Media Week

Watching the Andrew Marr show yesterday, a ritual as much a part of Sunday mornings as a double hit of Paracetamol was in former years, I couldn't help noticing, when Marr was going through the papers, how many back pages were dominated by iPhone ads. A quick spot check at the office this morning verified it was at least The Telegraph, Times, Indy and Observer.

Having recently taken delivery, finally, of my own Apple smart phone, it may be I am just more aware, but more likely it is Apple attempting to stamp some authority on a market that is becoming ever more crowded, not least following the World Mobile Congress last week where a multitude of handsets and software was unveiled.

This is not ‘the year of mobile' - this is not going to be the year of anything much. But within days I am already using my iPhone to make purchasing decisions and spending more time Facebooking, Twittering and generally fiddling with it than I am with any other medium.

The novelty may wear off, but if your brand is not currently reaching out to me through the few square inches of screen demanding my unbridled attention, you don't exist.

Oscar night is almost upon us and with it will come the grandest display of opulent product placement the might of Hollywood can muster. And we won't care, in fact we won't be able to get enough of it.

The blanket coverage of the world's biggest stars, plucked and preened for their red carpet appearance, will not be a low key affair. It will be brighter than the sun, with egos visible from space and bling to match.

And the one question each and every starlet will be asked as they glide by equally dolled presenters and omnipresent TV cameras will not have anything to do with the films for which they merit their appearance at the Academy Awards. It will be the cringeworthy, Americanised, not-even-a-proper-question, question, "Who are you wearing?" Shudder.

The leading designers in the fashion world will be rubbing their perfectly manicured hands together as they receive the biggest endorsement the modern age has to offer. The greatest products placed on some the greatest, ahem, places, played out in front of untold millions watching around the world.

Do we get upset at blatant commercialisation of The Oscars? Do we think the stars ‘just threw something together'? No.

The British public would be gutted if it didn't play out like giant fashion ad, knowing full well that scores of designers will have been wooing the A-Listers for months, perhaps years - and likely with more than the offer of a free ‘creation' for the night - just to get them to don a particularly revealing backless feather number.

So why, when TV watchers from Oscar aficionados to film buffs are able to understand that product placement happens within much of the programming they consume, from news - yes news, just wait for the wall-to-wall coverage of ‘that dress' - to sitcoms and movies, and not let it spoil their viewing, are UK broadcasters unable to join in the fun?

Does the Secretary of State think he knows what the British public are prepared to accept better than the producers of the Street or, more to the point, the British public? Does he think producers would do anything to tarnish the valuable reputations of hit shows for the sake of a misplaced pair of Nike trainers?

The global product placement market was reportedly worth $3.36 billion in 2006 and was forecast to grow 30.3% to $4.38 billion in 2007. Even bringing that down to likely UK levels, it's a pot of cash that would do more than a little to help broadcasters struggling to make ends meet.

But tempting as it might be to "contaminate programming", as Andy Burnham put it, there's too much at stake for creatives, producers and advertisers for a show to fall foul of the public for over-egging the product placement pudding. The remote control and multichannel TV make short shrift of anything even remotely annoying on the box.

So, do the industry a favour and let them try to make a bit of cash, and maybe help improve their programming, by throwing a few cans of Coke Frank Gallagher's way. We won't mind. In fact, (sorry brands), we probably won't even notice.

Wired magazine's US editor-in-chief has some forthright, and well-judged, views on life and, more specifically, the changing business landscape in the digital age.

His best-selling book, The Long Tail - which espoused the value to be tapped in the multitude of niches within the market - is soon to be followed by his next foray (Free - an exploration of the ‘radical price point of zero').

Speaking on Friday, at a Conde Nast-organised Wired seminar, Anderson, interviewed by UK Wired editor David Rowan, talked, among other things, about what "free" means for businesses - and in the crudest terms, it seemed to boil down to getting people hooked on a free, possibly inferior version of your product, then charging them for the good stuff. Sound familiar? It's a model much loved by drug dealers on many of our less-salubrious estates.

Explaining in more detail, "free", in this instance, can't mean you give everything away for free. While the nature of the internet is driving the price point to nothing - falling storage, server and bandwidth charges - a purely ad-funded model is still not a good idea in the current market. Companies, said Anderson, are shifting their model to direct payment - they want to be cashflow positive now

What he suggested is that businesses need multiple versions of their products, in order to give away free to the majority, but get about 5-10% of people to pay for the same content or a premium version of it.

In Wired terms, Anderson explained, this means giving the content away online for free, but getting people to buy the magazine. Sounds easy enough, although this week's ABCs will show the last bit is a little trickier in reality.

