Mon 25 August 2008

Olympics prove a winner for NBC ratings
The 209m viewers for an unprecedented 3,600 hours of coverage on seven NBCU channels in the first 15 days of the Beijing Games put it on track to surpass the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as the most watched event in US television history, Jeff Zucker told the Financial Times.
NBCU had seen a healthy return on its $894m investment in exclusive rights to the Games ...
Source: FT

Web Audience for Games Soars for NBC and Yahoo
The ratings for NBC’s television coverage of the Games were record-breaking this month. But the extent to which the Internet served as a supplement to television was unprecedented, and there were two clear winners: NBC’s own Web site and Yahoo’s Olympics section.
Source: New York Times

BBC accused of distorting market
Speaking at the Edinburgh television festival, Alex Graham, chief executive of the programme-maker Wall to Wall and former head of Pact, the independent producers’ association, said the BBC was in danger of incurring “its own little cultural version of sub-prime lending” because of the unfettered activities of its commercial arm.
As an example, he pointed to the rapid growth of BBC Worldwide ...
Source: FT

Poor earning virtual gaming gold
Nearly 500,000 people in developing nations earn a wage making virtual goods in online games to sell to players, a study has found.
Research by Manchester University shows that the practice, known as gold-farming, is growing rapidly.
The industry, about 80% based in China, employs about 400,000 people who earn £77 per month on average.
Source: BBC Technology

Digital accounts for quarter of WPP revenues
WPP has reported that 25% of its revenues are now derived from direct and digital practices.
The advertising group’s half-year results showed billings up 11.8% on last year at £16.87bn, with revenue up 14.3% to £3.34m and profit up 18.4% to £453.4m.
Source: New Media Age

Lively, Google’s virtual world, has been a flop
Millions of people log into virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life every day, but they require special software and their complexity can be daunting to newcomers. So Google’s launch of Lively, in July, seemed to have great potential. But in the weeks since it opened its virtual doors, Lively has remained surprisingly lifeless, hosting a dwindling number of users and prompting a string of negative reviews.
Source: Economist