Turner Broadcasting's Casey Harwood on the digital future: from CNN to Nuts TV
Turner's European digital media boss told the Broadcasting Press Guild that he was looking at taking Nuts TV onto the continent.
November 27, 2007 8:00 AM
When it comes to mustering a strategy for a massive multi-media business then few can top the task of Casey Harwood, senior vice president of digital media at Time Warner-owned Turner Broadcasting Europe.
Harwood's role - or at least the breadth of discussion at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch grilling yesterday - touches on everything from aspirations to launch a CNN documentary and lifestyle channel on-demand, the Nuts TV experiment to its recent YouTube and Bebo deals.
The importance of Nuts TV
Because of Turner's powerhouse business operation in the US the company, says Harwood, takes a bit of an attitude of "risk in the regions" where it can "afford to take a few bets".
An example is Nuts TV, the Freeview channel based on the lads magazine brand owned by sister company IPC.
"It moved us out of our comfort zone," he explains, referring to the four hours of live studio-audience based content the show provides, as well as access to participation TV, gambling and ad-funded programming the venture dips its toe into.
"If we were to replicate it 40 times around Europe it would be a big business," he says in an off-the-cuff manner, noting later that there isn't necessarily a "single solution" for all markets.
When the show moves to the BSkyB and Virgin platforms Nuts TV will be bolstered to 12 hours and will start to feature long-form programming ("even four hours of live TV is an awful lot").
And the "dual viewing experience" philosophy means that there is no desire just to replicate Nuts magazine on-air. "We are not wedded to Nuts forever, there could be breakout strands," he explains.

This article is saying how Casey Harwood wants to distribute Nuts TV across Europe. I think this should not happen. if it does, they are making all these porny things everywhere, even though they already are in Europe, however, they are contributing to the increase of it. and when people know it has come from England, they might think of England differently.

Audience profiling:
Checkpoint one: what is demographic profiling? grouping an audience into: age, gender, geographical area, class, economic status and religion.

Checkpoint two: what is psychographic profiling? categorising audiences in terms of needs and motivation rather than simply demographic factors, this way consumer cans be targeted directly through their needs and desires, which is more effective for advertisers.

Checkpoint three:why do you think advertisers create these niche nicknames? it is an easy way to define target audiences.

uses and gratifications
checkpoint one: what four motivations for choosing a text did Blumer and Katz suggest? Diversions, personal relationship, personal identity and surveilance.

Checkpoint two: what is cultural code? importance of certain soci-economic differences in shaping the ways in which people interpret texts. the texts appeal to different people in different ways.

BBC staff edge closer to strike

Owen Gibson
Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday November 20 2007
BBC staff moved a step closer to strike action today after the first in a series of meetings between unions and management ended in stalemate.
The corporation was seeking to make 440 redundancies at production arm BBC Vision in the first tranche of two rounds of cuts that will ultimately account for 725 job losses.
But union sources said management had received only 303 expressions of interest from people inquiring about the terms of redundancy and were determined to press ahead with compulsory cuts to bridge the gap.
Bectu and NUJ officials will meet with news management tomorrow, where the gap between the number of expressions of interest and the number of redundancies is expected to be much smaller, before a joint union meeting on Thursday at which they are likely to press for a strike ballot.
Overall, BBC director general Mark Thompson plans to cut 2,500 posts, with an overall total of 1,800 redundancies due to some staff being redeployed.
He is keen to conclude the process swiftly but unions have consistently warned they would ballot for industrial action if compulsory redundancies were enforced.
Union officials have also said the complex redundancy terms, with some staff barred from being re-employed for a period of time, mean that staff should be given longer to make up their mind.
BBC Vision is facing the largest overall number of redundancies, with factual programming taking the biggest hit as more programmes are outsourced to independent producers under the Window of Creative Competition.
There will also be fewer programmes made overall, with Thompson ordering a 10% cut in the commissioning budget as part of a policy to make fewer programmes with more impact across more platforms.

