Nov 28 2007
British Invasion 2.0
Earlier this week guardian.com toppled nytimes.com as the most popular newspaper website:
“With 18.4 million users in October, the Guardian was ahead of nytimes.com, which registered 17.5 million users in the same period, according to Nielsen / NetRatings” via Buzzmachine
Yesterday Reuters announce that bbc.com draws 40 million users a month from outside the UK.
Could the beeb replace the license fee with advertsing revenue generated in the US?
Last year BBC revenues from international operations were over $1.6 billion.
“BBC Worldwide Chief Executive John Smith said the business initially aimed to get at least 10 percent of its total revenues from the Internet, but has now realised this target is too low.” via martinstabe.com
The Daily Mail is pursuing a particularly aggressive expansion campaign in the US. Currently 80% of visitors to dailymail.com come from outside the UK:
“Our readership is huge in America – figures put us as the sixth most visited news site in the US” brandrepublic
Also yesterday Matt Drudge confides to his friends at Sky news that London is the new center of world media:
“One of the reasons I’m in London is that the media here is unparalleled. It surpasses New York, it surpasses all the cities of the world. This is the media town.” via martinstabe
This news does not come at the best of times for US media organizations. Help! indeed.
[UPDATE 12/2] Steve Boriss picks up on this theme at the Future of News
also using a pic of the Beatles - but his from Segeant Pepper’s. Is SB making some clever point about US media occupying an alternate reality, where competition from outside the country can be ignored? He has a point. After all no-one in the US media is crying Help! Most, like media maven Howard Owens, choose to ignore the phenomenon.
[BONUS LINK] find a photo on the net, send it to roundpic.com and with a couple of clicks you can resize, optimize, add cool rounded corners and upload to yr blog.
