Two bits of news out today which show the contrasting fortunes of the digital industry.
Sales of digital radios were down dramatically in December.500,000 were sold last month that was just half the amount sold in December 2007.
Meanwhile over 900,000 personal video recorders that are compatable with freeview were sold last year with nearly two a minute being sold in December.
Showing posts with label digital Tv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital Tv. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Problems with the digital switch in the USA.
With the UK's digital TV switch over slowly moving forward,a warning from across the Atlantic.With switch over scheduled in 9 months nearly 25 million homes have at least one television that will cease to function
The New York Times reports that
The government has spent over $1b on educating the public over the switch.
One problem that has been identified is the effect on advertising revenue.With less Televisions being physically watched,this will lead to drop in viewer numbers and ratings with subsequent drops in revenue.
The New York Times reports that
Ten million of those homes are considered “completely unready” for the conversion, according to a report scheduled to be released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research. Among the findings, Hispanic and African-American households stand to lose a disproportionately high share of access, and extra televisions in kitchens and bedrooms will be more likely to go dark, potentially cutting into the number of people viewing early morning and late-night television.
The government has spent over $1b on educating the public over the switch.
One problem that has been identified is the effect on advertising revenue.With less Televisions being physically watched,this will lead to drop in viewer numbers and ratings with subsequent drops in revenue.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Future of news in a digital age
Yesterday's Ofcom report into the future of Tv news suggests that in an increasing digital and competitive age we should no longer take for granted that broadcasters will provide news coverage as a matter of course.
Whilst suggesting that the last 50 years of public sector broadcasting has ensured the quality of news broadcasts,digital broadcasting,whilst giving significant opportunities to for news coverage,also presents some"fundamental challenges to traditional models and assumptions"
The report particularly highlights the problems facing regional news broadcasting thru the Itv regions which it predicts "in the absence of any regulatory framework will mean"commercial circumstances will make it much less likely that commercial organisations would choose to carry news at anything like the current levels"
There is no doubting that digital broadcasting has up to now brought many benefits to news coverage.Besides a plethora of 24 hour channels we have news on demand via interactive facilities and instantaneous coverage.Whether any of these services are cost effective to the broadcasters remains to be seen.
The report says that public service channels are still where the majority turn for a source of news.The internet is still a supplementary source "for some but not all users"
One benefit that the report highlights is that the cost of news gathering in the digital age is reducing meaning that a future competitor "may emerge to challenge the trio ploy of BBC/ITV/Sky.
Ofcom also have some interesting comments about impartiality.The traditional BBC/ITV duopoly was given an impartial mandate by the regulators.But is that really applicable in the digital age?
The report questions whether the rules of impartiality merely serve to stifle the expresion of views that are not part of the mainstream"
Whilst suggesting that the last 50 years of public sector broadcasting has ensured the quality of news broadcasts,digital broadcasting,whilst giving significant opportunities to for news coverage,also presents some"fundamental challenges to traditional models and assumptions"
The report particularly highlights the problems facing regional news broadcasting thru the Itv regions which it predicts "in the absence of any regulatory framework will mean"commercial circumstances will make it much less likely that commercial organisations would choose to carry news at anything like the current levels"
There is no doubting that digital broadcasting has up to now brought many benefits to news coverage.Besides a plethora of 24 hour channels we have news on demand via interactive facilities and instantaneous coverage.Whether any of these services are cost effective to the broadcasters remains to be seen.
The report says that public service channels are still where the majority turn for a source of news.The internet is still a supplementary source "for some but not all users"
One benefit that the report highlights is that the cost of news gathering in the digital age is reducing meaning that a future competitor "may emerge to challenge the trio ploy of BBC/ITV/Sky.
Ofcom also have some interesting comments about impartiality.The traditional BBC/ITV duopoly was given an impartial mandate by the regulators.But is that really applicable in the digital age?
The report questions whether the rules of impartiality merely serve to stifle the expresion of views that are not part of the mainstream"
Monday, June 11, 2007
Round up of the Media Press 11th June
Donald Trelford writing in the Indy this morning looks at what turned out to be a disaster for the Mail on Sunday over the John Snow affair
It is an editor's worst nightmare: an apparently copper-bottomed front-page scoop, confirmed on the record by one of the two people involved, that turns out to be completely false – a "stumer", as we used to call them in the trade.
A popular topic it seems as Vickram Dodd writes on the same topic in the Guardian
Media watchers have been baffled by what happened. How did the Mail on Sunday get it so wrong? And what are the implications for Snow, who says the episode has been the worst experience of his life; for the MoS, which prides itself on securing accurate and agenda-setting scoops; and for the general issue of tabloid excesses and trust in journalism? All sides in the story have differing recollections about how it surfaced. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that the woman, Precious Williams, did not approach the MoS - it came to her first.
In Access all ariels the same paper looks at the behind the scenes wrangles as the digital switchover looms ever closer.
