Media Beat: July 15, 2019

By David Farrell

What Was Said

FTC kisses Zuckerbutt

By my reckoning, Mark Zuckerberg made over two billion dollars on Friday.

The CEO of Facebook, who owns about 25% of the company's common shares, had a nice day at the office as FB stock rose almost 2% on news of the disgraceful actions of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC.)

The FTC reportedly fined Facebook $5 billion for enabling election tampering, undermining public confidence in the integrity of the 2016 US presidential election, lying about it, and doing next to nothing to remedy it.

Five billion is pizza money to Facebook. They spend more than that on hand lotion for lobbyists.

The travesty of this settlement guarantees that no tech company CEO will take consumer privacy or data security seriously. Nothing will change till someone either has to pay personally or go to jail. Paying insignificant fines with corporate money is now an officially established cost of doing business in techland and -- who knows? -- a jolly good way to boost share prices. While FB was paying 5 billion in fines they were coining over 10 billion in market value.

But let's keep our perspective and not forget who is funding the outrageous abuses that Facebook and friends have engendered. It's us and our disgraceful  "adtech" -- the practice of online tracking and surveillance.

If the irresponsible "leaders" at the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) would say to the irresponsible "leaders" at the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) "we don't want you spying on citizens on our behalf anymore," all this dangerous bullshit would end in ten minutes.

Friday was a very good day for Facebook, and a very bad day for the public. – Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian

Toronto start-up LUCID wins at music tech competition in Belgium

LUCID won the 2019 Wallifornia MusicTech pitch competition at Music Festival Les Ardentes on July 4 in Belgium and was named 2019 Wallifornia best start-up.

Wallifornia is a MusicTech hub based in Belgium where startups, music professionals, investors, developers and hackers develop together the future of the music industry. Once a year, to kick-off the Music Festival Les Ardentes Wallifornia gathers 500+ attendees around keynotes, panels, pitch competitions, matchmaking sessions, acceleration program, hackathon, demos, performances and parties. The festival is attended by 100,000 guests and the start-up with the best pitch is awarded.

The Toronto tech company got the opportunity to attend Wallifornia through the Music Den, a startup incubator based in Ryerson University's Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD). The Den offers unique resources, mentorship and community to entrepreneurs. LUCID is one of the first companies to complete the Den's new accelerator stream, in partnership with Universal Music Group, which helps Canadian startups expand their businesses internationally.

The company develops biosensor supported mobile applications to help people looking to improve lower stress, increase focus, and get better sleep with personalized therapeutic music. LUCID uses artificial intelligence to monitor users’ response to music and to deliver a personalized experience. – Media release

OAB announces Hall of Fame recipient

The 2019 Ontario Hall of Fame Award will be presented to Paul Larche during the OAB fall conference, Awards luncheon, November 7th at the Marriott Toronto Airport Hotel.

Larche is President and CEO of Larche Communications Inc. (LCI), a media company and digital branding agency. The company owned and operated successful radio stations in Kitchener/Waterloo, Barrie/Orillia/Midland, Sudbury, and Owen Sound. He has been working in the broadcasting and marketing business for over 40 years.

Originally from Timmins, Ontario, he started his radio career at CKGB and CFTI FM at the age of 15. Within a few years, he moved from announcing to program director, sales representative and eventually station manager. He was transferred to Sudbury in 1986 as GM for CKSO and CIGM FM.

In 1990, Larche was promoted to GM of Telemedia Network Radio (TNR) in Toronto. TNR provided syndicated entertainment and sports programming across Canada, including live play-by-play of the Toronto Blue Jays and Toronto Maple Leafs. During this time, he worked extensively with some of Canada’s top advertisers and advertising agencies.

In 1996, he set out on his own and purchased KICX 104 in Midland. Over the next 15 years, the company expanded to five radio stations in Ontario.

In 2008, Larche sold CIKZ FM (Kitchener) to Rogers Media. In 2018, he sold the remaining radio assets, with a staff of 80 employees, to Bell Media.

In 2014, Larche and his daughter Jessica launched Larche Digital, providing digital and branding services to companies throughout Ontario.

'Turbulent times': Journalists seek international funding for embattled industry

Journalists, press freedom advocates and politicians from more than 100 countries attended the Defend Media Freedom conference in London last week.

According to UNESCO, 99 journalists and media workers were killed last year — a fact that was discussed in several groups aimed at protecting journalists.

But another conversation has been taking place along the sidelines of the Defend Media Freedom conference in the British capital: one about money.

With the traditional business model of newspapers having been decimated in the age of social and online media, there was a call at this global gathering for international funding to help journalists do their work. – Derek Stoffel, CBC News

Postmedia’s $8M in taxpayer subsidies

The floundering corporation released its quarterly results Wednesday. They were bleak, as they have been every quarter since 2010 when Postmedia became Canada’s major newspaper owner.

But the corporation shared good news, at least from its perspective. Postmedia expects to get $8 million to $10 million this year from taxpayers under the federal government’s subsidy program to support “a strong and independent news media.” – Paul Willcocks, The Tyee

CRT releases Communications Monitoring Report 2019

The snapshot provides an overview of the adoption of communications technologies by Canadian households from 2013-2017, and illustrates the trends in household communications expenditure. The data presented here were drawn from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Household Spending and CRTC sources. Additional data on Canada’s communications industry can be found in the Commission’s 2018 Communications Monitoring Report (CMR).

Local ads to hit US148.8B in 2019. Traditional media share drops

Although local media will continue to see rising digital ad revenue, traditional media -- at least in the near term -- will retain a majority share.

BIA Advisory Services says traditional media will have 60% share of the overall local media spend in 2019 -- $89.2 billion -- with digital ad revenue at a 40% share, with $59.5 billion.

Digital media -- which includes direct solicitation, coupons and catalogs -- will maintain the largest piece of local advertising, with a 25% share at $37.2 billion. – Wayne Friedman, MediaPost

France adopts pioneering tax on tech giants after US threat

France adopted a groundbreaking tax on internet giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook on Thursday, despite U.S. threats of new tariffs on French imports.

The tax amounts to a 3% annual levy on the French revenues of digital companies with yearly global sales worth more than US$844 million and French revenue exceeding 25 million euros. The tax primarily targets those that use consumer data to sell online advertising. – AP

RIP

Hodan Nalayeh, who moved from Canada to Somalia to tell positive stories, but ended up in a terrorist attack that ripped through Kismayo, the normally serene and beautiful port city in Jubaland, about 500 kilometers south of the capital Mogadishu.  

She was the founder of Integration TV, an online platform with millions of views on YouTube which describes itself as "building a community of inspiring and uplifting stories for Somalis worldwide." – CNN