Media upheaval accelerates

Reports today have most Australian newspaper journalists concerned, as News Limited are rumoured to have 400 reporters facing the chop. Fairfax’s board last week actually discussed terminating the Monday to Friday editions of all their print newspapers; although they officially denied it will happen anytime soon.

Facebook is not such a turn on either, according to the Sensis Yellow Social Media report today. They say that in NSW at least, Linkedin is used more for professional networking. In side news, Facebook is reported as having plans to build a mobile phone, having hired engineers and lodged patents.

While the newspapers will continue in print for some years to come, the big media players are focussed on survival, with Fairfax said to have discussed acquisition of the Ten Network.

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News is reported to be changing its employment terms for newspaper staff so that they will now be required to work a 7 day rotating roster and file material into a story bank, for print across Australia and more importantly, for digital media.

Both Fairfax and News have had inefficient work practices – it wasn’t so long ago that the Age and the SMH both had competing teams at Parliament House, and separate foreign correspondents.

Gina Rinehart laid into the chairman of Fairfax yesterday, saying the company has performed badly. She has lifted her stake in the firm to 13%, and The Greens say she wishes to wield the power of media ownership to change political decisions in order to increase her own profits.

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Pay TV at least has been spared the atomic bomb of Optus rewind TV, which threatened to nuke the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend on AFL and NRL coverage. The sporting codes unified to take Optus to court after the fledgling payphone option that allowed viewers to watch matches virtually live was rolled out earlier this year. Optus argued the APP simply ‘recorded’ a show for later replay, despite the lag being just a few seconds.

Meanwhile, CX Network reports record reading on cxmagblog, established May 2^nd and now approaching 6,000 reads – 98% of which come from Australia.