All about slowdown

EMI dealmakers depart as private equity feels the pain

- 11 hours and 10 minutes ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/77556?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+EMI+dealmakers+depart+as+private+equity+feels+the+painch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=EMI+%28Business%29%2C3i+Group+%28Business%29%2CCitigroup%2CPrivate+equity+%28Business%29%2CMedia+business%2CBusiness%2CMusicc5=Investments%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CMedia+Weeklyc6=Martin+Farrerc7=2008_12_03c8=1127874c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=EMIc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FEMI" width="1" height="1" //divpGuy Hands' private equity firm Terra Firma is parting company with the architects of its £2.4bn top-of-the-market deal to buy a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/emi"EMI/a, it emerged this morning./ppChris Roling, who was parachuted into a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/15/musicindustry.emi1"the ailing music giant/a by Hands as chief operating officer after the deal in August last year, has left Terra Firma. Also believed to be leaving is Ashley Unwin who was EMI's chief operating officer in UK and North America./ppAnother sign that the slowdown is taking its toll on the buyout industry came as 3i, Europe's largest listed private equity fund, prepared to announce the loss of around 100 jobs. /ppa href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/07ed132a-c0ab-11dd-b0a8-000077b07658.html"The cuts, which amount to about 15% of its staff/a, will come from slimming down back office functions such as marketing and personnel, the Financial Times reported. Its shares were down almost 5% in early trading today./ppThe firm, which revealed last month that revenues from disposals had fallen 40%, has warned that the credit crunch has created much more difficult conditions for private equity. The sector grew strongly in the last few years, before the financial crisis struck, thanks to the availability of cheap credit, but in today's climate banks are extremely reluctant to lend./ppTerra Firma has struggled to turn around EMI, which was bought at the height of the buyout boom with money borrowed largely from the now-stricken Citigroup bank. /ppOther Terra Firma staff seconded to EMI believed to be in talks over leaving include Riaz Punja and Stephen Alexander./ppLast week Hands predicted at a conference of senior industry figures in Paris that there would be a cull of jobs as the industry suffered negative returns for the first time./ppHe told an audience of senior industry figures that 90% of the people hired in recent years "are not money makers" and many of them will be made redundant./ppNeither 3i nor Terra Firma were available for comment./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/emi"EMI/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/3igroupbusiness"3i/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/citigroup"Citigroup/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/privateequity"Private equity/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediabusiness"Media business/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/dnfYPznRBKp0z-_gnTrnN-dE9G0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/dnfYPznRBKp0z-_gnTrnN-dE9G0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

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strongly,climate,personnels,emi,chief operating officer

As sales slump, Toyota cuts bonuses and vehicle production

Autoblog

- 19 hours and 42 minutes ago

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/japan/" rel="tag"Japan/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/plants-manufacturing/" rel="tag"Plants/Manufacturing/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/toyota/" rel="tag"Toyota/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pa href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20081202/COPY01/312029894/1176"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/toyota_250_opt.jpg" //aManagement bonuses will be slashed 10 percent at Toyota as a result of the global economic slowdown. About 5,000 managers will take cuts as the Japanese automaker reels from falling global sales that are hitting its local market hard. Toyota vehicle sales in Japan dropped 27 percent in November (excluding 660cc minivehicles) and Lexus sales dipped 24 percent -- mirroring the same sales issues that both brands are having in the United States. As a result, the Japanse Juggernaut will halt production for two days on one of the Tahara production lines manufacturing the Lexus LS, GS and IS models, which will prevent about 5,000 luxury cars from being built, and idle another factory in southern Japan for two days, as well. Toyota is also expected to announce lower sales and production estimates at its year-end press conference that happens at the end of this month. That news will follow the 1 trillion yen ($10.7 billion) yanked just last month from its annual operating profit forecast. p /p p[Source: a href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20081202/COPY01/312029894/1176"Automotive News/a, subs. req'd]/p p /p p /pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/"As sales slump, Toyota cuts bonuses and vehicle production/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:01:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1388772/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7cyMl4l_iNP_JPNVvK4NKXtNLEw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7cyMl4l_iNP_JPNVvK4NKXtNLEw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=5Ywtvpn2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=5Ywtvpn2" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=LMjOjfsH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=LMjOjfsH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/gRtv3IrJUQQ" height="1" width="1"/

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Will Justin.tv Destroy Sports TV Rights Deals?

