-- Reuters: Riley McDonough has been appointed SVP, GM and director of advertising sales, Americas, for Reuters (NSDQ: RTRSY) Media’s Consumer Publishing business, where he will report to Alisa Bowen who leads the Consumer Publishing business globally. McDonough joins from WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD) where he served as SVP of sales, consumer markets. -- Aegis Media: Mainardo de Nardis has stepped down from his role as CEO and will be succeeded by Jerry Buhlmann, who also joins the board June 2. Buhlmann has been CEO of Aegis Media EMEA since 2003, and was CEO of Carat International from 2000 to 2003. The shakeup comes just weeks after David Verklin stepped down from his post as CEO Aegis Media Americas and Sarah Fay, CEO of both Carat and Aegis’ Isobar US, was tapped to replace him. More at our sister site PC:UK. -- Facebook: Just as it gears up to spend some major dough on infrastructure, Facebook has lost its CTO Adam D’Angelo, reports Kara at All Things D. What prompted him to leave isn’t totally clear although there’s the continuing chatter about tension in the top ranks. Officially, D’Angelo, 23 and a long-time friend of Mark Zuckerberg, just wanted to move on. This is the second major departure this year, following the loss of chief revenue officer (and erstwhile COO) Owen Van Natta. -- MTVN: Michael Bloom has defected back to MTV after having moved to RealNetworks’ (NSDQ: RNWK) Rhapsody America to run the joint venture between MTV and Rhapsody last September. No word yet on his title, but an MTV spokesman tells Alley Insider Bloom will have a “leadership position.” Other MTV execs who recently left Rhapsody include Marc Ache, who left his post as VP-technology to return to MTV as SVP-digital technology group and Doug Ferguson, who served as VP-product strategy. -- Tribune Co.: Mark Shapiro, president and CEO of Six Flags Inc., has been added to Tribune Co.’s board of directors; his lengthy experience at ESPN (NYSE: DIS) is likely to be just as valuable as his since-gained roller-coaster expertise. Gary Weitman was promoted to SVP-corporate communications from VP-corporate communications. Release.

News Corp ( NYSE: NWS). has withdrawn its $580 million bid for the Tribune’s Newsday, calling it “uneconomical,” according to Reuters via The New York Times. The remaining likely bidder for the New York newspaper is cable TV operator Cablevision ( NYSE: CVC), which also operates in Long Island. A News Corp spokesman told Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) the deal the comapny was unable to justify outbidding Cablevision’s $650 million offer, calling it “uneconomical.” Besides Cablevision, New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman was known for also bidding $580 million for the paper. More to come.

A clearer picture has emerged of senior-level changes in Reuters’ Media division, as the unit retains its name but undergoes some shake-ups in the wake of the Thomson (NYSE: TOC) merger. Chris Ahearn has recast the division with “three principal operating axes” to “put our customers at the center of all we do and reinforce teamwork, accountability and performance"… -- News agency: UK-based Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) Media MD Monique Villa stepped aside two days ago to become CEO of the Reuters Foundation, working on news training in developing countries and disaster zones. She will in a sense be replaced - although not directly - by Christophe Pleitgen, who will lead the new-look news agency element. -- Consumer media: After the departure of US-based Reuters Media GM and SVP Stephen Smyth, Alisa Bowen will lead the global consumer media axis. Bowen had previously led interactive products alongside Smyth’s online offerings and there will be a new head of advertising sales for consumer media in the US. -- Professional publishing: The third axis will be led by David Hurst. Other areas include strategy and business development (Maria Molland), marketing (Sumita Singh), technology (Leon Shklar) and office of the president, media (Malcolm Murray). Speaking to me at Thomson Reuters’ London HQ this morning, Villa said it wasn’t a restructure but created “a much more clean line”: “It’s just different, it’s not a revolution.” “It’s not so much change because Chris Ahearn has been president of Media for five years or something now.” She said she didn’t think there would be layoffs in the Media division… More views on the Thomson-Reuters merger after the jump... On the ground, however, the National Union of Journalists’ Thomson Reuters chapel says it has voted “unanimously” for industrial action in response to what it says is the merged agency’s “continuing refusal to consider a voluntary redundancy programme as part of any job reduction package and their continuing insistence that compulsory redundancies must remain part of the mix”, Press Gazette reports. -- Two weeks in, how’s the merger going? Villa: “Apart from changing the name, there have not been big changes - but of course we are a much bigger company. But immediately the media business, which is a small business representing only seven percent of Reuters revenue, we have been left quite alone, which is good.” No info yet on corporate synergies. -- Integration with Thomson?: So when will we see Thomson’s data-heavy offerings combined with Reuters’ own offerings? At some point, but not yet - at least not in Villa’s former division. “With Media, probably not because our client base is essentially the newspapers, the broadcasters, the online world - so they don’t need the professional tools that Thomson provides. But, yes, part of the information that Thomson gives on health, science etc, there will be a lot more news for the Reuters clients. But it’s not direct media - it’s very different writing for (Thomson’s) professional communities than writing for the newspaper.” -- More IHT-like deals? What progress on adding to Reuters’ recent news supply partnership with IHT.com? “This is a trend. Potentially, there are other possibles. It has been very good because getting the feedback immediately makes you better.” -- Direct-to-consumer media: On the decision four years ago to add more consumer-facing web output to Reuters’ core wire syndication business: “At the time, it was a very brave decision because we had this agency business and some were afraid of cannibalisation; were you becoming a competitor to your clients etc? Finally, we have done it in such a good way that no client has felt that they were in competition with us. We have learned a lot of things that have helped us with our clients. Now I know exactly how you make revenue from a website, so we can help our clients on what is working well or not on the web.” But Villa doesn’t foresee Reuters’ new Thomson bedfellow joining in by supplying data to newspapers like IHT. -- Priorities for the foundation: There could be some crossovers with Villa’s new post, however. Through AlertNet, the Reuters Foundation trains journalists in the developing world and shares information in disaster zones. “What I will try to do is grow the Thomson Foundation, which doesn’t exist really, grow around their business lines, which is science, health etc. You can imagine that AlertNet would become much bigger with lawyers giving pro-bono work and this kind of thing.”

