Mediaboss Marketing

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/19/2012 12:01:00 AM The growing popularity of accessing news on mobile devices, online and social media is increasing the consumption and demand for news content, according to the newly released 2012 State of the News Media report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence (PEJ) in Journalism.

But news organizations are still struggling to make money off these digital distribution platforms, in part because tech giants are capturing a significant portion of the money being spent, with five tech companies grabbing 68% of all digital ad revenue, the study reports, citing researcher from eMarketer.

In addition, growing digital consumption and increases in digital revenue are still not making up for loses in traditional revenue. The PEJ study found increased audiences for online, network TV, local TV, audio, and cable TV, with magazines remaining fairly constant and newspapers seeing declines. But it also concluded that rising audiences for network TV and local TV did not translate into increased revenue.

In fact, revenue declined for both network TV (down 3.7%) and local TV (down 6.7%). PEJ noted that on-air ad revenue for local TV grew in 2011 but was still 10% lower than it was in 2007 and that on-air ads still accounted for 85% of the total revenue.

"Our analysis suggests that news is becoming more important and pervasive part of people's lives," PEJ director Tom Rosenstiel noted in a statement announcing Pew's ninth annual look at the state of the news media. "But it remains unclear who will benefit economically from this growing appetite for news."

The new study contains extensive data on the spread of digital media and consumption of news on digital devices, including new national surveys on how news is consumed on different devices and the impact of social media.

Both the surveys and outside data cited in the report found that digital delivery and the growing popularity of smart phones and tablets was driving increased consumption of news.

Citing data from the mobile analytics firm Localytics the study argues that people were using "mobile devices for news more often and for longer sessions" and that mobile users "may be getting more news more often."

Overall monthly unique users at the top news sites grew by 17% in 2011, according to data cited from Nielsen Online. Most of these major news sites (17 of 25) are still run by legacy news organizations.

Growing digital consumption has also boosted both online and mobile ad markets. The study notes that online advertising grew by 23% in 2011. One segment of the online ad pie, display advertising grew by 24% bounce in 2011 to $12.4 billion, according to data from eMarketer cited in the report.

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PEJ: News Orgs Still Struggle With Digital Revenue

The shootout, it has been said, is basically a coin-flip.

If thats true, the Calgary Flames are playing with a double-headed coin.

And they keep taking tails.

The Flames dropped their fourth straight shootout and eighth of 11 overall and saw their playoff hopes take a major hit in the process.

Flames centre Matt Stajan, who at least rescued a single point for his club with a massive third-period marker, said its deflating to watch the bonus points evaporate.

Its frustrating when you dont win in the shootouts, Stajan said after the 2-1 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Our record hasnt been too good this year in shootouts thats no secret.

Last year, it didnt seem like we could lose a shootout. Right now, thats a huge difference in picking up some points.

The Flames came away with an extra point in 9-of-16 shootouts last season.

If they were even 50% this season, theyd be in a playoff spot instead of desperately trying to stay in the race.

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Skills competition hurting Flames

It's hard to imagine a filmmaker who has less in common with playwright Terence Rattigan than Terence Davies, whose visually lush and aurally rapturous studies of working-class British life are far removed from those crisp, clench-jawed dramas and comedies of the 1950s.

Yet there's a heartbreakingly melancholic quality to The Deep Blue Sea, arguably Rattigan's finest work, that we see in films such as Distant Voices, Still Lives and the Long Day Closes, which is undoubtedly what attracted Davies to adapting his first stage work for the big screen.

Not surprisingly, the famously single-minded Davies has not bowed down to the conventions of the well-made play. Rather, he's wrenched Rattigan's tale of love and desire in the face of social convention into his own aesthetic universe, rearranging the narrative, cutting pages of dialogue and imposing his signature dreamy, expressionistic style.

Lovers of traditional British theatre will find The Deep Blue Sea challenging. However, those alive to the expressive power of pure cinema, in which a beam of light falling on a bit of grubby wallpaper or voices raised in a pub singalong has as much meaning as a bit of perfectly enunciated dialogue, will be swept up by Davies' version of Rattigan's play.

Davies sticks to the broad outlines of the original, which opens with the wife of an eminent judge, Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) attempting to take her own life using sleeping pills and a coin-operated gas meter in her run-down London apartment.