Techdirt

- 21 hours and 21 minutes ago

Last month, Mike wrote about how the English Premier League was a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081103/1047072724.shtml"making/a threatening overtones towards Justin.tv, after it discovered some users on the site were streaming broadcasts of its soccer matches. It's the usual stuff from sports leagues, complaining that the sites aren't doing enough to stop piracy, and that their safe harbor shouldn't protect them, and that the DMCA takedown process isn't good enough. Now, a piece in The Guardian wonders if the large-scale piracy, along with a spending slowdown, will a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/26/premierleague-bskyb"hit the value of TV rights/a deals when they come up for renewal, with broadcasters unable to justify the same level of spending should viewer figures fall. br /br / This scenario isn't hard to imagine, but should it occur, it will be thanks to a lack of business acumen, not piracy. These sites exist, and thrive, because they serve demand untapped by the Premier League and its rightsholders. For instance, the rights situation means that in England -- where the league's based and its games played -- fewer games are broadcast on TV than in many places in the world. Here in the US, nearly every match is broadcast each weekend; just a handful make it onto UK TV screens. British pub owners tried to serve the untapped demand for this by buying satellite systems from foreign countries, but the EPL a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/technology/21jazeera.html"shut that avenue off/a in the courts. Likewise, users in the UK and elsewhere turn to sites like Justin.tv because they don't have other options. The match they want to see isn't available on television, or they're not near a TV set when the match is being played. I'd argue this drives use of the services much more than a desire for free content does. br /br / The rights situation domestically in the UK is the way it is because of the long-held view that putting games on TV will hold down attendance; but the small stadium sizes and increasingly geographically distributed fan bases (along with high ticket prices) do this already. And indeed, the experience of other sports leagues around the world would indicate that giving fans the ability to watch their teams' games on television does little, on its own, to hurt attendance. That sort of view seems to color the entire TV rights situation for the Premier League: it tries to manufacture some sort of scarcity in an attempt to increase its revenues. But the popularity of sites that make broadcasts available online makes it clear they'd be better off answering this demand with services of their own. br /br / Here's a novel idea: instead of trying to crack down on the likes of Justin.tv, why not require rightsholders to offer free streams of games as parts of their deals? Then, the Premier League and its broadcast partners get to serve this demand, instead of Justin.tv or Chinese P2P services, and get to capitalize on it through advertising or other means. It might have some effect on pay services by giving fans with the least willingness to pay a free service to use, but again, I'd argue that most people would still prefer to watch their teams' games on a bigger screen and in higher quality enough to pay for it. And the additional fans the services would reach could make new converts to paid services as well. Whatever the EPL decides to do, it's impossible to understand how it thinks it can benefit by alienating fans and making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to follow their teams.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emCarlo Longino is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/1028552964.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081126/1028552964.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081126/1028552964op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2ce99f96fcd45c8f2cf15ab5c8c75f84p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2ce99f96fcd45c8f2cf15ab5c8c75f84p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=2ce99f96fcd45c8f2cf15ab5c8c75f84" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=fvH6o"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=fvH6o" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/472956055" height="1" width="1"/

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IDC sees 2009 European IT slowdown

Vid-Biz: Blockbuster, 5min, WGA

USB speed issue SR MBP 17

Taiwan chip-maker TSMC lowers sales forecast

What’s It Like Looking for New Media Work Now?

NewTeeVee

- 1 days and 14 hours ago

Layoffs have become the dominant story as we near the end of 2008. After writing about the cold economic realities for companies that have had to cut staff, we wanted to find out what it was like for the people who are now unemployed. Just how bad is it out there for new media folks looking for work? We talked with three people at different stages of their job search to see what, exactly, they’re up against.

Sarah Lane was with Revision3 for a year and a half before being laid off at the end of October. While she did a lot at the company, she was best known as the host of popSiren. I spoke with her just a couple weeks after she had been let go.

“It’s great to be unemployed sit in my pajamas for like five minutes,” Lane said. The problem she encountered is that even though there are companies interested in her, there’s just a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the market right now. “Some people have said ‘If I could guarantee that you had a job in a year I’d hire you,’” said Lane. Problem is, those companies can’t guarantee anything right now.

In addition to the lack of jobs, there’s an increase in competition for those jobs. “It’s not just that I’m out of work, there’s a lot of me out of work,” said Lane. In the meantime, she’s taken some freelance work doing consulting and even some video hosting (she won’t say for whom) that will pay the bills and keep her busy through February.

