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News Corps Publishing arm to focus on losses at Times and Sunday Times

·         losses at the Times and Sunday Times

o   £1m a week

o   A priority for News Corps soon separating public division

·         The deficits

o   May stem largely or possibly exclusively from the daily title

o   Tolerated for a long time by Murdoch but they have the financial muscle to absorb the losses

·         The fact that the publishing company is smaller means that individual newspapers will be in greater focus with investors

o   This excludes News Corps more profitable film and TV businesses

·         Some say; it may be necessary to reduce losses

o   But efforts have proceed delicately due to1981 undertakings signed by Murdoch which bound him to “preserve the separate identities of the Times and Sunday Times”

·         News Internationals high profile problems mean that company is skeptical of it is able to win political approval to mean that the company is sceptical as to whether it would be able to win political approval to see the undertakings watered down to allow widespread seven-day working.

·         argue that the economic circumstances for newspapers have changed.

o   Two smaller competitors are also loss-making.

§  Guardian News & Media, which lost £44.2m last year, is trying to cut 68 editorial jobs

§  The Independent lost £18m in its last full financial year

·         Policing the Murdoch undertakings is a responsibility for the six "independent national directors" of Times Newspapers Holdings

·         The independent directors are also in place to ensure that "each of the two editors would be free to make his own decision on matters of opinion and news and each would be free to disagree with the other and with any other newspaper in which Mr Murdoch may have an interest".

This shows that newspaper businesses are seeing the decline in newspaper sales - this is primarily due to the increase in new and digital media. It is evident that Murdoch sees this as a threat and it aiming to resolve the issue.

Sunday Times's circulation falls below 900,000 for the first time

·         Fell by just under 1% month-on-month in November

·         had an average weekly circulation of 894,992 in November, a 7.51% year-on-year fall, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures published on Friday.

·         best month-on-month performer in a quality Sunday market where all titles lost sales was the Observer

o   down 0.77% (October)

·         Guardian News & Media's Sunday title was, however, the worst year-on-year performer

o   sales down 11.46% compared to November 2011

·         The Sunday Times has been flirting with falling below the 900,000 mark since about September

·         News International was one of a number of newspaper groups to stop bulk copies in 2009

o   grounds that it artificially inflates circulation as consumers receive them for free.

·         The Sunday Telegraph which reported a 2.9% month-on-month fall, 432,315, a 7.11% year-on-year decline.

·         The Sun on Sunday crept closer to falling below the 2m sales mark, with average weekly circulation falling to 2,009,282 in November

·         The worst performer in the tabloid market was Daily Star Sunday

o    fell 5.35% to 368,268

·         Sales have fallen 44.66% year-on-year, as like other Sunday tabloids the title has seen its 2011 circulation boost resulting from the closure of the News of the World ebb away.

·          

The Sun - Sunday edition

Headline circulation: 2,009,282

Month-on-month change: -1.39%

Year-on-year change: n/a

Overseas: 36,930

Mail on Sunday

Headline circulation: 1,732,385

Month-on-month change: -1.03%

Year-on-year change: -12.32%

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 1,570,192 (90.6% of total)

Overseas: 87,147

Bulks: 75,046

Sunday Mirror

Headline circulation: 1,036,457

Month-on-month change: -2.62%

Year-on-year change: -41.12%

Overseas: 18,544

Sunday Express

Headline circulation: 481,009

Month-on-month change: -1.66%

Year-on-year change: -26.94%

Overseas: 13,584

The People

Headline circulation: 445,594

Month-on-month change: -1.80%

Year-on-year change: -44.35%

Overseas: 14,942

Daily Star Sunday

Headline circulation: 368,268

Month-on-month change: -5.35%

Year-on-year change: -44.66%

Overseas: 6,878

Sunday Times

Headline circulation: 894,992

Month-on-month change: -0.97%

Year-on-year change: -7.51%

Overseas: 39,441

Bulks: 9,317

Sunday Telegraph

Headline circulation: 432,315

Month-on-month change: -2.90%

Year-on-year change: -7.11%

Overseas: 10,086

The Observer

Headline circulation: 236,179

Month-on-month change: -0.77%

Year-on-year change: -11.46%

Independent on Sunday

Headline circulation: 118,383

Month-on-month change: -1.20%

Year-on-year change: -11.06%

UK and Ireland paid-for circulation: 62,548 (52.8% of total)

Overseas: 437

Bulks: 55,399

UK newspaper advertising facing bleak forecast for 2013

·         UK newspaper advertising market is set to get even worse next year

o   national titles forecast to face an almost 9% decline

·         slight improvement in the outlook for regional newspapers in 2013

·         A second year of double-digit ad decline will see advertising in this sector also dip below the £1bn mark for the first time.

