Journalism, means and ideas

Carlos Jornet explains the piece of news lavoz.com.ar

2010-03-23T23:27:00.001-07:00

Carlos Jornet, the director of The Voice of the Interior, explains the new LaVoz.com.ar and some of the ideas that cheer up the most social development of a way and with a strong bet for the visual thing and the multimedia.

A too costly blackout

2010-03-23T13:21:00.001-07:00

The analogical blackout comes. On April 3 the television will be digital. Spain leads the career for being one of the first countries of the world in turning to the TDT. Too rapid? Perhaps we have spent too much money-12.000 million euros, according to Industry - with an enormous effort of the citizens to adapt his antennas and TV sets for an indispensable technology for the transmission, but that will not be the platform of the new means.

To be the most rapid has his price. The future of the new technologies is very far of the TDT, with little interactive capacity and of new services. The wide band in fixed and mobile networks is the key infrastructure for a sustainable economy and a connected society. The European Commission checks his rules on the public financing of the networks to stimulate investments delayed by the big phone companhies and to achieve that in 2020 all the Europeans have access of at least 30 gentle ones. A plan less ambitious than the presented one in the United States so that all the North Americans take access of high quality to Internet and to the digital services both as fixed and mobile networks.

And the television changes Internet. When the new audio-visual law is discussed, televisions and politicians are the big interested parties in supporting a licenses system every more obsolete day: an enclosed number of chains and with political control of contents and business. The television for Internet (IPTV) liberates users and chains to choose and to distribute his contents as they want. Although the sustentabilidad of the business, of publicity or of payment, is still not clear, Britons and North Americans lead the search of of the convergence.

Meanwhile, the Government is confident of being pioneers in the TDT to expand the market of the industry of the Spanish television. But the big Latin-American countries like Brazil or Argentina have preferred the Japanese system to the European and the expectations disappear. The blackout can cost more of the awaited thing.

Column in the Vocento means

Twitter prefers entertainment to news

2010-03-20T17:53:00.001-07:00

Does Adónde go the Twitter users with his linkage? When the microblogging tool strengthens every day his effect of replacement of the RSS for the social flow, the entertainment and the social networks are the destinations preferred by the users, according to Hitwise information.
The informative means occupy the fifth place in the preferences of the tuiteros, although the analyzed information is not included by the numerous clients of Twitter, used by his most active usarios.
Facebook and Twitter increase his influence in the information reading, but the biggest hearing of the first one affects with major intensity the traffic of the informative means.
Facebook is in the United States the third traffic source for the informative means, much ahead of Google News in the position 11 and Twitter.com it is 39 in the providers' traffic ránking.
Inside the means, the North American tuiteros prefer The Huffington Post, the way that more traffic receives from Twitter followed by CNN and The New York Times.

To one day for the piece of news lavoz.com.ar

2010-03-20T02:02:00.001-07:00

One day is missing to throw the new LaVoz.com.ar. We work against the clock for to manage to throw the possible best thing a completely different place, in content, concept, navigation, functionalities and technology.
New LaVoz.com.ar will be a social environment, as they it are already You and World D, the two previous projects of The Voice of the Interior.
But in the piece of news The Voice we go further away. A finished social development of the whole place, with functionalities of personalización and social network applied to the information. With profiles and communities where to share and to debate the contents and a head that becomes personal and turns into an accessible social control panel from any part of the place.

Also we include a tool of microblogging, similar to Twitter, but where from messages can be sent so much to other users, as to the communities in which you take part as to your own wall to share with the others.
In the contents, we bet for a very visual navigation, where the multimedia becomes transparent and one gains access to photos and videos from any graphic space. Semantic colors to separate the areas of the web and a triple navigation for sections, tags or warm topics and for communities and contents of the people to whom you are related.

Nothing of the previous thing has served to us, with an obsolete and amortized technology, so last days have been a finished testing of servants (with some inconveniences for the users of You and World D, you forgive) and hardware of a platform developed entirely with free software (Drupal).
From this night if everything is fine we will load all the contents in the new place and will try to be constructing the communities and the public more participativo and creatively on the information of Cordova and the Argentina.
Further on we will integrate all the LaVoz.com.ar functionalities with the principal social networks, but for the time being the information and the new forms of access and use of the contents are our goal.
This is the tool that we put in hands of the public. A public mostly still not much habitué to use many of this hardware for the information. We hope that he should accompany us in this adventure that tomorrow only starts.

Watch The Wanda Sykes Show S01E15 Episode 15 now

More wide band, less TDT

2010-03-19T14:03:00.001-07:00

The TDT has been one of the big promises of the government. We move forward two years the analogical blackout and April 3 will finish the analogical television in Spain. The government not of to presume, but sometimes being the first ones is not to be the best.
And in Spain it has not been done. Since we have repeated many so many times, we have paid an enormous increase in price for the development of the TDT.
It is the bet for an ephemeral technology, without enough possibilities of development, interactivity or services. It is necessary to change the sign, but it might have chosen the platform with more future. The TDT has harmed the development of the wide band and the digital advanced services, where the future of the information society is, as it repeats the European Commission with the promise to allow more public financing.
The proper Commission of the Market of the Telecommunications was shouting high place and skylight one year ago: the television is not the key of the information society, the future is the wide band and the lines of new generation.
This is the strategy that now Federal Communications Commission (FCC) impels in the United States. To stretch new networks of wide band to cover the whole country in ten years.
Who is opposed to the new networks and services?
The same ones that have determined the strategy in Spain: the televisions and the politicians tied to them until Farmer turns the latter years of audio-visual regulation in Spain into a seasoning worthy of the Brothers or of Luis García Berlanga.
Someone will have to explain some day the enormous increase in price of the TDT in Spain, so much across the public financing: 425 millions invested in the digital transition till now; 249,3 millions only between 2006 and 2008 in the Plan It Advances and another 89 millions in 2009. And to all this it is necessary to add the investment of the viewers to change his antennas, TV sets and decoders. The majority of them without interactive capacity.
True that between 2006 and 2009 613,5 millions of public money have been invested in wide band, but major absence does effort public and deprived to reach the promise of the minister of gentle Industry of a universal service of one of access to Internet for all in 2011. A speed by that time obsolete and much underneath of the average offered by the commercial operators, although in Spain the new services are slower and more expensive than in the rest of Europe.
But when the future of the means, the information services and communication, and the new networks of wide band are the proper television, the televisions and the politicians resist.
Chains and politicians support the control of the business of the television and of the mass communication with expiry date.
The digital television has liberated frequencies for an enormous fragmentation of the market and with the television by Internet there is finished the last political, economic and geographical control of the mass communication media of masses excellently of the XXth century. Ideologists of one and another tendency coincide with different arguments with the support of the control of the television.
And the struggle for supporting this control makes be in danger the neutrality of the network, the beginning that allows to offer with freedom all kinds of services and contents in Internet, it to try to change for the Internet one toll, controlled and regulated by the phone companhies and the big means.
The TDT also has increased the benefits of other big companies as Abertis taken charge of the sign, which in full crisis of 2009 increased his income for telecommunications 25 % up to 541 million euros, and his operative results (ebit), 37,3 %. Calculate who wins and at what price the new television is paid.
The digital dividend - the frequencies liberated by the digitization - was already distributed badly and late in Spain. Linked to the financing of the public television and without enough guarantees on the new telecommunications services. The same that the new licenses of digital television distributed badly up to a national, autonomic and local atomization that has sunk the viability of many chains and has guaranteed neither the television of proximity nor other advantages of the system. And it has spurred on the concentration allowed by the government again to satisfy the interests of the big chains.
None of the parliamentary parties has stopped these years to design the information society for the future. That's why we do not advance the sufficient thing in digital or sustainable economy - the new promise - and remain suspended in the classification of the OCDE in the position 20 of the countries with wide band. Very far of the leaders of the future.

LaVoz.com.ar is yours

2010-03-19T02:00:00.001-07:00

From the next week, LaVoz.com.ar will be yours. The newspaper of Cordova (Argentina) is opened to the users up to the point of integrating his head with his profile.
A head expandible: to the breadth to adapt itself to the different screens, and in vertical to show all his functionalities, it turns into a personal control panel where from the users will be able to continue to gain access, from any moment from his navigation, to his contents, those of his friends, those of the communities to which they belong and to all the news to which they are signed.
It is the biggest example of the social bet and 2.0 of new LaVoz.com.ar, a way that opens his contents and his platform to the public, from the head to the interaction with his writing and his journalists, with multiple possibilities of participation.
New LaVoz.com.ar advances in his social environment bet beyond what there is we did in You and in World D, two new products multiplatform of The Voice of the Interior.
On Monday we start, but I move forward the presentation that yesterday we did in one Beers&Blogs with the blogueros of Cordoba.
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Redesign LaVoz.com.ar on Prezi