The geek culture web video series EPIC-FU suffered collateral damage as a result of Revision3’s belt-tightening at the end of October. Smashface Productions, which produced EPIC-FU, itself had to let go of an editor and two producers. Among them was Rick Rey, who emailed me his thoughts on looking for new media work a couple weeks ago.

“After I was laid off as Producer of EPIC-FU, I was fortunate enough to quickly pick up some freelance work - affording me the luxury of not rushing into another full-time gig,” he wrote. “It’s not what I want to be doing career-wise, but it pays the bills and it gives me the freedom to be picky about my next move in the new media space.” Some of that freelance work includes writing for EPIC-FU.

Rey said he was weighing his options, which include working for an established network, or even seeking funding for his own projects, but that the idea of going back to a smaller new media startup wasn’t too enticing. “There’s also a few funded new media houses in the LA area that could use an experienced hand, but given the state of the space I’m not confident a horizontal move like that is the most prudent course of action. I don’t want to end up in the same situation 6 months from now,” wrote Rey.

When we checked back in with Rey, he said he’s still freelancing and doesn’t anticipate any new opportunities until after the holidays. And as you’d expect, the time between now and the end of the year is a slow one for companies — a slowdown John Halecky was trying to beat.

Halecky is in a bit of a different position than either Lane or Rey. He was laid off from his position as director of web content and editorial at ReelzChannel back in July. At the time, he figured he’d take his severance, take July and August off, and the start his job search in earnest in September — which is right when the economy went to pot.

Halecky has been actively looking for work since September, searching job board postings and networking through services like LinkedIn, but everywhere he applies, companies say they are on a hiring freeze. He’ll go in for interviews for jobs posted online only to be told that the position will be filled at some point — the company just doesn’t know when.

Thanksgiving was a big deadline for Halecky in his job search. “No one hires between Thanksgiving and the end of the year,” said Halecky. “Nothing will come about until the fiscal budget for 2009.” But when we spoke to him today, Halecky said that he’s still out looking for his next job.

Though it all sounds dire, the one thing all three people I spoke to had was optimism. No one wanted to just take a job to be employed — all three of them were willing to wait for the right opportunity and believed that opportunity would come.

Are you looking for work? What have you found in your search? Leave a comment and let us know.

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economy,startups,collateral,slowdown,realities

