The Media Weekly: KING of the whole roundups ting ?

Welcome to the hottest rundown in media town, as we take a look at some of the biggest trending stories of the week… There’s news of a special appearance due to be made by the King of Spain at tomorrow’s World News Media Congress, while Netflix looks to diversification to boost growth. But first, let battle commence… 

POV: You’ve held an unchallenged monopoly on search for 20yrs, and someone’s just erected a new hotel on Old Kent Road

On Friday, we reported that da yoof are increasingly using TikTok not only for entertainment and communication, but for search too

Back in July, Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan – who runs the company’s Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce and Payment product divisions, spoke at the 2022 Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference. 

Luckily, TechCrunch were on-hand to report on the event, in which the exec told the audience that: “In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram.”

While a more competitive search marketplace is an alluring concept, the trend also brings with it a worrying side-effect. A recent NewsGuard investigation found that almost 1 in 5 searches on prominent news topics on TikTok result in misinformation, including for topics like Covid vaccines, the war in Ukraine, and school shootings. ‘TikTok users are consistently fed false and misleading claims,’ the study concludes. 

Arise… World News Day! 

In an altogether more cordial story this week, WAN-IFRA have announced that the King of Spain, King Felipe VI, is to attend the World News Media Congress this week. He will deliver a speech during the Golden Pen of Freedom 2022 ceremony – an accolade that represents WAN-IFRA’s highest honour, and is awarded to an individual, group, or institution in recognition of an outstanding action in writing or in the cause of press freedom.

The Congress will also mark World News Day, a celebration of the industry that highlights the critical message that journalism matters and is worth supporting, promoting and defending. The occasion will also be the focus of a 90-minute live-streamed in-person event from The World News Media Congress itself, with speakers from around the global industry

From Blackfish to Finland, Netflix sets its sites on diversification

Meanwhile, Netflix has announced that it is launching its own internal games studio, which will be headquartered from Helsinki, Finland. In a statement published on the NETFLIX DOT COM yesterday, Amir Rahimi – VP of Game Studios, said: 

“This is another step in our vision to build a world-class games studio that will bring a variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games — with no ads and no in-app purchases — to our hundreds of millions of members around the world.” 

“Why Helsinki? It is home to some of the best game talent in the world. This will be a games studio that we build from scratch, and our second games studio in Helsinki alongside Next Games, which became part of Netflix earlier this year. Along with Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment, these four studios, each with different strengths and focus areas, will develop games that will suit the diverse tastes of our members.”

Latest readership figures from New Zealand

We recently looked at a YouGov study showing that UK and US magazine readers prefer print. Well now, we can also confirm that they’re still popular in New Zealand too, as Australian market research firm Roy Morgan publishes its latest study into New Zealand readership habits, for both newspapers and magazines. It shows that 2.8m New Zealanders read newspapers, and almost 1.7m read magazines, in the 12 month period up to June 2022. 

The results come from the Roy Morgan New Zealand Single Source survey of 6,474 New Zealanders aged 14+, which also breaks down the Top 10 newspapers and magazines by print circulation in the country.  

“Despite challenges over the past two years the audiences for New Zealand’s magazines are holding steady and in the year to June 2022 nearly 1.7 million New Zealanders (40.3% of the population aged 14+) read magazines, whether in print or online either via the web or an app,” said Michele Levine, CEO for Roy Morgan.

“There have been many magazines to grow both their cross-platform audiences during 2021-22 led by four of the most widely read magazines in the country: Dish, NZ House & Garden, Mindfood and Habitat. Other magazines to perform well with increased cross-platform audiences included NZ Gardener, Fish & Game NZ, Nadia, New Idea, Healthy Food Guide and Time.”

Is streaming silencing the sound of music? 

Alexis Petridis, the Guardian’s Head Rock and Pop Critic, has this week penned a fascinating article asking if streaming has made it harder to discover new music? This is a subject close to my own heart, as anecdotally I’d say it 100% has, and for me represents a broader trend towards media fragmentation… as opposed to integration. 

“It’s a state of affairs that opens questions about the way we discover and consume music now,” writes Petridis, “to which the sudden success of Running Up That Hill provided at least a partial answer. In 2022, it seems, the most effective way of promoting music is to get it placed on a TV show, film or advertisement.”

And finally…

If you like events the way WAN-IFRA likes its headquarters – in Germany – then we’ve got not one, not two, but THREE back-to-back corkers taking place in Berlin next month (WAN-IF HQ is in Frankfurt btw, probably should flag that…) 

Beginning with the Data & Di5ruption Study Tour on Tuesday 18th October, and moving onto the all-new Media Makers Meet (Mx3) event at Fabrik 23, there’ll also be a FIPP Insider at the end of the week. The latter is FREE and OPEN TO ALL, and FIPP members can also benefit from exclusive combined and group booking discounts on Tour and Mx3… further details on that front here.

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