Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

Channel Nine learned two small things and one big thing last week. The smalls: Gordon Ramsay was a flash in the pan (the audience for his latest Kitchen Nightmares was down half a million on his pre-Olympic figures, apparently because Nine had overstuffed the viewers, and in the process, stuffed itself); and the success of Seven’s City Homicide cannot be generalised into a fad for Australian cop shows (Nine’s The Strip was down 200,000 from its debut).

The big: Nine will not be making a comeback this year, because Seven will have the largest audience share when the ratings race ends in November. Nine’s audience may be up a bit, but it will not be The One.

Read the rest of this entry »

Former radio announcer and freelance journalist Carlee Potter has launched an innovative new social media magazine for Australian businesswomen. SNOBS is an online magazine designed for businesswomen and providing relevant information, news and events. SNOBS embraces social media philosophies of online community, open feedback and citizen journalism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Newcastle TV ratings week 36, 2008

NBN held an 8 point lead over Prime last week, with SC TEN another 4 points further back. While NBN is still dominant post-Olympics, it is worth noting that Prime’s new programs have definitely performed well. Packed to the Rafters, City Homicide, Criminal Minds and Find My Family have all jumped into the weekly Top 10.

Read the rest of this entry »

National TV ratings. Source: David Dale, Sun Herald blogs

Last Monday, Channel Ten launched a daily program called Taken Out, which is also about relationships, and drew 851,000 viewers. By Friday TO had sunk to 672,000 viewers. Did somebody say they’d seen Yasmin’s ghost in Ten’s corridors? Will the new description for a rapidly failing show be "It was Taken Out and …"?

Yasmin also made a fleeting visit to the ABC on Wednesday, when its new comedy Very Small Business did exactly what its title said — 708,000 viewers in the 9.30 timeslot that previously enjoyed 1.1 million for the opening episodes of The Hollowmen (now drawing 919,000 at 9pm).

Read the rest of this entry »

Several recent stories in AdAge in America point to how the tighter economy and increasing effectiveness of online marketing is resulting in a major shift in the allocation of marketing budgets.

Kellogg Says ROI on Digital Trounces TV by ‘Factor of 2‘. Food Giant Plans to Cut Commercial Filming up to 20% in the Next Year. After taking a long look at where it’s getting the best return on its marketing investment, Kellogg Co. has decided to move more money online and spend less on TV.

CMOs Up Digital, Cut Traditional. Survey: Marketers’ Need to Target Better Benefits Budgets for Interactive. The first quarterly Epsilon CMO Survey reveals that nearly two-thirds of chief marketing officers said their interactive/digital marketing budgets have increased in the past year, while 60% have seen their traditional advertising budgets go south.

That digital chatter is starting to get awfully loud folks. Is your company paying attention?

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald contains a remarkable story by respected journalist Paul Sheehan highlighting the battle traditional media faces to remain relevant in the Internet age.

Titled Floundering in a sea of change and using the Sarah Palin (US Republican Vice Presidential hopeful) story as an example, Sheehan notes how he immediately referred to YouTube for news on the nominee rather than traditional media sources. He points out that by the time he started researching Palin, 6 hours after the announcement, the Internet was in it’s fourth phase of the news cycle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Web design in Newcastle seems to be stuck in the Web 1.0 era. A quick look around the sites produced by leading Newcastle web designers reveals fairly standard formats that deliver the old-fashioned "brochure-style" efforts we were all discovering a decade ago.

Its like Web 2.0 never made it up the F3 to Newcastle.

This is a big concern and means that many businesses in Newcastle and the Hunter Valley are missing out on the benefits of modern web strategy and social media concepts. Some of Newcastle’s agencies are designing extremely attractive Flash websites that look great and do almost nothing for the businesses they serve.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the traditional versus new media debate rages on, I have just witnessed the amazing speed and power of social media.

Its a rainy, windy Saturday here and I have been cruising around Twitter and Facebook following various discussions online when an earthquake hit northern California.

Loic le Meur was the first to comment when his house started shaking. Within seconds the Twitter network was alive with quake messages, including Robert Scoble who joined in the conversation.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s selection of current articles that should be of interest to traditional, digital and social media marketers in Australia:

Fairfax fight for headline rights: FAIRFAX is claiming that the The Australian Financial Review’s headlines and bylines are protected by copyright.

Ten years on and Google is the king: A DECADE ago it barely existed, now it is a verb, a "frenemy" to the media and advertising agencies. It is even down your street photographing your house. It is Google, the handy internet search tool that has evolved into the most dominant media player on the planet.

Google’s Chrome Shines in Blogosphere: Data-Blocking Changes to Microsoft’s IE May Have Fueled Search Giant’s Effort to Launch Its Own Browser.

SBS seeks $70m for digital expansion: SBS will ask the Federal Government for a 37 per cent increase in funding, with the extra $70 million a year to go towards a network offering four digital television stations, another 100 hours of original Australian programs, and nine new digital radio channels.

Enjoy.

Google’s Chrome browser has exploded onto the internet today with thousands of people downloading the new browser and posting their thoughts about it.

Last night I posted on Sticky Advertising an early insight into how Google Chrome will place an even greater importance upon search engine optimisation. In just 10 hours the website was bombarded with the most hits it has ever received.

Is Google Chrome a hot topic or what?

Read the rest of this entry »