I think the BBC should go on strike because it is not fair that they are making so many redundancies, especially if they are barred from being re-employed because this means they will be left unemployed and is not loyal of the BBC to do. And strike will be bad publicity for the BBC so they may re consider making so many people redundant. In a way i am glad they are cutting the [rogrammes down because sometimes they show junk, for example, my family, it used to be good, but now it is annoying and they could put something better on.

Effects theory
checkpoint one:
The rise of media industries on society. it says that society controls nearly everything including culture. The mass audience is manipulated by society (the ruling class) = the audience is less able to criticise what they have been shown because it has been commodified to fit the capitalist system.

checkpoint two:
Desensitised means less sensitive. it is when repeated exposure will make the audience less sensitive as social attitudes and expectations change over time. This relates to media as movies and documentaries will be shown in contemporary society rather than in previous years where there may have been ethics.

8. Ed Richards


Richards: aiming to work with the BBC Trust to find 'appropriate solutions' to the problems of viewer trust in British TV

Job: chief executive, OfcomAge: 41Industry: regulationStaff: 776Salary: £308,930 (including bonus, benefits and pension payments)2006 ranking: 77

Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards faces a critical few months which will test not just his own ability but the effectiveness or otherwise of the three and a half-year-old regulator.
Ofcom's recent interventions read like a list of the industry's biggest stories of the year so far - the Celebrity Big Brother race row, the premium-rate call-TV scandal, and BskyB's purchase of a 17.9% share in ITV.
The Big Brother controversy ended with a landmark ruling from the regulator saying that Channel 4 had made "serious editorial misjudgments" that were "compounded by a serious failure of the compliance process".
Critics claimed Ofcom had made errors of its own by failing to react quickly enough to either the Big Brother row or the TV phone-in scandal, which began with Channel 4's Richard & Judy and spread to other broadcasters like a virus.
Ofcom is looking into Sky's purchase of a stake in ITV as well as the satellite broadcaster's pay-TV plans for Freeview, and has opened more than 20 investigations into irregularities on premium-rate phone-ins and interactive services.
"The next few months are going to be absolutely crucial for Ed Richards," said one of our panellists.
"He has more to say about the shape of the media landscape over the next 12 months than almost anyone else on this list, but I fear he is going to be weak rather than directional."
Also in Richards' in-tray: what to do with analogue spectrum; the future funding of Channel 4; sharp practice in the cut-throat broadband market; the future regulation of commercial radio; the provision of public service content in the digital age; TV product placement; HDTV. The list goes on. And on.

Previously the regulator's number two, Richards succeeded Stephen Carter in the top job in October last year.
The new regime made its first significant decision last year when it banned junk food advertising around children's TV programmes.

A quintessential New Labour man - Greg Dyke famously referred to him as a "jumped-up Millbank oik" - Richards has worked for both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
Criticised for being too close to the government and the BBC - where he worked for Lord Birt as its controller of corporate strategy - Richards dismissed accusations of New Labour cronyism as "tittle tattle".
Richards is one of this year's biggest risers, up nearly 70 places to number eight. He was lower last year because he had not yet been appointed to replace Carter as head of Ofcom.
Carter, a one-time candidate to be chief executive of ITV, is now chief executive of City PR firm Brunswick.

iPhone sales are in line with expectations, says O2 chief

Richard Wray
The Guardian
Tuesday November 13 2007
Mobile phone company O2 claims to have sold "tens of thousands" of iPhones over the weekend after its launch in Britain.
Its chief executive, Peter Erskine, predicted that the UK pre-pay mobile phone market will decline this year for the first time in the history of the industry as the mobile phone companies focus on users willing to sign a contract.
Customers buying an iPhone, for instance, have to sign up for 18 months. He said iPhone sales through O2 stores are outstripping those from Carphone Warehouse and Apple's own stores, with "tens of thousands" sold through the O2 store network. There have been reports over the weekend that O2 and Carphone stores have seen lacklustre sales but Erskine said "the initial feedback is we are in-line with our expectations".
Erskine stressed it is "early days" and refused to give an exact sales figure, adding that reports of sales of more than 100,000 were exaggerated.
Asked about speculation that people were put off by the price, he added "that's certainly not what we are finding".
The number of customers who have gone into an O2 store since the iPhone went on sale on Friday night is three times higher than the same period last year.
While many of these new visitors had come to play with the gadget, Erskine said he hoped overall sales would increase as staff tried to sell this wave of shoppers additional items. "It's the old story in retail: if you can get them in you can sell them something," he said. "What I don't know yet ... is how much extra we are selling ." UK chief executive Matthew Key expects to sell more than 200,000 iPhones in the Christmas and new year period.

