Media UK: Press news

Father and Sun: how the Murdoch dynasty handover crippled Labour - from Media Guardian

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:07:33 +0000

The extraordinary run-in between the Sun and the prime minister over Afghanistan last week was a sign of a more aggressive approach from the tabloid as Rupert Murdoch's son James puts his stamp on the media empire.In the 1990s, when the Sun enjoyed unparalleled influence, its editor Kelvin Mackenzie could tell the prime minister John Major that he was about to pour "a large bucket of shit" over him.Last week's coverage of the Jacqui Janes affair suggests the paper has lost none of its power to intimidate, despite falling sales. Gordon Brown's correspondence with Janes, the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, and his subsequent apology, which was secretly taped, dominated the headlines.The growth of the internet may hasten the hour when the sun finally sets on Rupert Murdoch's tabloid, but it can still make the political weather.Peter Mandelson took to the airwaves last week, claiming that Murdoch had done a deal with the Tories, promising slavish support – and unstinting criticism of Brown – in exchange for policy concessions.Brown's phone call to Janes, meanwhile, was quickly followed by another to Murdoch, whom the prime minister described last week as "a friend". During that conversation, Brown told Rupert Murdoch that the Sun's vitriolic attacks over his letter to Janes had been unwise and unfair. He made his points firmly, but was careful to avoid sounding riled. There is a recognition in government that the electorate is unlikely to vote for a man who is bullied by a newspaper proprietor.Brown and Murdoch have forged an unlikely friendship, based in part on a shared admiration for America, but the prime minister may have been appealing to the wrong man.Murdoch has handed control of his British operation to his younger son, James, who now oversees the European and Asian arm of News Corp, the media conglomerate his father controls, and is being groomed to take charge of the company.One senior industry source with intimate knowledge of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that owns his UK papers, said that Murdoch senior is "not really interested in Britain" at all.He has been based in America for many years, but his purchase of the Wall Street Journal, now the biggest-selling paper in the US, has kept him busy. He is also gearing up for a fight with Google over copyright, a battle he believes he must win to ensure consumers pay for his newspapers' online content.Murdoch didn't phone the prime minister before the Sun loudly declared it had lost faith in Labour on the day of his speech to party conference, according to the source. That should not be regarded as a snub, he added. Murdoch is simply detached from events in the UK.It was Rebekah Brooks (née Wade), the former Sun editor and now chief executive of News International, who delivered the news of the Sun's U-turn to Peter Mandelson after failing to get through to the prime minister.Brooks's importance cannot be overstated. She acts as a foil for Murdoch, an American who can hardly be expected to share her instinctive understanding of the concerns of Sun readers.She was also behind the paper's increasingly rabid attacks on the Ministry of Defence over the summer, which made the Janes controversy such a compelling story for the Sun.Fleet Street sources point out that Brooks began an email exchange with the MoD several months ago, as her time as editor of the Sun drew to a close.She wanted the department to give her reporters better access to Helmand province, where British troops were fighting and dying as they battled to regain control. The department was not keen on the idea but Brooks persisted. The email requests became demands, and their tone grew more belligerent.Shortly afterwards, when it became clear that the MoD was not willing to cooperate, Brooks told it: "The gloves are off." The Sun's coverage has been hostile ever since, offering unqualified support for British troops while traducing their political masters.Its subsequent decision to ditch Labour and back the Tories gave the Jacqui Janes controversy added impetus. Some senior executives who had not relished supporting Labour in the first place seized on the chance to mount a highly personal attack on a man who represents many policies they detest.Murdoch claimed last week that the decision to abandon Brown had been taken by "the editors in Britain" who "have turned very much against Gordon Brown, who is a friend of mine. I regret it." The 78-year-old has always taken the major editorial decisions at the Sun, and to imply that its new editor, Dominic Mohan, could switch its political allegiance without his consent is, at the very least, disingenuous.Crucially, however, it is James Murdoch who masterminded the timing of the decision to swing behind David Cameron, and set the hostile tone of the paper's coverage."James is behind the decision to make it tough and bloody because he wants to be like his dad," said one acquaintance.The problem, according to his critics, is that he has his father's aggression but does not share his political instincts.Murdoch junior ran pay-TV giant Sky for five years before his promotion in 2007 and his business acumen is not in doubt, but when Rupert placed James in charge of his British operation, he was expecting him to spend as much time in Westminster as he had in the City.Like his father, the 36-year-old James is firmly on the right, but he subscribes to a particularly trenchant form of free market orthodoxy. Those who know him describe him as a radical libertarian who believes that government should stay out of the public sphere, limiting its role to defence and policing.The News International observer described last week's coverage as "bullying" and "mean-spirited", and suggested it was motivated by a genuine dislike of Brown. "The lunatics are now running the asylum," he said. "Back in the day, an editor might disagree with Rupert, but he was a serious person; there were proper checks and balances. If they went over the top Rupert would pull them back."There is little doubt that the Sun's support will give Murdoch leverage over a Conservative government, and that power is already being used. Brooks is thought to have told Andy Coulson, the Tories' director of communications, that the paper could not back David Cameron while Dominic Grieve remained shadow home secretary. He was replaced by Chris Grayling shortly afterwards.Few were surprised when the paper backed Cameron, but James Murdoch's decision to do so long before an election, and risk the ire of an administration that will still be in power for many months, was a bold move.Government sources deny it took revenge on Murdoch last week by placing Ashes cricket matches between England and Australia — currently broadcast by Sky — on the list of "crown jewels" that must be broadcast free-to-air, but it was a timely reminder of how it can make life difficult for the Murdoch empire.Nor is there any hope of a reconciliation. Brown has tried to woo James, said a senior political source, but with little success: "Despite Brown's efforts there is no personal connection between the two men like there was with Rupert."Cameron, in contrast, was quick to cosy up to James, and cemented those ties by hiring the former News of the World editor Coulson, who is close to Brooks, and is also a friend of Mohan.Along with Brooks's new husband, racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, they form a coterie who occasionally socialise at weekends in north Oxfordshire, where the Brooks have a home – as does James's sister, Elisabeth, with her husband, Matthew Freud. Cameron's constituency is also in the county. The Labour party has tried to portray the Tory leader and his new friends in the press as a wealthy, impenetrable clique, although Labour's own relationship with News International is also built largely on a network of fragile friendships.There are rumours of a loss of nerve at the Sun, meanwhile, following a public backlash over its personal attack on Brown. The fact that it spelt Janes's name wrong on its website is acutely embarrassing. Murdoch is heavy-hearted about abandoning Brown. He is not convinced by Cameron, but he know it makes good business sense to back him. In the end, that is the only consideration that really counts.James MurdochThe SunRupert MurdochNews InternationalJames Robinsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The country doesn't want to be led by someone it pities | Andrew Rawnsley - from Media Guardian