Leading firms announce more than 2,000 job cuts

Guardian Unlimited

- 1 days and 23 hours ago

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/15616?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Leading+firms+announce+more+than+2%2C000+job+cutsch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Manufacturing+sector+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CRecession+%28UK%29%2CGlobal+economy+%28Business%29%2CBusinessc5=Credit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Marketsc6=Ashley+Seagerc7=2008_12_01c8=1127128c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Manufacturing+sectorc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FManufacturing+sector" width="1" height="1" //divpShares in London suffered another torrid day as leading companies announced more than 2,000 job cuts and figures showed that the country's manufacturing output and orders had fallen to a record low./ppThe FTSE 100 shed 5.2% of its value to close down 223 points at 4,065.5, while oil dipped under $50 and the pound fell back below $1.49 as investors anticipated a deep and prolonged recession in the UK and the possibility of more rate cuts when the Bank of England monetary policy committee meets this week. /ppSimilarly bad data on manufacturing in the US pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by 400 points and a think-tank declared its economy in recession./ppHSBC, Britain's biggest bank, began the jobs cull when it said it would cut more than 500 posts across the country following a review of the business and "current economic conditions". /ppDespite weathering the economic crisis better than many other banks, HSBC will cuts jobs at the London head office, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield and Chester. It said no retail customer-facing staff in branches or call centres would be affected. /ppCredit Suisse, the Swiss investment bank, added to the gloom when it announced that it was cutting 650 UK jobs. It has offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester. /ppMeanwhile, Halfords became the latest retailer to suffer from the slowdown on the high street, saying it would cut about 200 posts across its network of more than 450 stores, along with 50 more at its head office in Redditch, Worcestershire. /ppAnd luxury sports car maker Aston Martin said it was planning to axe 600 full-time and temporary jobs because of the downturn in the world economy. The jobs will hit the company's factory at Gaydon in Warwickshire and follows a fall in sales. The Unite union said it was "devastating news" for the workers, especially so close to Christmas. /ppThe latest monthly snapshot of the manufacturing sector from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply showed the worst activity reading since records were first kept in 1992 and a record low in employment intentions, showing firms are laying off workers in droves. The so-called purchasing managers' index â€” a broad measure of activity, orders and employment in the sector â€” plunged to 34.4 last month, much lower than expected and way below the 50 level that divides expansion from contraction./pp"The scale of the downturn in the UK manufacturing PMI during November is unprecedented," said Rob Dobson, economist at Markit, which compiles the survey./ppThe survey's employment indicator fell at a record pace, spelling further job cuts ahead. Unemployment has been rising all year but the pace of increase has been accelerating and experts expect it to reach two million by Christmas, up from 1.8 million now./ppThere was also a string of bad figures on manufacturing around the world with the eurozone, US and China all showing output on the downturn. The euro zone manufacturing PMI tumbled to a record 35.6, while the Institute of Supply Management in the United States reported its PMI for manufacturing fell to 36.2, the lowest since 1982. /pp"The November US ISM manufacturing survey has continued today's run of awful purchasing managers' index data from around the world," said James Knightley, economist at ING financial markets./ppCompounding the gloom, the respected National Bureau of Economic Research, a group of economists based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said "the decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession"./ppThere was also grim news from China as figures showed its industrial output had slumped because of the world economic downturn, putting paid to the notion that the nation would "decouple" from the world economy and pull ahead by itself./ppThe United Nations said the world economy faced its biggest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In its Global Outlook report, the UN lowered its forecast for worldwide growth to 1% for 2009, from 2.5% this year and way below the 4%-5% enjoyed for much of this decade. It warned the world economy could contract if economic stimulus packages were not implemented by governments immediately./pp"Most developed economies entered into recession during the second half of 2008, and the economic slowdown has spread to developing countries and the economies in transition," it said./ppThe 13 member eurozone has fallen into recession â€” defined as two quarters of contraction â€” and Britain is almost certainly in one too, its economy having contracted by 0.5% in the third quarter of the year, a number that is likely to double in the fourth quarter according to economists./ppManufacturing bodies over the weekend appealed to the Bank of England's monetary policy committee to make another big interest rate cut at its meeting this week, supplementing the 1.5 percentage point reduction it made last month./ppEconomists said yesterday's figures, including another awful showing for mortgage lending, made a cut in the Bank's key base rate to 2% more likely./ppGeorge Buckley, economist at Deutsche Bank in London, said: "On account of the PMI we have revised our view for this week's decision. We now see a 100bps cut from the MPC on Thursday, taking bank rate down to 2%. As a result, it seems very likely that interest rates will fall below the trough of 1.5% we currently expect."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/manufacturing"Manufacturing sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/globaleconomy"Global economy/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fv3iS4CMM9QWrIelvyBAXVBGhD8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/fv3iS4CMM9QWrIelvyBAXVBGhD8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

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contraction,financial markets,sports,economy,outlooks

