done well, they’ve thought about ten years ahead and they’ve stuck to it through thick and thin… We in the arts need to think a bit like that. I think we’re capable of doing it, because artists do tend to think long term and I think we need to acknowledge that…’ Davey added that the ten-year plan was intended to be ‘politician-proof so that it doesn’t really matter what the political climate is, we’re clear what we want to do in the arts’. More HERE.

BSkyB will learn today whether it will be forced to sell its controversial stake in ITV. In the fourth ruling since Sky acquired the shareholding in 2006, the Court of Appeal will decide whether to uphold previous orders for Sky to reduce its stake from 17.9% to less than 7.5%. Although it’s thought Sky is likely to appeal if the decision once more goes against it, there is no guarantee that Supreme Court – the only court left for it to apply to – would hear the case.

Sky has been fighting to hang on to the stake since the Competition Commission ruled in 2007 that the acquisition ‘restricts competition’ and ‘may be expected to operate against the public interest’. Sky had argued that the stake was a passive investment and offered to withhold using their voting power. M  ore in the Guardian HERE and Business Week HERE.

In the context of the BBC’s strategy review, chief operating officer, Caroline Thomson, is expected to tell the Oxford Media Convention today that the BBC’s ‘raison d’être is providing programmes and content of real value and quality to licence fee payers, and we must never forget this… we will also explore the potential for spending an even higher proportion of the licence fee on quality content’. More HERE.

Mark Thompson has previously said we should expect out of the review ‘reductions in some kinds of programmes and content’, but speculation that this might mean merging BBCs Two and Four and/ or scrapping BBC Three has been dampened today by reports that, whilst mergers were considered, the corporation is to keep the main television channel structure. More HERE.

Alcohol companies stand accused of ‘cynically manipulating advertising rules’ in order to target under-age drinkers. A report published in the British Medical Journal results from the examination of documents such as alcohol client briefs to agencies, market research reports and media schedules and claims that they show market research date on 15 and 16 year-olds; references to the need to recruit new drinkers; and attempt to push brands as necessary for social success or masculinity – tactics banned in the advertising code.

Alcohol industry body, the Portman Group, has responded that despite having ‘trawled through thousands of pages of internal company marketing documents on behalf of the Health Committee, [there has been a failure] to find any evidence of actual malpractice…’

UK advertiser’s body ISBA, concludes the report ‘deliberately distorts the facts to support [an] agenda… [it fails] to identify a single case of malpractice, which is due to the efficient system of self-regulation within the companies to which [it] refers’. More in the Guardian HERE; Independent HERE and Telegraph HERE.

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News Summary: January 20th 2010

January 20th, 2010 - 
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Google.cn again, and today news that Google has taken its first concrete step out of China, postponing the launch of two mobile phones produced specifically for the Chinese market. China has the world’s most-populous mobile phone market, with more than 700 million accounts. The postponement of the mobile phone launch underlines for Google how widespread the commercial fall-out of its dispute might become.

China is very much standing its ground, a Foreign Ministry spokesman referring to Google directly for the first time yesterday, saying  ‘Foreign enterprises in China need to adhere to China’s laws and regulations… Google is no exception’. Indeed, Google continues to offered its censored service. More in the Times HERE and Telegraph HERE.

The BBC has launched a marketing review, expected to take about 20 weeks, and forming part of Mark Thomson’s larger strategic review. The BBC has refused to comment as to whether the review will result in job-losses. More in the Guardian  HERE and Marketing Week HERE.

iTunes for newspapers? The problem of getting payment for newspapers’ online content could find solution in the arms of Apple, who, thanks to the success of the iTunes store, can now offer 100m accounts with credit card information. This, in turn, could be used to offer readers an attractively simple and elegant way to pay for online newspaper content: ‘click and run and don’t think about it’. More in the Guardian HERE and Telegraph HERE.

Also being linked to Apple’s tablet launch next week, are rumours that the New York Times is set to announce a Financial Times-style paywall for online readers. The FT’s paywall meters access, allowing readers to view a limited number of articles a month, before asking for subscription. The advantage attributed to a metered model is that it would allow NYTimes.com to extract money from heavy users while preserving its impressive reach (of 16 million monthly unique users). More in the Guardian HERE and Independent HERE.

Internet-enabled games consoles are staking a claim to be a home-entertainment hub. A Microsoft Xbox under the television means no need for satalite dish-installation; you can get Sky’s sports channels through the games console; If you’ve got a Sony PlayStation3, you can use it to get programmes via the BBC’s iPlayer, rather than having to watch them on your laptop; and Nintendo Wii users were told last week that they are going to be able to start streaming full-length movies over their console, thanks to a deal with Netflix. More HERE.

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News Summary: 15th January 2010

January 15th, 2010 - 
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Google may have pledged to close Google.cn if censorship is not lifted, but the Chinese authorities don’t seem remotely moved to change. The State Council Information Office has put out a statement filling half a page in the People’s Daily – the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party – signalling a stance that its 360 million internet users will simply have to manage without the search engine. It said:

‘Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development and this is a period of marked social conflicts. Properly guiding internet opinion is a major measure for protecting internet information security.’ More in the Independent HERE; Times HERE; and Telegraph HERE.

Human rights activists tell of their phished gmail accounts and malware infected computers HERE. Cyber attacks aimed at extracting secret information from defence contractors HERE.

Local media is under the spotlight, with concern expressed about the market impact of local authority publications on commercial regional and local press. A question being asked quite pressingly is why the Government is refusing to say whether or not it will ask the Office of Fair Trading to investigate the competitive impact of council-run newspapers. More HERE.

Online media sees Mecom, the UK-based European newspaper group, set to unveil their strategy on paid-for digital content. CEO David Montgomery has said:

‘The crisis is not to do with print or newspapers, it [has been] a crisis of advertising’, he said, adding that circulation and subscriptions at Mecom had stayed relatively solid throughout the downturn. ‘Advertising [decline] is now clearly moderating. People who have written off newspapers have clearly done so far too soon.’ More in the Guardian HERE and in the FT HERE.

Analysis of the decline of Waterstones is to be found in Guardian Books HERE and HERE, and of the firm’s plans to regroup and succeed as a ‘specialist chain relevant in a Google world’ in the Times HERE.

A new collection of Van Gogh’s letters is thought to reveal the depth of his personal plight and the true influence of madness on his art. All pretty depressing stuff really: ‘His achievement was not to conquer illness, but to drag something out of its isolating darkness.’ In his own words: ‘… every time I try to reason with myself… a terrible horror and terror seizes me’. More HERE.

And finally… Disney , you rebels! In the context of 15 years since the first Toy Story – and 10 successive computer animated Pixar films receiving global critical acclaim and box office hit after hit since – Disney is bucking the world’s obsession with CGI with its latest cartoon to be painstakingly hand-drawn throughout. More HERE.

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