An audio-visual advice with future

2010-03-18T15:36:00.001-07:00

Again the delay. This country takes time ignoring the international regulations on the television. Result: bar free for the chains with frequent violations of the rules on minors' protection, publicity, public service or fulfillment of schedules. The political control dominates the public televisions and the parties weave his alliances with the proprietors of the chains. Now, when the new audio-visual law proposes a State Council of Audio-visual Means, we run the risk of administering the past again with a proposal foreign to Internet, the telecommunications and the preference of the citizens to the offers of bundles of wide and mobile band.
The television of the future is the multiplication of channels and the offer for wide, fixed and mobile band. A regulation of the television foreign to the convergence and his effects in the companies and the public is not realistic. It is not possible to regulate the television of the waves and the governmental licenses, which hearing and market loses, and to leave aside the cable, the television under demand, for Internet and in the mobile.
That's why many defend a visual authority integrated with the Commission of the Market of the Telecommunications. And in real coordination with the already existing autonomic advices (Catalonia, Navarre, Andalusia) and those that will be created in the future, as in Germany, for example.
An audio-visual authority with independent members chosen by the Parliament, the industry and the social organizations. With economic autonomy guaranteed with the valuations on the audio-visual platforms, without dependency on governmental budgets.
The proposal of the Government neither guarantees the independence nor fixes with clarity the functions, as it demands Europe. The confusion is such that the minister of Industry, Miguel Sebastián, answers to the support of the PP of a convergent advice affirming that the competitions coincide with those of the department and his resources will be transferred. The governmental heredity condemns the new authority.
Column in the Vocento means

Twitter is the social RSS

2010-03-18T04:14:00.001-07:00

Twitter is to follow the people and the means. The microblogging tool looks alike increasingly to a personalized way and substitutes the subscriptions RSS, or at least it completes them incorporating the social flow, the power of recommendation and of the contents shared in community.
There are some of the conclusions derived from a recent study of Barracuda Labs that confirms tendencies.
Other interesting aspects are the enormous effect multiplier for Twitter of his use for the famous persons and how it is used increasingly like a tool of personal and professional promotion to gain reputation in Internet.
Almost half of the users of Twitter (48 %) follow more people than it continues them. 36 % of the users is the big prescriptores: they have more followers than sources whom they follow, a growth of 80 % in this category, of only 20 % of the users in last June.
Who do the most intensive users watch the promotional power of Twitter: tuitean more those who have an average of 1.000 followers, while less (100.000 are that less tuitean.
The impact of the famous persons red carpet believe the effect, in Barracuda words. Between November, 2008 and April, 2009 it was the stage in which more famous personages joined, with a users' growth of 20 % a month during this epoch.
The investigation shows again the power of the social flow in Internet: the current of continuous information shared between the users. Every day more substitutes the criterion of the means and even the personnel in the selection of the contents and events to be continued.
The effect for the means is very important, since it forces them to take part in the social networks and to do it with contents and style more adapted for the interpersonal communication, the information like conversation and looking in every moment for details that are interest elements for the users.

What Google does not count of the press

2010-03-17T16:15:00.001-07:00

Google worries about the press. Very worried. In spite of the enormous growth of the searcher and his business, the newspapers and the information keep on representing a the majority of the principal webs and contents in which it commercializes information. But also the generation of content for the informative newspapers and a half feeds the searches and it is the incentive of the attention of many users.
But also, the publishers are one of the principal pursuers of Google, to whom they claim a major portion of the advertizing cake of more than 7.100 million dollars that the searcher and comercializador it obtains of his announcements in foreign places. In addition to others that also promote the informative contents in more than 23.650 million dollars that Google invoiced in 2009.
The publishers there have joined the phone companhies and his threat of finishing with the neutrality of the network. Google has tried to pacify the telecos with his promise from which the mobile will bring benefits for all, but the pressure grows.
So much that up to the FTC, the North American regulator of the competition, has started investigating the wealth of Google.
His economist chief, Hal Varian, defends himself with an economic study of the newspapers from which he emphasizes several information:
The role and the impression are the principal cost of the newspapers. The diffusion and the invoicing of the newspapers was already falling down before the Internet explosion. The searchers feed the traffic of the newspapers between 35 and 40 %. A big part of the invoicing publiciaria online, still very small, of 5 % of average in the North American press, comes thanks to the commercialization of Google. Like earlier a big part of the invoicing was coming from special sections and not from the principal body of news about the newspaper.
The level of attention of the newspapers in Internet is very low: they have less readership that in role although every time they grow more while it lowers the diffusion, but only 70 seconds happen reading the newspaper opposite to 25 minutes on the role pages.
Conclusion:
The newspapers have to bet for the new platforms, there is no many option to charge for the information due to the informative plenty and the competition, and the transition to leave the role must be as rapid as possible, so that costs save themselves and be gained the new publics.
In so many things we agree - publishers, journalists, experts - that have no sense the olvidos and distortions of Google.
First, a clarification: the economic study of the North American newspapers that Google does does not coincide largely with the reality of the Spanish, European press, and of other countries.
In most of the markets the costs of the newspapers are more brought near to information that here we have analyzed often, with a major incidence of the income of the diffusion (sale of copies) and of the publicity of the general body and the classified ones, not of the special sections.
But the study and the conclusions of Hal Varian forget also three fundamental factors. And it does it with certain innocence or with a bad surprising will for anyone that knows the business of the press: he does not calculate the time that the income of the role is still going to be very superior to the digitalises and when it is the moment adapted to stop the rotary ones, but especially the responsibility of Google in the reduction of the prices of the publicity online with a continuous fall of the CPM for the means (what in due time I called the quandary of Google) and his mastery of the digital market and his commercialization, for which it fights with other companies as Apple in the new platforms.
The income of diffusion of the newspapers has grown in the last years for the economic crisis and the increase of the price of sale. The advertizing invoicing has lowered almost 40 % in two years and only the sale has braked the fall of the income despite the loss of circulation.
The Spanish newspapers have happened of invoicing 60 % of publicity and 40 % of diffusion to the opposite. Even the leader The Country obtained 45 % of his income for sale of copies in 2009 opposite to ten points less a few years ago.
In the United States, The New York Times has happened in less than five years of 20 % of the income for diffusion to 35 %.
But the study of Google also affirms that "the newspapers have never done a lot of money of the news" to set to the sections special and segmented like cars, trips, hearth, etc. like principal source of income. False in most cases.
The ignorance or the bad faith are overwhelming. It is possible to discuss if the newspapers do his money of the informative product, of the support or of his mastery of the market, but the newspapers have his principal economic fortitude in the field of general news. The tariff and the income are major than in any other supplement or offprint except for the classified ones, there where there are still a fortitude of the press. A limited income channel and even lost in the last years in favor of Internet and of the classified free ones.
For all that the argumentation of Google is vague and skew. Since it did already not long ago in his promotional campaigns on having hidden the publicity, traciona his motto of not harming, to conceal shames that it should not be, like his advertizing domain in the Network.
I do not know if Google will convince the members of the FTC and of course they will applaud those who are glad about the crisis of the press, but certainly a report as this one increases the suspicions between the journalists and those who know the business of the information.
Google is partly responsible for the landslide of prices of the publicity on the market of the plenty. It has served to him to commercialize volume to low cost instead of quality. Today it is an enormous threat on having turned into the big comercializador and distributor of the information, just as it it wants to be in other areas like the video or the books.
But also it is a part of the solution for the means with his innovation in formats, commercialization and ways of consumption of contents.
It defends his business, his future and also it creates value and improves the access to the contents. But to justify that the future of the press and his business is not in the role a study does not need with pretensions and a half truths so skew.
Don't be evil, Google. A little of credibility, the same for that one asks to the informative means, although perhaps demand should be too much for a searcher and comercializador of publicity.
030910 Hal Varian Imprisoned FTC

The Nation grows and becomes personal

2010-03-17T00:44:00.001-07:00

Design adjustments in LaNaci¾n.com. The front grows, improves the sale for sections of his contents and allows to personalize them. A coherent movement with the expansion of contents of the Argentine newspaper in Internet and his multimedia bet.
The new modules desplegables for sections allow to emphasize more articles and coverages for every area of contents than in the previous design, in addition to presenting more navigation alternatives with a few menus that study in depth the offer of the web.
The released format includes the possibility of personalizing the appearance of the place and the order of the contents, as earlier they did places like BBC, The Reason or Depor.pe.
The style and the concept are heirs of the design of MSNBC, although with different hardware and deployment.
Of the most interesting thing, the enriched alt that increase the information about the least out-standing contents.
Personally the appearance personalizaciones do not convince me very much in the webs always very little used by the users, and I prefer the viral distribution of this type of modules.
More useful is the order and the possibility of much more vertical navigation and in depth that now offers The Nation and that every time the difference more of the leader Clarín, with a completely different and quite chaotic architecture after the partial abandonment of his chronological bet.