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:07:30 +0000

Gordon Brown has attracted near-universal sympathy after the attack by the Sun, but it won't be worth a single voteIt's now got this bad for Gordon Brown: his enemies are feeling sorry for him. For the first time since he arrived in Number 10, he is the object of pity.Since his premiership started to unravel, a process of attrition that began when he flunked having an early election in the autumn of 2007, he has been portrayed with ascending levels of vituperation as dithering, cowardly, mendacious, useless, unstable and generally unfit to be prime minister. He has generated anger, ridicule, loathing, spite and despair. It got to the point where he couldn't even go jogging without being lampooned for looking like most men of his age look when they put on trainers. I remarked a few weeks ago that there was a flavour of the blood sport – the spectacle of the once proud bull being speared and slashed to death – about some of the media coverage of his premiership. He had brought a lot of this on himself, but that did not make it terribly pleasant to watch.In the past few days, we have witnessed a wholly novel phenomenon: the prime minister receiving near universal sympathy.The paradoxical prompt for this change in the script was the Sun. In its ruthless and attention-seeking way, the weather-vane tabloid ruined the night of his speech to the Labour conference by choosing that moment to announce that it was switching its allegiances back to the Tories. I can't say I have a great deal of general sympathy for the prime minister about being burnt by the Sun. He and his predecessor truckled to the right-wing tabloid when it was on their side. Neither he nor Tony Blair complained when the Sun scorched Tory leaders. Labour rubbed its hands with glee when the red top portrayed William Hague as a dead parrot. But there is widespread agreement, across the political spectrum, that Mr Brown has been the victim of a nasty campaign in respect of his badly written letter of condolence to Jacqui Janes, whose 20-year-old son died of the horrific injuries he sustained in Afghanistan.It is entirely understandable that the grieving mother was made incandescent by a letter that looked to her like "a hastily scrawled insult" to both her and the service and sacrifice of her son. Number 10 should never have sent out a letter of condolence to a recently bereaved mother with her name misspelt and the name of her son apparently corrected with a scribble.This is not evidence that Gordon Brown is a bad man; it is evidence that Number 10 cannot aspire to even the most primitive levels of competence. It is not quite good enough to excuse it on the grounds that the prime minister's eyesight is poor, he works all hours and his handwriting is notoriously messy.In fact, the letter to Jacqui Janes was unusually clear by his epistolatory standards. One member of the cabinet once described to me trying to decipher Mr Brown's handwriting and said it was like trying to read "ancient Hittite". The prime minister's nearest and dearest know that his penmanship is terrible and it makes his spelling wayward. If the letter was not checked before it went in the post, it should have been.If Number 10 staff did look at that letter before it went into the envelope, why did no one gently prompt the boss to bin his first effort and do it again? Are his aides too terrified of the prime minister to suggest that the utmost care needs to be taken with a letter of condolence to the mother of a dead soldier?Gordon Brown was fortunate then that the Sun went so far over the top by adducing this as evidence not of incompetence at Number 10, but of Mr Brown being callously indifferent to the deaths of soldiers. If he were truly that, he would not bother to hand write letters at all. He would do a Donald Rumsfeld and use a pen machine to fake a signature on a processed mailshot to the bereaved.The viciousness of the red top's attack rather than the sloppiness of Number 10 turned into the story. The feeling that the Sun was crudely exploiting a mother's grief to humiliate the prime minister became widespread and won him sympathy even from his natural enemies. Iain Dale, the right-wing blogger and aspirant Tory MP, came to the defence of Mr Brown on the grounds that "the prime minister was probably dog tired when he wrote this letter and we should cut him some slack. No one can surely really believe that he intended to insult the soldier's memory".Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP and brilliant polemicist who is usually unmatched in his scorn for Mr Brown, listened to the recording of the prime minister's 13-minute telephone conversation with Jacqui Janes. The Times columnist told his readers: 'As I listened to Mr Brown's painful attempts to make headway, I experienced what is for me a new, strange and unsettling sensation: sympathy for Gordon Brown."The Spectator magazine, no friend to either Labour or its leader, editorialised that "only the coldest heart could fail to feel for the Prime Minister". The overall response from voters, including many who posted on the Sun's website, was to express sympathy for the prime minister.At the beginning of the week, the letter and Mr Brown's failed attempt to appease the bereaved mother by arguing with her on the phone was turning into another horrific public-relations disaster for Number 10. By the end of the week, his staff were quietly pleased that it appeared to have rebounded to the prime minister's slight advantage.They were also buoyed by the easy margin of Labour's win in the Glasgow North East byelection, a result that Mr Brown celebrated as a "tremendous" victory. In normal circumstances, this would be nothing to get excited about – Labour holding on to one of its safest seats in Scotland. It is significant because last year Labour lost neighbouring Glasgow East, a similarly deprived seat, and because the win has been a rare shaft of light for the government in the encroaching gloom.In Glasgow North East, the sympathy vote appears to have had some effect in helping Labour's performance. The byelection was triggered by the defenestration of Michael Martin as Speaker of the Commons. Some Labour tribalists in the seat saw their former MP as the victim not of his own monumental incompetence, but of metropolitan English snobbery towards a former sheet metal worker.Nothing else seems to be working for Mr Brown, so I can see a temptation to think that salvation may now lie in pursuing the sympathy vote. There is a sort of fit with the broader strategy, advocated to his colleagues by Peter Mandelson, of Labour fighting the election as the "underdog".At his most recent Number 10 news conference, Mr Brown asked for people to accept his sincerity in regard to Guardsman Janes by alluding to the death of his baby daughter. Questioned about Afghanistan, he replied with a non sequitur which again asked for our sympathy when he said: "I am a shy person."This is a 180 degree change from how he was sold first to the Labour party and then to the country. He was the strong and experienced leader. He put the fear of God into colleagues and was the remorseless destroyer of opponents. He was the "Great Clunking Fist". Pity? That was for wimps. At the time of the financial crisis last autumn, this was again how he wanted us to see him. He was the statesman who acted while others flinched, he was the tough guy with the plan, he was the man of steel who boldly saved the world.He asked us not for our pity. He craved not our sympathy. He demanded our respect.And he and his image handlers were right to strive for that. Authority was his brand strength. Gordon Brown never had a hope of being one of those leaders who are loved. They come round very rarely in modern politics and he will never be one of them. His best approach was always to try to convince the country to give him its grudging respect.You don't achieve that from having people feel sorry for you. Voters want a leader who feels their pain, not one who asks them to experience his. Countries do not want to be led by people they pity.A man to ask about that is Sir John Major. A lot of people felt sorry for him – I felt sorry for him – as he trudged out his final months in office before the landslide defeat of the Conservatives in 1997. Even political opponents sympathised with his predicament, as he presided over a party that was tearing itself apart over Europe and ruining its reputation with sleaze. To the end of his time in office, many voters told pollsters that they thought of John Major as a fundamentally decent man "whose heart was in the right place". That didn't mean they were going to give a moment's thought to re-electing his government. Leaders who arouse our pity simultaneously attract our disdain. We do not want our prime ministers to be pitiful.What threatened to be another awful week for Gordon Brown has superficially turned out rather better than it looked at the start because he has attracted sympathy. I can tell him now that it will be worth precisely nothing when it comes to papers in ballot boxes. There are no votes in pity.Gordon BrownThe SunAndrew Rawnsleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Interview: Dave Eggers - from Media Guardian