Aston Martin slashes workforce by a third

Straight PSP Ports can work, says Sony

PSP Updates

- 2 days and 1 hours ago

a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126893/ironman_qjgenth.jpg?426864" rel="lightbox[article126893]" title="Ironman 20PSP 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126893/ironman.jpg 3F426864 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Ironman PSP - Image 1" title="Ironman PSP - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126893/ironman_qjgenth.jpg?426864" align="right" border="0"/aThe idea of porting games from the console into a handheld like the PSP is not really a very popular one. Sony itself admits that this notion was a failed one when they first started trying it with early PSPs.brbrHowever, given the relative successes of the ported version of games like "span style="font-style: italic;"Transformers/span span id="iTxt"(a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the DS" href="http://ds.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3474"DS/a, a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the PC" href="http://pc.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3479"PC/a, a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the PSP" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3476"PSP/a, PS2, a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the PS3" href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3475"PS3/a, a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the Wii" href="http://wii.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3477"Wii/a, a title="More Transformers: The Game news for the Xbox 360" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/category/Transformers-The-Game/cid/3478"Xbox 360/a) /spanand span style="font-style: italic;"Ironman/spanspan id="iTxt"span style="font-style: italic;"/span (a title="Sega and Secret Level's Iron Man for the PlayStation 3" href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Iron-Man/cid/4240S"PlayStation 3/a, a title="Sega and Secret Level's Iron Man for the Xbox 360" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/Iron-Man/cid/4241"Xbox 360/a, a title="Sega and Secret Level's Iron Man for the Wii" href="http://wii.qj.net/category/Iron-Man/cid/4252"Wii/a, a title="Sega and Secret Level's Iron Man for the PC" href="http://pc.qj.net/category/Iron-Man/cid/4255"PC/a, a title="Sega's Iron Man for the Nintendo DS" href="http://ds.qj.net/category/Iron-Man/cid/4256"DS/a, and a title="Sega and Secret Level's Iron Man for the PlayStation Portable" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/category/Iron-Man/cid/4254"PSP/a)/span," a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/john-koller/6926" id="tag" title=""John Koller/a, the head of hardware marketing at a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/scea/1256" id="tag" title="Sony Computer Entertainment America"SCEA/a, says that conventional wisdom on direct ports doesn't seem to hold if the franchise is big enough.brbrThe a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/npd-group/3734" id="tag" title="global consumer and retail information provider"NPD Group/a reported that the PSP version of span style="font-style: italic;"Transformers/span and span style="font-style: italic;"Ironman/span span id="iTxt"span style="font-style: italic;"Iron Man/spannbsp;/spansold 442,000 and 242,000 copies respectively. Sony felt this counts as a success given the games' failed console counterparts.brbrSo what does this all mean? According to Koller, we should expect a lot more big franchise games for the PSP coming in 2009. The announcements will be coming soon.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Articles:br/spanullia title="Sony: Home is imminent, more PSP games next year, hybrid Blu-ray discs" href="http://www.qj.net/Sony-Home-is-imminent-more-PSP-games-next-year-hybrid-Blu-ray-discs/pg/49/aid/126710"span style="font-style: italic;"Sony: Home is imminent, more PSP games next year, hybrid Blu-ray discs/span/a/lilispan style="font-style: italic;"a title="PSP piracy slowdown: good triumphs over evil" href="http://www.qj.net/PSP-piracy-slowdown-good-triumphs-over-evil/pg/49/aid/126641"PSP piracy slowdown: good triumphs over evil/abr/span/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=0t5oEg73"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=5nUCzEep"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=qAtZT7Mo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=43" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/QJ/PSP/~4/XegsxjJX67k" height="1" width="1"/

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entertainment america,computer entertainment,nintendo ds,ironman,franchise

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Apocalypse Soon? Half Of UK Media Jobs To Disappear By 2013: Forecast

paidContent.org

- 2 days and 5 hours ago

pSome thoroughly depressing news to start Monday morning - the founder of UK media research agency Enders expects the number of media jobs in the UK industry to ihalve/i between now and 2013. The last couple of months has seen urgent and accelerated downsizing from a glut of publishers, TV and other groups. Claire Enders (via a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081128/media_nm/us_britishmedia" title="Reuters"Reuters/a): "We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000 ... at the end of 2007. bBetween the beginning of 2008 and 2013 we're expecting half of those jobs to go/b. The big employers are the regional press, magazines, local advertising sales. Real numbers are in print." /p p That kind of decimation might seem an unlikely apocalypse, but other analysts (via a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081128/media_nm/us_britishmedia" title="Reuters"Reuters/a) are pessimistic, too... Numis' Paul Richards: "In terms of the really tough trading we've only had two months, maybe three" ... Screen Digest's Vincent Letang: "bI see a long slowdown before a potential recovery in 2012/b. I don't expect, following that period of crisis, we'll have a strong rebound as we had after the dot com crash." /p p Meanwhile, Rafat appeared on Bloomberg's TV channel in London on Friday morning, giving a frank forecast of the climate for media and the economy in the next few months. It boils down to: layoffs, consolidation and pay-back time for social media. Here's a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpAdAG8ktAkfeature=channel" title="the video"the video/a, and also embedded after the jump... br / /ppobject width="300" height="250"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vpAdAG8ktAkhl=enfs=1"/paramparam name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/paramparam name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/paramembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vpAdAG8ktAkhl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="300" height="250"/embed/object /p piCheck out the best business jobs in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=2h0Ljt"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=2h0Ljt" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=xd6JO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=xd6JO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=os79O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=os79O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=8cZJo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=8cZJo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=XEdHO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XEdHO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=Fe0MO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=Fe0MO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/471349094" height="1" width="1"/

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mondays,economy,climate,slowdown,analysts

In-Store: An Island of Ad Growth in a Sea of Recession

Tough U.N. climate deal urged despite economic woes