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After much speculation over its future, Attic Futura is set to be bought by the French media group, Hachette Filipacchi for around £40 million. The UK publisher was put up for sale last year by its Australian owners, PMP. However, the German company, H Bauer soon pulled out of the bidding and a proposed £55… Continue reading Attic Futura Set To Go Continental

WPP’s Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide division has acquired 70% of Era Public Relations Company, one of Taiwan’s leading technology-specialist public relations firms, the group announced this morning. Era provides communications services to blue-chip clients including Hewlett Packard, Dell Computer and Oracle and reported revenues of US$1.5 million for the year ended 31 December 2001 and… Continue reading WPP Acquisition Builds Asia-Pacific PR Network

Pace Micro Technology, the set-top box manufacturer, announced today that profits had fallen 70% year on year, reflecting a lack of growth in the digital TV market. Pre-tax profits, before one-off costs, for the year to June totalled £13.1 million, down from £44.3 million for the same period last year. Similarly, sales dropped by a… Continue reading Falling Profits Force Pace To Take Action

Despite expectations of the beginning of a recovery in advertising market conditions in the second half of the year, the outlook still remains decidedly unclear. A US mid-year media conference last month heard key players talk about the bottom of the recession, rather than the beginning of a period of genuinely strong growth. This assessment… Continue reading Insight Analysis: Media Healthcheck – June 2002

Faster internet connections and lowering prices will not be enough to induce the widespread adoption of broadband services in the UK, says a new report from PPAinteractive. In the past month, BT, AOL and Telewest have all introduced new high-speed internet services and according to a recent report from Oftel (see Cheap UK Broadband Internet… Continue reading Broadband Providers Must Look Beyond Price, Says PPAi

The switch-off of the analogue television signal throughout European countries is unlikely to occur before 2015, later than the 2010 target that many governments are hoping to achieve, according to analysts at Lehman Brothers. In a new report on the European digital terrestrial television (DTT) market, the broker says that take-up of the platform will… Continue reading European Analogue TV Switch-Off Unlikely Before 2015

Week on week analysis reveals that the best performance in last week’s media market came from Pearson, which has confirmed that its FT Business titles are to be retained within the organisation (see Pearson Opts To Keep FT Business). Shares rose 4.98% week on week to close at £6.85, an increase of 32˝p on the… Continue reading Sharewatch

Channel 4 chief executive, Mark Thompson, has warned of job cuts at the channel as he laid down a manifesto for leaner, more imaginative organisation.Speaking at an internal meeting earlier today, Thompson told staff that creating a more streamlined, less hierarchical Channel 4 would mean “employing fewer people.” He said: “If we don’t change the… Continue reading Thompson Warns Of Possible Job Cuts At Channel 4

Microsoft has become the official software sponsor of this summer’s Commonwealth Games in a deal worth around £5m.The deal represents Microsoft’s first foray into UK event sponsorship and will see the software giant launch a multi-platform advertising campaign to promote its association with the event. The campaign, which begins this month, will be fronted by… Continue reading Microsoft Secures Commonwealth Games Sponsorship

Media buyers and owners have a good understanding of what electronic media measurement companies do, but further education is required to improve this understanding, according to research carried out by ABC Electronic (ABCe).The research shows that the best known auditors were ABCe (93%), Web Trends (66%) and Nielsen/NetRatings (55%). 98% of media owner respondents correctly… Continue reading Agencies Need Educating Says ABC Electronic