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:07:13 +0000

Dave Eggers insists that there's still hope for print journalismWould you pay $16 for a newspaper? Well, the San Francisco Panorama, out next month, is no ordinary paper. The broadsheet forms this quarter's issue of McSweeney's, a tastemaking literary journal founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers. Unfailingly hip and prodigious (his latest book is The Wild Things, an adaptation of the Maurice Sendak story, and he co-wrote the forthcoming Where the Wild Things Are film), Eggers is now on a crusade for print journalism…Why a newspaper? "I love papers. There's a downbeat atmosphere about the future of the form so we thought we could demonstrate some things newspapers do uniquely well: the main way they can continue to exist is to differentiate themselves as much as possible from the internet."You've promised to cheer people up if they're despairing about the printed word: where does your optimism come from? "Paper is a uniquely beautiful format, more so than the web, I think: you need to invest in the aesthetics. We're resurrecting practices from 100 years ago – like printing full-page comics. We want to give young people ways to engage with it, feel ownership of it."McSweeney's isn't synonymous with hard news. Has it been a steep learning curve? "I come from a news background, but yes, the editorial process has been very different and we've tapped friends from the newspaper world for guidance." Why such emphasis on local news? "The local angle is crucial because that's why newspapers should exist. I thought we should investigate the Bay Bridge, this enormous project that's taking far longer than expected and is costing billions. So we unleashed Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Bob Porterfield on it. While he was investigating, part of the bridge fell and it had to be closed. A couple of days ago a truck flew off and landed 200 feet below, killing the driver. Now everyone's interested in how the bridge was designed, how these flaws have come about, and where all the money's going."Can newspaper editors take heart from this? "We're inviting them to borrow any ideas they want, to steal anything they can. Anything that helps any paper stay afloat."NewspapersNewspapers & magazinesHermione Hobyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Sun got too hot without Hinton, its coolest head - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:33:08 +0000

