Interview: Andrew Gowers, Financial Times (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

ANDREW Gowers may have saved £230 million last week. Much to his relief, a High Court judge threw out a claim by the City brokerage Collins Stewart Tullett that Gowers's newspaper, the Financial Times, could be liable for knocking a vast hole in its share price. It was, Gowers wants the world to know, "a completely trumped-up and nonsensical figure", that the judge dismissed as "unreasonable, irrational and circular … And now that figure has simply been wiped off the face of the Earth."

Gowers, 47, could use some good news at the moment. The FT has had a tough time since he became editor three years ago. It still faces a damaging libel action over allegations it reported by a former employee at the brokerage, James Middleweek - litigation Gowers dismisses as "vexatious, distracting and ultimately wrongheaded".

Worse, in Britain the paper's circulation is falling: full-price circulation is barely 100,000, and those figures are skewed by a healthy Saturday sale of 170,000, which suggests weekday sales are significantly lower than the headline figure. The paper's losses - £23 million last year, £32 million the year before - have prompted renewed speculation that Pearson, its owner, wants to sell.

Critics say that slippage is symptomatic of an erosion of the City's trust in the paper. It has been accused of moving too far from its traditional business focus ( Gowers's background is in foreign news) and of missing big stories as a result. The paper's editorial strategy has looked confused, just as The Times has boosted its own business coverage in direct competition. Eighteen months after adding a sports page, the FT has now dropped it to focus more narrowly on business. But Gowers dismisses suggestions that the FT has diversified away from its City focus: "Business lies at the heart of what we're about," he says, sitting in his office by Southwark Bridge. He has added a small-companies page, increased signposting "to show that the FT means business", and put in features such as a markets gossip column.

The paper also recently added Australia to its 23 global print sites, which leads Gowers to point out that 70 per cent of copies are sold abroad. "There may be an adjustment process required in some readers' minds in the UK. We are a global business newspaper aiming to provide the best coverage and analysis of business issues, and we are also a national business newspaper in the UK."

Nevertheless, some in the City say Gowers is more interested in quirky features than breaking stories. Not so, he retorts. "We've got so many exclusives everywhere. So confident are we about them that often we don't even put them on the front page."

Why, then, did they let The New York Times lead the way on Shell, surely a quintessential FT story? "Let's be honest, everybody flagellated themselves because The New York Times got to Shell first, but we were ahead on just about every other aspect of the story," he says.

So where are the FT's own big scoops? "Every edition is chockfull of exclusives other people are kicking themselves they don't have." Such as? "The Eliot Spitzer investigation into the US investment banks. M&S, we led the pack. WMD, the Libya-Pakistan connections ..." But WMD is hardly the sort of story the City is desperate for. "People running companies need to know how dangerous the world is, without spin and with real authority," he replies.

Yet some in the City still believe that the FT no longer speaks up for business the way it once did. Where are its great campaigns on red tape? Where is its robust defence of wealth creation? Gowers is unrepentant. "We have never been the cheeky newspaper campaigning for British small business. That's not part of our genetic makeup. I could draw you the dummy of a newspaper for the UK - it would be fearlessly anti-European, reflexively critical of any regulation or Government action, battling for smaller businessmen - but that's not the FT."

COULD that stance be partly because of the FT's friendliness towards the Government? "We are not beholden to any political party," Gowers insists. "Our reporting aims to be close to the Government to the extent that we want to learn what it is planning, and we do, generally, before anyone else. As for comment, we carry a wide range of views. We've been extremely critical of the coalition to invade Iraq. Gordon Brown is not always enormously pleased with what we say."

Still, critics argue that the FT no longer has the great voices that the City once so respected. Who are the great columnists at the paper whom the City now relies on? "I don't know where you're hearing that from, but it's an astonishing comment," says Gowers. "Martin Dickson in the Lombard column; Martin Wolf, who is the best writer on global markets in the world; John Kay, John Plender, a great forensic accountant; Philip Stephens, who can write about politics with real, reported authority ... I keep this wonderful team together firing on all cylinders."

For those who disagree, the main alternative to the FT is The Times, which claims to have 49 per cent more business readers. "They do business very well," concedes Gowers, "but no, it is not a threat. The Times is a general-interest British newspaper devoting much space to celebrities and showbiz. Our elite audience allows us to charge premium advertising rates."

And despite the advertising recession of the past three years, Gowers points out, Pearson has demonstrated its faith by investing, for example, in the FT's profitable website, which has brought almost 80,000 subscribers paying up to £200.