However, Davies tumbles back over the previous months, telling the story of how Hester fell head over heels in love with rakish former RAF-pilot Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston), who, after the initial rush of their illicit coupling has cooled, now spends his time drinking and playing golf.

Davies also gives us a glimpse of Hester's dull and constrictive marriage to the older Sir William Collyer (a rare big-screen appearance for stage legend Simon Russell Beale), culminating in an excruciatingly funny dinner with the judge's domineering mother (Barbara Jefford).

It's not surprising that the vivacious, intelligent Hester rushed into the arms of Battle of Britain hero Freddie. While William represents crushingly repressive class-conscious old Blighty, his wife is rushing headlong toward the sexual revolution to come and Freddie is a new kind of Englishman.

But Freddie does not love Hester as deeply as Hester loves Freddie and this is her problem. She's in a long line of movie heroines for whom love and desire are everything and who is willing to sacrifice the comforts of a middle-class marriage for the thrill of unfettered passion - that is, until the perfume of lust is replaced by the stench of real life.

While Davies has lost much of Rattigan's famously brittle dialogue, his recreation of postwar Britain, with its air of exhaustion and deprivation, takes us deep into the soul of Hester, whose education and classiness have led her to expect so much more.

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Movie Review: The Deep Blue Sea

BY JEFF GORDON stltoday.com | Posted: Monday, March 19, 2012 6:36 am | (Loading) comments.

Mizzou fans are still reeling today. SLU fans are a bit disappointed, too, after the Billikens failed to wrestle a victory from Michigan State on Sunday.

But the college basketball industry got just what it wanted from the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

Stunning upsets reinforced the March Madness theme. Norfolk State, Lehigh and The Ohio University played the Cinderella role and joined college basketball lore.

They wrecked brackets, engaged casual fans and justified the expansion of Division I basketball to three times its appropriate size.

Several power programs advanced to the Sweet 16, including Kentucky, Syracuse, North Carolina, Ohio State, Kansas and Michigan State. Those schools fill arenas and stadiums and pay the bills.

Double-digit seeds Ohio, North Carolina State and Xavier also survived the second round to add some variety to the proceedings and keep the storylines fresh.

(Downtown St. Louis merchants probably arent thrilled to get two of the surprise teams visiting this weekend, but the roving horde of Jayhawk fans ought to cover most of that gap. They will be pulling for KU big time Friday night.)

Here is what the experts had to say about what happened the past four days:

Eamonn Brennan, ESPN.com: Combined, Duke and Missouri wield well over 100 million in their combined athletic budgets; their overall university endowments dwarf that of Lehigh and Norfolk State and any other No. 15 seed you'll ever see. The Blue Devils and Tigers are members of the entrenched college sports aristocracy, the dominion of top-100 recruiting and charter jets and shoe-company contracts and greed-laden conference realignment and billion-dollar television deals. Lehigh and Norfolk State don't exist in this universe. These schools' recruits aren't elite AAU prospects. Oftentimes, they aren't really prospects at all.

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Tipsheet: March Madness marketing bonanza

by Stephen Ritch

The portrait of retired MHK Mr David Cannan as a former Speaker of the House of Keys is to go on display at the Isle of Man Arts Societys Easter Exhibition.

The portrait, by the acclaimed professional artist Svetlana Cameron, was commissioned by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald in 2011 and hung in the House of Keys Chamber in October of that year.

Speaker of the House of Keys, the Hon Steve Rodan SHK said: The portrait has attracted favorable comments from many quarters and we were pleased to be able to accord Mrs Cameron the opportunity to display her work to a wider audience at one of the Islands most popular art exhibitions.

The portrait will be displayed together with a drawing in pastels of a child by Mrs Cameron at the exhibition, which will be held in the Villa Marina Arcade from Thursday April 5 to Friday April 13 between 10am and 5pm, (excluding April 13 when it will close at 1pm).

Mrs Cameron is currently engaged in a second portrait commission by the Office of the Clerk of Tynwald, that of former Chief Minister Mr Tony Brown as Speaker of the House of Keys.

- Ends -

The portrait has attracted favorable comments from many quarters"

Hon Steve Rodan SHK , Speaker of the House of Keys

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Latest Speaker Portrait to be Displayed at Isle of Man Arts Society Easter Exhibition