Monthly Archives: January 2009

What is public service broadcasting?

Posted on by
1

Public Service BroadcastingAs a pro­fessor with a back­ground in pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­ing (PSB), I’m often asked — What exactly is pub­lic ser­vice broadcasting?

Take a pop­u­lar pro­gramme like Neigh­bours. From 1986 to 2008 it appeared on the BBC and was an import­ant piece of PSB, pop­u­lar with view­ers, and val­ued for its air­ing of gritty but uni­ver­sal human themes played out in an Anti­podean setting.

Alas, in Feb­ru­ary of last year it moved to Five, and became a piece of com­mer­cial, schedule-filling tat that appealed to the low­est com­mon denom­in­ator. Con­tinue read­ing →

What’s Happening to Our News

Posted on by
1

I was one of the people inter­viewed for Andrew Cur­rah’s What’s Hap­pen­ing to Our News, which is out today. Don’t let that put you off. Andrew’s an eco­nomic geo­grapher — dif­fer­ent, I guess, from a geo­graphic eco­nom­ist — maybe it’s an eco­nom­ist who knows where he is. Con­tinue read­ing →

Steve Jobs, Apple and Fair Disclosure

Posted on by
Reply

AppleHow much inform­a­tion should com­pan­ies be expec­ted to make pub­lic on issues like — say — their CEO’s health? Indi­vidual exchanges have their own rules about disclosure.

For example, the NASDAQ says its com­pan­ies: “shall make prompt dis­clos­ure to the pub­lic through any Reg­u­la­tion FD com­pli­ant method (or com­bin­a­tion of meth­ods) of dis­clos­ure of any mater­ial inform­a­tion that would reas­on­ably be expec­ted to affect the value of its secur­it­ies or influ­ence investors’ decisions.” Con­tinue read­ing →

Interpreting the Evening Standard acquisition

Posted on by
2

Two great con­spir­at­orial minds ana­lyse the Lebedev pur­chase of the Even­ing Stand­ard, or Stand­ard. First Peter Pre­ston:

It mat­ters hugely to Lebedev whether he has to com­pete against the Lite and Murdoch’s thel­on­don­pa­per. (The signs are that he will.) It mat­ters hugely to Asso­ci­ated to know whether a Lebedev Stand­ard would turn itself into a morn­ing paper, com­pet­ing dir­ectly with the Mail and Metro. Con­tinue read­ing →