INFO BOX
China Catching Up to US in Number of Web Surfers
There are 210 million Internet users in China, according to the country's government, a figure that rivals the U.S.'s estimated 215 million. Proportionally speaking, however, China lags far behind, with just 16 percent of the overall population online vs. the U.S.'s 75 percent. Still, the rate of China's growth means users there will have increasing power to shape the Web. The Chinese government said Friday its Internet population has soared to 210 million people, putting it on track to surpass the U.S. online community this year to become the world's largest. The official China Internet Network Information Center, also known as "CNNIC," said the online population grew 53 percent, from 137 million reported at the same time last year. According to the government's Xinhua News Agency, China is only 5 million behind the United States online, a figure consistent with some American estimates.
China still lags the United States in many respects, however. Xinhua placed China's online penetration rate at 16 percent -- the point Americans were at in the mid-1990s. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 75 percent of American adults are now online; penetration is even higher when teens are included. (China's stats cover Chinese 6 and older.)
Several other differences between the two markets mean Internet penetration has different meaning in China and the United States. First, cybercafes serve as the main entry to the Internet for many Chinese unable to afford a computer at home. One-third of Chinese Internet users surf through cybercafes, according to Xinhua, while Pew found that 93 percent of U.S. Internet users have access at home. Also, China is notorious for censorship. Although the government promotes Internet use for education and business, it tries to block the public from seeing material it deems pornographic or critical of communist rule, including new rules promulgated this month covering online videos.
China's government imprisons people who mail, post online, or access politically sensitive content from within China. Reporters Without Borders says 50 Chinese "cyberdissidents" are currently in prison. Nonetheless, China's online growth is significant. "Users do a lot to shape the Internet and not only by directly posting content but [by] their behavior," Horrigan said. "It tells other people what the demand is. As you get more Chinese, that increases demand for Internet content in Mandarin and other Chinese languages." Horrigan also said many Chinese users are accessing the Internet through mobile devices, offering China "a distinct opportunity to shape the Internet" with usage everywhere. TechNewsWorld, Telecomasia.net, 21st Jan 2008
SPORTS SHORTS
* Moscow and Singapore have been shortlisted to host the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010. The decision was announced today by the International Olympic Committee, leaving Athens, Bangkok and Turin out of the running. The number of bidders was cut to two by the IOC executive board following recommendations by an evaluation commission. The winning city will be decided by a postal vote of IOC members. Having more than two cities on the voting form would have entailed several rounds and made the process more difficult. Sportcal, 21st Jan 2008
* Harley-Davidson has agreed a long-term sponsorship deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. The deal will see Harley-Davidson's logo placed in the centre of UFC's Octagon and include World Extreme Cagefighting, which Zuffa, UFC's parent company, bought in October 2006. Last year UFC held 11 pay-per-view events and generated more than $200 million in customer retail revenue for the second year in a row. Sport Business, 21st Jan 2008
* Singapore has selected the Singapore Sports Hub Consortium (SSHC) led by Dragages Singapore Pte Ltd as the preferred bidder for the $800m Singapore Sports Hub project. Subject to finalisation of details, the SSHC will have succeeded in winning the prestigious contract against competition from the Alpine Mayreder consortium and the Singapore Gold consortium. The Sports Hub is expected to be ready in end 2011 with the ‘Net Present Value’ of the total costs the government will pay over the 25-year tenure amounting to S$1.87b. The Sports Hub is believed to be the first and largest sports facilities infrastructure Public Private Partnership (PPP) project in the world and is also Singapore's largest and flagship PPP project of this nature. Sport Business, Sports e-Media, Sportcal, 21st Jan 2008
* Mobile TV in India is one step closer to reality since Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) confirmed it is to submit its final recommendations and guidelines on Mobile TV to the department of information and broadcasting this week. "TRAI’s recommendations will include issues like usage and allocation of spectrum bands, method of beaming content, details of licences like fees and validity command area of these licences and eligibility criteria." TRAI chairman Nripendra Mishra said. ATVNews, 22nd Jan 2008.
* Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has permitted banned Geo TV to resume broadcasting. Geo TV, the country’s largest and most popular news network, was banned for 78 days by Pakistan under the its emergency rules of the Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA). The channel was reconnected on January 20, along with its sister sports channel. According to BBC Monitoring, Geo TV has been off air since November 3, just hours ahead of the issuing of the Provisional Constitution Order, which suspended many of the country’s laws. Other channels which initially went off air included CNBC, Dawn News, Aaj TV and Business Plus, but these named channels reportedly signed a voluntary code of conduct and were allowed to restart transmissions within a few days. Rapid TV News, 18th Jan 2008
* The French district court in Paris dismissed a demand by Canal Plus, French pay-television broadcaster, to suspend the results of a media rights tender for French soccer’s top-tier Ligue 1 until the outcome of the broadcaster’s legal challenge against the tender is known. The court’s presiding judge ruled that the award of rights by the LFP, the French professional soccer league, at the end of this month would pose no risk to Canal Plus, despite pleas to the contrary by the broadcaster’s legal team. Canal Plus was also issued with a fine of €10,000 ($14,647) by the TGI, payable to the LFP. The broadcaster said that it would appeal against the decision at the Paris Court of Appeals. Sportcal, 18th Jan 2008
* Dutch telecommunications group KPN said it has bid for the TV rights for the Dutch football league. The group has traditionally steered clear of exclusive content deals, but broadcasts live games from the Dutch league on its digital terrestrial TV network Digitenne under a deal with Tele2. The Dutch football federation invited interested parties to bid by Thursday for the Dutch TV and radio rights for three to five seasons starting with the 2008-09 season. The rights were been divided into several packages which could be bid for jointly or separately. According to Dutch media reports cable company Zesko Holding made a €100 million offer. Sport Business, Sportcal, 18th Jan 2008
* France Télévisions, the French public-service broadcaster, has agreed a five-year extension to its deal to cover cycling's Tour de France, despite the doping scandals that tainted the 2007 event. A new contract which runs up to and including the 2013 race has been signed by France Télevisions and organisers ASO. It is worth €23 million ($33.3 million) a year, about the same value as the current deal, according to French sports newspaper L’Equipe. The new deal also includes rights to other cycling events organised by ASO, such as the Paris-Roubaix, Paris-Nice, Fleche Wallonnee and Liege-Bastogne-Liege and motor racing’s Dakar Rally or its replacement event. The five-year commitment from the Tour’s main broadcast partner is a huge boost to ASO after the doping problems that plagued the event in 2007. Sportcal, 21st Jan 2008
* The London based distribution arm of Fox Sports International (FSI) has concluded a deal with the IAAF for exclusive worldwide television distribution rights to the new lifestyle magazine programme the Running Road Show. The 50-week series which premiers on the 18th January is sure to be a hit with fans of the road running community, as the programme incorporates features such as ''ROADSIDE STORY,'' spotlighting the lifestyle of runners, ''MY RUNNING ROAD'' showcasing a runners' running route, ''ROAD TO BEIJING'' follows elite runners as they prepare themselves for the 2008 Olympic Games and ''RUNNING ROAD DIARY'' chronicles runners preparing for their own big race. Sports e-Media, Worldscreen, 18th Jan 2008
* The Sportsman Media Group (SMG) will market and distribute the European Volleyball Confederation's (CEV) competitions in an agreement with the governing body. SMG, based in Munich, will be responsible for marketing a number of key tournaments, including the Men's and Women's Indesit European Champions League, the Men's and Women's CEV Cup, the Men's European League and the Nestea European Beach Tour. The distribution agreement includes worldwide television, Internet and mobile rights to CEV events, and according to a statement SMG will focus its efforts on Europe's top volleyball club competition, the Indesit European Champions League. Sports Media, 18th Jan 2008
