ITV is set to substantially cut the carrying value of its Friends Reunited website in a year-end review of past acquisitions.The review, which will be carried out by ITV’s chief operating officer John Cresswell, is thought to be likely to slash Friends Reunited’s value to below the £175 million the broadcaster paid for it in… Continue reading ITV to cut value of Friends Reunited site

Celebrity Big Brother‘s comeback kicked off with over 5.8 million peak viewers on Friday night.Channel 4’s live welcome show, which saw celebrities such as Michelle Heaton, Coolio and Austin Power’s star Verne enter the house, pulled in 5.4 million average viewers and a 22.4% audience share.However, the controversial reality show’s initial ratings success dipped over… Continue reading Celebrity Big Brother kicks off with 5.8 million viewers

News International has raised The Times‘ weekday cover price by 10p to 90p in a bid to counter increased printing costs and the economic downturn.The Times now sits in between its two rival titles, with The Guardian costing 80p and the weekday Independent costing £1.The News International paper, which told readers of the planned price… Continue reading The Times ups its weekday cover price

The new minister for communications, technology and broadcasting is thought to be in the process of recommending the relaxation of local media ownership rules in a bid to help struggling newspaper groups.Lord Carter is expected to approve consolidation in local media markets in his interim Digital Britain report, which is due to be published later… Continue reading Local media ownership rules to be relaxed

The NewsLine team would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. We will be taking a break over the festive season, but will return on January 2 with the latest media news, comment and analysis.Early in the New Year we will bring you round-ups for 2008 from… Continue reading Merry Christmas

The US presidential elections last month triggered a drive in traffic to quality news websites in the US – with Times Online and Independent.co.uk up more than 5% month on month and guardian.co.uk topping 26 million unique users for the first time, according to the latest data from ABCe.In November, Times Online saw a 5.5%… Continue reading US election boosts UK newspaper websites

Global ad spend is expected to continue to decline throughout 2009, according to forecasts from major agency networks over the last month.ZenithOptimedia predicted a 0.2% overall decline in global adspend next year, though it expects Asia Pacific and Central & Eastern Europe to grow but at a slower rate.Developing markets will largely counterbalance the decline… Continue reading Global ad spend to decline in 2009

The Bill‘s special ‘Too Hot to Handle’ episode banked more than 5.3 million viewers at 9pm last night.It held the peak audience for most of the all-important 9pm to 10pm slot with a 21% audience share, only missing out between 9.15pm and 9.30pm when the festive edition of BBC One’s quiz show QI pulled in… Continue reading The Bill banks 5 million viewers

Project Kangaroo has offered to scrap plans to jointly sell catch-up and archive programmes to rival broadcasters in a bid to gain approval from the Competition Commission.In a new submission to the CC, the key players behind the joint broadband TV venture – BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 – argue that by scrapping plans… Continue reading Kangaroo makes changes to win CC approval

FilmOn has released a new video-on-demand service, which is expected to make viewing high definition streams of film and television as easy as downloading a song.New technology that overcomes many of the problems originally encountered by HD film and TV streaming, which is usually due to its large file size, has been established by the… Continue reading FilmOn unveils new HD download service