You’re reading it here first… The number of newspaper editors who believe news will become an entirely free commodity - both online and in print - is growing. This year’s Reuters/World Editors Forum Newsroom Barometer of 704 editors, due out this morning, found 56 percent hold that belief - up from 48 percent in 2006. A third of editors disagreed while 11 percent remain undecided. But the free model has less support in western Europe (48 percent) than the US (58 percent). Other findings… -- Online first: 44 percent of editors new expect online to be consumers’ primary news medium in 10 years - not only is that slightly up on last time, it’s also ahead of the 31 percent who hold that newspapers will retain supremacy. -- More, better, multi-skilled staff: And editors’ priorities are clear - 35 percent said their first use of their editorial budgets will be to invest in new media training. Quite literally, you can’t get the staff - 31 percent of editors said top of their wish list was more journalists. Some 83 percent expect those reporters to be platform-agnostic (the world of multimedia journalism is now truly upon us)… -- Newsrooms: Accordingly, the unified seating plan - as pioneered by the likes of Telegraph.co.uk but still rejected by The Sun - now seems to have been decided upon as the best route… 86 percent of editors says integrated newsrooms will be the norm, though North American editors are most in favour (95 percent). With only 53 percent of newsrooms currently enjoying that integrated status, there’s a lot of work left for integration strategists - 69 percent of editors expect to integrate within five years. -- Threats: 58 percent of editors reckon falling youth readership is their biggest hurdle, ahead of the internet itself (38 percent) and lack of innovation (36 percent). Depressingly, 28 percent expect the quality of journalism to decline and only 45 percent expect it to improve next year. I’ll be at a Reuters/WEF roundtable at Thomson (NYSE: TOC) Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) in London on Tuesday morning, getting further details, and will be chairing a panel debate on mobile journalism at WEF’s World Newspaper Congress in Gothenburg on June 3.

A clearer picture has emerged of senior-level changes in Reuters’ Media division, as the unit retains its name but undergoes some shake-ups in the wake of the Thomson (NYSE: TOC) merger. Chris Ahearn has recast the division with “three principal operating axes” to “put our customers at the center of all we do and reinforce teamwork, accountability and performance"… -- News agency: UK-based Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) Media MD Monique Villa stepped aside two days ago to become CEO of the Reuters Foundation, working on news training in developing countries and disaster zones. She will in a sense be replaced - although not directly - by Christophe Pleitgen, who will lead the new-look news agency element. -- Consumer media: After the departure of US-based Reuters Media GM and SVP Stephen Smyth, Alisa Bowen will lead the global consumer media axis. Bowen had previously led interactive products alongside Smyth’s online offerings and there will be a new head of advertising sales for consumer media in the US. -- Professional publishing: The third axis will be led by David Hurst. Other areas include strategy and business development (Maria Molland), marketing (Sumita Singh), technology (Leon Shklar) and office of the president, media (Malcolm Murray). Speaking to me at Thomson Reuters’ London HQ this morning, Villa said it wasn’t a restructure but created “a much more clean line”: “It’s just different, it’s not a revolution.” “It’s not so much change because Chris Ahearn has been president of Media for five years or something now.” She said she didn’t think there would be layoffs in the Media division...More details on the change at PCUK, here.

Reuters Photographer Adrees Latif Honored for Dramatic Image of Japanese Videographer Kenji Nagai from Myanmar

If Apple ( NSDQ: AAPL) can do it, then so can we. Just a few weeks after Apple announced its $100 million iFund dedicated to applications for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms, RIM ( NSDQ: RIMM) said today that along with media giant Thomson (NYSE: TOC) Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) it was planning to launch a $150 million venture capital fund that would invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry platform and other mobile platforms. Canadian VC firms JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners will co-manage the fund. Unlike Apple, RIM said its fund would be open to all mobile platforms, not just for the Blackberry. In a sign that it wanted to break away from its business roots, it also said it would consider both consumer and corporate applications. RIM also announced the release of its so-called iPhone killer, the Blackberry Bold. While the triband smartphone is aimed at corporate users and supports HSDPA networks, it also includes many consumer-type multimedia features, GPS and WiFi built in. It also has a 2 megapixel camera that can record video, while its media player can play movies as well as displaying pictures and managing music. AT&T ( NYSE: T), the iPhone’s exclusive US carrier, will carry Blackberry Bold.

With all the talk that they’re getting a pasting over their upcoming Comes With Music service, it’s understandable that Nokia ( NYSE: NOK) is getting a little miffed with all the speculation surrounding the service’s business model. In an interview with Reuters, Nokia’s head of music Liz Schimel tried to sweep away the notion that Nokia will pay dearly—almost suicidally so--to fund their foray into mobile music. Some have suggested that Nokia has agreed to pay Universal $35 for each Comes With Music handset sold. Other rumors say Nokia will have to pay an extra fee for all downloads beyond the first 35—potentially cutting deeply into the 40 percent margin it enjoys on its cellphones. Schimel said that Nokia expected to make money both from the sale of their handsets as well as their music service, adding, “I can assure you that we are looking out for everyone’s interests in creating these new business models, including our own.” Shimel pointedly said she had read the various reports on Nokia’s service, and that they had “fundamentally misunderstood the concept behind the Comes With Music model.” She declined, however, to set the record straight. Meanwhile, with Nokia keeping quiet on the business model, it’s easy to forget that Comes With Music has the potential to shake up the status quo. The current digital market was worth $2.9 billion in 2007. As Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) points out, Nokia sold 146 million music phones last year. Had all those phones included the “Comes with Music” bundle, just an extra $20 per phone would make the service bigger than the total market. As Tero Ojanpera, Nokia’s head of entertainment and communities business said in a press conference last week announcing their deal with Sony ( NYSE: SNE) BMG, “Comes With Music has the potential to equal—and even exceed—the current value of the business. If we sell a single percentage of our total sales as Comes With Music bundles, the revenue for the music industry would be almost the same.”

