Canoe floats Rogers' boat

Media giants set aside rivalry for mutual gain

By TIMOTHY LERICHE, SUN MEDIA

Media rivals Rogers Publishing Limited and Canoe Inc. will join forces online to present Rogers' magazine content at Canoe's Internet portal.

And Canoe, a Quebecor Inc. company, expects to continue lining up new content and business partners in Canada and abroad to widen the scope of its canoe.ca site.

"Rogers and Quebecor are competitors, so why are we partnering?" asked Patrick Lauzon, executive vice-president of Canoe, anticipating observer questions.



"Online is a very different landscape in terms of where our competition is,"
said Lauzon " . . where we could be the best in is in managing and distributing content. We feel we can work with other publishers to build a single entry point."

. . . Rogers' publications includ(e) Chatelaine, Maclean's, Today's Parent, Flare, LouLou Magazine, Glow, Canadian Business, and Chocolat Magazine . . .

"We're taking 11 Rogers properties and putting the canoe.ca heading on all of them," said Lauzon. "It's a mutually beneficial agreement. There's a business arrangement that I can't really discuss in details."
. . .

Canoe attracts 6 ,781,000 online visitors a month -- about half in French. Its other linked services include employment, personals, autos and continuing education.

. . . Louise Clements, vice-president of digital and interactive at Rogers Consumer Publishing, (related that) the 11 Rogers sites attract about 1.25 million "unique" visitors a month -- meaning repeat visitors are not counted.

"We think it's a great fit," said Clements. "We have high quality content in both languages. We go very deep and they go very broad. Both parties are going to benefit from increased traffic and increased time on the site."
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BCE (Bell) bought CTV*, didn't they, back some 5 or 6 years ago? With LCN, it's TVA who provides the news on Canoe.ca. Does that mean BCE and Quebecor are competitors but now NOT Rogers, who partners with Videotron, a Quebecor property, on cellular networks?

Who then, in media, are we NOT talking about as a participant in this media onvergence on the web at Canoe.ca? asks Blogaulaire, puzzled.

For starters, and merely skimming the surface: it's NOT ( . . probably not??) Transcontinental, CanWest Global, CBC, Telus, Murdoch, Black, Bronfman . . . AOL Time-Warner, Disney, Stronach's T.V. sports cable . . lots of empires, some very powerful Canadian ones at that, are not implicated above. But are we certain EVEN THOSE don't fit into this picture SOMEWHERE. (But how?) (Who owns Hearst?)

Well . . I guess everything and everybody in media is intertwined, inter-connected. BCE as well. We'll have to just wait and watch for more shake-outs. Like the way we've seen media constantly converge. The 'drama' has lasted now for some 30 years . . and we're still counting fewer and fewer players.

Until very recently, cross-ownership was a fairly specialized aspect of the concern over concentration in the media, but it has taken centre stage in Canada in recent months as the result of three major deals: the purchase of Hollinger daily newspapers by CanWest, owner of Global Television Network; the alliance between the Thomson group, owner of the Globe and Mail, and BCE, the new owner of the CTV network; and, finally, the acquisition of the Vidéotron group (TVA) by Quebecor.

Within a matter of a few months, following the merger of AOL and Time Warner, the Canadian media industry has undergone a profound transformation.

Media Studies (2002)

University of Michigan 'Sees' A Post on CPE -- YIPEE !

Today, proudly, Cheap Priceless Editions was given a linked mention on the University of Michigan's list of Internet sites and posts (Boxxet Links) under the category 'Education'. We made the 'Best' Box.

The university's search site of various links is updated daily and choses a different focus each day. CPE was referenced under an announcement regarding Google partnering with the University of Texas to digitize part of their library collection. A similar project, the initial one in fact, of the Google Library Project, was undertaken at the U of M in December 2004.

Blogaulaire, along with several other bloggers with far greater expertise and experience than moi, highlighted our reservations about Google having free reign in how such digitized archives are distributed outside non-profit, public foundations and universities.

The only connection Blogaulaire has with this university is that it is the one and only campus venue at which I got together with Abbie Hoffman back when we were . . .

But I digress. Maybe if the U of M knew more about that 'moment', they would not have chosen to upload a link to CPE!

