Media Week

Ofcom's pronouncement on Friday that the BBC's proposed online video service is potentially anti-competitive provides some rare good news for the local commercial media sector.

It prompted the BBC Trust to reject its video proposals and instruct BBC management to drop its local expansion plans.

As local newspaper lobbying group the Newspaper Society points out, Britain's commercial local media is a £4bn sector that delivers trusted, relevant news and information to more than 40 million people a week across its print, online and broadcast channels.

The sector comprises 1,300 core newspapers, 1,100 websites, 750 magazines, 36 radio stations and two TV stations.

The media regulator's Market Impact Assessment found that the launch of BBC Local Video services would result in a drop in annual revenues at commercial providers of 4% - in other words, it would punch a £160m-sized hole in local ad revenues that are already under incredible pressure.

The Trust has directed that the BBC must improve its existing services, rather than launching a new local content initiative, though this will need monitoring to ensure it doesn't turn into a local online video service through the back door.

Commercial content providers can offer a powerful combination of print, broadcast and digital media to give advertisers access to local markets and deliver great response, and the BBC Local knockback is a victory for concerted lobbying by commercial media and its industry bodies.

It also suggests a note of pragmatism on behalf of the BBC, which has other ventures it wants to push past the Trust, including its Kangaroo online on-demand video joint venture, and has generated other controversies that are taxing the regulator and Government.

On the back of last week's shocking figures that Trinity Mirror and Johnston Press' property ad revenues had almost halved year on year, and that recruitment and automotive revenues were also plummeting, the removal of the threat of extra competition from the publicly funded BBC behemoth is a welcome fillip in tough times.

Local newspaper and radio groups must ensure they don't cease their investment in multimedia channels and miss this rare opportunity that Ofcom has granted them.

If you look at what some of media's movers and shakers were saying in Media Week's review of the year at the end of 2007, one of the most exciting developments in 2008 was meant to be the Kangaroo online, on-demand TV initiative.

Kangaroo is a joint venture between ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide. It was - or is - meant to do for online TV services what Freeview did for mainstream TV channels: aggregate them and make them more accessible to the public.

It would enable the UK's mainstream broadcasters to get in a pre-emptive strike against potential competitors in the market such as Hulu, Apple, Microsoft or Sony, offering a ready-made on-demand platform to exploit on the web and, eventually, via the TV set.

There were teething problems, but the hiring of senior BBC executive and digital guru Ashley Highfield to head the project seemed to be a positive sign for the nascent venture. However, he is moving on to lead Microsoft UK after just four months, seemingly disillusioned by the political difficulties in bringing three competitive broadcasters together to deliver Kangaroo. The project team has also become immensely frustrated by the time regulators are taking to approve the concept.

There is confusion about how it will work alongside the iPlayer and how Kangaroo will differ from that. But the player has been built, the money invested, the technology is there and there is a will for it to succeed.

Tests are in the pipeline, but Kangaroo won't now appear until at least February, when the Competition Commission is due to deliver its full response to the issue of whether the initiative is anti-competitive.

In last year's review of the year, top Procter & Gamble marketer Roisin Donnelly spoke of being "really excited at media owners collaborating together to provide great content for the consumer and an exciting new platform for advertisers".

Kangaroo is still a compelling proposition, but other initiatives such as FremantleMedia and YouTube's joint venture are already in the offing. In the current climate, Kangaroo is too important to mess up and the media owners involved would be advised to shelve their short-term individual agendas for the greater long-term good.

It's been a frantic period for media agency reviews, pitches and decisions - and there is no sign of this trend slowing as the economic downturn continues to kick in.

Last week, Media Week broke the story of OMD's annexe of the enormous consolidated £650m pan-European Renault-Nissan review; Santander is reviewing its £32m UK planning and buying deal with Carat; Mediaedge:cia has finally won the £14m pan-European MBNA account from BLM Quantum; Vizeum has taken Coca-Cola Enterprises' Appletiser and Capri-Sun from MEC to add to its existing Coca-Cola GB work, as well as winning Carnival Group Cruises from Starcom; Boots has moved from MediaCom to OMD; Mindshare has won Bayer from PHD; eBay is reviewing, so is Vodafone, with incumbent OMD going head to head with Carat again for this £57m UK account, as it did with Renault-Nissan.