Books and soccer improve the Hurry accounts

2010-03-16T16:06:00.001-07:00

Hurry improved his results in order year, like the rest of the means (20 Minutes, Antenna 3). The books and the agreement on the end of the war of the soccer allow to Hurry to finish 2009 with a net profit for 50,48 million euros, 40 % less than in 2008. Up to the third trimester the fall of the results was of more than 77 % for the fall of the income of Digital Bonus and the crisis of the publicity.
In any case, the Hurry results demonstrate again that the big means have compensated the fall of the publicity with strong clippings of expenses, of 15,3 % in this case. To cut employment away and investment in the products has been the recipe to avoid the losses and to achieve that the first Spanish group of communication obtains benefits in all his business units.
The invoicing was 3.208,58 million euros, a fall of 19 % opposite to 4.001,35 millions in 2008. The ebitda came down to almost the half and finished in 368,9 millions despite 15,8 % of advertizing fall, five minor points to the average of the market.
As in other means, the improvement in the last trimester allows to brake the advertizing fall, of 22 % up to end of the third trimester.
The debt of the group reaches 4.857 million euros, but the results and the strategic agreements with Phone companhy, Telecinco and others allow to come to a financing agreement with the banks until the year 2013.
The soccer saves to Digital Bonus
The agreement of three years with Mediapro for the payment soccer allows to brake the subscribers' flight and increase the income of Digital Bonus again up to 1.251,5 millions with an arpu for 41 euros, four euros less than when it was supporting the monopoly of the rights of the soccer.
In spite of this recovery, the income for subscribers of the television of payment falls down 12 % and the advertizing ones 35 %, penalizing the results of the group.
Four does not improve in hearing, 8,2 % in 2009 opposite to 8,6 % the previous one, and the crisis penalizes 16 % his invoicing, which is exempted to 274,35 million euros.
The operative losses (ebit) of the television openly are 20,2 million euros, a progress of almost 60 % opposite to those of 50,5 million the previous year.
Books and Latin America against the crisis
The income for bookselling and formation has increased 3,6 % up to 600,47 million euros opposite to 579,74 million euros in 2008.
They grow especially in Venezuela (+56,9 %), Chile (+31,5 %) and Argentina (+21,0 %).
Problems in The Country and Five Days
The Country and Five Days are most affected by the crisis. The daily general practitioner for a strong fall to half of his operative result and of his margin of profitability, which 7 % does not reach.
The economic journal suffers an operative loss for 1,28 million euros opposite to a light benefit the previous year. The income in press was 415,79 million euros.
The Country invoices 285 millions and a benefit for 12,05 million euros.
His daily average diffusion stays in 391.816 copies in 2009, 40.000 less than the previous year, a fall of more than 9 %.
Expert obtains 72,57 million income and benefits for 7 million euros. His diffusion lowers 6,5 % up to 215.2997 copies and it is the only one of the newspaper of Hurry that improves his profitability thanks to the cost adjustments.
Radio and music resist
The radio resists better the crisis, as it happens in the rest of groups. The fall of the income was 9,2 %, up to 377 millions, supported in the Latin-American Hurry radioes.
To Be also bore the advertizing crisis slightly better than the rest of the radioes thanks to his leadership. A loss of 14 % (16,3 % was measuring market) with a few income of 254 millions.
The music business belonged to the few ones that increased his invoicing, almost 30 %, up to 33,8 million euros.
The group has changed his strategy and has come to strategic agreements to support his audio-visual business with Phone companhy and Mediaset, in addition to 25 % of Santillana sold to DLJ South American Partners LC. The investments continue in Latin America and the Hispanic market of the United States, what makes increase the participation of the international business in four points, up to 23 % of the whole, with more than half originated from the books.
The Country is immersed in his process of convergence and the development of a new digital offer that improves his results and prepares it for the future of the information.

Culture ignores the streaming

2010-03-16T05:01:00.001-07:00

The streaming does not please to all. In spite of the advantages for the users, the industry of the entertainment prefers to sell music to distribute it for subscription or in exchange for publicity. But it is surprising that the Department of Culture, the same one that wants to turn into pursuer of the discharges, neither finds out nor promotes a legal and profitable alternative.
Between the webs of music indicated in the campaign If you are legal, you are legal only discharges pages are reviewed. A streaming not even alternative in spite of the increasing popularity of services like Spotify, Yes.fm or Rockola.fm.
The representatives of these services have not been consulted on the changes in the intellectual property legislation either.

How many web subscribers will support a newspaper?

2010-03-15T16:30:00.001-07:00

The consumption of contents of payment is low in Spain. Also, the public spends more in the systems and platforms of access, as the wide band, the mobiles or the television of payment. The expense means of the citizens in cultural consumption was 372,2 euros in 2007 according to the last available fact, which it can have increased up to approximately 410 euros in 2009.
According to the Survey of Cultural Habits, the Spanish spend an average for 44 euros in periodicals a year, 12 % of the entire expense. The revenue for user in the payment television is about 40 euros a month, just as the expense in mobile telephony. In access to Internet every person spends 47,5 euros a year.
Different studies of consumption of the newspapers indicate that the reader only appreciates about 20 % of the content. A relation value / price of 20 daily cents, six monthly euros that about 7,6 euros might come even if we count every Sunday.
Sufficient for a big national newspaper?
Let's take a big national newspaper as a hypothesis with a few income for 240 million euros per year. Let's calculate that it already achieves 10 % of Internet: 24 millions. The role income splits into 60 % for the publicity and 40 % of the sale of copies: 129,6 millions of publicity and 86,4 of the sale of copies.
If the benefits are eight per cent (in crisis times), the cost of the newspaper would be about 220 millions.
A big newspaper might convert 20 % of his buyers to the payment ideally, what would reduce the role income to 69 million euros.
If it can support the publicity in role with this copies fall, the income would be 198,6 millions. To close Internet to the payment would transport a descent of the digital advertizing invoicing of at least other 30 %, from 24 millions to 16,8. A few entire income of 215,4 millions.
The cost reduction with the decrease of the throw might be of approximately 10 million euros between role, impression and distribution, a cost of 210 millions that would grow at least up to 212 with the need for implementation, management and promotion of the model of payment.
To support the profitability it would be necessary to invoice 229 millions, 4,5 % less than with the previous business model. It would be necessary to achieve 13,6 million annual income of payment. A whole of 30,4 million income in Internet and an increase of almost 27 % of the digital income.
It would transport a strong fall of the only users, but it would demand a growth of the quota of income for Internet up to 13,3 % of the invoicing, half a point over the proportion of the Internet market in the advertizing, but enough whole more than the newspapers usually obtain in Internet.
At a price for ten monthly euros 114.000 users would be needed. If it is exempted up to 12 % of the annual expense with contents, the income for user should be 50 euros per year and 272.00 users would be needed. With an intermediate price for 7,90 euros a month 144.000 users would be necessary.
Is it possible to come to this quantity? The answer that many persons in charge are valuing only has for the time being a handlebar: Financial Times, a newspaper that it has obtained 121.000 payment subscribers with a diffusion in role of 400.000 copies.
A target that seems difficult to manage with the competition and the current market, but that is in the table of many and that explains the option for payment models only in platforms of access like the mobiles or the digital readership.

The Country and ABC keep on losing diffusion

2010-03-15T05:30:00.001-07:00

The diffusion of the newspapers starts in 2010 with different news for the national newspapers. Public leads the growth and overcomes 104.400 copies, more than 48 % than in January, 2009. The sale to the number and the subscriptions of the newspaper of Mediapro also they grow 48 % and it goes on from 49.132 copies to 72.841. A yield rested on joint sale with other newspapers, a strategy in which it will advance.
The Country keeps on losing diffusion and sale. The Hurry newspaper continues the bad march of last year and loses 5,3 % of his diffusion to finish in 378.783 copies. The fall is even more pronounced in sale to the number, 13 %, one of the worst of last months.
With these numbers, The World cuts distances away. The newspaper is supported, with 311.700 diffusion copies, but also the sale increases to the number up to 220.468 copies, what places his 44.000 of the newspaper of Hurry.
ABC loses the ascending footpath of last months of last year and falls down 3,4 % per cent in diffusion (255.600) and almost the double, 6,37, in sale to the number, to stay in 133.200 copies.
The Reason recovers of his big falls of last year with an increase of 8 % in the diffusion, to come to 138.700 copies, and a minor growth in the sale in kiosk with 5 %, up to 97.200 copies.

Yahoo wants to plunge the user

2010-03-14T23:35:00.001-07:00

"Experience inmersiva in the web of the things", it is the target of the future of Yahoo as Ricardo Baeza-Yates, vice-president of Investigation for Europe and Latin America of the company. Yahoo wants to support more time to the user on his pages with a more structured result of searches and with major wealth of sources and formats. An evolution and deepening of the targets of investigation a few years ago.
Baeza yachts has presented this morning the targets and innovations of the searcher in Spain. "Our target is to organize the web. To go on from the web of the pages to the web of the things with the employment of the knowledge of the people". The crowsourcing or wisdom of crowds like axis of the algorithms thought to offer the best results according to the experience of the users.
With this intention the new Yahoo pages show a major structure (example), the results gather together according to the sources (web or news), the relevancy and the formats (images, video, music), in addition to including social contents and real-time with the Twitter integration.
Now Yahoo is also the place where from tuitear. The users will be able to gain access to Twitter updates in Spain across the home of the searcher, the e-mail or the page of Sports and share these contents viralmente with his followers.
An image and an offer that approaches increasingly a company of contents, a way, more than to a searcher.
Yahoo has worked also in the assistants improved for searches. The new pages offer suggestions while the search is written and the left menu includes applications as Search Pad, who allows to keep the most habitual searches; filters with the principal sources and an assistant with related searches.
Three targets of search of Yahoo are that the user finds more rapid, to explore what really it imports and to manage to come to what loves.