After a week of more BB controversy,the Indy has an interview with Channel 4 executive Hamish Mykura who tells us
"You undoubtedly want the programmes to get noticed and to generate a stir, but what I don't want, and I don't think the channel wants, is controversy for its own sake.You never can tell how they are going to play out."
Raymond Shoddy comments that reaching younger viewers requires radical thinking from the BBC.in spite of cutbacks in the offing he argues that in
"many areas such as interactive and more personalised news, investment will actually increase. The ambitious aim is to retain the audience reach of BBC News at 80 per cent each week even though the number of viewers to the main bulletins such as the Ten O'Clock News will inevitably decline.
For that to happen BBC News has to pursue the young audience, in particular, via whatever devices they choose to use. Regional news in all its forms has a much older than average audience. "
Peter Wilby in the Guardian asks Should Sundays be put out to grass? Following the release of the ABC's on Friday he asks
'Why do I spend half of Sunday reading the papers?" asked Jimmy Porter in 1956 in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Nobody does now. In the half-century since Porter's rant against them it's been downhill all the way for the Sundays.
Since I started on Fleet Street in the late 1960s - on a Sunday paper, as it happens - their combined circulations have fallen by 50%, nearly twice the rate of the dailies' decline. As the traditional British Sunday gradually disappeared, and the Saturday papers started multi-section packages of their own, they struggled to find a role.
And concluding that
Over the next decade or so, I predict, the Sunday paper will go the same way as the rest of the British Sunday that Jimmy Porter so despised.
Finally to media Monkey which tells the story of the Mail and
Jaci Stephen's tale of how she got a little bit tipsy and bought a £7,263 Chloe dress. But exactly how much had the columnist drunk? "The fourth glass was a mistake. Finishing the fourth glass and going home via Chloe was an even bigger mistake." But Stephen's original copy told a rather different story: "The fourth bottle was a mistake. Finishing the fourth bottle and going home via Chloe ..." Clearly a subbing error, or perhaps the paper's executives thought the concept of a four-bottle lunch would be too much for some Mail readers to stomach. "I was sharing it with a friend," Stephen tells Monkey. But the paper edited that bit out as well.
It is an editor's worst nightmare: an apparently copper-bottomed front-page scoop, confirmed on the record by one of the two people involved, that turns out to be completely false – a "stumer", as we used to call them in the trade.
A popular topic it seems as Vickram Dodd writes on the same topic in the Guardian
Media watchers have been baffled by what happened. How did the Mail on Sunday get it so wrong? And what are the implications for Snow, who says the episode has been the worst experience of his life; for the MoS, which prides itself on securing accurate and agenda-setting scoops; and for the general issue of tabloid excesses and trust in journalism? All sides in the story have differing recollections about how it surfaced. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that the woman, Precious Williams, did not approach the MoS - it came to her first.
In Access all ariels the same paper looks at the behind the scenes wrangles as the digital switchover looms ever closer.
After a week of more BB controversy,the Indy has an interview with Channel 4 executive Hamish Mykura who tells us
"You undoubtedly want the programmes to get noticed and to generate a stir, but what I don't want, and I don't think the channel wants, is controversy for its own sake.You never can tell how they are going to play out."
Raymond Shoddy comments that reaching younger viewers requires radical thinking from the BBC.in spite of cutbacks in the offing he argues that in
"many areas such as interactive and more personalised news, investment will actually increase. The ambitious aim is to retain the audience reach of BBC News at 80 per cent each week even though the number of viewers to the main bulletins such as the Ten O'Clock News will inevitably decline.
For that to happen BBC News has to pursue the young audience, in particular, via whatever devices they choose to use. Regional news in all its forms has a much older than average audience. "
Peter Wilby in the Guardian asks Should Sundays be put out to grass? Following the release of the ABC's on Friday he asks
'Why do I spend half of Sunday reading the papers?" asked Jimmy Porter in 1956 in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger. Nobody does now. In the half-century since Porter's rant against them it's been downhill all the way for the Sundays.
Since I started on Fleet Street in the late 1960s - on a Sunday paper, as it happens - their combined circulations have fallen by 50%, nearly twice the rate of the dailies' decline. As the traditional British Sunday gradually disappeared, and the Saturday papers started multi-section packages of their own, they struggled to find a role.
And concluding that
Over the next decade or so, I predict, the Sunday paper will go the same way as the rest of the British Sunday that Jimmy Porter so despised.
Finally to media Monkey which tells the story of the Mail and
Jaci Stephen's tale of how she got a little bit tipsy and bought a £7,263 Chloe dress. But exactly how much had the columnist drunk? "The fourth glass was a mistake. Finishing the fourth glass and going home via Chloe was an even bigger mistake." But Stephen's original copy told a rather different story: "The fourth bottle was a mistake. Finishing the fourth bottle and going home via Chloe ..." Clearly a subbing error, or perhaps the paper's executives thought the concept of a four-bottle lunch would be too much for some Mail readers to stomach. "I was sharing it with a friend," Stephen tells Monkey. But the paper edited that bit out as well.
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