·         2005 the regional newspaper advertising market was worth more than £2.5bn

·         The market is set to get worse, with Group M's prediction back in the summer of a 5% year on year fall in 2013 now downgraded to an 8.6% decline.

·         Total national newspaper advertising market revenue fall from £1.19bn this year to £1.09bn in 2013, according to Group M.

·         advertising at national titles is forecast to fall 9% year-on-year, to £928m, the first time it has fallen below £1bn.

·         Total spend on regional newspaper advertising is projected to fall from about £1.09bn this year to £971m at the end of next year.

·         Regional print is [already] in trouble but there is a widespread advertiser perception that the problem, in display anyway, is even more serious than it is already," said Group M. …One certainty is that it could do with more demand."

Powerpoint

PARTICIPATION DEBATES – THE MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY

·         Has Web 2.0 and the explosion in social networking really opened up new opportunities for democracy?

WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

·         A form of government in which all eligible people have an equal say in decision making

·         System of government used in most countries in the world except one-party states such as China, dictatorships such as Libya and non-symbolic monarchies such as Saudi Arabia.

·         The X Factor as an example: in the 2010 series, 15,488,019 million votes were cast by viewers to decide the outcome of the programme.

o   an example of media democracy at work

·         Pre-digital era, there were very few ways in which audiences could make their voices heard.

·         Digital revolution and Web 2.0 have given users the opportunity to communicate ideas globally through the use of social networking

o   Series Six, winner Joe McElderry was held off the crucial Christmas No.1 spot in the British charts by ‘foul-mouthed rockers’ Rage Against The Machine.

§  Half a million Facebook users joined an anti-X Factor campaign to protest at the state of the modern music industry

·         The uprisings in Egypt and Libya couldn’t have happened without the use of Twitter and Facebook

·         It was probably the mobile phone and its evolution into a convergent device that enabled these uprisings

o   Could communicate on the move and keep one step ahead of the authorities

·         in the countries now experiencing this ‘Arab Spring’, access to mobile technology and the internet is still limited to a relatively small elite

·         Not yet seen true democracy through the media.

·         Internet has empowered its users by giving them unparalleled instant and almost unmediated access to unfolding news stories

o   This had bypassed the hegemonic institutions that control the dominant media discourses in society

·         Blogging is another way that the media are becoming more democratic.

o   Blogs have as much access to global audiences as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation

§  July 2011 the most popular blog was not FailBlog or PerezHilton but The Huffington Post, a well-respected political blog with 54 million monthly readers.

·         Some of the most significant events of the last ten years have been communicated by ordinary people who just happened to be in the right place at the right time

o   For example the iconic video footage of the attack of 9/11

·         Citizen journalism can do is provide eyewitness accounts and subjective angles on stories to complement the work of professional news organisations.

·         We have entered a new age when audiences are producers and the traditional power structures are being forced to listen.

IN THE AGE OF MEDIA SIX QUESTIONS ABOUT MEDIA AND PARTICIPATION

 ·         last ten years, we have moved into a new age of participatory media

·         Web 2.0’ – has brought about a much broader media revolution

·         The world of Big Media is no more

·         ordinary people are no longer mere consumers of media, but also producers

·         Vertical, top-down communication has given way to horizontal, networked communication.

·         blogs and online forums provide opportunities for ordinary people to have their say

·         wikis enable us to collaborate and share knowledge in ways that challenge elites and experts

·         social networking sites, we can represent ourselves and connect with other people in new ways

·         Youtube allows people to distribute their media globally

·         Don’t depend on getting past editors or gatekeepers

·         Can be accessed by anyone anywhere

·         Reflects a desire for a fairer, more democratic and creative society

WHAT’S NEW?
·         Web 2.0 coined by digital marketing entrepreneur; Tim O Riley – 2001

·         An attempt to rebrand internet business after the bursting of the .com bubble

·         Tim Berners –Lee – the basic technologic infrastructure have been around since the beginning of the internet.

