THE SNP’s strategic director of communications, Kevin Pringle, is the first guest in a series of podcast interviews centred around the upcoming referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future – being produced by an Edinburgh-based comms agency.
Says Message Matters, it is seeking “to offer unrivalled weekly insights from the key movers and shakers of this Summer’s ‘indyref’ campaign in a series of podcasts which will prove essential listening for those seeking the inside track on Scotland’s constitutional debate”.
Find out more, here.
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OUT today: the first of five ‘Summer Specials’, from the My Weekly women’s magazine.
Say publishers, Dundee-based DC Thomson (here), there will be a “holiday focus” to the publications, including “Five Minute Fixes, which provides readers with advice on issues including exercise and gardening”.
The last My Weekly Summer Special was produced two years ago.
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BEGINS the website, radiotoday.co.uk: “Manchester-based LGB&T radio station, Gaydio, is to broadcast on DAB in Scotland for the first time this Summer, via a pop-up DAB channel.
“The station will broadcast across Central Scotland (including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Paisley and Stirling) from 14th July to 31st August. The station will broadcast throughout the Pride Glasgow festival, taking place on 19th July, and the Commonwealth Games.”
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AN events co-ordinator is being sought by The BIG Partnership, as advertised here on the allmediascotland.com media jobs board and repeated on twitter.com/allmediajobs.
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ACCESSING news on the web and mobile apps is now as popular as reading a newspaper, according new research from broadcasting and comms regulator, Ofcom.
Says the watchdog, some 41 per cent of people say they now access news on websites and apps, up significantly from 32 per cent last year.
Four in ten people (40 per cent) say that they read newspapers to follow the news, which is unchanged year-on-year, according to Ofcom’s News Consumption in the UK report.
Read more here. And here, in an Ofcom media release.
And also next week, in the allmediascotland.com The Media in Figures feature.
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AND in the same, Ofcom, report, it says here (on page ten): “People in Scotland are less likely to rate a BBC source as their most important news source than the UK as a whole (46 per cent versus 52 per cent UK average).
“Over half of adults in Scotland say they use BBC One for news (55 per cent), followed by STV (37 per cent) and then the BBC website or app (24 per cent). There has been no change in the use of BBC One or STV for news, but use of the BBC website or app has increased since 2013 (14 per cent).
“TV is considered relatively more important for news among its users in Scotland than among those in England and Wales; the mean importance for television was 7.5 in Scotland, compared to 6.8 in England and 6.9 in Wales.”
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BEGINS The Scotsman: “The No campaign last night said it was willing to enter talks to resolve a row over STV’s plans to host a debate between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond.
“A statement from Better Together said it was willing to discuss the event with STV, provided the television company was prepared to negotiate with both sides of the debate.”
And The Herald’s coverage of the story opens: “Alex Salmond and former chancellor Alistair Darling could take part in two head-to-head television debates on Scottish independence in the space of a week, it has emerged.
“A spokesman for the First Minister said they would give ‘due consideration’ to an invitation from the BBC to take part in a TV clash with the Better Together leader on August 12.”
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BEGAN the website, MediaWeek, yesterday: “The Sun’s former editor, Rebekah Brooks, may have been cleared [on Tuesday] of all charges in the phone-hacking trial, but current editor [Scot] David Dinsmore admits the challenges for the company are far from over.
“Speaking to MediaWeek as the eight-month Old Bailey trail was drawing to a close (but before a verdict had been reach), Dinsmore said the reverberations of the hacking scandal were only set to grow.”
Dinsmore is quoted, as saying: “We still have masses of challenges ahead of us. We have 15 staff awaiting trail, there are still huge issues for us to deal with in the future.”
On Tuesday, former editor of the now defunct News of the World newspaper, Andy Coulson, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to hack phones.
MediaWeek also notes: “In Scotland, Coulson and two other News of the World journalists face trials on charges of perjury, phone hacking and breach of data protection laws. They have also denied the charges.”
The Guardian notes the same, here.
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STARTS David Maddox, in The Scotsman: “The former director general of the BBC, Lord Birt, has warned that a Scottish Broadcast Service in an independent Scotland will have limited resources and be forced to pay the market rate for popular TV shows from the rest of the UK.
“Lord Birt has also warned that any Scots who want to continue to watch the BBC would have to pay a subscription fee because the corporation has a duty to its licence payers.”
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