* Formally announced in September, the women's professional soccer league launching in spring 2009 in the United States now has a name - Women's Professional Soccer (WPS). The league has unveiled its logo and launched its website, www.womensprosoccer.com , and aims to be the top women's football league in the world and the global standard by which women's professional sports are measured. Play will kick off with WPS teams based in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New Jersey/New York, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. Football Insider, 21st Jan 2008
* ESPN's www.espn.com , experienced dramatic growth in its online video offering last year, with fans viewing more than 1.2 billion videos, a 54% increase over 2006. On average, fans viewed more than 105 million videos per month during the year, with the average increasing to more than 127 million per month for September through December. SportsCenter Minute, ESPN's twice daily short-form extension of its signature news and information programme, averaged nearly 900,000 views per day, while professional American football was the most-viewed video content (14.5% of video views), followed by professional baseball (14.4%), professional basketball (10.7%) and soccer (6.9%). Sports Media, 18th Jan 2008
* Sponsorship spend by North American companies is expected to increase 12.6% in 2008 to $16.78 billion, according to IEG Sponsorship Report, the sixth consecutive year that growth will be higher than the year before and the biggest jump since 2000. Spending in 2007 was up 11.5% over 2006, just slightly below IEG projection a year ago of 11.7% growth. US presidential elections and the Beijing Olympic Games will help boost ad spending in 2008 and that sponsorship's growth rate will continue to outpace increases for traditional media buys. IEG predicts a greater proportion of the 2008 sponsorship dollars will go to sports properties, with sports taking 69 per cent of sponsorship spend, some $11.6 billion. Spending on sports properties in 2007 was $9.94 billion, making the projected increase 16.7%. Sport Business, Sportcal, 18th Jan 2008
* Formula One teams’ individual operating budgets will be capped from the start of the 2009 season. In an attempt to restrict the sport's spiralling costs FIA president Max Mosley has written to all the competing teams regarding the planned cost reduction. It is believed that he envisages slashing the budgets of top spenders by 50% from their reputed current level of $550 million. Mosley's letter also plans for future engine regulations with the teams having agreed on a five-year engine freeze from 2008 to 2012. No work on the current 2.4-litre V8 engines will be allowed in that period, although work on what power-unit will replace it from 2013 will begin within the next 12 months. Sport Business, Sportcal, 18th Jan 2008
* ESPN's digitial growth has been underlined by the news that its WAP site is averaging more than nine million unique users per month. Since the February launch of a comprehensive mobile alerts service, ESPN has delivered more than 50 million alerts to fans' mobile devices at an average of nearly three million per week, while other areas of ESPN's digital empire continue to flourish. In May, ESPN signed an agreement to exclusively license its award-winning ESPN MVP application to Verizon, making it available to all V Cast subscribers at no additional cost, and in February ESPN.com launched ESPN Conversations, allowing fans to comment in real-time on the content they find on ESPN.com. Since the launch of ESPN Conversations, fans posted more than two million comments, and generated more than 45 million page views. Sports Media, 21st Jan 2008
* Spanish animation outfit Zinkia has appointed Fernando de Miguel as its new CEO, tapped to lead the company’s next stage of growth. De Miguel will be responsible for implementing new operational and business structures, building upon existing global franchises for the preschool series Pocoyo and Shuriken School, advancing TV projects in development and developing Zinkia’s video game production division. For the past four months, de Miguel worked alongside the senior management team in order to ensure a smooth transition. Worldscreen, 21st Jan 2008
MORE NEWS
Japan/Rights: NHK in Licence-fee Trouble
We first wrote about the problems at Japanese public broadcaster NHK back in October. Now a nationwide “don’t pay” campaign is threatening to hurt NHK’s income. A serious of scandals has led to a severe drop in Japan’s licence-fee payers’ loyalty towards NHK, where in two short years licence payments have shrunk from typically 90% of the population paying their annual $220 to nearer 80% today and a commensurate falling off in income. 1.28m homes refused to pay in 2006. Worse is now threatened.
