Murdoch, I-Level and… Claudine dominate media in 2010
In terms of commercial media, 2010 was always going to be dominated by one man and one company: Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation.
From the outset we expected paywalls and bundled content offerings (Alesia) to be the order of the day, but no one could have foreseen just where we find ourselves today.Vince Cable, business secretary of Britain’s first coalition Government since 1945, has realised it pays to keep warmongering in check, although there could be some soul-searching at Telegraph Media Group this yule-tide too.
Murdoch’s Project Alesia is gone, along with Ian Clark and a number of other once prominent executives, while debate continues to rage about the success of News International’s paywalls.
WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell has not been alone in doing a U-turn on the viability and likelihood of paywalls in the 21st Century, although The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger continues to talk a great game.
But I’ll keep it brief, (still have presents to wrap), so before I sign off for another year, I thought you might be interested in Media Week’s most read stories of 2010.
Measured in terms of unique users, not page impressions, the top five stories are not the ones I would have necessarily picked, but certainly tell a story of their own. All were accessed by more than 10,000 browsers – in some cases closer to 20,000 – which might give those naked souls at MediaCom food for thought, let alone the fantastic Claudine.
The success of such stories, coupled with Media Week’s biggest awards ceremony for many years, is testament to the strength and resilience of the brand, and the UK’s commercial media community in general.
Things promise to be equally interesting in 2011, with TV product placement in the offing, mobile finally coming of age, and social media platforms becoming fully commercialised.
Yet, for all the young upstarts and disruptive media and technology that is sure to come, I suspect much of the agenda will continue to be centred around the operations of one particular media mogul, who’ll be 80 years-old in March.
Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.
Media Week’s most read in 2010
