Mediaboss Marketing

We all have our guilty pleasures, and for many of us, they come in the form ofmovies, TV shows, or videosthat are, shall we say, ofquestionabletaste. Privately, you may relish in the Real Housewives ofinsert city name here, terrible B-rated Sci-Fi flicks, scandalous Anime, or compilations of kittens in knitted bodysuits(hey, were not here to judge), but were willing to bet you arent interested in sharing this stuff with your curiouschildren, taunting friends, or worse, your judgemental mother-in-law. For those who use Plex as a media server, this has been a problem the software has lacked any kind of parental controls or privacy measures, so when you grant someone access toyour collection, you share your entirecollection the good and the bad. But recently Plex announced a new feature coming to itssoftware, called Plex Home,whichmakes it possible to pick and choose exactly who sees what through its media server.

Related:Chromecast shines even brighter with new Plex features

Announced on its blog, Plex says that Plex Home has been over two years in the making, and that it aims to bring fine-grained parental controls and more to users by moving server managementto its Plex web app. Users will now be able to easily specify exact content ratings accessible by all theirfriends and family. It is important to note that some basic Multi-user features and Now Playing features will be available to anyone who uses the free version of Plex, but the really good stuff will be limited to Plex Pass holders. Recently, Plex hiked up Plex Pass rates, and they are now as follows: $4.99/month, $39.99/year, and $149.99/lifetime.

Whats the good stuff we refer to? For one: Label-based sharing will make specifying who can see whichcontent extremely easy. For example, you could choose to share only certain family videos with your parents and in-laws, and share only your recently-acquired Miles Davis box setcollection with your jazzer buddy.

Managing content forthose living in the home in which Plex is hosted will also be made extremely easy, especially for those kids whodont have a username, email, or password. Plex promises switching between users will be extremely quick, and that PINs will only be required where specified. So, for instance, those under 13 in the home would be able to access their approved content by simply selecting their profile, not additional actions needed, while accessing Dads account will require the use of a PIN as a password.

Finally, Plex promises access to any of the apps that come with a Plex Pass for everyone in the home. This should come in useful for those in a single home that operates separate Roku accounts, or those who opt to use several different kinds of media streaming hardware, such as the Google Nexus Player, which requires users to have a Plex Pass if they want access to Plex at all.

Related:Google Nexus Player review

Just chalk this up as one more reason to choose Plex as a media server, and perhaps the most compelling reason to throw a chunk of change down for a paid subscription. Plexs development has always been user-driven, and this is yet another example of its developers answering its supporters call.

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Plex will now let you keep your private videos hidden with new Plex Home feature

For decades, but especially since the Edsa People Power Revolt restored press freedom in the country, the Philippines has prided itself in having one of the freest, if not THE freest press, in the region.

Recovering from the repression and control of the media during the Marcos dictatorship, journalists basked not just in the sudden freedoms they enjoyed, but also in the number of employment opportunities that emerged, with the sudden blooming of media outletsnewspapers, magazines, radio stations and even TV networks, some of which reverted to the old owners displaced by martial law.

Not everyone, of course, welcomed the wild and wooly media environment that emerged with the Marcoses departure. As former president Fidel Ramos once declared, whenever he read the days papers, some make me want to commit suicide, while others make me want to commit homicide.

These days the media profession faces challenges that in those heady post-Edsa days werent even on the horizon. The advent of new information technology has threatened the viabilitynay, the very lifeof whats now called traditional media. Even as newspapers and broadcast outfits struggle to remain relevant and keep their advertising advantage over that of Facebook, blogs, e-magazines and such micro news sources like Twitter, they must also contend with the emergence of a world where everybody with a cell phone can become a journalist.

I would think that in such a world, media boundaries would be widening rather than narrowing, and that entities that must deal with all kinds of mediaespecially governmentswould learn how to better relate to all kinds of people dealing with and demanding information, confirmation, opinion and judgment.

In this post-WikiLeaks world, nothing remains secret for long, and governments cannot hope to dictate the manner and conduct of coverage in a media environment that is as loose, uncontrollable and almost boundless as it is today.

* * *

All this is by way of preface to news that the Bureau of Immigration has decided to blacklist nine unnamed Hong Kong journalists for allegedly posing a security threat to P-Noy.