This story is saying that the iphone is selling well and that more people have gone into O2 stores this time of year than last (more than 3 times of the people), and they hope to continue selling loads of more over Christmas. I think that the iphone is going to sell more over Christmas because obviously people are going to be buying gifts, and for teenagers, even young adults, this would be the perfect gift because nowadays technology what everything is about.

Marxist and Pluralist Consequences:

Profits will only exist by exploiting workers-->the value of the object is higher than the value of the employee.

That is not right, the audience is more active and are now more media literate. They are aware of what they are watchin g and are more selective.

But programmes have been dumbed down so ulimately the media still have control over audiences as they show programmes that are known to be 'dumbed down'. So therefore people cannot oppose what they see.

They may be 'dumbed down' but that does not mean there is a lack of media sources for an audience to gain knowledge and make up their own mind on a situation.

There are many media sources out there but a lot of it is owned by one person (eg Murdoch) passing down his values and beliefs. By dmming down texts (Adorno) it makes the audience passive in what they watch (hypodermic needle model).

But the uses and gratifications theory is when they audience is active, with the growth of the internet we are still able to read news from different sources and magazines and newspapers do not neccesarily have to be one of Murdochs.

But it is quesionable as to were these sources come from. Note the correlation between media conglomerates, the mass availablity of texts and then consider its reach to the audience; in the hands of the wealthy companies, we are fed texts.

People go out and read/view the media, if they don't like what they hear thet can simply choose another text: the entire media is NOT owned by one person.

Media guardian article 5

Radio 4's Today: the BBC move has affected shows such as the flagship news programme. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
BBC radio executives have abandoned the controversial rebranding of the corporation's news bulletins, which drew scores of complaints from listeners.
In a move that was also criticised as pointless tinkering by many staff, news presenters on the BBC's main radio networks were told last month that in future they had to highlight the fact that the bulletins were produced by BBC news.
Presenters on Radio 4's Today programme were instructed to begin their bulletins with the words "BBC news" and end them with the phrase "BBC news for Radio 4", instead of the old sign-off "BBC Radio 4 news".
The head of BBC radio news, Stephen Mitchell, said the "subtle change" was introduced as the BBC needed to "simplify" the identity of BBC news.
However, scores of listeners complained on the BBC's online message boards.
"Thanks for the clarification, I used to think Sky produced news bulletins on the BBC," one said.
Another added: "The fact that anyone at the Beeb spent time contemplating this change makes me very angry. What a waste of my licence fee."
A third commented: "Sounds ridiculous. Forget about branding, chaps, most of us who tune in do so because it is Radio 4 and we know we'll get the news read properly, not someone presenting it."
Following the outcry from listeners, Tim Bailey, the editor of Radio 4's 6pm bulletin, yesterday sent staff a new memo saying there had been a "change of plan".
With "immediate effect", he said presenters would now begin bulletins with the words "BBC News at x O'Clock" and end them with "BBC News".
"So for example at 1800 - BBC News at six o'clock. This is Corrie Corfield. Good evening," he said.
However, the further fiddling has angered staff at a time when they are preparing for hundreds of redundancies within the news division.
"I can't believe BBC news pays someone to sit around and think about stuff like this," one source at the corporation commented.
A BBC spokesman said:" We felt the words needed a slight change to get the result that sounds best on air."

I think they should have stuck to the original script because this has obviously angered their listeners. they do not need to reinforce or mention that the news comes from the BBC, it is not as if no one knows who they are, they are already established well enough.

In what ways do I agree with Pluralism?

To a certain extent i agree with pluralism. This is because the media have choices within the market. There are now a wide range of well established supermarkets, for example, Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose who all compete with each other over cheap prices, however people can chose which one they prefer. This is also like tv, there are a range of channels which people can chose from. These points show there is not a pluralistic society.