Les Hinton, now departed for Dow Jones, would never have allowed the paper to make such intemperate attacks on Gordom BrownTwo little words sum up what may be one big problem. Those words are "Les" and "Hinton". Quiet, shrewd Les, now running Dow Jones for Rupert Murdoch in New York, used to be top dog in Wapping. He didn't let his ego get in the way. He let Rupert be Rupert, descending from New York on sub-royal tours. And he let editors edit, giving prudent advice when asked. But now he's gone. And now things seem a trifle problematic.What, asks Melanie Reid in the Times, are we supposed to think when "a disabled man is being humiliated for his handicap? Nice. Really nice". Yes, "there's something pretty vile about the personal attacks being levelled at" our PM. Gordon Brown is attacked for failing to bow at the Cenotaph (when he is said to have become disoriented – his wretched eyesight problem). It's "public bullying" he does not deserve. It's like watching "the wings being pulled off flies".And the wing-puller in chief of course, is the Sun, just across Wapping's forecourt. What Lord Mandelson swiftly labels "crude politicking" even splits Murdoch paper from Murdoch paper. It also sets TV and political circles chomping, as the Indy asks on its front page: "Has Cameron done a deal with Murdoch?"That's a crudely discomforting question to pose at this stage. It doesn't help Dave or Rupe or son James (in his own Wapping top slot). Fragmentary polling shows that the world in general, and many Sun readers in particular, think the confrontation between an outraged mother of a war victim and a battered, obviously saddened prime minister has been crassly handled. Public sides with Gordon shock. It was the Sun wot lost it?But go back more forensically to the paper's treatment of Mrs Janes and Brown last week. Front page headlines: "PM sends gaffe-strewn note to soldier's grieving mum then fails to bow at the Cenotaph". Leader page cartoon of premier holding scrawled letter that says: "Er, Sory Gordon". An editorial pillorying his "slapdash condolences" headlined: "Shoddy, PM". And, of course, that covert tape recording of the phone call he made to say sorry again.Didn't it occur to anyone at Bun HQ that readers might indeed find this treatment shoddy? Which is where the departed spirit of Les Hinton walks Wapping's byways again.Dominic Mohan was Rebekah Brooks's hand-picked successor in the Sun chair when she moved up to succeed Les as News International chief. He was in situ when the paper turned floridly against Brown (though that had been predictable for months, because Murdoch never backs obvious losers). But nobody could possibly think that Brooks is sitting at some distant desk with the phone off the hook.Would Hinton, if still around, have been consulted about the Sun's Sorry blast? Of course. Brooks as editor would have wanted his political counsel, since Rupert himself has long been a welcome Brown visitor to Numbers 10 and 11. So, unless incredibly foolish, Mohan must have called Brooks first. In which case, the buck travels up, not down.Brooks has been in plenty of scrapes before, but she always had Les around to calm her down. Now she's flying solo. Now she's the political adviser to James, who is congenitally unlikely to phone his dad and ask whether the he wants a few adjectives toned down.Let's be charitable on the politicking front. All incoming governments pay their dodgy dues at the court of King Rupert. Talk of done deals is far ahead of reality: the relationship between Downing Street and Wapping is much broader-brush than that.But the presence of James Murdoch, master of BSkyB and lord of the print, makes the lobbying harder to manage. It runs up an obvious flag marked "TV interests". And the new presence of Brooks, who invited both Dave and Gordon to her nuptials a few months ago, makes the cruelty of the Sun's vituperation look idiotically inhumane.Rupert, far away in Oz, says that he still respects Gordon himself. Gordon, newly sympathetic on Today, says he still respects Rupert, too – but that this (he's obviously been told from afar) was something handled by those who run "the British operation".So, more of a domestic botch than an international battle royal. Crude? To be sure. But, worse (as cool, lost Les might sadly observe): plain dysfunctional.Les HintonGordon BrownThe SunRebekah WadeRupert MurdochJames MurdochNewspapers & magazinesNews InternationalPeter Prestonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

It's time to move into quality and end 'the dash for trash' - from Daily Telegraph

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:16:33 +0000

John Maynard Keynes famously likened investing in the stock market to a newspaper beauty contest in which contestants rank a number of faces in order of attractiveness. The winners in this game are the players who pick the most popular face.

Roy Greenslade: Times executive explains 'mother' headline - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:54:30 +0000

Last week I criticised a front page headline in The Times, The mother who brought down the Fort Hood killer. According to the paper's feedback editor, Sally Baker, writing in today's Times, it "raised quite a few female eyebrows and hackles."So she asked the paper's chief night editor, Simon Pearson, to explain why the story about police sergeant Kimberley Munley's shooting of the man responsible for killing 13 soldiers in Texas carried such a headline.His answer revealed that it was far from a thoughtless act. There was a logic to the decision that is so compelling that I thought I should reproduce his full explanation:"What is more interesting? 'The police officer who brought down Fort Hood killer'; 'The woman who brought down Fort Hood killer'; 'The mother who brought down Fort Hood killer'? I happened to think that a mother was the more interesting — someone who has given life perhaps taking it away — and our job is to make the front page as interesting as possible within the boundaries of truth, relevance and taste. Some of my colleagues thought the use of mother in this context was wrong, and we might well think again, given the reaction, in the same circumstances in future.Is her being a mother relevant? Society's expectation of mothers — sadly often challenged by evidence these days — is of them being nurturers, carers, more empathetic. If anything the headline drew attention to the way in which the story challenged these expectations, so I think it was valid, though perhaps stretching a point.I certainly don't think it was making a judgment on the role of a woman once she becomes a mother. This reader inquired whether The Times would have written 'father' had that been the case, and of course the answer is no. But the fact that the officer was a woman bringing down an aggressive man in full flood of violence seems to require extra courage: the likelihood of her overpowering him is so much less, and it is an action that most women would doubt they could attempt.The involvement of women in truly violent exchanges still remains unusual, even in military matters, and I thought 'mother' emphasised the point. This may well change, and the fact that it was a woman may one day be of no particular interest. We are finding this with abuse cases. Until recently, 'gender conditioning' dictated that we never expected to find women involved in cases of paedophilia. The mother in the nursery school abuse case a few weeks ago shocked us all, but the number of examples is increasing."Baker's response - see it here - suggested she agreed with Pearson. And I have to say his justification changed my mind too.The TimesWomenNational newspapersNewspapersRoy Greensladeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Authors win Google book concession - from Financial Times

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:20:28 +0000

Book publishers and authors in most countries outside the US won a significant concession as Google and American book industry representatives agreed to make changes to their landmark digital books settlement

Vivendi set to take control of GVT - from Financial Times

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Vivendi, Europe's largest entertainment group, last night said it was poised to take control of GVT, the Brazilian broadband operator, after outbidding Telefónica...

Disney helps offset confidence dip - from Financial Times

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Encouraging results from Walt Disney and Abercrombie & Fitch helped Wall Street edge higher yesterday, offsetting data showing a surprise drop in US consumer...

Disney helps offset dip in consumer confidence - from Financial Times

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:00:00 +0000

Encouraging results from Walt Disney and Abercrombie & Fitch helped Wall Street edge higher yesterday, offsetting data showing a surprise drop in US consumer...