The blacklisting stems from a press conference that the President held during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit held in Bali, Indonesia, last year. During that event, the nine journalists, as some reports put it, crossed the line when they aggressively questioned P-Noy about the continuing controversy over the botched rescue of hostages (who were all Hong Kong residents) at the Luneta in 2010.

BI spokesperson Elaine Tan defended the decision, saying that showing disrespect or mak(ing) offensive utterances to symbols of Philippine authority is sufficient reason to ban an individual from entering a country.

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Journalists behaving badly

Digital media presents a huge business opportunity, but also some risks.

Marketers of yesteryear used conventional media to control their message and communicate with target customers.

But once we entered the digital media era, including social networks, the power of consumers soared because digital media offers two-way communication.

Today's marketers must have a true understanding on how to manage this timeless media. That is what The Nation learned from Tom Doctoroff, CEO of JWT Asia Pacific.

"If brands fail to strategically manage messages in digital media, two-way communication may create consumer confusion about the brand," he said.

Regarding how this relates to the recent mid-term election in the US, he said: "Once customer loyalty to the brand declines, its price drops. After the drop in price, the economy falls. And then the Republicans won the recent mid-term election [to gain control of the Senate]."

A boxer in the bank

Apart from being a follower of the English Premier League, Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul may also be a boxing fan - given he compared monetary policy management amid global uncertainties to fighters slugging it out in the ring.

"The economic situations of Thailand and the world are complex and full of uncertainties, and recently there have been rapid changes in situations," he said.

"So we need to have a bracket of monetary policy that is flexible, similar to a boxer going into the ring - the legs must not stay still because if your legs are dead, the opponent will easily knock you down," he said.

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BizBuzz

News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch faced an unprecedented investor revolt last week. Photo: Reuters

The Sun King, Rupert Murdoch, lost the support of his prince last week - and almost lost control of his media empire as a result.

But the real problem for Murdoch is that this war is far from over, and there are serious implications for News Corp's struggling print empire in Australia - the weak underbelly that will be targeted by investors.

Long time Murdoch backer, the Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, kept on the sidelines last week as the News Corp founder faced an unprecedented investor revolt against the structure that entrenches his family's control of the company with a minority stake.

On the sidelines: Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Photo: Bloomberg

The Murdoch family owns just 12 per cent of News Corp, but they own 40 per cent of the shares which control the company.

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The backing of Prince Alwaleed with his 6.6 per cent stake is enough to make the family's position virtually impregnable.

"We never vote against our partner Mr Murdoch," a spokesman for Prince Alwaleed told theFinancial Times, but the numbers speak more loudly than his words.

Only 87.59 million News Corp shares voted against a proposal to give a vote to every News Corp share, not just the Class B shares.

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Sun King vulnerable after losing his prince

Fox Studios in Los Angeles, where the News Corporation annual meeting was held. Photo: Reuters

It was a sunny Los Angeles autumn day a week ago when six people boarded a special-purpose bus from the city's Century Park West carpark to Fox Studios. The six people, all shareholders, were off to attend what would be a momentous annual meeting of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

None had a clue that they were about to witness the 83-year-old media baron come dangerously close to losing his iron-fisted grip on a large part of his empire at the hands of a shareholder revolt.

News Corp's financially challenged newspaper assets form the basis of the (new) News Corp. Photo: Phil Carrick

No one expected that the billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, on whose support Murdoch relies to retain control of News Corp, wouldn't vote his shares.

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For Murdoch, in a corporate sense at least, the outcome of this meeting represented a near-death experience.

Thus Rupert Murdoch has been put on notice that his family's control of News Corporation the company that owns his international stable of newspapers, Australian pay television, book publishing and digital directory assetsis vulnerable.

The Sun king's dictatorship is being threatened by several of the company's large shareholders, who have been behind this push to force democracy on the company.

This is not the first time Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corp, has been challenged by shareholder detractors. But it is the closest shave so far. A massive 47.4 per cent of votes cast supported a proposal to eliminate the company's dual-class share structure which, had it passed, would have diluted his voting interest from almost 40 per cent to a mere 14 per cent.

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Murdoch losing grip on empire