The enrichment of the searches supports the old strategy of Yahoo of being increasingly a way with more development and technology.
Baeza yachts does not believe that to support any more time to the user on the Yahoo pages and to offer him structured searches and with more suppressed harm the sources and clients of the searcher. But when means and searchers remain faced by the linkage and every time the people spend more time in the social networks (also at the cost of the searchers) or it is content with the search results and does not go to the original sources, the Yahoo strategy seems more adapted to fight to the social networks than to improve the efficacy and the comeback of the searches for the sources.
The vice-president of Investigation insists that the informational advancing (dates mining) and the collective knowledge they will allow to Yahoo to offer the best results in every search according to every user. But also to balance the proper content of Yahoo and that of the rest of the web according to the consultation bosses and clics.
The heart of all this strategy is SearchMonkey, the Yahoo application to structure the results of the searches. It uses microformats, RDF and other formats of the semantic web to be able to order and open enriched results, visually and with content.
The progress in the searches in undoubted. It will be necessary to see if it improves also the comeback and the CTR for the sources.
The commercial person in charge of Yahoo in Spain, Loli Villa, presented also the progress of Panama and the platform of publicity of the company to offer more information to the advertisers and to be able to handle the campaigns from the office.
An effort of investigation and necessary TV/radio commercial when Yahoo does not manage to reduce users to Google and the alliance with Microsoft looks like the best route for his future. Baeza yachts affirms that "the agreement does not affect to the progress in the searcher, two companies we will integrate the advances".

Interactive publicity: real, of contact and personnel

2010-03-14T16:22:00.001-07:00

The publicity in Internet must be real, connected with the things and the persons; of contact, appealing to the participation and the action, and personnel, a person's conversation to person.
It is the conclusion of the analysts, of the evolution of the hardware - of the social networks to the mobiles - and of the development of the market. Why then has the opportunity of the crisis been wasted to try new developments?
It is the question to which the advertizing ones must answer, the advertisers and many means. When more inventory, lower prices and more people in the web there is that never, the resource reigns to the most intrusive models: the interstitials, pop ups and certain floating layers of high impact but very intrusive.
The banner is dying. But the evolution of the interactive publicity, in growth and in development of formats, styles and narratives it is not so rapid as it would be wished. And without this evolution it is not possible to improve the yield and the profitability for the advertisers and the means.
There are some of the conclusions of the special notebook that the magazine telos, of the Telephone Foundation, raises and that yesterday we debate in the presentation.
Enter the conclusions that I extract:
A growth of the market faced to the mix of investment in search of maximizing a comeback that is still low, although it overcomes already in investment / fame quota to the newspapers: 57 of Internet opposite to 52 of the press (information of Zenith Media). The efficacy and the investment concentrate on the contextuales and there grows the investment in social networks (8 million euros), blogs (5 millions) and in the mobiles, in addition to direct campaigns of the advertisers.
The attraction of the mobile and the video. There are the big promises of the business that they begin it is to become true with the smartphones, the applications for mobile and the growth of the wide, fixed and mobile band.
That's why Eduardo Madinaveitia, of Zenith Media, raises the end of the click trough (CTR) and the need to differentiate the systems of metering of the publicity of contact and deal of the graph and display, where the mark, the presence and the narratives recover an important role again.
And there arises the discussion of the measurement of hearings and the need to advance towards a model where it is possible to know not only the coverage and frequency of a campaign, but to advance beyond the CPM and CTR, even the GRPs, to go so far as to measure the contact and the recommendations: economic deals or of attention.
Internet limited, of toll and nursery after access fences. The access is the key again to achieve advertizing income or of payment. That's why phone companhies, searchers and social networks fight for being his proprietors. With the growth of the access across mobiles, tablets and new devices like the iPad, or across social networks, the habits of the user change.
In the mobile applications it is not navigated, goes away straight to the content providers. The social networks begin to overcome the age of the searchers with the social flow. They catch the user during more time and the personal recommendations guide his navigation, as there defends Koro Castellano, general manager of Tuenti.
Reality, participation and contact. There are the strategic lines of the new interactive publicity. Defended by publicists as Daniel Solana (Double You) and exploited by the ecommerce - that grows in Spain and the rest of the world in spite of the crisis.
For that it is necessary that the publicity is personal and motivating of deals. A footpath still very little exploited by the conventional means, which see how the new means and supports exceed them constantly without developing sufficiently rapidly new models of 360th business, with a hybrid or mixed model (payment, deals, publicity), social and multiplatform.
Scarce development of the local market. The local market is one of the big fallows of the business in Internet. The conventional means do not make use of it, the searchers set on themselves with his maps (Google) and the new hardware of geolocalización (developing reality, social networks), in addition to the classified ones.
But specialization is missing also on the market and commercial and advertizing solutions for the advertisers, as he tells the Galician case described in the magazine.
After the batteries to put themselves and to innovate, as Mario Tascón (Dixired) remembers, if the crisis of the means wants to excel itself and not leave that Google takes any more than half of an advertizing market of 660 millions in 2009 and that this year possibly cleans the press out like the second advertizing support if the fall of the newspapers is not braked and Internet grows again to rhythms previous to the crisis.

The Left eye is one-eyed

2010-03-14T07:43:00.001-07:00

So many years of profession for this! I suppose that some of his friends will say it to José Maria Izquierdo. After his step along Four and CNN + it returns to The Country to write one of the new blogs with which the newspaper wants to be gaining pulse in Internet and in the integration of the writing. And of step to re-place all the prepensioners with special conditions that it has produced in the last times.
José Maria Izquierdo writes a blog where the slant in the look is unlawful. So much that has no grace.
After The Country has discovered that the TDT is dominated by the most rural right, now it is thrown to the hem with a press magazine in combat.
But he cannot do it.
The Country has lost given long ago. It still has big journalists, good reporters and up to exclusive interviews. Especially those that some of the old guard keep on contributing. Those that are put aside by the love of more than one chief for the most cunning ministers in the swap with the means.
The given one of The Country has always been direct. Informative. Like that it was in the old times. But the twisted canine tooth is not his. He has never been able to wink with mischievousness nor presume with bad milk. For enjoyment of Pedro J., teacher.
Lefthander looks at the press and forgets its own words: "Strict and slow, it has doubled the newspapers after an attentive reading. Everlasting his, which every time is more reactionary, he says, and economic other of the same group - it has no remedy - to get soaked well of the crisis, of the disaster, of the cataclysm, of the disaster that us anega".
An alone man cannot redeem a newspaper. And less beating only with the left-handed one.
Set to have breakfast - and to eat and to have dinner and to sleep, as it is an obligation - against the press scoundrel and of trench I prefer Javier Vizcaíno in Public.
Where they give them they take them.
They taught me to me in the worst quarters that to kick in the eggs it is necessary to have of lead. And the shames of The Country have always been of crystal.
Arrear to matador is easy. For the left it is more complicated. The old control of the TV was going worse, and it keeps on doing it, when you turn it for this side.
It comes well to open two eyes. It is better for the journalism.

The Washington Post, in losses for the second year

2010-03-14T00:36:00.001-08:00

The Washington Post continues in losses in 2009 for the second year in a row. The crisis of the publicity, with a descent of 23 % in the role and of a fall of 8 % in his digital business, leads to the newspaper to a few operative losses for 163,5 million dollars (121 million euros) in 2009.
The diffusion did not also accompany, and as in case of the big Spanish newspapers, it fell down 5,9 % every day and 4,7 % every Sunday: 595.800 copies from Monday until Saturday and 831.300 every Sunday.
The fourth trimester improved and the newspaper lost only 4 % of his invoicing with regard to 2008 and 9 % of his publicity.
The digital means did not save to The Washington Post. The web of the newspaper and other digital means as the magazine Slate they already suppose 14,6 % of the invoicing of the newspaper, but the income lowered of 108,3 millions in 2008 99,6 in 2009.
The graphic publicity in his webs grew 2 % last year, but the classified ones fell down 24 % in the same tendency as those of the role, although slightly less accented.
The Newsweek restructuring has not stopped his fall either. The change of model of contents and business, with less diffusion (from 2,6 million copies to 1,5 millions) and increase of the price of the subscription, does not seem to have worked.
Newsweek reduces 27 % his income, up to 184,2 million dollars (136 million euros), with a fall of the publicity of 37 %.
The magazine loses 29,3 million dollars in 2009 opposite to 16,1 million losses of the previous year.
Both the newspaper and the magazines (The Washington Post also is an owner of Foreign Policy) have reduced drastically his personnel. In two years the Post in almost 500 persons and Newsweek in something more about 150.
Only the educational business and from cable television of the Post, in addition to extraordinary income of the exercise, they have saved the accounts of the group to finish with an operative result for 91,2 million dollars opposite to the 65,8 of last year.
In spite of the strong digital bet of the newspaper, the impact of the crisis has struck his classified ones to reduce his results.
The good news concentrates on the fourth trimester of the year, when the graphic publicity grew again 13 % while the fall in the classified ones came down to 17 %.

Tangled, with the TV

2010-03-13T18:29:00.001-08:00

We live connected. Caught by the means and Internet. More than 20 million persons get connected to Internet in Spain, and 2,3 millions live with the Network in the mobile. Less and less people escape to his power, but as they were making sure that the beginning of the mediamorfosis of Roger Fidler we do not replace means, we consume increasingly and also the old men transform to be like the new ones. Internet catches us. And inside the web the television monster keeps on growing, unstoppable and in prime steal.

The threat has written from the credit qualifications, as in The Star wars: Internet will be like the television. Every time they look alike more. Less evil that the social networks have come to save to the Net users of the video alone and to support the old promise of which Internet is a big conversation. Of course, every day looks like more to one a chat on the TV although we do not depend already so much on what the programmers throw to us and could choose a little more.