Those are not the same as fullprice paper sales. "I'm not panicking at all," he says. "Our September figure was down two per cent year-on-year, but the velocity of the fall in our circulation has slowed almost to a standstill. The market, however, is shrinking much faster, and so our market share is actually increasing."

That is an optimistic way of looking at it. But Gowers insists that the "for sale" sign will not be raised. "Pearson has said privately, publicly and every other way that the FT will not be sold, and I happen to know that's 100 per cent meant. The FT is an asset of unbelievable value, and Pearson knows that very well."

(Evening Standard, October 27, 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Mobile clubbing (The Times)

By David Rowan

It is 6.38pm at Liverpool Street Station, and the evening commute is suddenly interrupted by a burst of spontaneous dancing. The first gyrations below the concourse clock provoke uneasy stares, but soon 40 or 50 strangers are swaying unselfconsciously along to their own headphone soundtracks.Passers-by are grinning, nodding along, even occasionally joining in with their iPods. "The first time I was really nervous," explains Emma Davis, 27, keeping time on her Walkman tonight to Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough. "But the adrenaline gets going once you see someone else dancing out of the corner of your eye. Now I can dance anywhere."

This is "mobile clubbing", the latest socially networked urban phenomenon. It began last September when Davis and a fellow artist, Ben Cummins, invited a few friends by text and e-mail to turn up at Liverpool Street and start dancing at a prearranged time. Since then, the gatherings have spread to Victoria Station, Waterloo, Charing Cross, even Berlin, Hong Kong and Tel Aviv. "It's got to the stage now where 80 people will dance for a couple of hours, and we might not recognise any of them," Davis says. "It's mostly students and people in their twenties, but we've had kids, families, suits coming home from the office. Everyone likes to dance - so what better than to do it in a train station?"

The rules (explained on the www.mobile-clubbing.com website) are simple: arrive at the given time, start dancing to your personal stereo, and "utilise the space". This is not, Davis stresses, a spin-off of "flashmobbing", the pre-scripted internet-enabled gatherings which briefly excited media interest last summer. Still, she and Cummins were behind a "spontaneous" pillow fight outside St Paul's Cathedral this month, which attracted around 300 participants. "That was just a one-off, fun thing to do," Davis says. "It was timed for 5.40pm, just as people were leaving work. It was quite lovely."

The dancing events, however, continue to expand. Mobile clubbing has just branched out to Bristol and is about to reach Brighton; and any Times readers passing through Waterloo Station next Wednesday [OCT 27] are invited to strut their stuff by the departure gates at exactly 6.47pm. "Head-nodders and toe-tappers are as welcome as Fred Astaires," Davis says. "Choose any type of music, any form of dancing - and of course this club has no dress code."

The delicate question is what this all means. Some mobile clubbers claim to be reclaiming a public space from ever-encroaching commerce; others welcome the transient social context it offers our atomised urban lives. Emma Davis has a far simpler explanation. "People always expect us to make some grand political statement, but it's just about promoting fun," she says. "You struggle all day to make money, and then have to cope with commuting. This makes you feel good on the way home." "Some people go to gyms to keep fit, others go to stations and dance," adds Ben Cummins, 30. "Our most regular clubbers just like dancing. And unlike a real club, it's not even smoky."

So far these events have passed peacefully, with only occasional interruptions from bemused station security staff. "We've even had two police officers have a little boogie," says Cummins. The real threat seems to be from marketers keen to use the gatherings to promote everything from energy drinks to MP3 players. "It's just so wrong," Davis says firmly. "This is a public service. Why should anyone make money out of other people's dance moves?"

(The Times, London, October 25 2004)

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Interview: Phil Hilton, Nuts magazine (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

THERE are 56 exposed nipples in this week's edition of Nuts. That's 37 more than you'll find in Zoo, which is trailing some way behind in the battle of the men's weeklies. But if its evermore raunchy photography suggests that Nuts has abandoned its pledge to be "a magazine fathers and sons can read", the readers do not seem to mind. It sold 290,000 copies a week in its first six months, putting it 90,000 ahead of Zoo and prompting fevered speculation that IPC plans to roll out its hit formula abroad.

Phil Hilton, the 40-year-old editor, happily admits that he has been raising the skin count, despite his promise at launch that Nuts would be more "Boy's Own" than naked babes. But he has no time for the "sneering broadsheet critics" who preach about "the objectification of women". "It's easy for these journalists to complain, but if you work in a building society, and you've had a pretty dismal day, you can open the magazine and see all these topless girls on a yacht. And you think, 'I'd love to be on that yacht, I'll get back to the accounts later.' That's what it's all about."

