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Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has acquired a 14.9 per cent stake in APN. Photo: Lucy Nicholson

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has intrigued its rivals by swooping on a 14.99 per cent stake in APN News & Media, which owns strong-performing radio assets, positioning Australia's biggest media company for further consolidation of the struggling media sector.

It acquired most of the stake in a sale by APN's Irish dominant shareholders, ending a 27-year-relationship with the trans-Tasman newspaper, radio and outdoor advertising group by selling their combined 30 per cent stake for about $300 million.

The surprise move, news of which was broken on Thursday morning by Fairfax Media, comes as the federal government considers ripping up cross-media ownership restrictions that limit mergers between traditional players.

While News describes the holding as an "investment stake", APN pays no dividends and the shares have already performed strongly in the past 18 months."It's not untypical for News to buy these strategic stakes as part of a bigger-picture move or a bigger play," said one senior media executive who asked not to be named.

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A 14.99 per cent stake gives News, which is prevented by law from buying APN, a right of veto if another company attempted to acquire APN via a scheme of arrangement. News Corp's local rival Fairfax Media, which owns The Australian Financial Review and Business Day, has discussed various commercial opportunities with APN in recent years.

APN owns more than 100 regional newspapers, many of them in Queensland, and Australian Radio Network, which is the star of the radio sector with leading FM breakfast shows on its Sydney stations KiiS FM, and WS FM.

News Corp is prevented from acquiring 15 per cent or more of APN because News co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch owns 100 per cent of rival radio company Nova Entertainment. Nova owns the Sydney stations Nova and Smooth FM. No media owner can control more than two radio licences in a major market.

News Corp's move took some media watchers aback because APN shares have already performed very strongly as it has fought back from a debt crisis. The stock, which was suspended at 94 on Thursday morning, has almost doubled in the past year having traded as low as 22 in June 2013.

Originally posted here:
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp takes 14.9pc stake in APN as Independent News & Media exits

POMPANO BEACH, FL (PRWEB) March 18, 2015

Onstream Media Corporation, the leading online service provider of corporate audio and web communications, today reinforced its commitment to serving the healthcare community by announcing that its services are fully HIPAA-compliant. The HIPAA safeguards mean that all information Onstream transmits electronically on its customers behalf video, voice or text during webinars, webcasting, conference calls or other virtual meetings is handled in compliance with HIPAA regulations.

If your business involves storing, accessing or communicating personal health information, you are subject to HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Healthcare providers, clearinghouses, health plans, or vendors that service these organizations, are considered covered entities under the regulation. HIPAA is designed to safeguard sensitive patient data, called protected health information and electronic protected health information. HIPAA requires that organizations comply with specific rules for creating, storing and transmitting patient information, or face significant fines of as much as $1.5 million.

What many healthcare entities dont realize is that these guidelines extend beyond your primary organization, to all of your information technology vendors, said David Glassman, Chief Marketing Officer at Onstream Media. Whether you are using our Onstream Media webcasting, webinar, audio and web conferencing services, you can be confident that the data and information you share and use are stored and transmitted using the strictest and most compliant security procedures.

Onstream Media has the following HIPAA safeguards in place:

Helping your organization stay complaint within HIPAA guidelines is one of Onstream Medias top priorities. To learn more about Onstream Medias HIPAA processes and controls, contact us at 1-877-932-3400.

About Onstream Media Corporation: Onstream Media Corporation is a leading online service provider of corporate audio and web communications, including webcasting, webinar, conferencing and virtual event technology. Onstream Medias innovative webcasting platform has recently been ranked #1 by TopTenREVIEWS. The company's video streaming, hosting and publishing platform - Streaming Publisher - provides customers with cost effective tools for encoding, managing, indexing, and publishing content to the Internet or virtually any mobile device. To date, almost half of the Fortune 1000 companies and 78% of the Fortune 100 CEOs and CFOs have used Onstream Media's services. Select Onstream Media customers include American Honda, Dell, GE Capital, Georgetown University, IRS, HBO Latin America, HubSpot, PR Newswire, Stanford University, Twitter and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Onstream Media's strategic relationships include Akamai, BT Conferencing and Trade Show News Network. For more information, visit Onstream Media at http://www.onstreammedia.com or call 954-917-6655.

