Los Angeles Metro transit commuters who since last summer have been able to catch up on national and world news via special TV monitors on selected buses now also will get a slice of local news if they can read Spanish, that is.
Los Angeles’ Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion has struck a deal with Transit Television Network LLC to provide a digest of stories from that morning’s edition to be displayed in text as part of a one-hour broadcast that repeats throughout the day.
Under the agreement, La Opinion, the nation’s largest daily Spanish-language newspaper with an audited circulation of around 125,000, becomes the exclusive Spanish-language news provider for 1,750 Metro buses equipped with TV monitors, which receive the morning report and an afternoon update via satellite. Transit Television executives are in talks with local television stations about adding local English-language video content to the show.
Orlando, Fla.-based Transit Television has a 10-year contract with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in addition to similar agreements in five other cities. The company by June expects to have 2,400 L.A. buses equipped with the monitors that can reach a half-million Metro riders daily, 67 percent of whom are Hispanic.
The authority receives a share of advertising revenues from the service, with General Mills Inc. and Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom Inc., among major advertisers.
“Some advertisers look at it as an outdoor advertising buy, but most see it like buying a local or cable TV spot and that’s how we’ve positioned it in the market,” said Gerry Noble, chief executive of Transit Television, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Torstar Corp.
What La Opinion, which is owned by New York-based ImpreMedia LLC., gets from the arrangement is exposure to potential newspaper readers and additional publication platforms, an increasingly important goal for all print publications.
“It’s a way for us to extend the brand,” said Publisher Monica Lozano, noting that in addition to adding video clips to its Web site, her paper soon will offer podcasts and wireless versions of the paper. “We’ve redefined our business in a way that our number 1 asset is content, and we’re moving into multiple delivery forms of that content.”
Distinctive Fall
The Los Angeles Times’ recently announced shuttering of Distinction, an 85,000 circulation bi-monthly magazine aimed at high-income Southern California residents, is part of a larger move by the paper to focus on products that can more effectively build the Times’ brand name and add subscribers and advertisers. The glossy magazine’s last issue will be May/June.
Distinction launched in September 2003 by the Times’ advertising department, but quickly found itself competing for readers and advertisers with a growing number of upscale regional titles, such as Brentwood, C, Angeleno, Calabasas, Santa Barbara and Variety’s VLife, the latter of which also recently shut down.
“Our priorities are focused on growing our presence in the broad online, travel and entertainment sectors areas where we see the greatest growth potential in terms of revenue and readership,” said Times spokesman David Garcia. “Distinction magazine was a niche publication and did not fit this strategy.”
In comparison to Distinction’s fate, the Times decided to buck a trend by major metro papers to drop their Sunday magazines, by instead investing in an extensive
redesign of Los Angeles Times Magazine and renaming it West.
West, which began appearing in the Sunday Times in February, provides a distinctive forum for West Coast-focused features, fiction and essays by noted contributing writers and Times staff, said West Editor Rich Wartzman.
“We really want to distinguish the voice of West and give readers styles of writing they won’t find in the regular pages of the Times,” said Wartzman, citing staff writer and San Joaquin Valley native Mark Arax’s Feb. 5 cover story on the impact of the war on terror on his home town of Fresno.
Wireless TV Guide
TV Guide Mobile Entertainment, Inc., a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Gemstar- TV Guide International, Inc., last week was drumming up interest among cellular carriers to offer their subscribers two TV Guide wireless services unveiled at the CTIA Wireless 2006 show in Las Vegas.
TV Guide Mobile is a wireless interactive program guide that not only will give viewers searchable access to TV Guide’s local program listings and show guides, but also remotely program their digital video recorders. The second service, TV Guide Mobile Entertainment, is an on-demand version of the TV Guide Channel with short-form, made-for-mobile content highlighting recommended programs and movies on TV.
The two services are among the first offerings from TV Guide’s brand-extending partnership with Florham Park, N.J.-based mobile broadcast software developer Roundbox Inc. TV Guide isn’t the first to offer remote programming of DVRs, said spokeswoman Bo Parks, but the company is touting ease of use and TV Guide’s extensive media database as features that make TV Guide Mobile stand out from competitors.
Comings and Goings
Seth Lubove is leaving the Los Angeles bureau of Forbes magazine to take over as Bloomberg News’ L.A. bureau chief and an editor for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Lubove, 45, had been with Forbes since 1990, moving to the L.A. bureau in 1994 and becoming bureau chief in 2001. He’s expected to start at Bloomberg by the end of the month and succeeds Greg Baumann, who has become editor of TV Week.
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As part of a larger management reorganization of the Los Angeles Times, Todd Brownrout, senior vice president of advertising since 2004, is leaving and Dave Murphy, the paper’s executive vice president and general manager, will take direct charge of the advertising staff. The move will enable Murphy become more directly involved in key sales strategies, a Times spokesman said.
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Playboy Entertainment Group Inc. executive Douglas Lindquist has been hired by Penthouse Media Group Inc. to oversee licensing and business development efforts as managing director of the International Television and Mobile Video Group. He’ll be based at the soon-to-open Penthouse Broadcast Network studios at Los Angeles Media Tech Center.
Staff reporter Deborah Crowe can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 232, or at
[email protected]
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