If men wish to look at attractive, partially clothed women, it doesn't mean, Hilton suggests, that they want to take away the female vote.

The magazine, he insists, would never exploit women. "Most guys are reasonable blokes with partners they respect and a very modern attitude to women," he says.

"They are not comfortable buying something exploitative or pornographic.

It's all about picking an image which shows a woman having a good time."

A recent feature on the porn star Jenna Jameson, for instance, was stringently vetted for the reader's sensitivities. "There were no pictures there that our mainstream audience could find offensive, which took some doing," he says.

"We make it look very easy, very casual, but we work for hours to make sure not one single image is inappropriate or offensive.

Whenever I meet someone at a party, they immediately think that your working day is poring over endless pictures of women. And, well, yes, it is - but we take it very seriously, and it's easy to get it wrong."

Nor does Nuts merely appeal to men, he says. Each week, it receives "a steady stream" of photographs from "super-sexy" women readers hoping to model in its pages.

"The feminists are missing the point," says Hilton, a former editor of Men's Health and Later.

"Women feel comfortable having their pictures appearing in a magazine like Nuts. They want to be considered attractive. Both men and women today are much more sexually comfortable with themselves."

Still, he is not that much of a "new man". "We cast the girls in this very room, once we've closed the blinds and checked they haven't massively put on weight since they sent in their shot," he explains in his South Bank meeting room. "You can pay for their train fare, only to find they've been at the pies and ballooned to 16 stone."

ONE woman who consistently lifts sales is Abi Titmuss, whom Hilton says can currently move tens of thousands of extra copies. "It's because Abi's a real person who has experienced real life," he says. He is not surprised by a report this week that Titmuss has earned £1 million in the past year.

"I can absolutely believe that. I'm fascinated by Abi. Having come so quickly from being a nurse, she's clearly delighted with what she's doing.

She was recently here as our guest editor, and she'd be saying, 'This is amazing, I was changing bed pans only a short time ago.' That comes across in the pictures."

Jordan, too, still delivers sales.

Hilton has just been weighing which of two Jordan photos to use on his next cover. "She's still fascinating, very smart, totally in control. I'm sorry to disappoint the enraged feminists, but Jordan is not someone you'd dream of exploiting. She'd destroy you."

As for male role models, Johnny Vegas and the Little Britain team are current sure bets. "If you can make blokes laugh on TV, they're interested in anything about you."

The monthly men's sector is in deep trouble, Hilton believes. "With the monthlies, you have to make a complex decision at the newsstand about what sort of person you are - a GQ guy? A Maxim guy? But the weeklies are an easy purchase that don't make you decide that. So we're straight in with the things all guys like."

Besides, the monthlies' editors are too busy pleasing their highend advertisers to think about the reader. "I find it hard to read magazines like GQ and get excited. It seems like an endless churn about the latest film, with the star saying this is their best film yet, and then a long piece on shoes, because they think long is better than concise.

It's all so insincere, so hollow."

Nuts does not do "long". But Hilton, a Muswell Hill-based father of two, is infuriated at criticisms that its focus on babes, cars and sensation is "lowest common denominator" journalism. "There's nothing low about it," he says a little angrily. "So our coverage of developments in the European Community is limited. Our readers can go elsewhere for that. They come to us to have a good time. It would get dull just watching Newsnight, you know."

The broadsheet "snobs", he says, should look to their own journalistic failings. "Anyone can write think pieces. But putting together a magazine like Nuts is incredibly demanding. It's hard to find a guy who's had half his arm chewed off in a tractor accident and carried his own limb back to hospital ... " HE ALSO has a few thoughts on his weekly rivals. "What I hate about Zoo is its yobby tone and the fact that it doesn't read like a magazine for smart guys," he says. "If Zoo was a person, I wouldn't want to be stuck in a lift with him." Bauer's Cut, the most troubled of the weeklies, is merely "sad". "I feel for them," Hilton says. "It's humiliating - this is a big stage on which to fall over."

So what next for Nuts? Hilton would be "absolutely thrilled" to see IPC's parent company, Time Warner, publish a US edition, but will not disclose how far plans have gone. As for suggestions that it will publish more than once a week to take on the red-tops, the very idea is "exhausting". Still, The Sun has refused the magazine's advertising, which delights him. "The Sun is standing on a chair pulling up its skirts, and we've only been around for 10 months. It's great that they see us as real competition."

So how far can Nuts expand? "Oh, there's still plenty of room to grow, and circulation is rising extremely steeply," he says. Besides, he reckons there must still be a few hermits out there who have yet to try his magazine. "Or," he adds with a smile, "some broadsheet readers."