Media Relations: Patty Buchanan Fastlane Communications 973-670-1203 patty(at)fastlane(dot)co

More here:
Onstream Media Announces HIPAA Compliance, Reinforcing Its Commitment to the Healthcare Industry

posted by Bob Kovacs / Broadcast Engineering Extra 03.17.2015 10:32 AM

Media General Stations Standardize on ChyronHego Graphics

Adopted a suite of ChyronHego graphics creation and workflow solutions for 15 of its stations

MELVILLE, N.Y. ChyronHego announced that Media General, one of the largest multimedia companies in the U.S., has adopted a suite of ChyronHego graphics creation and workflow solutions for 15 of its owned or operated television stations. Installed in MGFX, Media Generals centralized graphics hub in Richmond, Va., ChyronHegos BlueNet, Mosaic, Camio and Axis World Graphics systems will give each stations production control room an integrated platform for graphics creation and workflow management, asset management and cloud-based graphics order management.

One of our goals for the graphics upgrade was to empower our local teams at the stations to do more of their own graphics creation, said Mark Turner, vice president of station engineering and operations for Media General. After evaluating many products, it was clear that ChyronHego not only met our requirements for a fully integrated single-vendor solution, but also provides the cloud-based tools, such as Axis, to make the local stations more self-sufficientall in a manner that closely mirrors our existing workflows. Plus, the ChyronHego team is giving us outstanding support as we drive to our go-live date.

ChyronHegos BlueNet supports Media General's upgrade strategy by enabling an end-to-end graphics workflow to accelerate graphics creation and playout using Mosaic, while Camio powers distribution, access and management of the graphics assets. MediaMaker, a Camio component, integrates the ChyronHego graphics creation tools with Media Generals file-based workflows and third-party editing systems. The Axis World Graphics cloud-based order management system enables personnel at each station, ranging from reporters to editors to news producers, to access a set of graphics templates and build broadcast-quality graphics rapidly and easily.

To meet Media Generals aggressive delivery schedule, ChyronHego professional services has deployed a team of graphic artists that is working with MGFX and the local stations to migrate legacy content into the new ChyronHego platform.

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Media General Stations Standardize on ChyronHego Graphics

COMMENT

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has drawn the personal ire of Rupert Murdoch. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Political history has shown that picking a fight with Rupert Murdoch can be career suicide.

Thus the media industry was awash with theories on why Malcolm Turnbull has jumped into the boxing ring with Rupert Murdoch over changes to media ownership laws. Chief among them is that it will ultimately do more damage to Tony Abbott.

Another theory around Turnbull's motivation is that he is under pressure to do something within his media and telecommunications portfolio beyond increasing the price of stamps and overseeing changes to the National Broadband Network.

It would be a lot more palatable to think that Turnbull is attempting to drag media legislation into the 21st century.

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Changing the antiquated media ownership laws in Australia is more about extending the survival of the big incumbent players than it is about giving them carte blanche to dominate or earn mega profits. There are some traditionalists in federal politics that are still operating in a bygone era. The reality is that while print media is dominated by Murdoch's News Corp the profitability of all print assets in Australia is commercially challenged.

The television networks are under huge pressure from fragmenting audiences, most recently from the introduction of streaming services like Netflix and locally grown defensive plays like Presto and Stan.

The returns from print assets have been decimated by the internet and more recently by giant online aggregators like Google and Facebook.

See the original post here:
Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Turnbull in media prize fight

COMMENT

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has drawn the personal ire of Rupert Murdoch. Photo: Christopher Pearce

Political history has shown that picking a fight with Rupert Murdoch can be career suicide.

Thus the media industry was awash with theories on why Malcolm Turnbull has jumped into the boxing ring with Rupert Murdoch over changes to media ownership laws. Chief among them is that it will ultimately do more damage to Tony Abbott.

Another theory around Turnbull's motivation is that he is under pressure to do something within his media and telecommunications portfolio beyond increasing the price of stamps and overseeing changes to the National Broadband Network.

It would be a lot more palatable to think that Turnbull is attempting to drag media legislation into the 21st century.

Advertisement

Changing the antiquated media ownership laws in Australia is more about extending the survival of the big incumbent players than it is about giving them carte blanche to dominate or earn mega profits. There are some traditionalists in federal politics that are still operating in a bygone era. The reality is that while print media is dominated by Murdoch's News Corp the profitability of all print assets in Australia is commercially challenged.

The television networks are under huge pressure from fragmenting audiences, most recently from the introduction of streaming services like Netflix and locally grown defensive plays like Presto and Stan.

The returns from print assets have been decimated by the internet and more recently by giant online aggregators like Google and Facebook.

Go here to see the original:
Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Turnbull in the media boxing ring