They say the last studies that we spend almost two hours a day given to Internet, more than in TV, although the audímetros support that the television consumption is four daily hours and a half. With so much study there is no the one who clears up. But in what they all coincide that a big part of the time that we spend in Internet is consuming videos, unloading movies or watching TV in the web.

And in the forums, social networks and chats, the TV and his frikis triumph.

Oscar Wilde was saying that "the art should never try to be popular", but the electronic democracy perfects the television alienation condemning us not to stop speaking about her in addition to seeing it. One of the five Spanish watches TV and he is in Internet at the same time. The majority chatting or in social networks. The promise of the collective intelligence caught in a cut of sleeves of John Cobra. Less evil that also costs so that, after voting for it stacks, a few thousands of tangled put it to broth in Facebook.

Column in Vocento means

Only the local press and Disney save Vocento

2010-03-13T12:22:00.001-08:00

Vocento closes 2009 with a net profit for 9,1 million euros, 73,6 % less than the previous year. The fall of the publicity of 21,9 % and the costs of 111,4 millions for his restructuring ballast the benefits, as in 2008. The group reduces his costs 13,5 % headed by the redeployment of labor of ABC.
Only the regional newspapers, with operating profits of 18,9 millions, the supplements (2,7 mill). and the national TDT (2,78 mill). they support the benefits.
The income was 751 million euros, with publicity and sale of even copies. More than 274,6 millions (76 millions less than in 2008) for publicity and 274,2 millions of sale of copies, one more 1,6 %.
The press reduces 12 % his income (512,9 millions) with losses of development of 49,1 millions in ABC opposite to 21,3 millions in 2008. The free one What loses 4,9 millions in spite of the progress of his negative results of 12,1 million the previous year.
The regional press descends less in income, 316,3 millions (-12,5 %), but his profit falls down 38,4 % up to 28,9 millions opposite to 46,9 in 2008 or the 104,7 of 2007.
The income for publicity has diminished below the average of the market, 23,3 % opposite to 26,5 % of the rest of the local press.
The efforts to support the newspapers with contents, new design and promotions crash against the results of this exercise.
ABC improves his income for sale of copies with an increase of 12 % in ABC thanks to an increase of 2 % in the diffusion: 256.650 copies.
The regional press loses 5,3 % of diffusion (453.928 copies) and his income for sale falls down 0,7 %.
The investment in his digital means, the buy of 33,3 % of 11870.com and the abandonment of The Digital Back room, harm the Internet accounts to register a few losses of development of 7,9 millions opposite to those of a million of 2008 or the benefits of 4,8 million one year earlier.
The Internet means suffer the fall of the classified ones (11,7 million,-14,5 %), especially of employment. The B2B descends with the cost of 3,5 millions for the exit of The Digital Back room.
The digital publicity increases 21 % with a few income of 18,6 millions in the digital editions (+18,9 %) of the newspapers and 3,2 % in the vertical channels in spite of the incorporation of 11870.com (800.000 only users).
The innovations and progress in the digital newspapers produce a few losses of 3,6 million, the second year of fall after the benefits of 1,55 millions in 2007. Classified and vertical they continue also in losses.
Vocento places himself like the first group of information in Internet with 10,2 million only users, according to the information of the panel of Nielsen, over Publishing Unit with 9,9 millions and of Prisacom with 9,7 million users.
In the television, Channel Disney improves the accounts of a sector with losses for four million euros in the autonomic and local TDT despite a strong reduction of costs or a fall in the business of the production of 24,4 %.
Point Removed progress 3 % his hearing (530.000 listeners) and it limits to the half his losses (6,2 millions) thanks to the cost reduction.
The audio-visual area loses 12,1 million euros despite the benefits of 2,78 millions of the national TDT: Disney and Intereconomy.

Music for subscription and mobile

2010-03-13T06:12:00.001-08:00

The musician is not already bought: it is paid for hearing, how in the payment for traditional vision, and the subscription is imposed like business model. The problem is how many listeners will pay and at what price.
The cost for user of a service of streaming like Spotify or Yes.fm is between six or seven euros, according to information recognized by sources of the sector. Services as Napster corroborates this number of about 75 euros per year of cost between copyright, I pay to the record companies, connectivity, promotion and management.
The business model is to attract users with free music and to turn them into payment subscribers, as admit several experts. The music as marketing to turn songs free into subscriptions of payment, income for services, of the platforms of access, merchandising, concerts, and even sales of CDs and legal discharges: 360th business.
The fans reduce the discharges when the music is accessible in any platform and from any place, from the computer, the mobile or other portable teams.
But not the sufficient thing to satisfy to the industry and to support the business.
In Spain the use of the P2P has fallen down of 45 % of the users in 2006 to 26,6 % in 2009, according to the last information of the EGM. In direct relation with the increase of the streaming of music (56,9 % of the Net users) or of television and movies (41,8 %).
Numbers that recur in other countries and in those that there must bear in mind also the increase of the direct discharges.
The debate is if the free access and from any device the business makes grow. Experts as Russ Crupnick (NPD Group) point out that the streaming makes lower 13 % the sale of digital music. Other persons in charge of the musical industry in Europe deny this canibalización and point out that there takes place the same effect as with the criterion P2P: it is listened to choose in streaming or in discharges and buys to him the music or goes away to the concerts of the favorite ones.
It is the defender of the consumer opposite to the saturation of the market of the plenty and the commercial strategies of the record companies, the big ones harmed by the crisis of the business.
But they all seem to coincide that the radio online or the services of recommendation that do not allow to choose to what music one listens are more profitable: for the industry because they cannibalize less digital sales or of CD and for the users because they discover new offer instead of consuming his favorite music and replacing his buys.
The business of the music advances with the streaming and the mobiles, in addition to the video in Internet in places as YouTube or Vevo. The streaming and the video in Internet substitute to a great extent the radio and the videos in television, which change also Internet like principal platform, especially between the youngest.
That's why the record companies and the agents of rights want to support the price of the digital rights and not to reduce them. Today for every hundred songs - in streaming or in video - it is paid in whole about euro and a half in rights. And in spite of the low price of every audition, very much minor that the old copy and even of the rights of private copy, if the price is too low is sustainable not neither for the artists, nor for the record companies, and for the maintenance of the new services of distribution.
The result for the time being is that the new services need to turn more than ten per cent of his users into payment subscribers. But also they need to limit the number of songs to that the users listen free not to lose profitability for the rights payment with little comeback.
The publicity is cheering up, especially in services as Spotify in Europe, but the video lacks more advertisers, one of the big problems of YouTube.
And the viralidad cercena, since it has happened in case of Ok Go. Many videos in Internet stop being available for incrusting them because the advertisers seem ready to invest in the principal platforms of exhibition, where they can control who, how and how many times see them, but not in other webs. The publicity controlled opposite to the possibilities of the viral distribution and his biggest power of distribution.
Many musicians complain about the little that they gain with the streaming and the radio online. The effect Lady Gaga for the share-out of the income that do the record companies. But others admit that his hearing increases and is the best promotion way.
The diagnosis is that the music ambience and accessible, in the cloud, in the computer and the mobiles, it is for the most intensive consumers, which are ready to pay or keep on buying music and being present at concerts. But the whole world is to the expectation what is the threshold of survival of these new forms of access and business. The hearing to keep on enjoying music without limits and new services, and the record companies and the musicians to compensate the income of the sale of copies of his works and of the audio-visual diffusion (radio and television), the heart of the business for the time being.

Information: multiplatform, mobile and social

2010-03-13T00:49:00.001-08:00

The future of the information appears every clearer day: Internet turns into the first way and the mobile is consolidated like access device for the most interested and participativos. The biggest consuming ones and more assets in the proper means, in the social networks and platforms of microblogging.
In a few days, two surveys, Navigators in the Network of the EGM and Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, of Pew Internet, show the evolution of the consumption of information in Spain and the United States.
The information confirms the regression of the diffusion and hearing of the editions of role; the ascent of the mobile, especially of the smartphones users, in the news consumption; and the every time major influence of the social flow, the participation and the linkage shared in networks like Facebook and Twitter.
The information is omnipresent. It is in everything and to the moment in the age of the access, with his two basic hardware and distribution models: platforms (mobiles, iPad and ereaders) or social flow (social networks, recommendations, social networking).
The users consume more information that never, several times a day, and across several means.
I consume multiplatform. In the USA, 92 % of the Americans uses several informative platforms and 61 % finds out for Internet, only behind the television and over the newspapers. But 59 % finds out for traditional means and online.
In Spain, 90 % of the Net users reads information and for 64 %, the Network is his principal source. Three of every four usually and only consult the digital newspapers 51 % reads the edition role.
The television resists better thanks to the control of the chains and the limited convergence: nine of every ten Net users see conventional television. The radio attracts two of every three.
The portability of the mobile substitutes the newspapers, in consumption and business model. One of the old advantages of the newspapers has always been his mobility. The mobiles and the applications of iPhone, Blackberry or Android (used by 44 % of the users of smartphones Spanish) begin to achieve that the information consumption moves from the newspapers to the phones.
An important decision that can suppose a change of the business, so much of the press as of the cost-free status in Internet.
If Internet has increased the news consumption much more than the loss of diffusion and hearing that it has provoked, in the mobile it is not navigated, one gains access straight to the wished information. The user comes to the information with a major incidence of his preferences and of the recommendations of the people to which it is related in social networks and of microblogging.
For the time being, while the number is small, these users are the most intensive consumers and they come to the same number of means as the users who get connected from computers. But his search for optimizing the time and the reading makes them entrust more of the social criterion best adapted to his interests and to the most perfected algorithms of places as Google News and other agregadores.
That's why also they value more possibility of sharing news and linkage that the rest of users.
In the USA 33 % of the users of mobiles consumes information in Internet across his phones. In Spain this number is the whole of persons that get connected to Internet from the mobile (EGM, Foundation Orange) and only less than ten per cent in the traditional mobiles and almost one of the five users of smartphones reads news in his phones (IAB).
I pay in the mobile, but with reserve. The superusers, intensive consumers of information in all the platforms, are the readiest to pay for the information. But the mobile and the new systems of access, already of payment - although to the operators and to the developers of applications - they are the most inclined to replace the payment of the newspaper or the magazines in the kiosk with the payment in Internet. As in case of the music, the constant access and with the best quality the key seems.
A multimedia future to guarantee the maximum access. Only 2 % of the North Americans reads exclusively the digital press, many less than the readership only of role: 38 %. 59 % consumes both means.
Between the Spanish Net users 55 % consume role and web. But almost 30 % reads only digital press.
The money continues also in the role in spite of the growth of the web. Very slow to turn into the source of principal business.
The crisis has ill-treated the accounts of the newspapers, but also of his digital editions (Vocento, The Washington Post, 20 Minutes, for example).
Of 654 millions invoiced in 2009 by the digital publicity in Spain (Infoadex), less enough of the fourth one part they have gone to stop to the informative digital means.
The contextuales are the domineering format, they lower the prices and there are missing new forms of rentabilización and publicity for a model of 360th, mixed, social business and multiplatform, like the proper consumption of digital information.

