British newspaper front pages on the London/UK riots:

iPads and Kindles force newspapers further away from print - article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/25/ipad-kindle-newspapers-digital-print

Key points/facts from article:

• A million iPads and Kindles may have been unwrapped on Sunday – according to tentative analyst estimates – an influx of portable technology that is expected to hasten a decline in the already faltering sales of printed newspapers, adding pressure on traditional business models that have traditionally supported so many titles around the country.
• Publishers, preparing for the handheld arrivals, took the chance to break with a tradition that dates back to 1912, when publishers agreed not to produce Christmas Day papers to give paperboys, among others, a day off. 
• For the first time in its 190-year history the Sunday Times published a digital-only edition on 25 December – with the normally paid for product given away in the hope of luring sought after digital subscribers.
• Fifty years ago two national dailies – the Daily Mirror and the Daily Express – sold more than 4m copies each; today the bestselling Sun sells 2.6m. 
• In the last year alone, printed sales declined by 10% for daily broadsheets and by 5% for daily tabloids – and when the News of the World stopped printing last July 600,000 copy sales simply disappeared.
• The knock-on impact of the decline has been a push for digital readers that have seen newspapers like the Daily Mail win 5m unique visitors a day – compared with its printed sale of 2m – but struggle to generate revenues to match. The Mail generated £16m from its website last year, out of £608m overall.
• Some specialist titles, such as the Financial Times, are managing the transition well – it has 260,000 digital subscribers – up 40% this year – compared with 337,000 buyers of the printed product, where sales are down by 12%. Digital subscribers generate £180 a year and the paper, priced at £2.50 on the newsstand on a weekday, is profitable.
• During a typical week the number of people signing on digitally is "five to 10 times" what it was a year earlier, as the newspaper looks to a future beyond print.
• Daily titles in Birmingham and Bath have also gone the same way in recent years – while pre-tax profits at Johnston Press, the owner of the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, fell from £131.5m five years ago to £16m last year.
•  Although the tabloid media have faced criticism at the Leveson inquiry, not least from the likes of Hugh Grant or Steve Coogan, popular titles remain in fair commercial health. 
•  Trinity Mirror's stable of nationals – the Daily and Sunday Mirror, the People, and the Record titles in Scotland – will earn about £70m this year, although they made £86m the year before. The profit margin at the Daily Mail hovers at around 10%.
• The Guardian may generate £40m in digital revenues from its largely free offerings, but some of that comes from its dating sites. The Times titles have gone for a low price subscription model, which has attracted 111,000 takers, but which generates £11m a year against an editorial budget estimated at £100m.

Media predictions for 2012: media business and advertising - article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/30/media-predictions-2012-business-advertising

Key points/facts from article: 


Businesses: 

• The failure of Shameless maker All3Media and Dutch firm Eyeworks, maker of Test the Nation and The Biggest Loser, to find buyers in 2011 is indicative of how tough the market is shaping up to be next year.
• All eyes are on Big Brother maker Endemol, which if it can finally agree the protracted restructuring of its €2.8bn debt, which is widely expected to be put up for sale next year.
• ITV will be debt free by the end of the year and has access to £1bn, or more, with chief executive Adam Crozier finally likely to make a major acquisition to boost its production arm.
• Facebook's highly-anticipated IPO, which could well dwarf Google's effort in 2004, will send the tech stock buzz back into overdrive after the failure of Netflix, Groupon and Zynga to set investors alight.
• However the biggest potential development of the year is whether Rupert Murdoch will be forced by his board into looking to sell off some, or all, of his newspaper titles.
• A forced sale attracts bargain-hunting predators and top of the list is Richard Desmond, owner of Express Newspapers and Channel 5, who has form here, having offered £1bn for the Sun in 2009.

Advertising: 

• Sir Martin Sorrell's Group M reckons that the 3% growth it has factored in for 2012 would be lucky to be flat, at best, if not for the Olympics.
• By this he means that comparisons with the uplift in ad revenue seen in other host countries, where the Olympics airs on commercial TV, are misguided because in the UK it airs on the BBC
• Morgan said that investors should not have "expectations of a significant lift'; Daintith added that the event is "not the answer" and that the market "shouldn't be thinking about huge numbers from the Olympics for our titles". DMGT reckons it will see an uplift of about £5m.
• The big winner will be the outdoor advertising market - Group M reckons it will be up 6%, the most of any media bar digital advertising - with the £746m ad take pencilled the highest since 2008.
• National newspaper advertising is forecast to be down 3.1% and the regional market down 7.8%.

Rupert Murdoch joins Twitter article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/01/rupert-murdoch-twitter-account

Key points/facts from article:

• Within hours, the media tycoon had amassed more than 14,000 followers and was giving them his views on everything from the US presidential election to his family holiday in the Caribbean.
• A cursory glance at his output reveals that he considers Steve Jobs's biography to be "interesting but unfair", that thoughts are best kept private in St Barths ("like London!"), and that George Clooney deserves an Oscar for his performance in The Descendants (whose distributor is News Corp-owned Fox Searchlight Pictures).
• But the former deputy prime minister John Prescott captured the reaction of many when he made indirect reference to the phone-hacking scandal which saw Murdoch come under huge pressure in 2011. "Welcome to Twitter … @rupertmurdoch," he wrote. "I've left you a Happy New Year message on my voicemail!"