BSkyB to control ad sales for MTV - from Financial Times

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:23:03 +0000

Viacom's move to hand responsibilities for about £375m in ad revenue over five years to British Sky Broadcasting marks a further consolidation of broadcasters' TV ad sales houses

Is The X Factor killing pop? - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:11:04 +0000

With the show's charity single ready to secure its dominance into 2010, Simon Cowell's chart stranglehold seems completeSix nights ago, 16.6 million people – more than half of those in Britain watching TV at the time – turned their sets to ITV1 to watch three 18-year-olds battle for their places on The X Factor. Since the previous evening's broadcast, an undisclosed number of people – ITV does not reveal individual episode voting figures, but it is likely to be close to 1 million – had voted on their performances, leaving twins John and Edward Grimes and Welsh teenager Lucie Jones facing ejection on the Sunday results programme. In the end the Grimes twins, who perform as John and Edward, would triumph, leaving Jones sobbing onstage, but the manner by which that result was reached led 3,000 people to complain to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom – 10 times the number that complained about the BNP leader's appearance on Question Time.At the very same time, on Radio 1, the top 40 singles chart was being revealed to those few pop fans who weren't watching ITV1. The results were instructive. Of the current top 10, no fewer than six are songs by artists who were either discovered by The X Factor (JLS, Alexandra Burke), have recently appeared on the programme (Michael Bublé, Westlife, Black Eyed Peas) or, in the case of Cheryl Cole, judged it. The top three albums, meanwhile (Cole, Bon Jovi – who also performed – and Bublé), might also thank the show for some of their success. Burke's album is at No 7, the Black Eyed Peas at 10. On Monday the second album by Leona Lewis, the programme's 2006 winner, will be released, to almost certain chart dominance.Six seasons after it premiered on British TV, the enormous popularity of The X Factor is hardly news. But while an audience increasingly familiar with the feints and tics of what remains, in essence, an old-fashioned talent show might be forgiven for starting to tire of them, its appetite for The X Factor and anyone associated with it appears only to be growing, and at a startling rate. Strictly Come Dancing, which the BBC hoped might be a potential threat to The X Factor's ratings supremacy, has been vanquished, with even its season's best audience share running 9% below its ITV1 rival.Sunday's audience was the highest in the show's history – and given the controversy about John and Edward's victory (after judge and producer Simon Cowell refused to cast his vote), and the runaway tabloid popularity that has given them the Brangelina-style nickname "Jedward", Cowell might reasonably hope for yet more this weekend. It is no coincidence that the English entrepreneur judge, who performs the same role on American Idol in the US, was this week revealed by Forbes magazine to be the biggest earner on American television, taking home $75m last year.And yet if The X Factor's influence is familiar, so too is the fact that not everyone is delighted by its runaway success. This week Sting became the latest in a long line of those considering themselves authentic musicians to hit out at the show, describing it as a "preposterous" programme featuring judges who had "no recognisable talent apart from self-promotion, advising [contestants] what to wear and how to look" and a form of karaoke in which singers were permitted to conform only to narrow stereotypes. "They are either Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston or Boyzone and are not encouraged to create any real unique signature or fingerprint."While some may argue that this may be precisely what has won the programme such an enormous mainstream audience, Sting's other argument, that The X Factor has "put music back decades", is more serious. Is he right?Certainly the scale of the programme's dominance of the music chart is a new – and for those record labels with a new act to promote, potentially worrying – development. While the Christmas No 1 slot has been effectively ringfenced for the winner's single since the programme's launch, the fact that the show has arguably got better at picking talent means that this year's chart already features last year's winner, Alexandra Burke, and runners up, JLS. Tomorrow sees the release on download of a charity single sung by the programme's contestants in aid of Great Ormond Street hospital, which is very likely to hold the No 1 slot until this year's winner is ready to take over, effectively locking up the top of the chart until 2010.In a further innovation this year, the Sunday results show has been built around other artists promoting their own singles, leading to a previously unforeseen scale of chart dominance. "In an age when there are very few truly mass-audience platforms left, the X Factor has become pivotal for those labels and artists seeking to reach a family-based audience," says Gennaro Castaldo of HMV, one of the few music retailers that retains a high-street presence. "As soon as an artist goes on, almost overnight we tend to see a huge surge in demand for their single or album, initially via downloads, but then over the course of the following week via physical CD sales instore and online."Album sales, he says, "can double or treble or increase by even more, so much so that a good chunk of our marketing and planning at this time of year tends to revolve around the show now"."Does it impact on the signing and release schedules of other labels? Of course it does," says James Foley, music editor of industry news site recordoftheday.co.uk. "They will do anything to avoid being up against JLS and Alexandra Burke and Leona Lewis, because they know they have automatic access to a promotions