V Congress of the Language becomes virtual

2010-03-12T19:31:00.001-08:00

V International Congress of the Spanish language becomes virtual after the tragedy of the earthquake in Chile, where it was going to celebrate in Valparaiso. A magnificent decision that can open a new age for this type of events and for a better use, more sustainable, with more accessibility for experts and public, and even with possibilities of becoming many more participativo, open and interesting, also turn into perm.
I thought it on having known the news about the earthquake and there was even the one who reproached me. But the step given by the organizers can be important to rethink this type of events and to promote the education, discussion, presence and study on line of the languages and the literature.
Why to wait to a congress presencial when everything can be in Internet?
Both the Institute Cervantes and the Spanish Royal Academy have experience in Internet.
Perhaps be the moment to appear if all this money, efforts, resources, guests, protocol etc. invested in these great events academic exchange would not be better made use in the promotion of the language in Internet, the construction of open and free hardware of education, discussion, audio-visual, papers, wikis colaborativos, networks of experts and interested parties, etc. further away and to reinforce initiatives as the Virtual Center Cervantes.
And to do it so that all his contents promoted and subsidized with public money re-spill straight the citizens, free and open seas for his use. Because the language is a big example of procomún, a good of all.
I hope the tragedy of the earthquake in Chile and the experience of this Virtual Congress of the Language serves to stimulate and to make to rethink a new way of increasing the capitalization, the value and diffusion of the Spanish language in the world and in Internet.
Because the language is alive, and it does not develop only with congresses and communications, but also promoting and helping to the expansion of the quality contents.

The payment in Internet does not save Financial Times

2010-03-12T14:07:00.001-08:00

The payment procedure of Financial Times does not save his results. The operative benefits of the economic journal fell down 42 % in 2009 (39 million pounds sterling, 43,2 million euros), with a reduction of the invoicing of 12 % (395 million euros).
His payment strategy for consumption or for intensity (metered model) has allowed him to obtain 126.000 digital subscribers and 750 licenses of company, an increase of 15 % with regard to 2008.
It is not possible to consider a big result, but it improves the numbers of 2004, when with his previous payment model it overcame 80.000 subscribers.
The users registered in FT.com are 1,8 millions, which another 1,4 millions join in FTChinese.com, where Pearson, his publishing company, he has chosen to expand.
But the diffusion of the newspaper keeps on falling down, 7 %, to remain in 402.799 copies.
Pero Pearson supports that the payment strategy for contents is the best future for the informative means. The publicity keeps on overcoming to the payment in the invoicing of Financial Times, but Pearson entrusts more in the future of the payment for services that in the advertizing investment due to the scarce profitability of the digital publicity.
Interactivate Byline, his company of information and financial services, it marks the way. It is consolidated like leader of the business of information of the group with an increase of sales of 5 % (484 million pounds sterling) and 7 % of growth of the benefits: 148 millions.
With this information, FT Publishing, the division of informative means of Pearson obtains 81 % of his income of payment and subscriptions thanks to Interactive Data while the low publicity to 19 %. The perspectives of the company insist that the advertizing market will be still volatile while the payment business will grow.
The bet for the digital information does also that the digital income is already 73 % opposite to only 27 % of the role, on the contrary than in the year 2000.
The Economist, where Pearson possesses 50 % of the capital, it continues his growth in diffusion up to 1,42 million copies, 2,2 % more than in 2008.
The results of the company are not different from those of other big groups like Hurry or The Washington Post Company, with which it coincides with the bet for the business of the education, the engine of the benefits in the three.
The business of the education allows to Pearson to increase his income 4 %, the same as the increase of his operative benefits, of 858 million pounds sterling, 947,7 million euros.
Lessons of the strategy Financial Times:
Change towards the digital business: of the products role to the digitalises, both in the division of education and in the informative one and in the books, where the sale of ebooks of Penguin has gone off from the appearance of Kindle de Amazon. Groups as The Washington Post or The New York Times already obtain 15 % of his income of the digital business, while in Spain the proportion is still much more a-year-old fall 8,7 % of the advertizing income in Vocento and minor in Hurry and, of course, in the televisions.
The contents as service. Pearson is sure that the new business of the contents and the information happens for turning into services providers when the information is a process.
I pay for reading instead of the sale of copies. The business of the information and the contents as service changes the old model of the sale of contents into the subscriptions and the licenses, the affiliation and the search of the profitability with a base coontinua and clients' believer.
It is the same strategy of the music in Internet or of the payment for reading, the model to which they stretch the ebooks and the digital book in the cloud (cloud computing).
When the information and the contents are permanent accessible in Internet from many devices, the sale and the proper concept of property of the information disappear: one pays for the reading and the consultation. Of a property model to one of services.
To improve the efficiency and the profitability. The new structure and the efficiency in the management and the costs of Pearson allows to support the profitability margins. Financial Times supports profitability of 10 % and in Interactive Data it climbs up to 25 % thanks to the benefits of the prosecution of information and his distribution multiproduct, which has grown with the services in real-time (19 % of the sales of the company of financial information and of market).
New platforms of distribution and user's experience. The new digital supports like ebooks, mobile, iPads, etc. are the hope of the business of the contents. Penguin already has 14.000 books in format ebook and the application for iPhone of FT.com has unburdened itself 200.000 times.
The business of the payment for information is not yet sufficient. FT.com it has achieved a conversion valuation of users registered to subscribers of 7 %, much underneath of the margins necessary for the sostenibilidad. His 126.000 pay an average for 172 euros per year, a few income for 21,7 million euros. The payment income in Internet sound 6 % of the invoicing of Financial Times, much underneath of the proportion necessary for a newspaper of his characteristics. That's why the publicity keeps on being essential like principal business of the information until it does not become possible to reach about 30 % of the income for the digital means.
Mixed, social business and multiplatform. The social flow, the participation of the users, the business for access across different platforms marks the future of Pearson and Financial Times, like that of so many means and companies of contents. Without this development of a hybrid business both in income and in publicity the support of the means will be very difficult.

The press suffers in Portugal

2010-03-11T22:16:00.001-08:00

Portugal is not an exception. The Portuguese press has suffered a strong diffusion fall in 2009. The biggest newspapers finish the year with important losses and only the new newspaper I grows strongly in his first year of life, with a sale of 14.963 copies after the year finishes.
The information of Associaçao Portuguesa for or I Control of Tiragem and Circulaçao (APTC) reflects strong newspapers falls like Day's wage of News (79 thousand copies), Public (34.150) or Diário of News (26.453).
Correio gives Manha it is one of the few ones that lasts, with a diffusion of 122.319 copies.
I Informaçao registered a big diffusion increase in his first six months of life that seems to have been braked. The diffusion at the end of the third trimester of the year was 14.245 and it obtained 700 more copies at the end of year.
The million only visitors overcame his web in November and it demonstrates again that the new means especially faced to the young public, obtain more hearing in Internet than in the kiosk.