(Evening Standard, October 21, 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Video mash-ups (The Times)

By David Rowan

Steven Spielberg somehow forgot to include Eminem in his Indiana Jones movies. Nor did Judy Garland ever get around to rapping with Q-Tip in The Wizard of Oz. Thankfully, Jonny Wilson is around today to correct Hollywood's greatest oversights. Crouching intensely over a PC in his bedroom in Hendon, north London, the 24-year-old self-confessed geek is busy remixing films the way he wants them, for distribution on DVDs or over the net. The studios might not appreciate Wilson's blatant breach of their copyright - but, as he explains matter-of-factly between mouse-clicks, "they can't do anything about it".

This is the latest digital menace troubling film-industry lawyers, and it's called the video mash-up. In a thousand bedrooms like Wilson's, amateur bootleggers are cutting and splicing movies, TV clips and music videos to create an underground art form that's fast winning a mainstream audience. To join them, all you need is a computer, some easily pirated editing software, and a decent sense of rhythm. And if word spreads that you have talent, your audiovisual remixes might even earn you some cash.

It's worked for Jonny Wilson, who has given up his day job editing TV documentaries to be a dance-club "video DJ". Three years ago, Wilson and two friends began mixing (or "mashing") up video clips with danceable tunes and posting the results online. They would splice Bing Crosby in White Christmas with an episode of The Tweenies, re-cut a Kill Bill fight scene as a rhythmic dance track, even turn a Tony Blair TUC speech into a rap. The three men, calling themselves Eclectic Method, then started remixing footage live in clubs, their laptops connected to projectors. So far this year they have played 88 clubs in 13 countries, their mash-ups also featuring on MTV and at the Sundance Film Festival.

"At Sundance, our live movie remix show took in kung fu films, Charade, Pulp Fiction, The Terminator and The Muppets," Wilson explains. "What we really like is finding the recurring rhythms in films, like the sword fights, that we can put to a beat."

Until recently, mash-ups were all about music. Video remixes were just too complicated for the available technology, but anyone could sample, scratch, cut and cross-fade MP3 audio files. The results were sometimes surreal, but often very danceable - Madonna's Ray of Light blended with The Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant, or Christina Aguilera's Genie In A Bottle mixed with The Strokes' Hard to Explain. But suddenly now, video is becoming easier and cheaper to remix, thanks to new DVD players and software such as VJamm. This lets Wilson program his laptop so that each keystroke controls a different video feed. All he needs for a two-hour show is his laptop and a small customised video mixer.

But it's not just clubbers who are enjoying the latest video mash-ups. Some of the year's biggest hits have built audiences online - including a satirical remix of The Passion of the Christ, called The Mashin' of the Christ, which samples films ranging from A Clockwork Orange to Jesus Christ Superstar. The genre's popularity, reckons Wilson, stems from the limited demand it makes on concentration. "Young people get bored quickly," he explains. "They need fast entertainment to catch their short attention span."

But isn't he just stealing other people's creative property? "I'd say we're promoting the artist's music or film, and if anything we'll increase their incomes," he says. Besides, last month he spent £600 on DVDs for unauthorised sampling. "So you could say," he grins, "that we're a major supporter of the movie industry..."

(The Times, London, October 11 2004)

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The Daily Telegraph: Overdevelopment along the Thames towpath

Old Father Thames tosses and turns in his watery grave: The mix and muddle of new building on the river may constitute much needed brownfield development, says David Rowan. But at what cost to the rest of us?

To watch a heron poised to dive for a roach, driftwood swirling timelessly past loose-tethered barges, you could forget that the tidal Thames is currently a war zone. To understand why, simply glance up at the vast new apartment complexes reclaiming London's riverbanks from Kew all the way east past Deptford. Amid frenetic protests from local civic groups, luxury riverside blocks are rising across the city on a scale not seen since the 1980s Docklands boom. With dozens more awaiting planning consent - for towers up to 50 storeys tall - a handful of developers is redrawing the face of London's ancient waterway.

Their buildings, many by renowned architects such as Lord Foster and Sir Terry Farrell, are regenerating long-neglected neighbourhoods and providing thousands of highly desirable new homes, some for Londoners on lower incomes. Yet to the belligerent neighbourhood conservation groups, this emerging canyon of high-rise gaudiness is a historic mistake destined to haunt London's skyline for generations.