The "freemium" model - some free content with premium services paid for - is already operated by a few major publishers, The FT being the obvious UK example, and is how Anderson sees the future of content provision being funded. The Wired model, free online content but a paid-for print version, is pretty much what every remaining publisher adheres to. But at the moment, for many, this latter iteration of the "free" model is not working.

Removing the ‘walled garden' and offering total open access, relying solely on ads for revenue has been the rallying cry of the majority of traditional publishers as they charge headlong into the digital age.

The fact they are all are finding it tough to replace the lost print advertising and circulation revenues by generating cash from even huge online audiences makes either of Anderson's suggestions (free online and pay for print, or some free online and some paid for) a little hard to square for everyone in media who's currently struggling.

"Getting someone to pay for something they love is a nice problem to have," said Anderson on Friday. Unfortunately, driving prices higher at any time, let alone in a recession, and let alone from free to paid for, is not an easy task.

Anderson has a well-deserved reputation as a deep, solid thinker and it would be unfair, and a mistake, to prejudge his Free book on the basis of a half hour interview, in which it wasn't even the main topic.

But, it does feel as though free is just how it is. There is no going back for publishers. There is no chance that people will start to pay for something they've enjoyed for free for so long. And there's not much, if anything, in terms of information, that an average consumer is now, or will be in future, willing to pay for.

Which only begs the question, if the ad-funded model doesn't start working, and people aren't prepared to pay for information, how are media businesses ever going to fill the revenue void?

Having written about the good times Sky execs are enjoying in my last post, today's news that they have landed a fifth (of the six) live football TV rights packages in the latest Premier League auction tops off the week quite nicely, thank you very much.

Murdoch's pay-TV powerhouse has paid a princely £1.6bn for the rights, but to secure the driving force behind the company's solid performance this year (and for the last 17 years) it's a price worth paying.

The cost will no doubt grate with the subsequent victims of BSkyB major shareholder News Corp's rigirous cost-cutting, but it's those at rival pay-TV operator Setanta who must now be shifting most uneasily on the bench.

The lost package may only be 23 games, but it amounts to half Setanta's live Premier League output. Yes, it has lower league, Scottish football and some exclusive internationals, and when its full sports offering is taken into consideration, the broadcaster still has a decent roster. But when it comes to football, it's not the Blue Square Premier League that gets punters parting with their cash - just ask any chairman of a Blue Square Premier League club.

How Setanta deals with its loss will be interesting. No doubt it will come out fighting, whether through reduced package deals or a revised business plan that offsets lower subscription revenue against the cost-savings of paying for and producing fewer live matches. Or it may use the cash saved to ramp up its other sports output.

Whatever happens in the long run, today's loss to rival Sky will not have Setanta execs reaching for the Champagne. Meanwhile, Sky is proving that it will not easily be parted from the crown jewels of its Pay-TV offering.

Sky execs will no doubt be whistling their way to work this morning - if it's possible to be cheery when travelling to the Osterley campus (it's not exactly Googleplex) - flushed with the news that not only have they landed the prized Premier League rights for another three years, but Project Kangaroo, the high-profile VoD venture backed by BBC, ITV and Channel 4 has been binned by the Competition Commission.

As far as the football is concerned, thank God. As an early complainer that we suddenly had to pay to watch football on TV, I am now a true convert to the church of Keys, Stelling and Rednapp.

What Sky has done for football coverage in the last decade cannot be over-estimated. See ITV's appalling intro for its FA Cup coverage - strangely reminiscent of When Saturday Comes if only in its misjudged sentiment - for how rival broadcasters can still get it utterly wrong.

And if ITV producers think Robbie Earl, (nice, but hardly compelling), and that Irish bloke who used to do the Holiday programme can anchor the main highlights show with any kind of credibility, they are forever to remain lower league.

As for Kangaroo. It's another pot of cash down the digital drain, but I'm not really sure it makes that much difference. They're not going to put all the old content into a single player so I'll have to click an extra time to switch websites. Is that such a chore?

It may be a marginally less attractive offering for the consumer, but does it diminish the online value of Dad's Army-on-demand, because it no longer sits in the same VoD player as Wife Swap? I would have thought the opposite.

And surely the CC decision doesn't prevent the original backers using the platform, jointly developed - and already showcased to agencies - just individually rather than collectively.

As they were planning on selling their own ad inventory anyway, what the individual broadcasters are losing due to the CC decision is surely marginal. It's a blow, and a missed opportunity, but will hardly spell the end of VoD ambitions for any of the UK's main broadcasters.

And it certainly opens the door for online commercial independents to aggregate video content rather than it being the sole domain of the big three. Watch this space for the rise of numerous operations filling the Kangaroo void.