Double trouble for Virgin and Sky ads

Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday November 14 2007
Bitter rivals Virgin Media and BSkyB have both fallen foul of the advertising watchdog this week.

Virgin Media was rapped for its claims over the speed of its broadband service, after the Advertising Standards Authority received 30 complaints including one from Sky.
Meanwhile, Sky was singled out for advertising its new on-demand service, Sky Anytime, without making it clear it was not available to viewers that subscribed to Sky channels on other platforms.
Complaints about Virgin Media centred on the broadband service, with Sky and others challenging the claims of a "superfast" 10MB download speed.

Virgin responded that its marketing usually qualified broadband speeds with the phrase "up to" but this had not appeared in some versions because of an oversight. The company provided data showing that at least 95% of users could achieve full speed at all times.

The ASA upheld the complaints and ordered Virgin not to repeat the ad without the qualifying statements.

The watchdog also ruled that Virgin was wrong to claim that its broadband was four times faster than its competitors.

Virgin supplied data to show its average speed was four times faster than its competitors' average speeds, but the ASA ruled this was misleading since one of the competitors had an abnormally low speed, bringing down the overall average.

The Sky adjudication focused on a TV ad for Sky Anytime, described as "the new on-demand service that lets you experience Sky on your PC".

The ad stated: "You can choose from hundreds of great films to watch on your PC ... and all at no extra cost from Sky". Text on screen added: "No extra cost for Sky Movies 1 and 2 subscribers. Minimum system and broadband requirements."

The ASA received one complaint from a viewer who said the ad made no mention of the fact that you also had to be a Sky Digital subscriber and that people who subscribed to Sky Movies 1 and 2 through a third party such as Virgin Media could not access the service.
Sky responded that the words "from Sky" and the on-screen text implied the offer was only available to its own customers.

However, the ASA ruled that the statements were ambiguous and the fact that the service was only available to Sky customers was a significant condition that should have been made clear in the ad.

this article is important because the two main tv institutions sky and virgins are in competition with other, both have alot of power. both institutions have received a lot of complaints about the information given on there advertisements, the amount of complaints made to ASA can damage there reputations

MURDOCH maclennan

• Job: chief executive, Telegraph Group
• Age: 58
• Industry: publishing
• Staff: 1,000
• MacLennan has said he wants the Telegraph to become "the cutting edge media group in the United Kingdom - fully integrated, efficient and profitable".
• "Our industry has survived because it has never failed to take bold and tough decisions when presented with profound change," said MacLennan.
• We need that courage again to traverse the dynamic changes gripping us - recognising that the 'do nothing' option is the surest way to decline and fall."
• A former executive at the Daily Mail, where he had worked since 1989, MacLennan's departure was a big blow for Daily Mail & General Trust chairman Viscount Rothermere. The two newspaper groups seem to have been poaching each other's staff ever since.
• Since the Barclay brothers put him in charge of their newly acquired newspaper group three years ago, MacLennan has turfed out its old-style "country club" management and instigated its biggest editorial clearout for two decades.

ITV shares slide again

Chris Tryhorn
Guardian Unlimited
Monday November 12 2007
ITV plc's share price took another battering today, falling to a fresh all-time low.
At 86p this afternoon, the shares were off 3.6%, or down 3.1p, on Friday night's closing price of 89.1p. The price fell as low as 85.1p at one point during the day.

It is the third time in four days that the stock has fallen to its lowest level since its debut as a merged plc in February 2004.

The slump on Wednesday was triggered by the disclosure that ITV wants BSkyB to sell its 17.9% stake in the broadcaster, leading to fears that there will be a shortage of buyers if Sky's shares are dumped on to the market.

Today, the price decline was given fresh impetus by a note from analysts at Morgan Stanley, who cut their target price for the stock from 117p to 83p.

The fall in ITV's shares is also bad news for Sky, which faces a loss of more than £300m if the government forces it to sell its shareholding at the current market price.
Sky paid 135p a share - or £940m - for its 17.9% stake in November.

The Competition Commission delivered its provisional findings on the stake at the beginning of October. It is due to hand over the full report to John Hutton, the secretary of state for business enterprise and regulatory reform, by early December.

this article is important as itv has many competitors wanting to buy the channel. such as Rupert murdoch and virgin with the loss of viewers i think that itv needs to buy the sell channel so they can get more viewings.