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BBC to Sell Lonely Planet Travel Guidebooks

March 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In 2007, when the British Broadcasting Corp. bought the Lonely Planet travel guidebooks, it drew criticism from rivals for using public money to expand into areas better left to the private sector.

On Tuesday, as the BBC confirmed plans to sell Lonely Planet to a reclusive American billionaire, it drew internal scrutiny — this time for losing public money on the sale.

BBC Worldwide, an arm of the public broadcaster than runs many of its international and for-profit operations, said Tuesday that it had agreed to sell the series to NC2 Media, a company controlled by Brad Kelley, a businessman from Kentucky who made a fortune in tobacco and later turned his attention to real estate and other interests.

The price, £51.5 million, or $77.3 million, was nearly £80 million below the £130 million that the BBC paid for Lonely Planet in two stages. The scale of the loss prompted the BBC Trust, a panel that oversees the broadcaster, to call on the executive arm of the BBC to “commission a review of lessons learnt and report to the Trust with its findings.”

“Although this did not prove to be a good commercial investment, Worldwide is a very successful business, and at the time of purchase there was a credible rationale for this deal,” Diane Coyle, vice chairwoman of the trust, said in a statement.

At the time of the purchase, the BBC — then headed by Mark Thompson, who is now chief executive of The New York Times Company — talked about extending the Lonely Planet brand into new areas, including digital outlets. But publishers of traditional travel guidebooks have struggled to compete with travel sites on the Web, like TripAdvisor.

Meanwhile, rivals of the BBC complained that the broadcaster had no business moving into new areas at a time when some commercial media companies have struggled with the challenge of the Internet.

In 2009, James Murdoch, then the head of the European and Asian operations of News Corporation, described the BBC’s purchase as a “particularly egregious example of the expansion of the state.” In addition to its other media holdings, News Corporation is the largest shareholder in British Sky Broadcasting, a pay-TV company that competes with the BBC.

The BBC has been scaling back since it agreed to a reduction in its public funding — which comes from a license fee on television-owning households — in 2010.

“Lonely Planet has increased its presence in digital, magazine publishing and emerging markets whilst also growing its global market share, despite difficult economic conditions,” said Paul Dempsey, interim chief executive of BBC Worldwide, in a statement. “However, we have also recognized that it no longer fits with our plans to put BBC brands at the heart of our business and have decided to sell the company.”

Despite the challenges facing travel publishers, the BBC said Lonely Planet is the biggest travel guidebook series in the United States, Britain and Australia, where the title was founded in 1973 as a bible for backpackers. It said 120 million books have been published in 11 languages, and 120 million people visit its Web sites annually.

“The challenge and promise before us is to marry the world’s greatest travel information and guidebook company with the limitless potential of 21st-century digital technology,” Daniel Houghton, executive director of NC2 Media, said in a statement. “If we can do this, and I believe we can, we can build a business that, while remaining true to the things that made Lonely Planet great in the past, promises to make it even greater in the future.”

The purchase is a big expansion of Mr. Kelley’s media holdings; he also has an investment in OutWild TV, a Web site that shows travel videos. Mr. Kelley is said to be one of the largest private landowners in the United States, with millions of acres of ranch land in Texas and other states.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/business/media/bbc-to-sell-lonely-planet-travel-guidebooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Pressure on James Murdoch Is About to Intensify

July 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment

LONDON — After his testimony in Parliament was challenged by two former senior employees and referred by a lawmaker to Scotland Yard for investigation, James Murdoch has come under rising pressure in Britain’s phone hacking scandal that is likely to intensify this week.

The board of British Sky Broadcasting, the satellite broadcaster of which Mr. Murdoch is chairman, convenes on Thursday for the first time since the scandal erupted, as regulators continue their inquiry into whether the hacking scandal means the broadcaster should continue to be considered “fit and proper” to hold a broadcasting license. A day later, members of the parliamentary committee investigating the scandal are to meet to consider whether to ask for more information from Mr. Murdoch and whether to call him and former executives back in front of them to answer additional questions.

Some former senior executives of News International who until recently held powerful positions in the News Corporation’s British subsidiary and were privy to internal deliberations have indicated that they believe Mr. Murdoch knew more about widespread phone hacking at The News of the World than he indicated in his public testimony. If they continue to challenge Mr. Murdoch’s account, it could damage his effort to protect his own reputation and that of the parent company run by his father, Rupert.

“It now seems to be everyone for themselves,” said Paul Farrelly, a Labour member of Parliament who has been a prominent critic of News International. “The edifice is cracking; they’re all fighting like rats in a sack.”