Spend a day walking the Thames path and the extraordinary scale of pick'n'mix construction hits you at every curve: St George's Wharf at Vauxhall Bridge, a rising city of giant Aztec gods overshadowing Farrell's MI6 building; Barratt's Oyster Wharf, grinning from Battersea towards Chelsea Harbour like three mutant molluscs preparing to spawn.

Over pints of Young's in a Wandsworth pub, elderly locals tut-tut and roll their eyes at talk of the "rich incomers" to whom the river is simply "a million-pound view". Not for them Persimmon's £140 million Riverside Quarter, just around the corner, where prospective residents are promised a "secure haven" with 24-hour security and an "executive shuttle service" to free them from walking local streets.

The neighbourhood protesters are scoring occasional victories - the repeated knock-back of a 1.4 million square-foot development at Lots Road in Chelsea, for instance, or St George plc's inability to push through Britain's tallest residential tower at Vauxhall, subject of a recent public inquiry.

But for all the flashpoints, the planners' decisions have mostly been going the way of developers - who, after all, are turning neglected brownfield sites into the high-density blocks and residential towers demanded by Mayor Ken Livingstone's London Plan. Caught in the middle are the 13 London boroughs through which the river flows, whose planners have been processing applications according to no unified vision.

The London Assembly, which holds the Mayor to scrutiny, believes that today's uncoordinated sprawl is turning the historic riverbanks into a "sterile monoculture" reserved for the rich. Last year, its planning committee warned that the Thames was being "barricaded from the rest of London" by private and gated developments, leaving only "a windswept and often forbidding riverside path for public use, which has no link to life in the rest of the city".

As the mud-spattered hoardings from Rotherhithe to Richmond make clear, river views certainly command a premium. Estate agencies specialising in riverside developments are currently marketing a £4.25 million penthouse at St George's Wharf, Battersea, also available at £4,500 weekly rent. Flats at Montevetro, Richard Rogers's mammoth, glass doorstop towering over the graves in St Mary's Churchyard, Battersea, are being advertised at £2.75 million; at Parliament View, a Westminster block resembling a giant hi-fi system, apartments cost £1.7 million.

Not surprisingly, the new residents have their own particular requirements, pressing Southwark Council to move on an "unattractive", long-established houseboat community, and, as the environmental group Thames21 tells it, complaining to its volunteers that passing boats were "splashing dirt on to our windows".

What bothers Jim Nicolson, president of the Vauxhall Society, is the absence of community in all the marketers' "lifestyle" brochures. "Many of these developments are depriving local people of any real access to the river, while vast numbers of flats are being sold to investors in places like Hong Kong," explains Mr Nicolson, whose group has fought in vain to limit the scale of schemes such as St George's Wharf.

`We're losing schools, libraries, almost every sort of public utility, as these huge riverside developments are transforming this area. Go to Paris, and the riverside is a proper open space. Why shouldn't everyone benefit from having the river here?"

Mayor Livingstone has become far too hospitable to developers, according to Mr Nicolson. "He wants to give speculators a free hand, and there's very little that local people seem able to do." He cites the Mayor's support for St George's 50-storey tower by Vauxhall Bridge, against strong opposition from Lambeth Council.

"Ken Livingstone has virtually threatened the planning committee that they refuse it at their peril," he says. "And boroughs such as Lambeth don't have the finances to fight major concerns like St George."

The Mayor, who cannot grant planning permission, only direct refusal, insists that his support for high-density developments is intended to tackle London's housing crisis. He believes that the Vauxhall tower would provide "a significant uplift of affordable housing". Besides, he told Lambeth, it was "inconceivable that the council would reject such a world-class building".

St George, part of the property group that also includes Berkeley Homes and St James Homes, is the civic groups' main enemy. Its riverside developments - including Battersea Wharf, Putney Wharf, Imperial Wharf in Fulham, and Kew Riverside Park - aim to provide "quality working and living environments in which customers can fulfil their expectations of lifestyle and security".

The Kew Society, which has opposed its development of the former Public Record Office site near Kew Bridge, takes a less charitable view. The company, it claims, achieves its goals by "disregarding community views, avoiding community investment and exploiting deficiencies in the planning process".

A common complaint is "planning creep". Angela Dixon, vice-chairman of the West London River Group explains:"A developer will get permission for one thing, then come back and ask for more." She singles out St George for a late application to build an extra floor at Kew. "This is a very determined and successful developer," she says with a sigh. "We can oppose them, fight them, wail and object, but alas we seem to achieve very little."

At Imperial Wharf, a sweeping St George development on a 32-acre riverside site in Fulham, the company's managing director, Tony Carey, is politely dismissive of its critics.

