via Universal McCann’s release information

Universal McCann released in March the third study report in a series looking at the impact and use of social media across the globe.

MAIN FINDINGS
Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media

• Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region (more…)
  April 30th 2008 Posted to New Media, Media Research

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AFP, Google sign content deal

Agence France-Presse and Google signed a licensing agreement Friday giving the search engine the right to post AFP news and photos and settling a lawsuit filed by AFP two years ago. A joint statement by the companies said the accord allows the internet giant to post AFP content on Google News and other services.

AFP agreed to withdraw a lawsuit filed in March 2005 accusing the world’s number one internet search engine of copyright infringement for allegedly posting AFP headlines, news summaries and photographs without prior permission.

AFP chairman and Chief Executive Officer Pierre Louette said the accord also goes further. ‘The agreement will allow uses of AFP’s content in ways that go beyond its typical use of content in Google’s services, which features just headlines and snippets of text to provide just a taste of what an article offers,’ Louette said. He did not elaborate.

Source: AFP via Yahoo News, via EJC.

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The number of planned job cuts in the U.S. media soared 88% last year, according to a study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, up to 17809 layoffs, from the 9,453 that were announced in 2005. The trend is to continue, and ‘old media’ must effectively renew themselves.

Importantly, the study focuses on planned layoffs, not actual number of job cuts.

“Already this year we have seen job cuts announced by Time Inc and the New York Times Company,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “These organizations will continue to make adjustments as their focus shifts from print to electronic.”

As readers spend more time online than reading print, advertisers are readjusting their own focus, thus providing less revenue for print, thus pushing newspapers to focus even more on online, and so on.

Newspapers are in tough competition with other media and news organizations, but also with the increased number of alternative news sources and information platforms (blogs, gossip sites, consultants and analysts), according to Challenger.

“This dilutes their audience and dilutes the amount of money they can charge advertisers, which currently is the primary source of revenue for online news sites, since most are not charging subscriber fees to access their content,” Challenger said.

There is only one solution for traditional media including newspapers: transition quickly and smoothly to online and multimedia. For those who can’t embrace the change, or who don’t have the resources to sustain print while transitioning, they will continue to be forced to cut jobs.

“Until they can figure out a way to make as much money from their online services as they are losing from the print side, it is going to be an uphill battle,” said Challenger of planned cuts across the media sector.

Source: CNN, via EditorsWeblog.org

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Monday’s Muse.

Who, or what, is going to test the libel laws as applied to online publishing in Ireland?

Digital Rights Ireland (a body devoted to defending Civil, Human and Legal rights in a digital age) have an excellent overview of the current online libel sitaution in Ireland.

Guido Fawkes appears to have started something by using the pledgebank.com

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Media Futures. It’s a media revolution where the old rules are being broken.

Thinking about the future, and in particular the shape of our media future, is always enhanced by going back to the past. Just imagine where we all were ten years ago, at the beginning of 1996, and what our media life was like. The Internet was in its early days, with static home pages if you were lucky. I had just joined the BBC as a news manager and remember the BBC site was basic with little text content let alone anything else. Today it’s the number one news media site in the world. Just check out www.archives.org where you can travel back through websites for a reminder of how recent our web experience is and how far we have travelled. Then think about what was on air in Ireland – no TG4 or TV3, they’ve both come in the past ten years, and no Today FM or Lyric FM. RTE had no competition at national level and Lyric didn’t come around until 1999 during my own stint as Head of RTE Radio.
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A quick note on the Television Without Frontiers Directive

On the 1st and 2nd of June last the European parliament held a public meeting on the proposal of the European Commission to (among other things) change the name of the Television Without Frontiers Directive to the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.

This yawn-inducing and very technical debate will affect the way that television programmes are funded, made and distributed.

The Television Without Frontiers Directive (henceforward TWF) has been in existence since 1989 and is a very important piece of legislation that has affected the kind of television we make and watch quite profoundly. It has three key provisions. It requires all European television stations to broadcast a majority of European programming; it requires that at least 10% of the production budget goes to independent production (20% in Ireland thanks to the Broadcasting Authority (Amendment Act of 1993)) and it regulates advertising.
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