A recent report from The NPD Group said that Sirius had captured 56 percent of satellite retail sales in September, but XM Satellite Radio is actually still the market lead, holding a 59 percent market share in the third quarter, reports Mediaweek. The NPD Group’s numbers were apparently based on the sales receipts from a subset of retail outlets, excluding many of the places where satellite radio is sold.
email this
permanent link
Discovery Networks U.S. Hispanic Group has created a specialized advertising sales team to represent the company’s Spanish-language networks, Mediaweek reports. Discovery has three networks that target the U.S. Hispanic market: Discovery en Espanol, Discovery Travel & Living (Viajar y Vivir) and Discovery Kids en Espanol.
email this
permanent link
According to a study from Bridge Ratings, a composite group of major market talk and news radio stations are losing “favoriteness shares” and that this drop-off indicates an “attrition among talk radio listeners as a whole,” Billboard Radio Monitor reports.
The study, based on interviews with 2,000 adults aged 25-54, showed that 29 percent of these “primary” listeners-those who say their favorite station is talk format-were listening less, while 62 percent were listening the same amount now as six months ago.
DirecTV plans to launch its first original programming series with “CD USA,” a weekly show that will debut in January and only be available to its 15 million U.S. subscribers, Reuters reports.
VerticalSearch.com is slated to announce Wednesday the launch of a beta search engine for b-to-b media, BtoB reports. The search engine will be located at www.verticalsearch.com and will crawl about 4,000 b-to-b media Web sites and about 1 million pages.
email this
permanent link
A 2-cent rate increase for a postage stamp was approved Tuesday by the Postal Rate Commission, AP reports (via Editor & Publisher).
Under the recommendation, the cost of a first-class stamp will go from 37 cents to 39 cents and the postcard rate will rise a penny to 24 cents. Presorted advertising mail of 2 ounces will go up 1.1 cents to 21.4 cents.
Thirteen independent stations not owned and operated by Infinity Broadcasting have rejected the replacements lined up by Infinity for after Dec. 16, when Howard Stern, who was in 37 markets, leaves for Sirius, The New York Post reports.
TV content providers could - if they were so disposed - bypass cable and satellite services and deliver programming directly to viewers, because much of the technology needed to deliver TV via the internet is already in place, writes CNET (via MarketingVOX). Though providers don’t plan to abandon traditional TV any time soon, they are keeping a close eye on internet TV developments. Most are dipping their toes into the market - while making sure that there is adequate demand for the service and their digital rights are protected.
Online sales this year’s holiday season will increase 25 percent from last year’s, reaching $18 billion, despite consumers’ falling confidence and diminished discretionary income - and thanks in large part to the 2.5 million new online-shopping households expected this year, writes InternetRetailer (via MarketingVOX), citing a new report from Forrester Research. Many shoppers are also expected to buy gifts online to take advantage of free shipping to be offered by 79 percent of online retailers.
Starting today, Sprint and Scripps Network’s Foodnetwork.com are partnering to enable Foodnetwork site visitors to look up a recipe online, then click on an icon to send the shopping list for that recipe to any Sprint phone.
Billijam, creator of the Business Sponsored Art Program, and Clear Channel have partnered to bring Dynamic Art Spots, or sponsored original art, to the streets of New York through its digital display network, Media Life reports. Businesses can sponsor displays of original art on LED video screens placed at street level subway entrances. The art spots are a part of a 60-second video ad loop that targets pedestrians.
The Susquehanna Pfaltzgraff Company is selling its radio and cable television businesses in separate deals for nearly $2 billion, AP reports (via The New York Times). The privately owned company’s 33 radio stations will be sold for about $1.2 billion to a partnership of Cumulus Media and several private equity firms. Comcast will buy Susquehanna’s cable TV and broadband businesses for $775 million.
Sunday night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was the first original to air after a repeat of Desperate Housewives, and it performed well, delivering a 7.6 overnight rating among viewers 18-49, and seeming to prove that it’s a hit in its own right, Media Life reports. That number was down 10 percent versus an 8.4 overnight rating that the show averaged through the first five episodes of the season, but that’s not a large drop considering it didn’t have the benefit of a huge lead-in from Desperate Housewives.
Yahoo continues to develop original content, announcing today that it has inked a deal with The Week, which will provide “The Best of Today’s Business,” a daily roundup of print and online business news that will appear in Yahoo Finance, reports AdAge (via MarketingVox). Though it has recently hired individual writers to produce original content for its sites, Yahoo is for the first time partnering with a news medium to provide exclusive content. The financial terms of the one-year deal were not disclosed.
“Advertisers are looking to the online guys like Yahoo and Google and trying to figure out how to spend more money with them,” UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter is quoted as saying.
email this
permanent link
Vincent Bollore continues to up his stake in Aegis on an almost daily basis, and now owns over 21 percent, Brand Republic reports. The French financier and chairman of Havas is believed to be interested in forging a joint venture or partnership between Havas and Aegis. The U.K. Takeover Panel has said that offers for Aegis must be made by noon on Nov. 25.
email this
permanent link
P&G has launched a full-scale design review for its flagship U.K. brand, Ariel, for the first time in 30 years, in the hopes of boosting lackluster sales in a flat detergent market, Brand Republic reports. The new look includes a new logo and a packaging overhaul, and is being rolled out this week.
email this
permanent link
As circulation and newsstand sales drop, the ability of newsweeklies to remain viable in an increasingly competitive marketplace won’t last much longer, according to a recent Media Life poll of media planners and buyers. While Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report have managed to stay competitive in the face of the internet’s ability to report news more quickly (and, to a lesser extent, competition from TV’s cable news channels), readers predict that one of the three will go down the tubes.
Most believe that it’s the smallest in circulation and the weakest in ad pages, U.S. News & World Report, that won’t survive.
email this
permanent link