"It's such a ridiculous idea that here's a developer taking our river, rampaging and pillaging," he says, as he strolls proudly along his new, 400-metre riverside walkway. "All we want is to develop brownfield sites in London so we don't have to develop greenfield. It's a great pity the process should be so adversarial."

His detractors lead one to imagine Mr Carey to be the archetypal cigar-chewing hard man in a sheepskin coat. Far fom it. In his impeccable, navy suit, he professes a passionate, personal mission to "improve" the riverside that, after 16 years with St George, he says is his life. He is, in fact, a misunderstood force for good, providing 1,000 jobs at Imperial Wharf, a hotel, even a new railway station.

"That makes me quite proud, actually," he says. "I certainly don't wake up feeling an utter bastard."

Before judging today's developments, he implores, consider what was there before. "We're bringing public access to a riverside last seen 100 years ago, if ever," he says. He spent more to decontaminate the former British Gas site that is Imperial Wharf than he did buying the land, and, in the process, is creating a 10-acre public park. And, he adds pointedly, half of the 1,665 new homes count as "affordable".

St George has learned from the mistakes of the 1980s, Mr Carey insists, when unenlightened developers in east London effectively privatised the riverbank.

"The tendency for locked gates, single tenure and single use led to exclusive developments that suited Thatcher's Britain. Exclusivity is not what we want now. We have an obligation to develop land in central London, at central London densities, to provide the homes that Londoners need."

Nor do the planning bodies accept that they give developers an easy ride. Residents' groups suggest that financially strapped councils such as Wandsworth, home to many of today's larger sites, are overly influenced by "planning gain" - a pledge by developers to provide amenities in exchange for consent.

"It seems to be Wandsworth's policy to encourage these very large developments, whatever their unitary development plan says," says Angela Dixon.

Nonsense, replies a Wandsworth Council spokesman. "We haven't gone easy on the developers - there are plenty of examples of us rejecting applications for riverside sites, such as the Montevetro building, and fighting them on appeal, only to have the Deputy Prime Minister give the go-ahead."

Besides, the council notes, a few riverside health clubs and 24-hour concierge services are a small price to pay to regenerate derelict contaminated land.

Back on the front line, the campaign groups are gearing up for the next round of battles. St George faces continued opposition over a 263-unit development by Kew Bridge, English Heritage has joined residents to oppose Berkeley Homes' planned cluster of towers near Tower Bridge. And then there are the fights to come over the next huge swathe of riverside development, along the Thames Gateway, east of Greenwich.

Still, Mr Carey is a patient man. "If we can make it work this time round, we can set an example to show the world how regeneration should be done," he says calmly, as he surveys the Fulham riverside.

"This is about how we're going to live in the future. And I, for one, find it pretty exciting."

(The Daily Telegraph, October 9, 2004)

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The Times: Op-ed on music downloads

By David Rowan

AS BUSINESS strategies go, it is certainly creative. Spend years overcharging your customers, restrict their use of your products, collude to keep prices high and then, when your business model finally collapses, sue them for discovering alternative suppliers. Big it up, you record industry lawyers! Prosecuting individual music fans has to be your most audacious ruse yet.

That it will fail, further alienating your customer base, will probably not concern you. But if the British Phonographic Industry needs a theme song for its new campaign of litigation, it might consider Eamon's charming hit, F*** It (I Don't Want You Back). By dragging music file-traders to court, the major studios are confirming their refusal to evolve. The rules have changed, guys -rather than fight them, you should turn them to your advantage.

Had you not charged £15 for CD albums, or used restrictive copy restriction software to prevent them from being played on PCs, then we might have had more sympathy. But going after 12-year-old Americans for using peer-to-peer websites - well, that looks like bullying. Sure, illegal downloads hit your profits. Yet the generation that has grown up with them will not suddenly change its behaviour.

The answer is to embrace the online world for what it is: a wonderful global marketing opportunity. For all the industry's scare stories, there is evidence that illegal downloads boost CD sales by bringing new audiences to previously unsampled music, which in turn sells the artist's concert tickets. Enlightened performers such as Moby accept that file-sharing is a reality. Why, he asks, won't the labels to incorporate it into innovative business models?

Should they refuse, and persist in suing potential customers, history offers a warning. A century ago, an upstart named Henry Ford sought to build a market for low-cost production-line motor cars. The automotive establishment, however, had a legal weapon with which to beat him: the Selden patent, under which they denied Ford a licence to build his cars. When he did so anyway, they sued his customers.

It took Ford eight years to win his court battle, during which time he became a popular hero. As for the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers well, the BPI might inquire where they are now.

(The Times op-ed page, October 8, 2004)

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Interview: Boris Johnson (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

NOT surprisingly, Boris Johnson is late. Having partied until 2am, the Tories' frenetic multi-tasker arrives somewhat dishevelled at the Bournemouth Waterstone's where he was expected 40 minutes ago.

Before he dashes back for Michael Howard's conference speech in an hour, he has a pile of novels to sign, The Spectator's cover to commission, a conference dinner to arrange and an appointment to keep with the Evening Standard. "I really could use a coffee," he tells a shop manager while nursing his trademark blond mop. "Ugh, conference can be awful, awful..."

There cannot be many magazine editors permitted Johnson's extraordinary range of distractions. But for how long can the Tory rising star combine running Britain's leading political weekly with his roles as constituency MP, shadow arts minister Telegraph columnist, TV personality, novelist and now blogger? In yesterday's Times, Andrew Pierce suggested mischievously that under The Spectator's new proprietors, time is running out for "'six jobs' Johnson". Will the Barclay brothers not want an editor who is fully committed?

"I haven't the faintest idea," Johnson says. "Journalism is a wonderful, charmed thing but you live from minute to minute. There may come an evening call or a morning call when I get the bullet."

His sales figures, he believes, are his best defence. "Subscriptions are at an all-time high, newsstand sales are up even on last year's. [Circulation is 64,000, some 40,000 ahead of the New Statesman.] Obviously, if I become a minister, as opposed to a shadow minister, which would be wonderful, then that will be time to stop doing journalism."

Johnson, tipped by some as a future party leader, is under no illusions that his wish will be fulfilled any time soon. In the meantime, he has ambitious plans for the 176-year-old weekly. "We're now ready to move up a gear," he reveals. "I think the way to go is upmarket, braining it up, wising it up, and expanding it. I'm not saying it will be like Prospect, or The New Yorker, but I want to big it up a bit."

He hopes to reinvest much of the magazine's £1.3 million annual profit in its journalism - especially longer essays and heavily researched exclusives. "Particularly in the summer months, The Spectator can be quite low on features," he says. "It's a quick cocaine rush, then that's it."

Has he told the new proprietors how he intends to spend their money? "We've had some preliminary conversations, yes, but they haven't heard the detail. We're talking. We make a lot of money. And there's a case with any successful media product for putting the money back in."

He cannot say whether his new bosses will be as tolerant of his lifestyle as Conrad Black was. He does, however, deny any embarrassment at failing to spot Black's financial indiscretions. "How could I possibly have known? Even if I'd been suspicious, which I wasn't, I don't see how I could have informed myself of these things in Doughty Street."

Johnson also intends to nurture a new generation of "engaged political voices". "I don't see the twentysomething wannabe political writers - the people who want to be Charles Moore when they grow up, or Simon Heffer." What, Heffer as the new role model? He laughs. "Yes, I admit it's a curious ambition. Or indeed Polly Toynbee, I'm a huge admirer. But the people born after 1969, after the Moon shot, just don't seem to be intellectually and ideologically engaged in politics like we were."

Are there also too few women writers in the Spectator? "God, I'm yearning to get more female voices in the magazine," he says. "We do have some very good ones ... I don't think anybody could conceivably say the magazine is an unfriendly environment for women writers."

Taki's columns, indulging his own racial prejudices, have repeatedly caused Johnson trouble. Is it finally time to lose him? "God, I'm always being asked about Taki," he says. "The more I'm asked, the more invulnerable he becomes. You must never capitulate to terror..." Though, yes, he adds, sometimes he goes over the top and has to be censored.

One topic of recent controversy has been Johnson's support, and the magazine's, for Tony Blair's impeachment over his selling of the Iraqi war. With the chances of success slim, does he have any regrets?

"None," he says. "Of course Blair is not going to be impeached - his lobotomised Labour backbenchers will be whipped into line. But I do think it's worth keeping in the public consciousness the discrepancy between what the Joint Intelligence Committee told us about WMD, and the information Blair laid before the Commons. Michael Howard is right to say it was tantamount to a lie. It's a function of our magazine to hold Blair to account."

Johnson rejects assertions that The Spectator's strident anti-war stance is simply a posture. "The truth is that the magazine is very divided. It was the most difficult moral issue I've faced. I did vote for the war, not because I believed in WMD, but because I thought there were very good humanitarian grounds. I now feel we were right about WMDs throughout - but what I, and everybody, got wrong was the assumption that the Pentagon knew how to run the country.

"I don't think my own internal divisions have necessarily been a drawback for the magazine. If we published an unremitting neo-con tubthumping Bush-and-Blair-ogram every week, we wouldn't be doing justice to The Spectator's traditions."

