The year ahead in the media: cutbacks and new players in digital

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 31, 2006 | by Steven Vass

FOR those who like bloodsports, the year ahead in Scottish media could be grizzly. Redundancies, takeovers and cutbacks all look likely as the indigenous media takes a fresh pounding from outside competition, but there will at least be new launches for those in the job market.

The fate of SMG is likely to be resolved early. As the boards of the Glasgow-based company and Belfastbased UTV put away their party hats and get back to the negotiating table, bookies would offer long odds on finding SMG intact in 12 months' time.

The STV owner's demise might have been predicted every year since at least 2002, but this time SMG has stopped looking for a new chief executive and several main shareholders are determined to see a deal done.

The smart money is on an agreement which will make the UTV terms that SMG rejected in the summer look generous.

Like a Deal Or No Deal contestant who turned down a reasonable banker's offer only to find three big red numbers in the next round, this final embarrassment should provide the perfect theme for the obituaries to follow. "They couldnae even sell themselves at the richt time!" we may all shout.

This will then raise the prospect of further redundancies from scale efficiencies, no doubt mostly in Glasgow, which should ensure that STV's upcoming internet plans and regional news opt-outs get minimal coverage.

Former Emap employees could well join SMG people in the job market, after it emerged that the owner of the former SRH stations is planning severe costcutting in the new year.

Managers were recently informed the company was on a war footing and staff are bracing themselves for developments, including a move to centralise AM station output across Scotland.

Other senior managers may yet follow Forth boss Adam Findlay out of the door.

Over at the Daily Record, we now know it is safe from being sold by Trinity Mirror, but it is still facing great uncertainties. The whole group is one of the most likely takeover targets among the big UK media companies, and there is always the chance that any buyer would break up the pieces and sell them off separately.

The Record will get the chance to reclaim its No 1 position if, as expected, News International (NI) ends its longstanding 10p Sun promotion in the summer, but by then The Sun will be full colour and bigger and backed by some kind of marketing blitz. Whether there will still be a PM Record edition by then is anybody's guess.

The market may be more crowded by that time anyway. NI and Associated Newspapers are widely tipped to take their respective TheLondonPaper and London Lite to cities around the country, including Edinburgh and Glasgow.

These titles are set to hurt the rest of the market, including the Record, not least the Evening News in Edinburgh and Evening Times in Glasgow. Will they be tempted to follow the Manchester Evening News and launch free editions in the coming year?

Either way, the Tommy Sheridan perjury investigation could be the perfect conduit to get afternoon readers hooked on these new titles.

The big threats to the quality end of the market are a full Scottish edition of The Times and local versions of free London business daily, City AM.

The Times, possibly with former Scotsman editor Magnus Linklater at the helm, is expected to land soon after NI moves to its new Eurocentral printing plant in Lanarkshire in April. City AM plans to launch in the autumn.

In the meantime, Scotsman editor Mike Gilson is planning a charm offensive to reconnect the paper with its readership. Whether or not this succeeds, all eyes will be watching to see how much owner Johnston Press and The Herald's owner Newsquest will invest to defend their respective patches.

There will be new entrants in radio and TV too, with a Gaelic digital channel expected in the coming months and a new FM station for Aberdeen possibly before the end of the year.

All this without mentioning the dreaded internet, which is one of several reasons why newspaper sales, and doubtless also television viewing figures, are likely to keep falling next year. Google's efforts to create a secondary advertising market in radio and newspapers in the US seem bound to reach these shores soon and kick off massive change.

So fickle is the internet that social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo could either take over the known universe in the next year or be thwarted by some unexpected glitch. The same goes for YouTube, but on past form such sites will become ever more ubiquitous.

The Scotsman and The Herald will probably lead digital strides north of the Border next year, with Newsquest finalising a large investment and Johnston Press rolling out countrywide its current trial "newsroom of the future" in Preston, Lancashire.

Elsewhere everyone will be watching the Telegraph titles to see how they cope with the fully integrated newsroom that opened its doors in the autumn. Newly promoted Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis will be seen as a visionary if he can make it work, but his proprietors, Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay, could wield the axe if it is a disaster.