New Zealand's two biggest online media properties, Telecom's Xtra site and Microsoft's MSN, have begun to merge into a single portal called XtraMSN.
Before a $300 million investment in Telecom by Microsoft began the process in May the two sites totaled more than a million visits a month - in large part because many New Zealanders had one or the other pre-set as the home page in their web browsers.
The near-400,000 Xtra customers (and anyone else who uses the Xtra site) now have access to a range of services provided via Xtra by Microsoft, including chat, messaging and online photo albums. But to use some of those services, they will need to registered with Microsoft's online "authentication hub", Passport, helping feed a vast store of marketing information on which the software giant is pinning its future.
Xtra general manager Rod Snodgrass and marketing manager Chris Thompson talk about the new arrangement in an interview with Mediawatch. Here is an intriguing (if somewhat technical) essay on how Microsoft's strategy shapes up.
After arranging a good deal of publicity for the new TV2 show Back of the Y Masterpiece Television, TVNZ prevented the show going to air at the last moment this week. The broadcaster says it is discussing "issues" about the show with the producers and that Back of the Y will screen in about a month. Was a Charter-watching TVNZ unnerved by scathing previews of the show by Bill Ralston in his role of TV reviewer for the Sunday News? Did Ralston campaign against the programme? Mediawatch interviews Bill Ralston and TVNZ spokesman Glen Sowry. And, if you're up to it, you could visit the Back of the Y website.
The succession issue looming over the Murdoch media empire has been settled according the Guardian - and Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan, has blown his chance of inheriting the empire with his disastrous foray into telecommunications.
Interactive TV operators such as Murdoch stand to know a lot more about their customers than the customers might feel comfortable telling them, according to TV That Watches You: The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television, a new report from the US-based Centre for Digital Democracy.
You'd think erstwhile Conservative leader William Hague's drubbing in the UK general election would be bad enough - but what Hague didn't know was that his spin doctor was secretly engaged in a piece of reality television. Amanda Platell, Mr Hague's head of news and media, has quite in the wake of a row over news that she kept a secret video diary during the election campaign for a Channel 4 programme.
David Robie's new book 'The Pacific Journalist: A Practical Guide' can be ordered via the Internet. New Zealanders can buy it for $49.95 from South Pacific Books. Click on Book Search, and key in 9820103851 under ISBN.
Readers outside New Zealand should buy the book from the University for the South Pacific Book Centre ($US25).
Other Robie-related links are the site for the University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme (Robie's students last year won the major Ossie Award in Australia for their online coverage of the Fiji coup); Pacific Media Watch, an independent media monitoring site, and Robie's own site on Pacific media and politics, Café Pacific.