platform that other labels don't have." Foley cites the example of Robbie Williams, at one point a star so huge that an album launch would have carried its own momentum. With his recent release, however, "EMI factored The X Factor directly into their promotional schedule. In previous years there were other TV options open to Robbie and EMI, but if you are releasing something that needs to come through a well-placed promotional avenue, it needs to be on The X Factor." Williams appeared on the show on 11 October to perform his single Bodies; several observers directly blamed its comparative commercial failure – it fell out of the top 10 last week to No 23 – on Williams's nervous, highly eccentric performance on the show.And yet while the programme's influence on the charts is unquestionable, some argue that it is more helpful to consider it as a light entertainment monster, existing within its own very strange ecosystem, than as a functioning branch of the music industry. For Paul Williams, editor of Music Week, the issue is "a bit more complicated than whether X Factor is a good thing or a bad thing. It follows on from a long history of talent shows on TV. The only problem with X Factor, for its critics, is that it's executed much more successfully than its predecessors, but it is absolutely in that tradition. To criticise it for being successful is a bit odd."Gladys Knight, he points out, was discovered on a talent show in the early 50s, "and nobody could say she isn't a legend"."The fact is that since there has been a music industry there has always been this issue of where the new talent is going to come from. When Elvis went into the army, people worried this was the end of rock'n'roll. The important thing is that the music industry makes sure that this isn't the only way in which new talent is discovered."Other observers point out that very few contestants manage to forge lasting careers, so their long-term influence on the charts is hardly overwhelming. For every Leona Lewis, who became the first British solo artist to have a US No 1 with her debut album, there is a Leon Jackson, who won in 2007 but has scarcely troubled the pop world since; one could name a very long list of previous contestants in the same category.Jon Savage, who wrote perhaps the definitive history of punk, England's Dreaming, as well as editing the Faber Book of Pop Music, says The X Factor should be understood as "returning pop music to its light entertainment function. If you view it in those terms, as an industry, then it's a fantastic success; if you think making music is a strange mix of industry and creativity and oddity and lunacy, then obviously it's not that." In one sense, though, he does agree with Sting: "After the Beatles, you had the idea that people could write their own material and be in charge of their own destiny. What The X Factor does is return popular music to its pre-Beatles state."The programme's audience, too, might be said to be smart enough to know exactly what they are watching. The lead single from Jackson's debut album was beaten to the No 1 slot last year by the spinoff single from Peter Kay's merciless X Factor spoof, which parodied the programme's cynical idiosyncracies without doing its reputation the smallest harm.There are, of course, plenty in the music industry who maintain a healthy contempt for the programme – Alan McGee, who signed Oasis, managed the Libertines and now runs music website toocooltodie.com, says: "I think Paul Weller said it best 30 years ago: the public gets what the public wants. If you are stupid enough to watch it that is what you get, you deserve it. I have no pity for you."But others argue that it might even produce a backlash of truly creative music-making. "I think X Factor might be good for alternative music, giving kids something to push against," says Billy Bragg. "Don't just complain about it – get out there and do something challenging that proves you don't need any input from people like Simon Cowell to be successful."In any case, note observers, the music industry has plenty of other pressures to be concerned about without worrying about The X Factor. Woolworths, Tower Records and Zavvi are long gone, physical sales replaced by downloads which, even if legal, are priced at a fraction of the £15 at which record companies once flogged CDs. Illegal downloads worth many billions have stolen sales from the market, while fans can now access millions of songs through streaming sites such as Spotify or Sky Songs. While the diversifying market is good news for consumers – thanks to price competition, the current No 1 single, JLS's Everybody in Love, can be downloaded for 79p on iTunes and 29p on Amazon – the financial bonanza days for the wider music industry are, for the present at least, over.In this context, notes Paul Williams, "it would be bizarre to describe something that was watched by 16.6 million, exposing music to a quarter of the British population, as a threat". One could argue, indeed, that The X Factor expands rather than replaces the market for music; millions of pre-teens, for instance, will have been introduced to a song made famous by Julie London in 1955, Cry Me a River, thanks to Michael Bublé's performance on the programme three weeks ago. Savage calls the programme's audience "people who aren't passionate about music. And there's always been a huge market for people who weren't passionate about music.""When it comes to the ills of the music industry, the blame is not to be laid at The X Factor's door," says Foley. "There is no one problem, and no one solution, but blaming X Factor is not the way. This is, after all, a 21st-century, hyper-real Opportunity Knocks. It involves huge ideas, the supposed £1m recording contract and a lot of razzmatazz, and it's very cleverly done, but in its essence it's no more cleverly devised than Opportunity Knocks."Simon CowellThe X FactorITVAlexandra BurkeLeona LewisTelevision industryEsther Addleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

