Media News - Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Apple outlines eight Samsung devices to ban

Since a US jury found that Samsung had violated parents used in the iPhone, and ordered the South Korean company pay USD 1.05bn in damages at the end of last week, Apple has wasted no time in stipulating which products it wants banning from US shops. According to a notice Apple filed with the court, Apple wants the following eight smartphones banned in the US: Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 (AT & T), Galaxy S2 (Skyrocket), Galaxy S2 (T-Mobile), Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail. Apple will still have prove to the court that it will be irreparably harmed if these handsets are not banned in the country. Last week the nine-person jury in San Jose, California, found Samsung infringed six of the seven Apple patents in dispute and did so wilfully in five of the cases. The jurors also upheld the validity of all seven of Apple patents, many of which covered the design of the iPhone. Apple had sought up to USD 2.75bn in damages, alleging that Samsung infringed four design patents and three software patents. Samsung, in turn, counter-sued, claiming that the Californian company infringed five of its own patents. Lawyers for the South Korean company argued Apple was trying to thwart legitimate competition. The legal battle in California was one of several being waged across the world to determine the future of the USD 200bn smartphone industry. While Apple has pursued legal action against manufacturers such as Samsung, experts says its real target is Google. (The Telegraph)

Swede launches site for net’s ‘top one percent’

Swedish social media entrepreneur Erik Wachtmeister on Monday announced the launch of a new social networking site targeting the "top one percent" of internet users, called Best of All Worlds. The site, which helps users find events and contacts, counted 20,000 members even before its launch. Wachtmeister, 57, created one of the world's first social networking sites, aSmallWorld, in 2004, the same year as Facebook. He left the company in 2008. The site was dubbed the "MySpace for millionaires" by the Wall Street Journal and highlighted by Forbes magazine as one of five social networking site for the wealthy. Best of All Worlds is targeting the same audience, he said. "The top one percent of the online audience, people who are leaders in their field, investment bankers, PR people, media, fashion, government... It's not about jet-set or rich people, but sophisticated people who have good taste," he said. "It's more three million people than a billion," he added, a reference to Facebook's announcement in July that it had more than 950 million subscribers. Best of All Worlds helps users get in touch with each other to find what's going on where they are, which Wachtmeister said was an improvement on Facebook's service which "looks backwards (and) gives you unstructured information that shows what your friends have done." Subscription to Best of All Worlds is by invitation only. Wachtmeister did not specify how or when the company would turn a profit. (AFP)

US: TV ad campaigns fail to reach audiences

Nationwide US television advertising campaigns are failing to reach a large portion of their target audiences, according to new research based on TV viewing data. Using figures from Nielsen and Kantar Media, ad targeting company Simulmedia has found that in many cases as many as three-quarters of marketers’ TV ad impressions are viewed by just 20 per cent of their target audiences. According to its report, Unilever’s USD 6.3m TV ad campaign for its Axe body spray was not seen by 60 per cent of the 18 to 24-year-olds it was intended to reach in March this year. Similarly, Progressive Insurance spent USD 31.9m on television ads in June, but a fifth of all adults older than 20 did not watch any of its TV ads that month. Similar patterns were observed during ad campaigns run by several of the largest advertisers in the US. In spite of the fragmentation of audiences across new media, TV ad spending remains the bulk of many companies’ marketing budgets. US advertisers are expected to allocate 42.2 per cent of their total spending – USD 64bn – to TV ads this year, an increase on the 39 per cent share five years ago, according to WPP’s GroupM. But the new research provides further evidence of the long- suspected shortcomings of TV as a medium for reaching broad audiences – which is likely to have ramifications for budget allocations across the media business. (Financial Times)

Wall Street Journal offers free Wi-Fi in NYC and San Francisco

Newspapers have been trying all sorts of gimmicks, from paywall promos to “open houses,” to get readers to discover their websites. The latest by the Wall Street Journal is clever: thousands of free Wi-Fi hotspots throughout New York City and San Francisco. Through the month of September, readers will be able to use, courtesy of the Journal, 1300 hotspots blanketing large swathes Manhattan, including high traffic neighborhoods like Times Square and West Village. The service is also available in parts of three other boroughs. In San Francisco, the Wi-Fi will be available in places like Nob Hill and Fisherman’s Wharf. So why is the conservative Journal giving out free internet service to all comers? According to a spokesperson, “We’re always looking for ways to give people the opportunity to sample The Wall Street Journal. This is the latest in a long history of those efforts.” This is one of the paper’s more novel initiatives but it may prove effective. The paper will also garner valuable customer data since non-subscribers must register to access the WiFi. Existing subscribers can simply log-in using their accounts; this too promises to deliver a trove of marketing data about the places that Journal readers frequent. (Paid Content)

Newspapers snub women reporters for election coverage: study

According to a report released on Monday by the Women's Media Center, three-quarters of newspapers' presidential election coverage is written by men. The report, based on a survey of local and national newspapers, found that men wrote 76 percent of the election coverage during the primary and 72 percent of the coverage so far during the general election. The research was compiled by the Fourth Estate Project, an organization that has been collecting statistical information about the 2012 election using online analytics. According to the Women's Media Center, the results of the new study show that bylines skew overwhelmingly male for newspapers' election coverage when compared to the overall population and to the gender makeup of most newsrooms. According to employment census data by the American Society of News Editors, 62 percent of newsroom reporters are men. For the study, Fourth Estate chose 35 newspapers based on strategic and geographical diversity. The papers included national "conversation setters" such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, along with regional powerhouses such as the Chicago Sun-Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Seattle Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The study did not include blogs or opinion columns, nor did it include broadcast media. (International Business Times)

Smartphone-toting journalists help Wall Street Journal launch a video channel

The Wall Street Journal on Monday announced the launch of WSJ WorldStream, a global video newsgathering and publishing platform for short-form videos shot via smartphone by journalists from across its global news organisation. WSJ WorldStream is the latest addition to WSJ Live, the Journal's video initiative, which has launched four new shows in the past year from New York, London, Hong Kong, and Washington, DC. It is Available on WSJ.com and as a free web app. WSJ WorldStream is video for the social media and mobile age. It consists solely of footage captured on smartphones utilizing the resources of more than 2,000 journalists worldwide. Each video is under a minute, and all footage is reviewed by an editor before being posted to the stream. Using a custom video publishing app, turnaround time is condensed to just a few minutes between shooting and posting video so that the content can be delivered from the journalists in near real-time. (Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union)

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