BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT CLIMBS TO THE TOP

As the war for Saturday night, prime-time ratings comes close to an end, it looks as though it’s Simon Cowell’s “Britain’s Got Talent” that has come up trumps. Ashleigh Butler and her dog Pudsey helped the final of “Britain’s Got Talent” reach a peak of 13.8 million viewers last Saturday, more than twice the peak of ‘The Voice’ on BBC One. With an average audience of 11.38 million viewers between 7:30pm and 10pm, ITV’s flagship show saw a 46.6% share of the audience during that time. Comparatively, between 6:15pm and 7:45pm “The Voice” saw a respectable average audience of 5.64 million viewers, giving it a 29.4% share during that time.

OCEAN OUTDOOR SOLD FOR £35M

Outdoor advertising firm, Ocean Outdoor, have announced that they have been sold to the private equity arm of Lloyds bank, LDC, for £35m. Ocean Outdoor operates 28 sites across the UK, including London’s Imax theatre, Eat Street at Westfield and Two Towers West on the Hammersmith Flyover. Managing director of LDC London, Daniel Sasaki, stated that their plans for Ocean Outdoor include “further expansion of the company’s premium iconic locations, pioneering new digital technology and engaging with a wider client base as digital out of home converges with mobile audiences”.

SONY SET TO EXPAND VIDEO CONTENT WITH BLINKX

In order to expand the company’s video content and to give users access to high quality video content, Sony has partnered with video search engine Blinkx. The Blinkx app for Sony gives users access to Blinkx’s index of premium content and is available to all users with an internet-enabled Sony home entertainment device, such as Bravia televisions, Blu-ray players, home theatre systems and the like. So far, Blinkx content partners include BBC iPlayer, ITN, Press Association, YouTube and Reuters across the service’s various categories (sports/news/popular etc.). Blinkx has signed more than 720 partners and indexed over 35 million hours of video and audio content to date.

THE BIG ISSUE SET TO TRIAL DIGITAL ISSUES

Street papers such as The Big Issue are to trial selling their editions in digital form using QR codes, allowing vendors to offer customers both print and digital editions. Priced equally to the print magazines, the digital issues will be accessible to customers via an access card which is bought from vendors. The card features a unique QR code which can be scanned or entered onto smartphones, tablets or desktop computers, granting customers access to the digital edition. The scheme, which is pioneered by the International Network of Street Papers (INSP), is set to be trialled over the summer by The Big Issue North in Manchester. INSP executive director Lisa Maclean stated: “we believe this project has the potential to become not only one of the world’s largest paid digital media platforms, but one of the most important, too.”