Watch this Space Issue 39!!

It's time for more marvellous media updates! Enlightenment follows.

This is progress

September 16th saw the launch of 45 new websites in Northcliffe's "This Is" network, increasing the publisher's digital offering to 151 sites as it overtook for the first time the number of regional newspapers the publisher prints. A great deal of these new sites are hyper-local offerings, providing news updates at the local level in areas already covered by Northcliffe's newspapers and by its larger, regional websites. Burghers of Beeston, habitants of Hucknall, citizens of Sherwood and, um… people who live in Long Eaton, for example, can now get news of their local area from their own suburb's individual This Is site, and then catch up on wider Nottingham news from the larger ThisIsNottingham site: the digital arm of the Nottingham Evening Post.

Captain Kickback says: "Digital media are one area that regional publishers still seem keen to invest in: relatively low production and overhead costs and the sharing of newsrooms and journalists between print and online publishing mean that the smallest of areas, whose potential revenues might never support their own printed newspaper, can now have their own local web publication."

This is Troubling

While workers at Trinity Mirror's midland branch have cancelled at the last minute a planned two-day strike, ITV has announced that it will shortly be making 1,000 journalists redundant. Workers at Trinity Mirror's Midland Weekly Media, Coventry and Birmingham offices had planned a walk out on October 7th and 8th, but plans for industrial action were shelved in return for their employers' agreement that there will be no mandatory redundancies in the near future. Meanwhile, following de-restriction of the amount of public service broadcasting that ITV is required to provide, and in light of falling advertising revenues, the broadcaster has announced plans to save money by reducing the amount of local news it broadcasts, and will accordingly be laying off journalists all over the place.

Mobile Mayhem Afoot

There have been advances aplenty in the mobile advertising arena recently: I hardly know where to begin! News in brief:

- Google has launched its own mobile phone, a rival to the Iphone.
- Nokia has unveiled a mobile television channel available online to users of Nokia handsets, capable of showing 96-second programs (or "Mobisodes") and giving access to the BBC's catch up service, iPlayer.
- The five largest UK mobile phone operators have banded together to work with the Internet Advertising Bureau to develop and publish research into mobile advertising and form a steering group to develop this nascent sector's massive advertising potential
- Google are busy preparing to launch a UK version of their Google Maps for Mobile with Streetview, which is already available in the USA. This fantastic bit of gadgetry will doubtless prove extremely useful to the property industry among many others. Visit YouTube to see how it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IXC5A1ZoV4

Captain Kickback says: "the ways of accessing consumers through their mobile phone handsets are manifold and of varying worth. Even though the medium is still in its infancy, there's potential here for the latest technologies to be used creatively to good effect in both response-driven and awareness campaigns."

Independent Goes Colour

Having moved to new print presses in Watford, Oldham, Glasgow and Belfast, the Independent has reshuffled its supplements (including the moving of property from its own supplement to an in-paper section), and is now printed in full colour throughout. Other changes included the replacement of the old "Extra" section with the new "Independent Life" supplement.

Captain Kickback says: "For such a trendy young newspaper The Independent has always had a hefty preponderance of stuffy old mono pages. No More!"

Five News

Following The Independent into the barbers this month, terrestrial TV channel Five has also announced a bit of a re-design, the first for the brand since it dropped the "Channel" from its moniker and replaced the "5" with the more grown up "Five" back in 2002. Also unveiled was a new strap-line, "We Are Five", which must have taken a marketing agency somewhere a good couple of minutes to think up: presumably they were still puzzling away at it by the time the office junior got back from the old rope shop.

That's your lot for another month. Reply to this email or contact your Space and Time Team if you'd like more information on any of the stories covered this month.

See You Next Time!!

Captain Kickback