AN online TV news service – with a deliberately Scots perspective – is launching in Spring with a 30-minute daily bulletin, with the hope of raising enough money to become a 24-hour rolling news outfit.
Scottish News has been set up following a crowdfunding appeal. And a launch video released today – for a Scottish Evening News – explains the thinking behind the project.
The Scottish News team includes former head of digital at the Yes (to Scottish independence) campaign, Stewart Kirkpatrick (whose CV includes being a founder of caledonianmercury.com). Two other key members are Jack Foster, a filmmaker, and writer, James Devoy.
The launch is picked up by, among others, BuzzFeed News (here), which says: “Four pro-independence Scots are attempting to crowdfund millions of pounds to set up a 24-hour rolling Scottish news channel.”
It quotes, Carolyn Scott, business manager of Scottish News, as saying: “There’s a gap in the market for global news from Scotland. We don’t get Scottish people talking about the Ebola crisis.”
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THE head of BBC Radio Scotland, Jeff Zycinski, is among the speakers at a radio conference concentrating on the UK’s nations and regions.
The conference is taking place in Salford, Manchester, next week.
For more, read here.
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THE Independent on Sunday newspaper has again seen its average sales in Scotland increase, year-on-year – this time rising from an average 5,240 during October last year to an average 5,418 last month.
Figures released on Friday by the newspapers circulation body, ABC, follow those of a month before (and noted here on allmediascotland) that found the paper’s sales in Scotland had risen from an average 5,401 during September last year to an average 5,548 two months ago.
Read more, here – in the allmediascotland feature, The Media in Figures.
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BEGINS the website, radiotoday.co.uk: “There’ll be no Radio Academy Awards or Radio Festival in 2015 following a strategic review at the organisation, which also sees the Academy office closing.
“Instead, a new unannounced event will take place most, likely in London, designed to ‘celebrate and reflect the radio industry in a dynamic and modern way’.”
Read more, here.
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INTERESTED in sport, report it, involved in it? Check out the allmediascotland spin-off service, www.twitter.com/allSportsPR – featuring sports-related media releases posted on the site.
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SAYS a comment piece published by The Guardian: “We live in a visual world… In the most pervasive medium, television – the one that we encounter from cradle to grave, brought directly into our homes – the imbalance between the numbers of men and women on screen remains severe, as the Lords committee on women in news broadcasting has been hearing this week.”
Read more, here.
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AND begins another comment piece on the The Guardian: “There are two prevailing narratives in print-to-digital media right now: the unstoppable [venture capitalist]-fuelled ascent of digital publishers like BuzzFeed and the inevitable decline of ink-stained legacy publishers like the New York Times. Both stories are wrong.”
Read more, here.
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ROY Greenslade, The Guardian’s media commentator, quotes a survey finding about ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ so-called ‘paywalls’, to gain access to newspaper websites: “Most publishers with hard paywalls are reporting retention rates as low as 15-20 per cent. Retention rates for newspapers using metered paywalls average 58.5 per cent, with some reporting as much as 90 per cent reader retention.”
Read more, here.
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