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ONE of Australia's leading advertisers believes proposed media reforms would inflict Australians with the same limits on the free press as Russia and Cuba.

Harold Mitchell today told a Brisbane audience the reforms proposed by the Independent Media Inquiry were "crap", designed by people who did not understand free choice.

"Firstly, they believe that there should be no freedom of the press, but, you know, through all the centuries the greatest way a society can ever continue is by having a free society," Mr Mitchell said.

"You control thoughts and it just won't happen."

Mr Mitchell is founder of Mitchell & Partners and executive chairman of Aegis Media Pacific, a company that buys commercial space on all media for some of the world's biggest brands.

He is also the expert chosen by the federal government to advise on how more philanthropists can be encouraged to donate to the arts.

Mr Mitchell told the QUT business leaders forum that some of the reforms proposed by the inquiry could have an equivalent effect to jailing newspaper editors who offended vested interests.

He said: "Now, what sort of a world are we living in when that would be a notion we should have?"

The report by retired judge Ray Finkelstein, QC, presented last week to the federal government, proposes sweeping regulation of newspapers.

It urged the government to set up a taxpayer-funded body to regulate all of Australia's news and current affairs across all media: a statutory watchdog to set standards and handle complaints.

Read more here:
Media reforms 'as bad as Russia, Cuba'

A number of recent studies have shown that social media services like Twitter and Facebook are one of the largest sources of traffic for news sites, and the BBC has now decided to aggressively test the limits of this dynamic by launching the BBC News Control Panel on Facebook.

The Control Panel requires that you first "like" the BBC page on Facebook, after which you are presented with a menu of options that allow you to customize your Facebook news feed by topic, news show, or correspondent.

Explaining the reasoning behind the move, BBC News product manager Gareth Owen said, "Fewer than 50 percent of the 8 million-plus visitors to the News website every day see our front page and the rest arrive directly at a story, video page or section index Almost a quarter of a million individual users start their BBC News website journey via a link on Facebook every day."

Apparently not everyone is a fan. Not long after the BBC announced the new Facebook feature, several BBC fans voiced some rather strong opposition to the feature.

A BBC user named Chris offered the most detailed critique saying, "Sorry, but while I appreciate that many people come in from Twitter or Facebook, and while I think it is reasonable for the BBC to add sharing buttons and the like, I strongly dislike the idea of the BBC spending its resources building applications specifically to promote a proprietary, privately run platform and one moreover whose revenue comes from attempting to monetise its users personal data and activity records."

For now, the BBC says this is just a beta product, but the execution and ease-of-use of the feature suggests that a lot of thought went into the Control Panel.

A number of news organizations, like the Washington Post and Yahoo News, have launched Facebook-centric apps that allow users to automatically share with their friends the stories they read. Facebook says this is an easy way to keep your friends up-to-date with your interests, though critics have argued that it is ruining sharing.

Read the original here:
BBC Launches 'News Control Panel' on Facebook

BEIJING, March 8, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Ku6 Media Co., Ltd., ("Ku6 Media" or the "Company", Nasdaq: KUTV) a leading internet video company in China, today announced unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter of and full fiscal year ended December 31, 2011.

Background

In 2010, Ku6 Media (formerly known as Hurray!) completed a series of transactions including acquisition of Ku6 Holding Limited in January 2010 and disposal of its wireless value-added services ("WVAS") and music businesses to Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited ("Shanda") as well as acquisition of online audio business from Shanda in August 2010, and became a company focusing on online advertising business on its online video platform of http://www.Ku6.com. As a result, the operating results of WVAS and recorded music were presented as "Operating Results of Discontinued Operations" in the income statements.

Highlights

Business results

Total revenues, representing advertising revenue from online video portal operation, were $4.42 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, representing an increase of 4.5% from $4.23 million in the third quarter of 2011 and a decrease of 34.7% from $6.77 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

In the second quarter of 2011, the Company started to generate revenues from performance advertising using a system called Application Advertisement ("AA"). The performance advertising revenue was realized through an affiliated advertising agent. 79.2% of total revenues in the fourth quarter was from this source, as compared to 72.3% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2011.

Cost of revenues was $4.23 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, representing a decrease of 22.8% from $5.48 million in the third quarter of 2011 and a decrease of 66.1% from $12.46 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. The change of content strategy since the second quarter of 2011 fromlong-form professional content to UGC is the main reason for the decrease in cost of revenues. As a result, gross profit was $0.19 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, as compared to a gross loss of $1.25 million in the third quarter of 2011 and a gross loss of $5.70 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Operating expenses were $4.38 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, representing a decrease of 61.2% from $11.28 million in the third quarter of 2011 and a decrease of 55.2% from $9.77 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. Fourth quarter operating expenses include a $0.98 million favorable adjustment due to increased forfeitures of equity compensation awards caused by greater than anticipated headcount reductions in the Company's strategic transition.

Operating loss was $4.19 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, representing a decrease of 66.6% from $12.53 million in the third quarter of 2011 and a decrease of 72.9% from $15.46 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

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Ku6 Media Reports Unaudited Financial Results for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year of Fiscal Year 2011

ONE of Australia's leading advertisers believes proposed media reforms would inflict Australians with the same limits on the free press as Russia and Cuba.

Harold Mitchell today told a Brisbane audience the reforms proposed by the Independent Media Inquiry were "crap", designed by people who did not understand free choice.

"Firstly, they believe that there should be no freedom of the press, but, you know, through all the centuries the greatest way a society can ever continue is by having a free society," Mr Mitchell said.

"You control thoughts and it just won't happen."

Mr Mitchell is founder of Mitchell & Partners and executive chairman of Aegis Media Pacific, a company that buys commercial space on all media for some of the world's biggest brands.

He is also the expert chosen by the federal government to advise on how more philanthropists can be encouraged to donate to the arts.

Mr Mitchell told the QUT business leaders forum that some of the reforms proposed by the inquiry could have an equivalent effect to jailing newspaper editors who offended vested interests.

He said: "Now, what sort of a world are we living in when that would be a notion we should have?"

The report by retired judge Ray Finkelstein, QC, presented last week to the federal government, proposes sweeping regulation of newspapers.

It urged the government to set up a taxpayer-funded body to regulate all of Australia's news and current affairs across all media: a statutory watchdog to set standards and handle complaints.

View post:
Media reforms as bad as Russia

Andrew Bolt Wednesday, March 07, 2012 at 07:55am

Heres another thing I dont understand about the Finkelstein inquiry, which recommends more government control on a media it clearly disdains:

MEDIA executives and journalists are being offered the chance to attend a $500-a-head workshop.

The workshop will be on the recommendations of the federal governments Finkelstein media inquiry, despite no indication it will lead to a new regulatory regime.

And the co-commissioner of the $1.4 million inquiry, academic Matthew Ricketson, will deliver the keynote address at the event, despite not commenting so far on the taxpayer-funded inquiry.

I have known Matthew for years. His highest achievement is the profession that his inquiry now seeks to have controlled was media and communications editor for The Age from 2006 to 2009.

To be perfectly frank, I did not consider him to be very good in that job. He seemed to break few stories, or offer any penetrating observations. His writing is not sparkling. He was well outshone by The Australians Amanda Meade, for one, and I do not think I am being unfair. I recently spoke to a senior Age executive who endorsed my overall opinion.

So heres my astonishment: how does a man who rose to no great heights in the media wind up as the presiding expert in an inquiry to determine how much freedom to give it?

UPDATE

Tin Burrowes of Mumbrella:

More here:
How did Ricketson become the great media expert?