2012 and how good viral marketing can go bad - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:10:28 +0000

Disaster movie 2012 inspired panic in the States with Nasa having to reassure Americans that the world wasn't about to end. Is movie viral marketing getting too clever for its own good?When Columbia Pictures launched a marketing campaign for 2012 – the latest disaster movie from serial Earth molester Roland Emmerich, where the planet, played by America, is set for impending doom – they didn't do it by halves.First, there was a teaser trailer showing a tsunami crashing over the Himalayas. The Earth was going to end in 2012, it said, and the world's governments aren't doing enough to prepare us. Search "2012", it said, for "the truth" (the "truth" turned out to be over 1,000 real websites and 175 real books obsessed with 2012 as the end of time).Then, there was a fake website – the "Institute for Human Continuity" – which consisted of a screen stating that for 25 years they'd been assessing threats to the continuation of mankind, and the results were in.The "odds of global destruction" in 2012 had been confirmed at 94% (goodbye mortgage) and "to ensure your chance of survival, register for the lottery". In other words, it was a web campaign that seemed to say: "Look, the end of time might actually be coming, so enjoy a film about it why you still can, yeah?"Many didn't get the joke. Tens of thousands from all over the world panicked, called Nasa, wrote letters – couldn't they do some saving of people too?'People are really, really worried about the world coming to an end. Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep'"I think people are really, really worried about the world coming to an end," said David Morrison of Nasa. "Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep and can't stop crying."Indeed, Nasa got so many queries, they set up a specific site to deal with them. Yet perhaps even more worryingly, 2012 is not alone. Following the success of Blair Witch, nearly every film worth its celluloid now has its own teaser campaign, web mystery, and viral marketing push, and even the simplest promotional campaign can have unexpected consequences.For the independently made 2008 animated fantasy Delgo – featuring the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt – they hit upon the idea of launching "Digital Dailies", where a crack team of animators would whet the public appetite by posting their handiwork as they went. It seemed to work: the videos were getting up to half a million hits a month. Yet, sadly, it seemed most of those were in the industry; they liked what they saw, and began poaching the film's best talent. The director, Marc F Adler, was forced to resort to hiding their identities with aliases."It was brilliant as viral marketing," says Adler, "but terrible for making a film."The "brilliance" of the viral marketing also proved questionable. On a reported budget of $40m, the film's box-office taking was one the worst ever for widely released film (it opened on 2,160 screens), taking just $694,782. According to Yahoo Movies, that works out as roughly two viewers for every screening.To be fair, their teaser trailer – "From a Studio Nowhere Near Hollywood … From People You've Never Heard of … Comes a Myth for the New Millennium … Delgo" – probably didn't help either.Yet if that was unexpected, some campaigns just cry out for trouble. Take the case of 2008 indie horror film A Beautiful Day. Set for its debut at an independent film festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the makers posted a teaser on YouTube, which featured a sinister synthesized voice saying: "People of Muskogee. Open your eyes. April 25th is a day you'll come to remember", including the message "the end is coming". But 25 April was also the prom night for the local high school. The scared students called the Muskogee police, who assumed it was a terrorist threat, and called in the FBI. Outcome: their film was swiftly booted out of the festival.And in the world of suspect virals and dodgy publicity stunts, it seems terror threats can come from anywhere. The Cartoon Network's guerilla marketing for cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force saw them install LED displays depicting the show's "Moonieites" – 2D aliens from the moon – in 10 major cities across America. In Boston, however, they didn't get the gimmick. Authorities considered the Moonieites suspect devices, which sparked a major bomb scare, caused the closure of roads and posed the question: would al-Qaida really plant bombs that glowed in the dark?"It had a very sinister appearance," said Attorney General Martha Coakley, adding "It had a battery behind it and wires."'There are always going to be problems with unbranded campaigns; people may not get the connection to the film, and people fear the unknown'Of course, ill-judged glowing figurines are one thing.But even ill-thought-out poster campaigns can wreak havok. To promote Forgetting Sarah Marshall, unbranded posters were put up all over the US, saying things like "You suck, Sarah Marshall", and "My mother always hated you, Sarah Marshall". Which sounds like great fun – unless your name is Sarah Marshall of course, many of whom assumed they were the victim of a hate campaign.As student Sarah Marshall, of Fort Worth, Texas, told the LA Times: "I got a lot of emails and phone calls asking if my boyfriend and I were OK." Some Sarah Marshalls even struck back with posters of their own: "You suck, Judd Apatow," they responded, citing the film's producer.Even the obviously fanciful bus-station posters for recent sci-fi hit District 9 – featuring a crossed-out alien, text saying "Bench for humans only", and a request for alien sightings – saw the marketing team get more that they bargained for. Tens of thousands called the hotline with sightings, assuming it was a real request."There are always going to be problems with unbranded campaigns," says Dan Koelsch, managing editor of MovieViral.com, "because people may not get the connection to the film, and people fear the unknown."Yet with studios looking at ever more innovative ways to market films, it inevitably leads to more innovative ways to cock up."Sometimes studios try too hard, to the point where people can smell the desperation," says Sean Dwyer, editor of filmjunk.com. "That's when it doesn't really work."The desperation ponged when 20th Century Fox, looking for a way to market this year's rom-com I Love You, Beth Cooper, paid a high school student, Kenya Mejia, $1,800 to profess a secret passion for a classmate during her graduation address (which she did, bellowing: "I cannot let this opportunity just pass by. I love you, Jake Minor!").The idea was that Fox would video the moment – which recreates a key scene in the film – post it on YouTube, and create viral buzz that the movie was inspiring copycats. It didn't work due to a) Mejia blabbing to the Wall Street Journal, b) Her already having a boyfriend, who wasn't Jake Minor, and c) The film hadn't even been released when she was supposed to have copied it. The film bombed, and a month after the video was posted, it had attracted less than 2,000 views.If that was treading on suspect moral ground, it didn't come close to New Line's marketing push for 2006 adult crime drama Running Scared starring Paul Walker – a tale of the Russian mafia, bent cops, paedophiles, hookers and men being chased around with really big machetes. What did they do? Made a promotional online game from it, of course, in which players re-enacted not just the film's main action scenes ("A man points a .38 revolver at another man's crotch and fires it, blowing his crotch apart," notes the Parent's Guide section of IMDb of said action, in a list that goes on for six pages) but the more intimate moments too, including Walker's character performing oral sex.Needless to say, conservative America wasn't too happy when they realised little Timmy was performing online cunnilingus, and pressure from the National Institute on Media and the Family saw the site swiftly shut down.Still, a really good teaser campaign, well judged, and executed, should work wonders, right? Not always. The campaign behind Mike Myers comedy The Love Guru was brilliant, spot-on, did everything right."It was a fully fledged effort to position Myers's character as a real guy, or at least flesh out his backstory," explains Chris Thilk, editor of MovieMarketingMadness.com. "But it wound up being funnier than the movie."Marketing & PRguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Letters: Voters still elect for the press and TV - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:07:11 +0000

The power of the tabloids is on the wane, argues Alexander Chancellor (G2, 13 November), so why do politicians suck up to them? To a point. The perceived wisdom is that falling newspaper circulation and the rise of digital and social media is changing politics, as it has in the US. But our research shows that while digital communications and online advocacy has changed the way consumers choose goods and services, it has yet to impact on voters. We surveyed 1,000 potential voters at the time of the recent party conferences. They were asked what communications channels would have an influence on deciding how to vote. When a parallel sample of consumers were asked the same question about purchasing decisions, by far the biggest influence was digital and social media (26%). Print and broadcast media ranked second in influence, with only 23%. Brand advertising scored 10%.With our sample of UK voters the reverse was true. National and regional print and broadcast media scored a 59% influence rating. Political advertising and party broadcasts scored 10%. Blogs and social networking sites scored just 5%. Following the Obama campaign, WebCameron, the PM on YouTube and the fall from grace of Damian McBride, many of us in the Westminster bubble obsess about digital communications and political blogs. Their time will come. But in next year's election, "traditional" media will be overwhelmingly influential. That's why politicians spend time with newspaper editors. Perhaps Hazel Blears had a point when she wrote in the Observer "YouTube if you want to ...".Colin ByrneCEO, Weber Shandwick• Commercial broadcasters have a clear economic incentive not to irritate viewers with product placement (Simon Hoggart's sketch, 10 November) – which, if introduced in a controlled manner, would simply allow broadcasters to monetise the brand presence that already exists in many programmes. It would not be a "form of corruption", and nor would elements of programmes be "covertly sold off without [viewers] being told", as the existence of product placement in any show would have to be clearly identified at the beginning and end of the programme, as well as either side of a break. And Ofcom's strict guidelines on undue prominence of commercial products would remain in place. ITV has warmly welcomed the government's announcement of a public consultation. If introduced, placement would allow UK producers and broadcasters to operate on a level playing field with their international counterparts, as well as bringing valuable new revenue directly into original UK production. This can only be good news for viewers, advertisers and the nation's creative economy.John CresswellChief operating officer, ITV NewspapersITVguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Author, author: Hilary Mantel - from Media Guardian

