Johnston Press, the regional newspaper group, has acquired eight Scottish newspapers from rival company Archant.Johnston paid £11.2 million for three paid-for papers in the north-east of Scotland and five free papers in central Scotland.In the year ended 31 December 2006 the business, which will become part of Johnston’s Scottish division, generated revenues of £6.95 million.Tim… Continue reading Johnston Press Buys Scottish Titles From Archant

Andy Duncan, Channel 4 chief executive, has said that there have only been two incidents of possible racial abuse on Celebrity Big Brother, and that he has no intention of taking the show off air.Duncan said: “The latest series of Celebrity Big Brother has strayed into particularly controversial territory – the issue of racism and… Continue reading Duncan Defends Big Brother

Celebrity Big Brother is continuing to make headlines across the globe, and the controversy over the current series shows no sign of abating, with the audience for tonight’s eviction banned and Endemol being inundated with calls from potential sponsors.Jade Goody is up against Shilpa Shetty in tonight’s eviction programme, with Goody, who has been at… Continue reading Audience Banned From Big Brother Eviction

News Magazines is believed to have shelved plans to publish a new women’s weekly, which was being developed under the name Project Dannii.News magazines, the magazine publishing division of News International, had suffered a series of delays in launching the title, which was first meant to hit the market last September.Karl Marsden, News Magazine’s commercial… Continue reading News Magazines Shelves Project Danni

Web traffic to the blog pages of the top 10 online newspapers in the US grew 210% year over year in December, according to new research from Nielsen//NetRatings. The overall unique audience growth to these online newspapers was 9% year over year. Unique visitors to blog pages accounted for 13% of their December 2006 internet… Continue reading Online Traffic To US Newspaper Blog Pages Increases

There were over 4 billion text messages sent in the UK during December 2006, according to figures announced today by the Mobile Data Association (MDA). It is the first time that text messages have broken through the 4 billion mark, and this huge total takes the overall figure for 2006 to 41.8 billion, beating the… Continue reading Record 4 Billion Texts Sent In December

A new report from eMarketer estimates that there will be 136.1 million Europeans online in the five largest European Union countries and advertisers will spend $7.5 billion to reach all Western Europeans, up 25% from $6.0 billion last year. The Europe Online Advertising report analyzes the many, diverse factors driving internet advertising growth throughout the… Continue reading Western European Online Advertising To Reach $7.5 Billion

Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell is expected to announce today that the BBC will be set a borrowing limit of between £220 million and £230 million, a figure far less than the £400 million the BBC had sought. The licence fee is expected to rise by 3% over each of the next two years, following which… Continue reading BBC Borrowing Limit To Be £230 Million

Shares in Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times have reached a five year high, amid speculation that the FT could be sold off or that there could be a US buyout of the entire group. Shares had reached 835.5p as of 9am today, a five year high following an increase of 24.5p yesterday. The Financial… Continue reading Pearson Could Sell FT

The BBC licence fee is expected to rise by 3% over each of the next two years, seeing the current price rise from £131.50 currently to a maximum of £151 by 2012.Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell is also expected to announce today that a borrowing limit of between £220 million and £230 million will be set,… Continue reading BBC Licence Fee To Rise 3%