·         Long history of utopian views about new media and technology

o   Some say its liberating

o   Will be “power to the people”

·         Will undermine power of political elites and big corporations

·         Will create now forms of collaborations

·         Will allow ordinary people to express themselves

= Ultimate effects of these new technologies were much less revolutionary and more complicated

·         kind of technological determinism here - the idea that technology will bring about revolutionary social change

·         Yet technologies do not come from nowhere

o   created in response to wider social, economic and cultural developments

·         impact is Dependent on how they are used, by who, and for what purposes

WHO’S PARTICIPATING?

·         innovations are adopted in uneven and often unequal ways

·         agency Hitwise – suggest that the number of active participants is very low

o   less than 0.5% of YouTube users actually upload material,

o   Very little of that material is originally produced, rather than pirated clips from commercial media.

·         striking social inequalities in participation

·         gender differences – young women are leading the way in areas like blogging, while young men tend to dominate video-sharing

·         Class differences

o   young people from high-income families who are most likely to be posting or sharing online

o   people in disadvantaged communities do increasingly have computers at home, they are less likely to have the multimedia capabilities

·         ‘Digital divides’ are still apparent

·         Young people from wealthy, middle-class families are also more likely to have books at home to use the internet for education and to participate in creative or arts-related activities offline

·         The most active participants in the creative world of Media 2.0 are the people who are already privileged in other areas of their lives.

·         While younger people initially drove the uptake of social networking sites; older people are now the fastest-growing group of subscribers

·         Twitter is largely dominated by middle-aged people.

·         Young people are usually the ‘early adopters’

WHAT ARE THEY DOING?

·         often assumed that participation is necessarily a Good Thing

o   But there is a real problem in defining what counts as participation, or as ‘creating content’

·         A difference between posting a comment and editing publishing and uploading a video

·         Only a very small proportion of users are generating original content: most are simply ‘consuming’ it as they always have done.

·         Enthusiasts for participatory tend to ignore superficial practices of the majority of people

·         research on amateur video-making found that it continues to be dominated by home movies of family life

o   kept as a record that people imagine will be watched at some time in the future

o   rarely edited or shared

·         People rarely see it as having anything to do with what they watch in the mainstream media – let alone as a challenge to the power of Big Media.

WHO’S MAKING MONEY?

·         “Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media élite… now it’s the people who are taking control.”

o   radical media activist from a 2006 interview with the notorious Rupert Murdoch

·         Alerts us; there are large commercial interests at stake in these developments.

·         two richest and most profitable global media corporations are now Google and Facebook

o   Both increasingly diversifying from their initial business

·         The rise of democratic participation in the media could also be seen as a matter of the growing concentration of power in the hands of a small number of global companies.

·         very uncertain business

o   YouTube (now owned by Google) took five years from its launch before it finally came into profit

·         MySpace, have undergone a rapid rise and fall.

·         internet is an exceptionally efficient medium for niche marketing and for targeting individual consumers

·         detailed information about our preferences and buying habits is being gathered unknowingly through cookies

o   Specifically targets certain people

WHO’S DOING THE WORK?

·         Much of this marketing is itself ‘user-generated’ and ‘interactive’

·         most obvious in the case of viral marketing

o   consumers are recruited to distribute commercial messages on behalf of companies

·         Orange has picked up on the idea of ‘user-generated content’ by running competitions for consumers to create videos to promote their products.

·         Soren Peterson - ‘loser-generated content’

o   A great deal of unpaid labour goes into the production of blogs

·         issue with fan websites

o   celebrated by enthusiasts for Media 2.0

·         fan websites are about consumers taking back control of the media

o   J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers, who own the Harry Potter franchise – have taken legal action against fans who have used and reworked their materials in making fan fiction,

·         They may be active participants, but they are also the ultimate consumers.

WILL MEDIA 2.0 SAVE DEMOCRACY?

·         it’s clear that we are in a period of significant change

·         Is it really liberating or empowering ordinary people to take control of the media?

·         reasons to doubt this

o   digital media are not likely to result in a society of creative media producers

o   like ‘old’ media, these new media are driven by commercial imperatives – and that means that some people are bound to benefit from these developments much more than others

o   There is democratic promise but it will require more than technology alone