CROATIA TO GET A MEDIA MUSEUM?
One of the most visited museums in Washington is the Newseum, dedicated to the history of the media. It spreads over seven floors, has a series of screens and galleries, a television studio, numerous interactive checkpoints, and various collections of newspapers, television and radio recordings. Opened in 1997, in the first five years it was visited by 2.2 million visitors, and in 2008 it moved to a new, 450-million-dollar building. In the opinion of the Trip Advisor, it’s one of the top 25 museums in the United States. Now Zagreb could also get a Croatian media museum – of course in somewhat more modest version.
“I’ve noticed among my journalism students that they’ve never seen Feral Tribune or Vjesnik, because there’s nowhere to see these magazines which were crucial for Croatia, but were closed – not even on the web,” said the initiator of the idea of the Media Museum Nada Zgrabljić Rotar, associate professor at the Department of Communication Studies and the Editor in Chief of the journal Medijska Istraživanja (Media Research). It is envisaged that the future Museum will house materials from various institutions and private collections
SI.MOBIL TO ENTER 2016 WITH GREY AS ITS NEW MEDIA AGENCY
In the last quarter of 2015, Si.mobil (Slovenia) was conducted a media competition which invited all the media agencies from the region. In the last week of last year they completed their selection. New media agency of Si.mobil is Grey, which will take over operations from the agency ZenithOptimedia.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF OCULUS RIFT PROMISES BOOST FOR VR SECTOR
Facebook’s Oculus on 4 January announced that they will soon start accepting pre-orders for their VR gear Oculus Rift. The announcement has brought a renewed vigour to the sector as a host of competitors are also preparing to present their devices at CES (Consumer Electronics Show), this week in Las Vegas.
Oculus has announced that they will start accepting orders from 6 January, when the CES will also start. In a post on their official blog, Oculus also noted that every Rift will come bundled with video games Lucky’s Tale and EVE: Valkyrie. Facebook bought Oculus last year for over $2 billion, and it is expected that in 2016 they will ship five million Oculus Rift units with a price tag of around €500 at launch.
ADIDAS’ CEO ISN’T HAPPY WITH PLAYS BY MANCHESTER UNITED
Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer voiced his dissatisfaction with recent plays by Manchester United, despite the fact that the club’s brand brought Adidas record sales after the Adidas replaced Nike as kit sponsor last summer with a record braking contract worth about 1 billion euros.
“Business with Man United is going very well, we sell more shirts than expected,” said Hainer in an interview with German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung. “We are satisfied….even if the current playing style of Man United is not exactly what we want to see,” alluding to the defensive style of play that the team has adopted this season, where in eight matches in a row they haven’t scored a win, until a 2-1 victory during the weekend against Swansea.
DONALD TRUMP GATHERED HIS MOST CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS AND LAUNCHED THE FIRST TV AD IN HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
Republican running for president of the United States, Donald Trump, has launched the first TV ad of his presidential campaign, in which are summarized all of his most controversial ideas. In the ad, Trump announces that he would “cut the head off of ISIS”, that Muslims will be temporarily banned entry into the US, and that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico “that Mexico will pay for.”
The ad reignited the controversy surrounding these issues, and Trump, among other things, came under fire for the use of footage from the border between Morocco and the Spanish-owned enclave of Mellila, to illustrate Mexicans trying to enter the United States. In his defence, Trump stated that the use of this footage was deliberate, with the desire to “illustrate the danger of open borders and a real threat with which the Americans are facing right now, if we do not build a wall to stop illegal immigration.”
Many media assessed the ad as typically “Trump-like”. Watch the ad and decide for yourself if this is the case.
https://youtu.be/Sssml-rAVfY
YAHOO SHUTS DOWN ITS VIDEO SERVICE YAHOO SCREEN
Yahoo Screen became the latest in a series of company’s products that flunked. After five years of operation, Yahoo is shutting down its video service, and has already removed the Yahoo Screen website, as well as the apps of this service from iTunes and Google Play. Yahoo plans to focus its video distribution to other channels such as magazines on sports, entertainment and music.
Website DigiDay listed five reasons why Yahoo Screen collapsed. The first is the fact that it was too small. In November last year it had only 15 million unique visitors, representing a decrease of 34% compared to the previous year. When this is compared with one billion users reported by YouTube, it is clear why this service was not up to the task.
They also stated that many people did not go to Yahoo for video, because most identify it with the mail or the news, and not as a place to watch video clips. The third reason is that Yahoo insufficiently invested in original video production. Last November Yahoo attributed the loss of $42 million to the failure of their series “Sin City Saints” and “Other Space”, as well as the revival of the “Community”. But when one compares these figures with the resources that other houses are investing in production (Netflix announced an investment of $6 billion in original content in this year, while Hulu has paid $160 million for distribution rights of Seinfeld) it is clear that their investments were not nearly enough.
The fourth reason given is that it is difficult to scale video hubs and attract viewers to them, while the fifth is that there is simply too much competition in the online video.