Households in Japan are being urged by pressure groups to join a protest against illegal activity at NHK, which includes alleged examples of insider dealing amongst some of the broadcaster’s senior news staff. Hiroya Masuda, Japan’s communications minister, on January 18 said all 5000 NHK news division staff should be included in a formal examination on wrongdoing. Three business news journalists have been named for allegedly using knowledge gained from an exclusive TV interview to buy shares in a restaurant group ahead of the information being transmitted.
But this is only the latest scandal to hit NHK. A year ago its lavish New Year variety show was deemed unsuitable by many members of the viewing public because 100 dancers wore skin-hugging costumes that left little to the imagination. A week ago a computer glitch sent out a pre-recorded warning about an earthquake that never happened. And over the past three years NHK has seemingly been plagued by scandals at the very top of its management structure. In January 2005 a chief producer at NHK was accused of fraud involving 17 programmes, and allegations of kickbacks amounting to Yen48.9m.
On December 24 Shigeo Fukuchi (73), from the Asahi Beer company, was named as the next president of NHK, the first-ever outsider to head the business, replacing Genichi Hashimoto whose three-year term has been marred by repeated scandals. Fukuchi takes up his new position on Jan 25, and will need all his skills to dampen the current slew of protests. Payment of the licence fee is an obligation under Japan’s Broadcast Law, but there are no penalties for non-payment. Rapid TV News, 21st Jan 2008
Global/New Media: 310m Broadband Users
The world’s total broadband subscribers have reached a mind-boggling 310m, says IDate. It is the Asia-Pacific region which is making much of the running in terms of fresh broadband growth, now said by IDate to be an impressive 38% of the global total. Western Europe showed the strongest growth, up 31% on new broadband connections (up from 28% in 2006). But IDate says the gap between Asia-Pacific and Western Europe will widen, as Asia-Pac pulls ahead thanks to the emergence of India and China, and given that North America is largely saturated.
IDate says China is expected to take the lead over the US in 2008. Among developing countries, Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Russia and India are at last emerging from the wings and reporting steady growth. Meanwhile, in Europe, Germany has had a good year and pulled ahead of the UK and France but still lags behind in terms of penetration. In Asia, notably in Japan and South Korea, the migration to ultra-broadband is picking up steam, the ultimate goal being to deliver a service running at 1 Gbps per subscriber.
The trend of offering ever-increasing bit-rates, spurred by growing competition and the technologies’ performance (ADSL2+, VDSL, and DOCSIS 2 and 3 for cable), fuelled the emergence of the triple play model, which combines internet access and telephony with a TV and video offering. Rapid TV News, 21st Jan 2008
Global/General: "Comprehensive" Programme For Handball Championships
Infront Sports & Media is reporting "very successful" sales of broadcasting rights to the 2008 EHF European Handball Championship. The event, which is currently taking place in Norway and is running through to January 27, has drawn the "most comprehensive global media and marketing programme implemented by Infront Sports & Media" in the agency's role as exclusive commercial partner for the European Handball Federation's (EHF) premier event. Infront has concluded agreements for 80 territories - particularly in Europe, Middle East and Asia - and the event will be transmitted by more than 70 broadcasters, including a record number of almost 20 radio stations. The goal is to reach and eclipse the 1.2 billion cumulative audience from the 2006 event, which also generated more than 1,200 hours of programming.
Infront is delivering worldwide coverage, including dedicated live online coverage on the event's official website, and a comprehensive marketing programme. The host broadcasting for 2008 EHF European Handball Championship, overseen by Infront and being carried out by TV 2 Norway provides, according to Infront, "a state-of-the-art multi- and unilateral broadcast production". The production includes up to 14 cameras per game, and, for the first time in the history of the event, all games are covered and distributed in wide-screen 16/9 format. Sports Media, 21st Jan 2008
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