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:06:17 +0000

A little while ago I mentioned in this column Charles Lamb's dictum that no one ever put down a newspaper without a feeling of disappointment. I didn't admit, at that point, that I am the exception; that the paper has never been printed that didn't make me happy. I understand the despondency and lassitude that overtake the reader at the repetitious parade of human folly, and the evidence, reinforced on a daily basis, of nature's malignity and the indifference of the gods; but me, I just like the small ads. I pick up the freesheets in towns I'm passing through, to find out about their local version of a good time, and what they buy and sell to each other, what rows have broken out in the council chamber, which luxury sauna has got some all-new blondes, and who wants planning permission for a conservatory roughly the size of their house. I like reading the "In Memoriam" verses for people I've never known, and feeling sorry they're dead, if only because their relicts have such a woolly idea of scansion.It was in the small ads of a local paper in Norfolk that I saw for sale three bridesmaid's dresses, identical, to fit sizes 24, 26 and 10; ever since, I have been imagining the photographs from the original wedding, and wondering if such bridesmaids ever occurred for a second time, or if the dresses are still hanging in a closet. When we lived in Sunningdale, a respectable parish, we had a dodgy car dealer in the area; he would add, to his description of every clocked and clapped-out vehicle he was trying to flog, the claim "drives superb". This term long ago entered our family lexicon. "How's my new chapter?" I might ask my husband nervously. "Drives superb," he'll say. If next day I realise that it's broken down on the hard shoulder, emitting sparks and stenches, I blame myself for expecting a bargain in the first place; smooth engines and smooth writing don't come easy or cheap.When it comes to the national press, I can make any paper last two hours, and when I've finished it's not fit for another hand; it looks as if a drunk has been making paper hats with it. I read all those parts of a newspaper that aren't news and aren't features and aren't really anything else but listings of one type or another: church services and engagements and wills, encapsulated yearnings for love and offspring, and traces of lives well-spent. If the Guardian has a fault, it's that it doesn't offer enough of this peculiar entertainment and I have to supplement it with other papers if I want to know, for instance, the Princess Royal's daily engagements, or keep up with the Duchess of Kent through the efficient track-and-trace system provided by the Court Circular; not a Lord-Lieutenant in any county shakes hands with her, but I know about it. Through close study of the "Birthdays", I am aware, as others may not be, that Charles Moore and Jimmy Savile share a natal day, though not a year. I know of all the latest Crispins, Chloes and Clementines born into the chattering classes. I am particularly fond of the column called "Appointments in The Clergy"; one week recently, I actually knew one of the clergymen mentioned, a coincidence which caused me to feel airy and full of grace, as if I'd just been baptised and got a second chance.So I need not explain why I was reading a list of school reunions, when my eye fell on what follows: the address of a girls' school in Llandudno, and the notification that it was the "Final Old Girls' Reunion". Next April it will occur; the information tolled in my ears: why is it the last, how can anyone know? It may be that the organiser has just got tired of doing all the work: that fewer and fewer old girls are turning up, that some of them are shrill and grubby and have vodka bottles in their bags, and piercings, and toyboys in tow: or that Llandudno is just too hard to get to. But sadder explanations suggest themselves. Are there only two old girls left, and has one of them been given a bad prognosis? I can't help thinking what it would be like, two sassy old dames crumbling a final scone together, replacing in its saucer the teacup drained of Darjeeling, polishing their noses with a crumpled tissue: "Well, Blinky, old thing . . ." "Well, Nodders, old girl . . ."; brushing crumbs from their laps, laying down the final butterknife, stepping into separate taxis to go their final ways. Surely there's a short story in it. But it's not mine, is it? It's one for Jane Gardam.Who owns stories and where do they come from? The last part of the question is one that readers ask all the time; writers are very poor at giving the answer. We don't like to say "from the personal columns", or "from the small ads", even if it's true. It sounds too obvious, too much like the way people assume authors operate. For years my family has supposed that in restaurants and pubs I eavesdrop on other tables, and so pick up ideas.Only recently I've found the courage to say that in fact I don't hear well, and that my expression of rapt attention is my effort to prepare for a hard question, such as "Still or sparkling?" Stories must be happening all the time and I simply don't hear them. I am not a ready writer of short fiction and I have almost to trip over a story before I recognise it. I tend to assume that whatever strikes me belongs somewhere inside a novel, and will have to hang about in my notebook for that novel to come along: which makes, I can tell you, for a prodigiously slow rate of progress at turning life into ink.I can sometimes see a poem, but I don't have the craft and skill to make it work. Requests to "write a fairy story" strike me dumb; aren't fairy stories just there? Yet I did once manage it, because I did it without thinking. I didn't recognise the result as belonging to me; it seemed like a stone kicked, or flicked off from my heel, into an underground stream. I have imagined whole novels (and sometimes written them) while wondering if they belonged to someone else: Beryl Bainbridge, mostly. BB gave me courage when I was a beginning writer; I used to think well, if she can get away with this outrageous stuff, maybe I can sneak in more of the same kind? The question about "your influences", so often posed to writers, is hard to answer, however great the desire to give an honest reply. You'd like to know, yourself, why you do things the way you do. It hardly seems graceful to admit that, if you take your ambition from Shakespeare, you take your inspiration from "Flats to Let".Hilary MantelNewspapersguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds