The Financial Times and Radio 2 presentation notes

December 07, 2009


The Financial Times

· Aims to be the best business organisation of its kind in the world
· Its goal is to become essential reading (in print and online) to business leaders.
· It is a global business organisation, with half of its sales outside the UK.
· It was Founded in 1888 by
James Sheridan and his brother, it competed for many years with four other finance-oriented papers, finally in 1945 absorbing the last of them.
· Known as one of England's best papers, it specializes in reporting international business and financial news while maintaining an independent editorial outlook.
· It is a morning daily newspaper published in the
Borough of Southwark, London
· Its primary rival is New York City-based The Wall Street Journal.
· The FT is the only paper in the UK providing full daily reports on the
London Stock Exchange and world markets.
· The Financial Times reports business and features share and financial product listings.
· About 110 of its 475 journalists are outside the
UK.
· The FT comes in two sections, the first section covers national and international news, the second company and markets news.
· 20% more executives than last year think it is "the most important business read"
· Despite the biggest downturn in recent history, the combined print and online audience has grown by 8% in the past year
· The FT is still the best-read publication, a position it has held since 1978.
· In the recent EMS Winter 2009 survey the Financial Times emerged as the title with the highest coverage of international print media reaching 3,135,000 readers/users (FT.com is also the number one international print website, reaching 2,815,000, users).
· FT.com has also won the Best Mobile Site award at The Association of Online Publishers Awards
· During the 1980s it supported
Margaret Thatcher. However, it has aligned itself with Labour in recent years, and has been very supportive of Gordon Brown.
· FT editorials tend to be pro-
European Union.
·
Noam Chomsky said it is "the only paper that tells the truth", however some disagree.


The Lex Column
· The Lex column is a daily feature found on the back page of the financial times.
· It is unknown how the column got its name.
· It covers company activity, takeovers, earning statements, corporate deals, company and development around the world.
· The FT calls Lex its agenda-setting column.
· The column first appeared on Monday, October 1 1945.
· Lex is Worldwide, including coverage and writers from Asia, the USA and Europe.
· The Lex team consists of journalists based all over the world (6 in London, 4 in New York, 1 in Tokyo and 1 in Hong Kong).
· The estimated readership of the Lex column is 1.3m and research shows that almost two-thirds of FT readers read Lex every day.

Financial Times Weekend
· The Financial Times weekend consists of financial news and lifestyle features.
· It focuses on mixing business with leisure in a sophisticated way.
· Its columns consist cover the subjects of art, gardening, food and hotel/ travel industries.
· The Financial Times Weekend includes the supplement ‘FT magazine’, which covers world events, the arts and politics.
· The Financial Times Weekend also publish ‘How to Spend It’ magazine, which is a produced monthly. It includes articles on
yachts, mansions, apartments, designs, haute couture, automobiles and fashion.

The Financial Times target audience
The Financial Times Target audience would fall under the A/B category.

Audience Information
53% have senior roles in their organisation (Owner / Proprietor, Executive / Director or Senior Manager)
30% have personal investments worth over £1m
49% run a self-managed superannuation fund
60% have purchased an online subscription
73% are likely to purchase professional services in the next 12 months
55% are likely to fly internationally in the next 12 months
30% are likely to fly business or first class when flying internationally
72% of FT readers do not work in financial services


The financial times perceive their audience in a amusing and stereotypical way; showing how the paper isn’t always so serious.

Advertisement
One main reason companies choose to advertise in the financial times is because of the size of the paper. Readers spend more time looking at the page, meaning more exposure of the advert.
The financial times also appeal to advertisers by having an audience target scheme, where the company can easily target a certain audience online with ROS (run of site) and section targeting.
The paper advertises many companies in different divisions. Common adverts seen in the paper include upper-class airline tickets, new software updates/specific IT Programs, and watch adverts.


Current Employees
Lionel Barber (Editor)
Lucy Kellaway (Management Columnist)
Jo Johnson (Head of Lex)
Tim Harford (Dear Economist)
Gideon Rachman (Chief International Affairs Columnist)
Martin Wolf (Chief Economics Commentator)
Jurek Martin (Columnist and former Washington Bureau Chief)

Editors
1888: Leopold Graham
1889: Douglas MacRae
1890: William Ramage Lawson
1892: Sydney Murray
1896: A. E. Murray
1909: C. H. Palmer
1937: D. S. T. Hunter
1940: A. G. Cole
1945:
Hargreaves Parkinson
1949:
Sir Gordon Newton
1972: Fredy Fisher
1981: Geoffrey Owen
1991:
Richard Lambert
2001:
Andrew Gowers
2005:
Lionel Barber

A simple definition of a Share
A share is simply a divided-up unit of the value of a company. If a company is worth £100 million, and there are 50 million shares in issue, then each share is worth £2 (usually listed as 200p in the money pages.) As the overall value of the company fluctuates so does the share price.
Shares can, and do, go up and down in value for various reasons. However, such movements are not usually for the most obvious of reasons.
It would be very simple if a share were priced solely on what the company in question owned - its buildings, cars, computers, value of contracts in the pipeline etc.
The total value minus company borrowings would be divided by the number of shares in issue and there would be the value of each individual share.




BBC Radio 2

· The station launched at 05:30 on 30 September 1967.
· Radio 2 became the first 24-hour radio station in the UK in 1979.
· BBC Radio 2 is the most popular radio station in the UK.
· Most of the content contains adult commentary.
· You can listen to it on
digital radio via DAB, Sky Digital, Cable TV, IPTV, Freeview, Freesat and the Internet.
· The most famous Radio 2 broadcaster is
Terry Wogan.
· Its daytime
playlist features music from the 1960s to various current chart hits.
· In 2009 Radio 2 again won the Music Week Award for National Radio Station of the Year, an award it has won for several consecutive years
· Weekday evenings feature specialist music, including
jazz, folk music, blues, country and western, reggae, classic rock, show tunes and biographies and documentaries on musical artists and genres. This specialist programming runs from 19:00 to 20:00, and from 22:00 to midnight.
·
Brian Matthew's "Sounds of the Sixties" remains a regular fixture on the Saturday schedule, as does Johnnie Walker's "Sounds of the Seventies".
· On Sundays the schedule reverts closer to its old style with
easy listening music.
· Radio 2 does not broadcast complete works of
classical music, which shows it is a mainstream station.
· Radio 2 has the longest period of continuous broadcasting of any national radio station in the UK.


Audience
The station now has adult listeners, mainly aged 25 and above, although in recent years it has attracted more younger listeners through broadcasting more indie and alternative music.


Specialist programming
Mondays
Paul Jones: Blues
Clare Teal: Big Band Special: Jazz
Jools Holland: Jazz
Tuesdays
Desmond Carrington: The Music Goes Round
Nigel Ogden: The Organist Entertains
Wednesdays
Mike Harding: Folk Music
Trevor Nelson: Soul Music
Steve Lamacq: Rock/Alternative Music
Thursdays
Bob Harris: Country
Suzi Quatro: Rock 'n Roll
Fridays
Friday Night is Music Night: light music
Frank Renton: Listen to the Band
Claudia Winkleman: The Weekender (arts programme)
Saturdays
Paul Gambaccini: America's Greatest Hits
Brian Matthew: Sounds of the 60s
Dale Winton: Pick of the Pops (nostalgia)
Sundays
Aled Jones: Good Morning Sunday (religious-themed breakfast show)
Elaine Paige show tunes
Alan Titchmarsh: Melodies for You (from 28 January)
Brian D'Arcy: Sunday Half Hour (hymns)
Russell Davies: Sunday Evening (from 28 January)
Clare Teal – Celebrating The Age of Swing
David Jacobs: The David Jacobs Collection (musicals, film music)
Others
It's Been a Bad Week – Comedy starring Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis.
The Day the Music Died – music comedy series starring Jon Holmes and Andrew Collins
Book Sequence
Stand-in presenters heard when a regular presenter is away


Advertising
The BBC is not permitted to carry advertising or sponsorship on its public services. This keeps them independent of commercial interests and ensures that they can be run instead to serve the general public interest.
If the BBC sold airtime either wholly or partially, advertisers and other commercial pressures would dictate its programme and schedule priorities. There would also be far less revenue for other broadcasters.
The BBC is financed instead by a TV licence fee paid by households. This guarantees that a wide range of high-quality programmes can be made available, unrestricted, to everyone.
The licence fee also helps support production skills, training, local or minority programmes and other services which might not otherwise be financed by the economics of pay-TV or advertising.
The BBC runs additional commercial services around the world. These are not financed by the licence fee but are kept quite separate from the BBC's public services. Profits are used to help keep the licence fee low so that UK licence fee payers can benefit commercially from their investment in programmes.



2 comments:

  1. Good work. I'm not one to talk but wach your spelling - its OK to make typing mistakes. Clearly you can write with complete accuracy - as with you Journalism Now piece - so practice that more often. The content of the blog is fine and extensive. You can increase your traffic by using some of these methods ...
    http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/04/13/10-ways-to-improve-blog-traffic-in-30-minutes-or-less/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for reading Chris.
    They were just the notes for my presentation; Brian asked me to post them up.
    I have just looked on that site and have set up link clusters.
    Thankyou so much for the advice :)

    ReplyDelete

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