A free one to comment without reading

2010-03-11T15:39:00.001-08:00

The new one What is already in the street. And the staples are his bet in role and the comments in Internet. Two ways of seizing the information with different targets and results. The first one avoids to lose the pages, the second one loses the approach in the information to turn the newspaper into a reality show.
The staple is an old ABC advantage. Although many people have studied the formula to offer a newspaper to which him the sheets do not fall down, almost they all have desisted for the cost and the complications of production that he supposes.
Now a free one subscribes to a format more expensive than that of the means of payment.
The comments are the new star of What in Internet. It does not wonder. The free one thrown by Recluses and later bought by Vocento to a price that still ballasts the accounts of the group was born like blogratuito with the intention of making use of the contents of the blogs to relieve his deficits of local information.
It did not work for lack of informative contents and quality, and certainly I push back of the blogueros to deliver his contents to a way.
In December, 2008 it to reconvertirse in social environment and it created a proper social network again.
A bet that we had initiated in ADN.es between the Spanish informative means and to which the Vocento means have joined.
But the nut return of What, in contrast to the regional press of the group or of ABC.es, is it to put in the first line the comments of the users.
Up to the point on that for the first time it is incited to comment without reading the information on having allowed the comments from the fronts, without coming to the articles.
It is a dangerous strategy. I do not have any doubt that the means must be social. I bet long ago for it and keep on doing it. But to create hardware and social space in the means needs to diminish the noise, to personalize the use of the information and to make use to the maximum of the social criterion and the exchange in real-time. But also to study in depth the information and to provide the hardware user to be related to who wants and to choose how he wants to share his contents and his identity.
I do not believe any of these targets be achieved by the new formula of What, although yes in the profiles of the users, incorporated in the previous change. Neither that the out-standing comments help to improve the social flow, which fundamentally is to share contents and to create social criterion.
Rather this presence covers with stars of the comments can provoke an enormous noise in a way that tries to be informative, an incentive for the ego and the least creative and interesting commentators.
Also it is a formula difficult to promote. The comments are worse the more general practitioner is the product, and with a way which first two sections are curious News and Famous persons, one can do to himself idea of the quality of the participation. And therefore of the publicity that he bets for this model.
It is a formula to banish to the whole publicity and the business formulae that are not based only on the volume. A less and less accurate advertizing strategy.
The comments are one more step in the strategy of popular press of What. Till now it has not given to him very much been the result and in spite of the enormous clippings in his costs, in 2009 it lost 4,9 million euros again in 2009.
The free ones are the popular press of the XXIst century along with the sports one. But both 20 Minutes and ADN support formulae of major informative ambition.
Commenting is not to be informed, but the model Qué.es can be an alternative to the chat.

The World throws his payment platform

2010-03-11T07:27:00.001-08:00

The World in Orbyt. This way the new payment platform will appear today in Internet of The World. A bet for increasing the payment business with sources of financing that extend the already traditional one in Internet.
The newspaper directed by Pedro J. Ramírez will offer from Monday for 14,99 euros a new platform to consult all his editions in pdf and prepared for the new platforms like the iPad.
An enlargement of the already existing contents of payment in elmundo.es that a readership club joins, one of the payment procedures for contents explored by other newspapers as The Times or The Daily Telegraph.
This readership club will allow to gain access to papers, interact with the writing - in the style of the original Factual - and benefit from promotions, discounts and other offers.
The beginning of the implatación of a 360th, essential business for the future of the means.
Will Orbyt be the answer?
The edition in pdf has not been it nor will be a big business, but it is the first step that if it advances to the rhythm of the new platforms of access to information, will be one of the new routes of commercialization.
The clubs of readership linked to offers, ecommerce and other initiatives of direct marketing are essential to compensate the low prices and scarce yield of the digital publicity.
The development of a business of payment as these routes has the advantage of not penalizing the access to the digital way and of not losing, therefore, any of his opportunities. Little by little we will see readership clubs in almost all the means. And those who do not hurry up will lose a good opportunity.
orbyt

The crisis of the press sends Spiderman to the unemployment

2010-03-10T22:34:00.001-08:00

Not even the superheroes are saved. The publisher J. Jonah Jameson dismisses Peter Parker, as so many people others in the real life. (route)

The Country and ABC integrate his writings

2010-03-10T14:25:00.001-08:00

Two traditional writings begin his restructuring between this week and the next one: ABC and The Country advance towards the convergence of press and Internet with steps for the integration of his writings.
Both will support specific teams for role and web, but with integrated writings. The two chase the same target: to achieve that the editors and the sections of the role produce information for the web with new rhythms, styles and contents.
As in almost all the writings, the physical structure changes in both cases to improve the functionality. In ABC it will be a central table in star to coordinate the work while in The Country it is decided in favor of a configuration that some describe as a bar bar, where to finish contents, and others speak about a model more similar to a modern system of distribution of delicatessen. As if The Bulli was serving covers.
In ABC the integration comes together with a change of design, both in the daily role and in the web, which one is working for months with the support of Alfredo Triviño, the director of art of News Corporation, which took part already in the renewal of the local newspapers of Vocento.
In The Country there will not be immediate changes of format and product. The persons in charge of the project prefer to be employed at the writing to improve the work process.
But the reorganization of the writing of The Country will affect to most of the headquarters of section. There will be even incorporations of other means of group, like the television Four.
After two hard years of crisis in the press and a strong reduction of costs and jobs, the big national newspapers begin a new stage towards the convergence and the multimedia.
Today there appears also the new offer of payment of The World, the newspaper that more has advanced in his definition of the only and multimedia way, although the integration of his writing makes be waited more than in his competitors.

The public TV slims

2010-03-10T06:59:00.001-08:00

RTVE in strike for the slimming remedy and we return to the past with the file programs. Politicians, managers and workpeople differ on the necessary treatment. In Great Britain the almighty BBC he proposes shock therapy: to produce quality programs, to reduce his expansion in Internet, to close magazines and specializing radio stations.

A less expensive public television. The opposite of done last years. The BBC has grown as never. It is already not a radio and television, it is the emblem of what they called the digital Great Britain. Here the previous model of RTVE, constructed by Luis Fernández, was growing elefantiásico like his British model: more channels in the TDT and a project in Internet earlier put aside by the ignorance of a future present fact.

The crisis came and the television needs to slim. The question is what the public service must be in the digital age. The BBC has reigned like Elizabeth II. His throne is indisputable and his empire dominates the television, the radio, Internet and even to the newspapers. In Spain Alberto Oliart, with head of agent and mantita of home-loving viewer in the knees, has come to give vile club to a model with tendency to get out of hand. While, the autonomic telestado devours all that can nicely.

The question is what public service the radio and television redeems in the digital age. Do not ask the proprietors of the private roads, they will say that none. To the viewers' associations? You doubt. The politicians only are interested in the power: licenses, partisan control, to support a business of high visibility. Do not look for it in the new audio-visual law, they will only find ambiguities. Someone should answer sincerely why we have spent so much money in the TDT without making use of the technological change for a universal network of wide band capable of offering all kinds of contents.

More proper production, they ask for the trade unions. More responsibility and a platform of really public contents, we must demand the citizens.

My column in the Vocento means

Félix Monteira leaves Public for the State Department of Communication

2010-03-10T00:34:00.001-08:00

It will not be very well seen. Who either they were criticizing the political Public position either they have more ammunition: his director leaves the newspaper for the State Department of Communication little more than one year after assuming the charge.
Jesus Maraña, assistant director already with Nacho Escolar and authentic strong man of the newspaper, assumes the direction.
Snow Goicoechea is left by the headquarters of Communication of the government after one of the stages most gray and less political that it is remembered, asphyxiated by the pressures of vice-president Maria Teresa Fernández of the Vega and his most direct collaborators. And with a president who some time ago lost the control of the political communication.
Public has a problem. The government, other.
Three directors in three years and the step of an executive publisher, Ernesto Ekaizer, of the one that reminds little to himself beyond his shocks with the direction and the publishers.
Jumble is the stability, but little stays of the fresh and a little alternative newspaper that started with a young team and with new ideas headed by Ignacio Escolar.
The sales grow. A strong investment in promotions and the agreements with local newspapers for the joint sale they impel them. The hollow of the newspaper is clear: to the left of The Country there is place for a national newspaper. But the question is why a newspaper, with what dimension, what strategy of commercialization and what contents.
The answer continues without being clear.
The government has lost some time ago his communication strategy. It is an example of everything what must not do, with confusions, constant reverse gears, bad dialogue to itself with the means and the rest of parties. But especially the tendency to promises and declarations that finish in doubt or in the unreality.
Miguel Barroso left the Secretariat of Communication after defining several strategies that still keep on influencing some areas. The redefinition of the television panorama, the bet for the information society and the strategy of the mood of ZP there are largely his works.
Fernando Moraleda replaced it in a fiasco of proportions that exceed to the charge that it was redeeming. His errors, practical jokes and incapability to manage a message finished with his stage.
By that time the vice-president was already doing time that was playing a role of face of the government much questioned internally, but that is supported and has been gaining power.
Snow Goicoechea It allowed to Be to take charge of the position with a more technical profile than it has not gone out.
Félix Monteira is the following one. It has brought to Public more information, a criterion more similar to that of the agenda of the rest of newspapers and a more and more clear separation of the project defined by Toni Cases and started by Ignacio Escolar.
It is still to see how the new Public of Jesus Maraña will be and if Monteira comes up to the next elections.