Last week, the two former executives, Colin Myler, who was editor of The News of the World until it closed this month, and Tom Crone, the former legal manager for News International, accused him of making “mistaken” statements to Parliament in his testimony on Tuesday.

A third, Jon Chapman, News International’s director of legal affairs until this month, said in a statement last week he was also preparing to cooperate fully with the Parliament investigation and wanted to correct “serious inaccuracies” in the evidence given by Mr. Murdoch to lawmakers. Mr. Murdoch issued a statement insisting he stood by his remarks.

Mr. Murdoch could also face a challenge from another source, according to several lawyers and executives with knowledge of the proceedings. The source is an outside attorney who was also privy to discussions surrounding a confidential settlement to a phone hacking victim in 2008, which Mr. Murdoch approved, according to several lawyers with knowledge of the proceedings.

Mr. Murdoch said he had relied on “outside counsel” in settling that case.

One of the lawyers providing outside counsel was Julian Pike, a partner of the London firm Farrer Company, the queen’s lawyers. Mr. Pike, who is on sabbatical until Sept. 5, was at times directly engaged in discussions with the lawyers for the soccer union leader Gordon Taylor, who was the first victim of phone hacking to sue News International, the lawyers and executives said.

File notes that Mr. Pike took of his internal discussions with News International executives during 2008 could be pursued by Scotland Yard as part of a criminal inquiry, said two officials with knowledge of the police inquiry.

“So far, it’s two against one,” said a lawyer with first-hand knowledge of the proceedings who spoke on the condition of anonymity, referring to Mr. Crone’s and Mr. Myler’s word about the negotiations against Mr. Murdoch. “But if two more lawyers step forward to contradict Mr. Murdoch’s evidence, it would raise even more profound questions.”

Mr. Pike and several of his assistants did not return repeated messages asking for comment. News International would not comment on whether it was prepared to lift client confidentiality restrictions on Mr. Pike or Farrer Company, as it has with another outside law firm used, so they could speak to the police and Parliament.

Mr. Murdoch told the committee that he relied on the advice of “outside counsel” when he agreed to settle the case brought by Mr. Taylor for £725,000, which was then about $1.4 million, a settlement that was far beyond what privacy violation cases were being settled for at the time. Most were being settled for £3,000 to £12,000, lawyers with knowledge of such cases said.

In Mr. Taylor’s case, The News of the World did not even publish a story about him based on the information gleaned from hacked messages, lawyers have said.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/world/europe/25hacking.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Pressure on Murdochs Mounts in Hacking Scandal

July 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Tom Watson, a Labour lawmaker who has taken a leading role in the hacking inquiries, said he was asking the police to investigate whether James Murdoch had misled a parliamentary committee in his testimony on Tuesday.

Those and other developments put renewed pressure on the Murdochs and seemed to frustrate efforts by the company and its global parent, News Corporation, to contain the damage and put the scandal behind it.

Separately, another Labour lawmaker said he had written to nonexecutive directors of News Corporation urging that James and Rupert Murdoch be suspended from their roles in running the company.

Also, the authorities in Scotland opened an investigation into phone hacking and police corruption that could put new focus on Andy Coulson, a former editor of The News of the World, a tabloid that the company shuttered. He testified at a trial there that he knew nothing about phone hacking.

Mr. Cameron continued Friday to distance himself from the Murdochs and their newspapers, whose support helped usher him into power just over a year ago, as the scandal continued to raise questions about the close ties between his government and News International executives.

“Clearly, James Murdoch has got questions to answer in Parliament, and I’m sure he will do that,” Mr. Cameron said during a visit to an auto plant in the British Midlands. “And clearly News International has got some big issues to deal with and a mess to clear up. That has to be done by the management of that company. In the end, the management of the company must be an issue for the shareholders of that company, but the government wants to see this sorted out.”

In a week of fast-moving developments, James Murdoch testified that he had not been aware in 2008 of evidence that phone hacking at The News of the World went beyond a single “rogue reporter,” as the company then maintained. A year earlier, a reporter covering the royal family for the paper, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator on contract to the paper were convicted of hacking into the voice mail accounts of members of the royal household.

But on Thursday, two executives — Colin Myler, a former editor of The News of the World, and Tom Crone, the company’s former legal manager — said that James Murdoch’s testimony was “mistaken” and that they had in fact shown him evidence of wider phone hacking. Mr. Murdoch immediately denied the assertion, a stance he repeated Friday in an open letter to the chairman of the parliamentary panel.

“Allegations have been made as to the veracity of my testimony to your committee on Tuesday,” he said. “As you know, I was questioned thoroughly and I answered truthfully. I stand by my testimony.”