-- The DoT has issued M&A Guidelines for telecom licenses, stating that no merger and acquisition will be allowed if as a result of which the number of service providers reduces below four in a circle. Additionally, the combined market share of the merged entity should not exceed 40 per cent of the subscriber base or in terms of revenue. As for spectrum, the merged entity will be entitled to the total spectrum held by all merging entities. However, failure to meet the spectrum allocation criterion within 3 months will cause the post merger Licensee to surrender the excess spectrum. The guidelines effectively seal the possibility for the current biggies to harvest new licensees for precious spectrum, if anything, it encourages new licensees to consolidate. I wouldn’t expect big telco dominated COAI to be waxing eloquent about the new regulations anytime soon. Guidelines available here -- The TRAI has proposed an FDI hike from 49 percent to 74 percent in the cable TV network sector, citing the high cost for upgrading current infrastructure. This has direct ramifications on broadband penetration as an estimated Rs. 64,000 crore is required for upgrading 80 million cable homes in the country. The upgrade of cable infrastructure will allow triple play services (voice, TV and data services). Nothing new in case of Mobile TV, TRAI has reiterated its 74 percent FDI recommendation. Additionally, foreign investments upto 49 percent may be permitted under the automatic route, beyond which FIPB approval would be required. Fancy predictions regarding Mobile TV have been going around since April, everything but the service has yet to start with DD drawing a complete blank on issues of terrestrial transmission. As for content services, recommendations for the FDI limit for news & current affairs channels as well as FM radio has been hiked from 26 percent to 49 percent. The full recommendations available here (pdf) Nikhil adds: The most significant recommendation here is the increase in FDI limit for news and current affairs channels from 26 percent to 49 percent. Here’s why: foreign investment in media in India has been largely in the non-news segment, which are not governed by a foreign direct investment limit of 26 percent, which governs news businesses. Thus, many media entities has been forced to separate their news and non-news (or as NDTV calls it - news and “beyond news") businesses to attract foreign investment. A change in this policy means that many media companies, like NDTV, UTV, INX and Network18 can raise more money their news businesses from the likes of Disney ( NYSE: DIS) (invested in UTV), NBC Universal ( NYSE: GE) (invested in NDTV Networks), Turner (invested in Miditech), Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) (split with Times Now recently) etc. The other significant factor is that these guidelines are for news broadcasting; in order to maintain parity between print and TV news businesses, there may be a case for increasing foreign investment in the print news sector as well, since some, like HT Media are reportedly also entering the news broadcasting space with Mint TV.

So here’s the official announcement regarding Live Current Media’s deal with the Indian Premier league, which we had told you about yesterday: The ten-year deal includes a minimum guarantee of $3 million per year to the BCCI, and $2 million to the IPL - $50 million in total. This includes co-marketing and exclusive online content right agreements to launch IPLT20.com as the official site of the Indian. The IPL site will feature audio-visual content, photographs, live scoreboards, Fantasy Cricket, player interviews and profiles, and also offer ticketing (tie-up with Ticketpro.in, we’re told) and contests. LCM, will also develop Cricket.com as a destination, as well as the BCCIs official website - BCCI.tv There are more details in our report on the deal here. Readers should remember that these “exclusive” online rights that LCM has bagged are at the center of controversy surrounding the stringent guidelines that have been forced upon media companies: websites, including key sites like Cricinfo (owned by ESPN), Rediff ( NSDQ: REDF) and others are not allowed access to the IPL matches. India’s News Broadcasters Association had also threatened to boycott the IPL because they were being charged for showing clips of matches; that issue was reportedly resolved. The IPL, in major fire-fighting mode, also resolved issues with the Indian Newspaper Society. Today, the News Media Coalition, which has Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY), AFP and AP as members, have said they may boycott the IPL. The Editors Guild of India has also asked the IPL to review media guidelines considering barring websites. Interestingly, Lalit Modi, Chairman of the IPL has said that “The American company to which we have sold the portal rights (i.e. Live Current Media) will offer photographs at a reasonable price.”

The Indian Premier League is certainly throwing its weight around, and pushing its luck - the media guidelines issued regarding the much hyped and controversial Twenty20 Cricket tournament, reportedly include clauses related to Internet reports and photographs that have media organizations up in arms. So what are the restrictions? -- Website Accredition: The IPL has refused to grant accredition to websites for the event. I wonder if that includes Cricinfo, which primarily depends on the Internet and mobile, but has a magazine as well. Almost all publications and TV channels have websites with Cricket coverage...will their media accredition be revoked? -- Photographs: For most media publications, the problem is around photographs: The IPL is claiming sole copyright for the images, and no match images are allowed to be made available on mobile either. Photographers are required to first upload photos on the official IPL website within 24 hours. Apparently: “The IPL shall be entitled to use and reproduce, free of charge, worldwide and without limit in any time and all photographs/images captured by the accredited party at any group...” So what’s being done? The Sports Journalists Federation of India and the Editors Guild of India have written to BCCI President Sharad Pawar expressing “alarm and concern”. They’ve called the claims ridiculous. The Agence France-Press (AFP) has said they can’t cover the tournament. Reuters ( NSDQ: RTRSY) and the Associated Press are considering a boycott. This isn’t the first time a Cricket authority has been at loggerheads with the media - in 2006, Cricket Australia had banned online video coverage of the Ashes series between Australia and England, also threating to revoke press accredition for journalists. The IPL has has a prize money of Rs 12 Crores (around $3 million), and sponsorship is around the Rs. 500 crore ($125 million) mark. Here’s the match schedule. Note:: If you have a copy of the IPL media guidelines, please do mail them to us at nikhil AT contentsutra DOT com. We’ll upload them for all to see.