The fourth Power is born like journalists' society

2010-03-09T19:11:00.001-08:00

The Fourth Power has just been born. A new way founded by professionals of expert journey, a the majority of them friends and ex-partners. One of the new alternatives that many journalists appear opposite to the crisis of the traditional means and of the professional journalism.
The fourth Power is born basically like a network of blogs where Francisco Frechoso, Juan Carlos Escudier, Pedro Alzaga, Luis Díez, Mónica Prieto, Raimundo Castro and others will be shelling the actuality with the intention of doing a journalism participativo, ethically and independently, as tells Paco Frechoso in the presentation post.
His models are places like Huffington Post or Politician, new means that in the last years have grown like few ones thanks to a new way of doing, of distributing and of promoting the information.
Nevertheless, the distances between The Huffington Post, a network of blogs, agregador of foreign contents and with participation of many famous persons of star system North American, and Politician, a specializing media of political information with a forceful bet for the contents for politicians, lobbies, and other news junkies, supported in a profitable edition role, with the Fourth Power are enormous.
For the time being the fourth power appears more like a new way resulted from a professional society of editors that tries to exploit new business models with minor need for income, a small writing and largely without exclusivity constructed on platforms and cheap technology (Wordpress) and without the flagstone of having to return big benefits to his shareholders.
The fourth Power is another example of new means that every time we will see. Result of a moment in that the big means are more and more difficult of supporting for his needs for structure and the descent of the profitability of the professional journalism.
The luck of the Fourth Power will depend largely on the quality and attraction of his authors. As all the personal means, his information is based more on the journalist like mark and his information that in structure of production and information processing how of which the professional writings are capable.
For the time being they are much removed also from new structures like the means like social network, but many of them have sources and sufficient aptitude to be able to advance in this strategy.
Luck.

More RTVE, for Spain and the democracy

2010-03-09T07:23:00.001-08:00

The audio-visual panorama is altered, very shaken. The crisis of last two years, the reduction of benefits of the big chains and his pressure to increase the television concentration, the lack of definition of the future television and the RTVE restructuring without publicity while the autonomic telestado keeps on devouring resources and public space worries many people, it stimulates frustrations and throws a new interests career.
From ideological positions and different interests, in a few days there coincide two criticism of the new model of public television impelled by the president Shoemaker and his vice-president Maria Teresa Fernández of the Vega.
The professor Enrique Bustamante, one of the wise persons summoned in 2004 for the reform of the public, public television in Peels Diplomatique an article in which he complains about a reform that "threatens to degrade the Spanish democratic public space for many years".
And in The Confidential one, José Antonio Zarzalejos, the ex-director of ABC, he complains now about the channel TVE liquidation, "a political fraud, not only for the socialistic electorate, but for the Spanish society in his set, to which it is deprived of an instrument of education, information, worthy programming and common intangible patrimony".
With the two I coincide partly, although they do not stop surprising any affirmations of both me.
With Bustamante I agree in the need for the definition and orientation to a function of public service that is very far to be fulfilled. But neither it was fulfilling it earlier and the one that the wise persons never proposed in his report developed appropriately, in spite of the bad thing that my criticism sat to Bustamante for a clearly insufficient report, like the time and the political will they have demonstrated. Criticism that there were coinciding with other members of the committee of wise persons from whom Bustamante also was differing for his conviction of the need for a strong public radio and television, which should not make a mistake with big.
An idea from which I differ deeply while the public radio and television service is only an enormous instrument of power of the partitocracia.
Perhaps he was trusting more that the politics would continue his recommendations. My skepticism of then unfortunately has been fulfilled.
With Zarzalejos I coincide with the criticism of the voraciousness of the commercials television and of an autonomic telestado that squanders the money of the taxpayers with an enormous absence of responsibility and minor transparence. Televisions as instruments of being able permanently used by the politicians to extend his domain over the society.
But I differ from Zarzalejos of his vision of RTVE as a new standard of Spain. Battering-ram of a reconquest of autonomic competitions that the right and some sectors of the left wave in the last times. An idea founded on the partisan use of a big part of the public funds and of the autonomic administration. An accusation which real bases might be solved by a reform unitarista and antiautonomic or with a federal draft that increases the financial responsibility of the self-governments. And where of course some problems of the coffee might be restated for all fundacional of the autonomic map.
While the public televisions do not slim not to invade any more space of the necessary one for the public service and this target do not be re-defined to be adapted to the possibilities of the digital age, everything else remains.
Another thing is the denunciation of a commercial television that 20 years after his birth he confirms that it is an only one business voracious like few ones, and that it does not fulfill the minimal requests of the service of public television that also they redeem.
But that it was already known. To be surprised at this point is to have lived in the innocence during two decades.
The public television will not be really valuable while it depends neither on the citizenship and not of the political power nor of an enormous unionized bureaucracy that drowns a lot of possibilities.
A public service in the digital age must be more open, responsible, participativo and efficient of what RTVE or any of his autonomic rivals has been till now. But neither it is necessary to be excited. The television is to be able and business, the epitome of the communication of masses. And it does not seem ready to change not even when it colonizes Internet allied with the telecommunications and tries to finish with the neutrality of the network.
The illusion of the Shoemaker's big revolution TV with a new public television and more it offers and plurality disappears. Concentration, fight for the TDT and the television of payment, and a sobrecoste of the TDT paid for all and very far of the promises of engine of the information society proclaimed constantly by the government and his persons in charge.

Chile thanks Argentina

2010-03-09T01:49:00.001-08:00

The Chilean government did yesterday something quite unusual: to thank Argentina for his help for the victims and the ravages of the earthquake.
And it did it publishing an announcement to finished page in the principal newspapers of Buenos Aires.
The whole lesson for those who have thrown some evil comments on account from the help of Chile to Great Britain in the war of the Malvinas, but a recognition also which the relations between two countries have changed very much in the last years. Other one of the advantages of the democracies.
In The Voice of the Interior we analyze the changes forced by the earthquake for the new president, Sebastián Piñera.

Is it a profitable YouTube?

2010-03-08T20:04:00.001-08:00

It is the big question that many rise to themselves to foresee the profitability of the business of the video in Internet.
Peter Kafka offers some information of an analyst of Citigroup, Mark Mahaney, forced by the traditional opaqueness of Google on his accounts, in spite of quoting in bag.
The information is very partial, there does not exist a calculation of the costs of the biggest web of video of the world, in the income it does only one estimation to itself on CPM of MySpace and the CPC of Google is not included, so it is necessary to take them with the due precautions, but if we take them for good they serve to outline some ideas.
YouTube has the business volume of a chain of European commercial television. With a few income for 727 million dollars in 2009 (535 million euros) there would be below the income of a commercial television like Antenna 3, which invoiced 592 millions of the whole of 686 millions of the group. It would be still located further of Telecinco, leader in profitability in Spain, with a few income of 656 millions.
MySpace would be enough for below, with a few advertizing income of 405 millions, although the costs are considered quite lower than those of YouTube.
The profitability of the videos keeps on being very low, although it grows strongly. It is the big problem for the television in Internet, just as for the rest of means. With a CPM for 1,08 dollars (I insist that it is a questionable estimation) the viability of the video in Internet is not very promising. Several analyses with which I coincide enough for the experience with several projects, place in a CPM for 10 dollars (about 7 euros) necessary CPM to support a video business with professional content, the only one that till now has demonstrated to attract to the publicity.
Nevertheless, the growth year by year is strong in case of YouTube (41 %) and also if we analyze the information of the webs of the Spanish televisions.
Telecinco achieved in 2009 an increase of his invoicing for Internet and his thematic channels of TDT of 26 % to reach 14 millions. A volume of only 2 % with regard to the entire income of the chain, but that managed to grow opposite to the fall of 33,8 % of the income of publicity of the television.
With so low income volume, it is no wonder that the fight in the United States is to unify all the chains across the emission for cable or wide band and to increase the business of television of payment.
YouTube loses in profitability opposite to the televisions. If the margin of advertizing invoicing for YouTube is of an average of 50 %, like Indian the analysis of Citigroup, the profitability might be below the chains of television. The reason is the biggest price of the rights of the contents and the enormous cost of connectivity, much more expensive than the emission of conventional television.
Even if some calculations are accepted on the reduction of costs of connectivity of Google, the invoice of his servants and of interconnection is major than that of the conventional television, hard subsidized in his infrastructures also with public money, as it is possible to verify with the financing of the implantation of the TDT.
The margin of development of the commercial chains is between 11,5 % of Antenna 3 and 19 % of Telecinco, although before the crisis it was of the double.
But a conventional television has approximately 15 % of costs of personnel and 30 % of consumption of rights, in addition to other 55 % of operative costs. In YouTube the cost structure is completely different, with major incidence of the rights of contents and the distribution expenses opposite to a few much minor labor costs.
The new platforms get dearer the price of the rights. In his fight to obtain quality contents. The payment of 50 % of the advertizing income to the professional producers gets dearer enough the costs of the rights for the future business.
The same happens in the negotiation of the new platforms like iPad and the pressure on Amazon and Google to get dearer the price of the rights of the books up to 70 % of his invoicing.
In spite of dominating 40 % of the market of videos in Internet in the United States, much over other platforms like Hulu, Microsoft or Fox (where MySpace integrates), the business has not just detached for a company that has kept on exploiting diverse ways of increasing his business and his profitability.
The comparison of the real numbers makes to understand also why the television keeps on being the queen of the business of the contents much over the digital means and dismantles some of the preconceived and slightly informed ideas that circulate in Internet on the real costs of the business of the contents.
Does YouTube cost what Google paid?
The profitability of the company is very far of what many analysts were predicting when the operation was realized.
The Cititgroup calculations indicate an invoicing of little more than four dollars for user if we take into consideration only the North American Net users (less than the half with the world users). They would need eight years of good results to compensate 32 dollars for user that were paid then, already very far of more than 40 euros for viewer that generate the Spanish televisions.
The business of the video in Internet looks like still a background and YouTube already feels the pressure of the social networks, which offer an interesting window for not professional contents and also a value screen for many means, producers and distributors of contents who try to make use of the opportunities of the management of users and of marketing of the social networks.