Renault-Nissan was a stunning win for OMD, adding £400m in Nissan billings to its existing Renault account, though given the outlook for automotive brands the figure will not end up this high in 2009. Either way, a number of media owners don't relish OMD retaining yet another high-profile account in Vodafone, as they feel it could consolidate too much buying power in their hands - but OMD seems confident of success.

So the agency/client merry-go-round continues and the informed view is that it will continue to spin as clients use the economic downturn to squeeze extra value out of their agencies. Some of the above are pan-European, but many are UK-only and there is no doubt accounts are pitched more regularly in the UK than the rest of the world. The two to three-year statutory review has become the norm, but with the pitch process stretching anything from three to 12 months, that doesn't leave much time to bed in new business or consolidate existing accounts.

The upshot is agencies spend half their time chasing their tails, desperately trying to retain existing business or aggressively pursuing new accounts. The energy and resource required is immense and deflects agencies' attention from providing excellent service to their clients.

One can't help feeling it would be beneficial for all concerned if clients gave their agencies a longer period of grace before they instigate reviews.

And so to another set of industry gongs, this time the IPA Effectiveness Awards that were handed out at the Hurlingham Club in south-west London last night.

Regular readers will already know of my fondness for our own Media Week Awards, which were presented last week (don’t worry, I’m not going to bang on about them any more), but the IPA awards are a very different animal.

They are rightly regarded as one of the more rigorous sets of awards, with the judging process and entry requirements really stretching entrants and testing their powers of writing, persuasion and presentation. I won’t dwell too much on the winners, suffice to say that creative agencies BBH, RKCR/Y&R and Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy all did exceptionally well.

On the media side, UKTV’s Dave followed up its Media Brand of the Year at the Media Week Awards with a Gold IPA Effectiveness award. Mindshare won a Silver for its work on Dove. MediaCom also won Silver, for Lucozade Sport. Mediaedge:cia was involved in the Bronze award for Cabwise. But that was pretty much it from the media point of view.

Talking to some of the judges at the event, it seemed many of the media entries suffered from poor presentation. There was some good media work entered, but the standard of writing and paper submitted simply weren’t up to scratch. Apparently, some of the successful media awards may have done even better if they had been presented more effectively. Whether this is due to lack of time, lack of expertise or lack of will is a moot point.

Media leads creative in many areas of marketing communications, but this is one area where the creative shops are definitely ahead of the game. The IPA Effectiveness Awards represent the gold standard of awards and until media agencies crack the presentation conundrum they will struggle to compete with their creative counterparts at that much-discussed "top table".

ITV’s Formula 1 motor racing coverage slithered to an end yesterday in much the same way as the incredible final race that ultimately resulted in Britain’s Lewis Hamilton becoming the youngest-ever world champion.

Towards the end of the broadcast, shortly after Hamilton had overtaken Timo Glock on the second-last corner of the race to pip Brazilian Felipe Massa to the title, the commentators started uttering their valedictory that the "other lot" who are taking over the coverage next season – the BBC – would find it difficult to equal ITV’s coverage over the last dozen years and, especially, would struggle to compete with the drama that unfolded during yesterday’s race.

That may well be true but, actually, yesterday highlighted as many of the frailties of ITV’s coverage as it did strengths. For a few moments at 7.00pm, just as the race had finished and viewers were gagging for confirmation of what had happened on the final, pivotal lap and to hear from the new champion, I actually thought ITV was going to shell out to its new drama series Britannia High instead of staying with the action. Obviously the producers quickly saw sense and made a rapid about-turn, and viewers got an extra 15 priceless minutes.

ITV’s coverage has won several industry awards, but has also been beset with problems such as managing to fit in the ad breaks without missing crucial passages of the race. In 2005, at the San Marino Grand Prix, the network infuriated viewers by shelling out to an ad break three laps from the end while two drivers were battling it out for victory. An early ad break in the crucial initial stages of yesterday’s race also seemed particularly badly timed.

The antisocial starting hours of some of the races from far-flung corners of the world didn’t exactly suit viewers and advertisers. And there was also a feeling that the coverage was preaching to a converted, very loyal audience of upmarket men, but one that remained much the same throughout and didn’t put on extra viewers - apart from the thrilling Lewis Hamilton effect of yesterday.

The irony is that the next few years of Formula 1 look set to be some of the most exciting for a long time, with Hamilton opposed by a number of bright, new stars. But ITV will now concentrate its resources on football and hand the F1 reins back to the BBC.