The latest ABC figures reveal that, for the period October 1996 – March 1997, The News of the World was the highest selling newspaper, selling 4,537,641 copies. In the daily market, The Sun remains the most popular title selling 3,962,745 copies. Nevertheless, both these titles saw their circulations fall during this time by between 2… Continue reading National Newspaper March ABCs – Summary
Boots is the first retailer to trial an interactive home shopping service. The experiment begins in the Kingston Upon Hull area on 16 April.The system carrying the service operates through the customer’s television and telephone wire. TV’s are fitted with a set-top box and viewers are given a special remote control unit to gain access… Continue reading Boots Opens Virtual Store
Channel 5’s first full week of ratings has now been made public and Elstein and his crew have nothing to celebrate.Mrs Doubtfire is its biggest ratings winner to date, attracting 2,849,000 consolidated viewers. Indeed, the evening film is proving to be the channel’s most popular slot; My Step Mother Is An Alien recorded 1,694,000 viewers… Continue reading Channel 5 Ratings Round-Up
The Swedish minister for social affairs, Margot Wallstroem, has promised to oppose an important preliminary ruling of the European Court of Justice which threatened the country’s state monopoly over the retail sales of alcoholic beverages. “No matter what the [ultimate] verdict of the European Court of Justice (which is expected in the next couple of… Continue reading SWE: Promise to oppose the ECJ
Jessica Larive MEP, the European Parliament Rapporteur on the Green Paper on Commercial Communication, has completed her report. It judges that the “internal market for commercial communications is not presently functioning in a satisfactory manner, as 99 per cent of those consulted providing commercial communication services identified potential trade barriers linked to disparity in national… Continue reading EU: Larive Report Finalised
The Distilled Spirits Council of the US (DISCUS) has sent a letter to President Bill Clinton, asking him to bring together the broadcasting and alcoholic beverage industries, in order to develop and agree a common code of practice for alcohol advertising. The move comes in the context of Clinton’s recent pressure on spirits’ producers to… Continue reading US: Clinton Urged To Take Action
Speaking at the MRG conference on Friday, Peter Bowman, media research director at WCRS, called for a change to the National Readership Survey. He said that the survey was not as robust as the research for the TV industry. BARB, he argued, provides a meaningful currency while NRS seems only to be used for things… Continue reading Changes Urged For NRS
The European Commission hosted a conference on 7/9 April in Bonn, part of a project launched by the G7 Ministerial Conference on the Global Information Society in February 1995 in Brussels. The Bonn conference was held to discuss the development of a global business information network and electronic commerce for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).… Continue reading EU: SME Conference
David Brennan, vice president of research at Flextech, spoke about digital TV and said that there was a general feeling of “so what?” among the public and the industry. Despite this, together with a general fear of new technology, he predicted that there would be a take-up of 5 million households by 2003.Brennan also predicted… Continue reading MRG Conference Report – Second Day
On 16 April the Conciliation Committee achieved a compromise on the amendments proposed by the European Parliament in its second reading of the Television Without Frontiers (TWF) Directive (89/552). The most significant referred to two key topics: the requirement for public broadcasters in the EU to guarantee access to the public to major sports events;… Continue reading EU: Compromise on TWF Directive