Reuters Group (RTRSY) reported solid revenue growth during the fourth quarter, despite the slowdown in growth in its Sales & Trading Group, which suffered from the turmoil in the financial markets. Revenues and earnings were below our estimates, though. Revenues from all three other segments grew at an accelerated rate, and more... [More...]

Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising

Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY) has a blog section at the bottom of most business stories at Reuters.com. It is called Business Blog Posts, and it is powered by Blogburst. Blogburst is part of blog syndication service Pluck. And, Reuters is one of Pluck's owners.

Complicated? Yes.

The business blogs that Reuters runs are mostly small, one-person operations like Phil's Stock World and Captain Currency. Some, like The Kirk Report and Bill Cara, are well regarded. But, Reuters does them a disservice. It keeps the traffic for their content when it runs on Reuters.com. So, Reuters gets the ad revenue on those pages. The bloggers get their names on Reuters, and a link back to their sites, which is probably rarely used.

It is interesting to note that none of the big business blog sites like SeekingAlpha or Ticker Sense run in the Reuters program. They understand that the deal is good for Reuters and bad for the blogs. They aren't prepared to let Reuters compete with them for eyeballs using their own blog content.

It is a shame that Reuters has handled bloggers this way. Many other media outlets like WSJ.com and TheStreet.com comment on blogs but send traffic to the bloggers. Reuters has decided not to give the little guy a leg up.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. which was approached about the Reuters program and turned the company down.

Nokia is partnering with CNN, Sony and others to get access to their video content for its high-end multimedia phones.

Andrew Corn is a contributing editor for Theflyonthewall.com and the CEO of Clear Asset Management.














Newspapers are Alive and Kicking (Online that is)

I just read about how many people who read the paper, and I do not mean just the morning paper. Today the paper is online, searchable and yesterday’s paper is there too. The media feeding frenzy that is going on now with Thomson (TOC) / Reuters (RTRSY), News Corp (NWS) / Dow Jones (DJ), may be a fight into the push / pull of shrinking and expanding revenue and profit streams. We certainly see where the growth is and isn’t. That is also why Google-phobia remains headline news as the media has not embraced the encapsulated display of their editorial on Google (GOOG) even though it drives new unique traffic. There are big bucks out there and some firms just don’t want to share.

Here are the stats edited for relevance:

According to analysis by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America, more than 59 million people (37.6% of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites during the first quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 5.3% increase over last year.

These Web site visitors generated nearly three billion page views per month throughout the quarter, compared to just under 2.7 billion last year.

According to data from Scarborough Research, Newspaper Web sites have helped drive a 13.7% increase in total newspaper audience for 25- to 34-year-olds and a 9.2% increase for 18- to 24-year-olds.

Users continue to increase the amount of time they spend on newspaper Web sites with the average visitor spending more than 45 minutes per month during the quarter, an 11.5% increase over this time last year.

First Quarter Online Newspaper Audience
Month	Audience (mil)	% Reach	Page Views (bil)	Visits/Person
2007
January	58.9	37.6	3.2	8.7
February	58.8	37.5	2.8	7.9
March	59.6	37.7	3.0	8.6
Avg Q1	59.1	37.6	3.0	8.4
2006
January	56.5	36.6	2.7	8.2
February	53.9	35.7	2.6	8.0
March	57.9	37.6	2.7	8.1
Avg Q1	56.1	36.6	2.7	8.1
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings Custom Analysis, April 2007

The bottom line is the new math in news is the combination of growing the top and bottom lines online. Monetizing traffic is the job of the business side and selling ads is not a new discipline. The billion dollar question is: how else can the media monetize the traffic they have? The answer will separate the winners from the losers.

Looking at Murdock’s hunt for Dow Jones, besides the ads, my credit card gets a work out just for my privilege of reading the WSJ and Barron’s on-line.

If you have friends in online media in NY, Chicago, London, Paris or CA, you know they can change jobs and move up with just a phone call. There is gold in those page views, especially where quality writing intersects with a focused audience.

Disclosure: Mr. Corn is CEO of Clear Asset Management LLC and is long Google (GOOG) through his portfolio holdings.

Elizabeth Harrow takes a look at news on the Street before the market opens.

Elizabeth Harrow takes a look back at news that drove the major market indices today.

Ed Stenson takes a look at the markets before the open.