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson - to give him his full name - is 40, and has four children by his second wife, Marina Wheeler, a barrister. With all his achievements, why write the novel, Seventy Two Virgins? "Pure vanity," he replies. "Just to see that I could. I wrote it because it was difficult to do and I'd never done one. If you've been writing for ages, you want to try something hard and new."

Isn't he spreading himself too thinly? He pauses. "Well, I don't really know. Provided I have people to help me, it can all be done. People say how do you do all these jobs, you can't do them all properly. In a way, that's true - no one could do all these jobs on their own. I don't - I do each as part of a team."

The Spectator team has lately been troubled by publicity over the relationship between Kimberly Fortier, its publisher, and David Blunkett. Fortier recently returned to work. Does Johnson believe that she will stay? "I hope so," he says. "Kimberly has done a great job of getting advertising revenue in - she's £150,000 over budget for this quarter." Was he troubled by the coverage? "I don't want to talk about all that business," he says a little uncomfortably. "In the ghastly phrase, we have moved on. I don't actually know the truth about that stuff. I think there could have been a lot less to it than met the eye."

As for Boris's future, what would he prefer - party leader or Telegraph editor? "Neither of these things," he says. "I'm a mere toenail, a footsoldier." It is the well-rehearsed patter of a man with too many choices.

(Evening Standard, October 6 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Supermarket TV (The Times)

By David Rowan

Jackie Rose never planned to buy the toilet wipes. Pushing her three-year-old past Pampers and organic Hipp baby food, her only conscious concern was his ear-splitting tantrum. Stressed, rushed, and a little disoriented in Asda's cavernous Wembley superstore, Rose did not really register the giant overhead TV screen advertising Kandoo, "your little one's first toilet wipe". "I suppose that's what made me notice it on the shelf, and I didn't see any harm in trying it," she says distractedly, as the 42-inch screen cuts to shots of Dove moisturising cream. "What is it they say about the power of telly?"

TV commercials just became a whole lot harder to avoid. Not content with being our insurers, dry-cleaners, pharmacists, even bankers, Britain's supermarkets have now decided to launch in-store television networks. Asda TV went live last month; Tesco TV, now in 100 stores, will be in 300 by Christmas. Advertisers, it seems, will pay vast sums to reach you when you're in shopping mode - and unlike your living-room set, these screens cannot be switched off. No wonder supermarket TV is known, in the industry's jargon, as a "captive audience network".

"This is an exciting new medium," says Sarah Brookfield, the executive responsible for Asda's move into television. It is certainly good news for Asda: advertisers such as Nestle[E ACUTE ACCENT] and Procter & Gamble are each paying £55,000 to bombard shoppers with aisle-specific messages during a six-month trial. For that, they get "category exclusivity", which means that no rival advertisers can sell you their coffee or shampoo. Commercials and "service messages" are looped on tapes lasting between 90 seconds and four minutes, depending on how long we linger in particular aisles (more for hair care, less for beans). But don't expect breakthrough programming. "Customers don't go into the store to be entertained," Brookfield explains. "This is not about news, weather and cocktail ideas."

Retailers from Boots to Toni & Guy have used in-store screens for a couple of years. But with the supermarkets suddenly convinced that there is big money in it, the medium is about to explode. It costs from £20,000 to £50,000 to advertise on Tesco TV, for which your 10-second ad is shown every five minutes for two weeks in a range of stores. JC Decaux, the agency selling Tesco's slots, predicts that with ten million potential viewers each week, annual income from ads will soon reach £40 million.

"With 55 screens in each store, your customer scores a very high chance of being hit at least once," explains Spencer Berwin, Decaux's head of sales. "Seventy-five per cent of purchasing decisions are made at the point of sale - and for the first time, advertisers now have the opportunity to talk to customers right at that moment of truth." Because the store knows exactly how long we spend in each section, ads can be scheduled, Berwin explains, "to avoid wastage".

Do Britain's shoppers really want more advertising clutter? Both Tesco and Asda insist that customers welcome a more "informed" shopping experience. And we do seem to be responding with our wallets. Spar credits its in-store TV channel with a 44 per cent rise in sales of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Tesco claims that advertised brands are boosted by an average of 10 to 15 per cent. "The numbers speak for themselves," Berwin says bullishly. "Though I wouldn't run away with the idea that ITV will crumble as a result. Much as I'd like it, I don't think you'll be pulling up your cosy chair in front of Tesco TV."

(The Times, London, October 4 2004)

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