Mr. Watson, the Labour lawmaker, said the police should look into Mr. Crone’s and Mr. Myler’s assertions. “If their version of events is accurate,” he told the BBC, “it doesn’t just mean that Parliament has been misled, it means the police have another investigation on their hands.”

The British authority that regulates lawyers said Friday that it would formally investigate the role played by lawyers in the hacking scandal. Without naming specific firms, the Solicitors Regulation Authority said it would specifically investigate concerns raised by Mr. Watson.

He asked the authority to review Harbottle Lewis, a law firm that counts members of the royal family among its clients. Rupert Murdoch has accused the firm of making a “major mistake” in its review of internal News of the World e-mails, some of which, it has since emerged, contain evidence of wrongdoing.

The firm was hired by The News of the World in 2007 to defend it in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by the royalty reporter, Mr. Goodman, who claimed he should not have been fired because other staff members had done similar things.

Harbottle Lewis was asked to look through about 2,500 e-mails to and from Mr. Goodman, according to News International officials. In a carefully worded May 29, 2007, letter to the company, Lawrence Abramson of the law firm said that the review of e-mails found no evidence that executives knew about hacking. Several company executives have since said that the e-mail did contain signs of other unethical practices, notably police payoffs.

Lord Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions who was hired by News International to help it re-examine the e-mail, has said that the signs of criminality were “blindingly obvious” after a review of just “three to five minutes.”

Harbottle Lewis, which has been given a release from client confidentiality requirements to answer some questions put by the police and Parliament, did not return a call requesting comment.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/23murdoch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Murdoch Aides Long Tried to Blunt Scandal Over Hacking

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Now, with their most trusted lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and paying police for information, the broadcasting bid abandoned, the 168-year-old News of the World shuttered, and nine others arrested, Rupert and James Murdoch are scheduled to face an enraged British Parliament on Tuesday.

It is a spectacle that Rupert Murdoch’s closest associates had spent years trying to avoid.

Interviews with dozens of current and former News Corporation employees and others involved in the multiple hacking inquiries provide an inside view of how a small group of executives pursued strategies for years that had the effect of obscuring the extent of wrongdoing in the newsroom of Britain’s best-selling tabloid. And once the hacking scandal escalated, they scrambled in vain to quarantine the damage.

Evidence indicating that The News of the World paid police for information was not handed over to the authorities for four years. Its parent company paid hefty sums to those who threatened legal action, on condition of silence. The tabloid continued to pay reporters and editors whose knowledge could prove embarrassing even after they were fired or arrested for hacking. A key editor’s computer equipment was destroyed, and e-mail evidence was lost. Internal advice to accept responsibility was ignored, former executives said. John Whittingdale, a conservative member of Parliament who is the chairman of the committee that will question the Murdochs, said they need to come clean on the depth of the misdeeds, who authorized them and who knew what, when.

“Parliament was misled,” he said. “It will be a lengthy and detailed discussion.”

Mr. Murdoch has indicated he wants to cooperate.

“We think it’s important to absolutely establish our integrity in the eyes of the public,” he said last week. “It’s best just to be as transparent as possible.”

Ms. Brooks’s representative, David Wilson, said she maintained her innocence and looked forward to clearing her name, but declined to answer specific questions.

As a trickle of revelations has become a torrent, the company switched from containment to crisis mode. Ms. Brooks and others first made the case, widely believed to be true, that other newspapers had also hacked phones and sought to dig up evidence to prove it, interviews show. At a private meeting, Rupert Murdoch warned Paul Dacre, the editor of the rival Daily Mail newspaper and one of the most powerful men on Fleet Street, that “we are not going to be only bad dog on the street,” according to an account that Mr. Dacre gave to his management team. Mr. Murdoch’s spokesman did not respond to questions about his private conversations.

Former company executives and political aides assert that News International executives carried out a campaign of selective leaks implicating previous management and the police. Company officials deny that. The Metropolitan Police responded with a statement alleging a “deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation into the alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers.”

Mr. Murdoch was attending a conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in early July when it became clear that the latest eruption of the hacking scandal was not, as he first thought, a passing problem. According to a person briefed on the conversation, he proposed to one senior executive that he “fly commercial to London,” so he might be seen as man of the people. He was told that would hardly do the trick, and he arrived on a Gulfstream G550 private jet.

Inquiries on Several Fronts

The storm Mr. Murdoch flew into had been brewing since 2006, when the tabloid’s royal reporter and a private investigator were prosecuted for hacking into the messages of the royal household staff in search of juicy news exclusives. For years afterward, company executives publicly insisted that the hacking was limited to that one “rogue reporter.”

Don Van Natta Jr. contributed reporting from London.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=cbe3c872074461bb94642eedbe710af0

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