I'm kidding folks. Abbie's dead and I've mellowed so much, I might as well be. :) (wry, withering smile)


See HERE !!

Table-Top Imaging of Books Kept Blogaulaire Busy

Yesterday I did not post to my blog 'cuz I banged out 157 photo shots of books. Once I have my homemade diffusion screen 'tent' set up, once the tripod, lights and backdrop is in place, I blaze away at snapping the shutter and slapping the books in the 'saddle' to have their portrait taken.

Why So Many Books?

It was to upload an image, eventually, to the meta vendor sites where a bookseller friend has listed her entire 14,500 book inventory. Livres Bronx Books is not far from where I live, so it is easy for me to set up there or on my own table at home (and schlock the books back and forth).

Yesterday, it was partly a dry-run, partly my own books which my friend may upload on her site as reimbursement for my work, and partly her books. But don't worry, I'm not setting up to image all fourteen-and-a-half thousand books she's got. Some of those have been on-line nearly 10 years. They're dead pulp. Ready for some 25-cent or 50-cent bin out on the sidewalk (come spring, come summer) in front of her shop. (But SHE knows not to ask what I think she should do. You don't want to go there either, nor see the sparks fly . . so we'll just drop that hot potato, okay?)

As well, yesterday and early this am I registered with flickr and started uploading images as a public archive. I have not decided where I want to take those collections yet. Until I do, I'll make book-related photos public, ditto some of the urban imagery that I will share with the sites UER and Walking Turcot Yard, and make the rest private - to share on a needs-to-see basis.

Oh, I forgot to mention that another friend has opened a wool and fabric shop is St. Jean sur Richelieu. Actually she bought out the former owner. My daughter takes her newborn over to the wool and knitting boutique some days and the 'regulars' are getting to know my grandchild. I wish it was closer to where I live (it is in fact 25 km to the south). But maybe I'll relent on my 'simplicity' and buy another (the latest) in that long line of clunkers I've owned since the $50 Chevy with dual carbs (1957) which I shared with a grad student back when. I wasn't a driver in '57, that's for sure. So I'll let YOU guess how old it was. We kept a quarter barrel of motor oil - I swear, a barrel with a pump - on the back seat . . that Chev burned so much oil! Now that we are so globally warmed, I . . . 'Don't mourn, organize!' I already said that above.

2006: Best-Ever Online Year for Christmas Sellers | 2007: the Year for Buying Blind

A Good Online 2006 Christmas: Keeping Internet Buying On Billboards All Year Long | | Guardian Unlimited Business

Bloggers, of anyone on the planet, know that for the Internet it is now more than the interface, it is distributed and virtual software: Web 2.0/3.0 that will be hot in tech news (again).

But with wireless and cellular or satellite comm expanding, there is all the more reason to push shoppers online "instantly" in 2007. This Internet access mobility, for transmiting ads AND closing the sale, will push 'impulse buying'. The scenario Blogaulaire sees coming could be very strange; almost as strange as car-hops on rollerskates were in the mid-to-late 1950s.

More advertising dollars are certain to go toward instant shopping, without even looking at the screen. Using any iThis or iThat - any of a myriad of handheld devices now closer than the horizon - Internet shopping could be as easy and without customer care as picking up a latte to go.

(Using a handheld as a price scanning and price-comparing device via satellite downloads of web searching will figure as only the most arcane of utilities. Punching in a short code on a device for instant purchase may become the most mundane application.)

In an earlier post, Blogaulaire posed the query: Is it all so 'the Establishment' now that it is boring. That's an acceptable question. But I also implied that the quality and service issues with online marketers would, in a manner of putting it, vanish. Cuz that's boring too!

Well people are people, and we have the opportunity to look back over nearly 3 weeks of 2007. And I have to make one revision. It looks like the issues of bait 'n' switch, like motel owners were accused of going back to the invention of the automobile (and used car salesmen thereafter), well those consumer protection issues, I predict, are going to stick it out in the LIVING and BUSINESS as well as ENTERTAINMENT sections of the print newspapers.

Maybe we'll see more of this:

Business News

Amazon mystery: pricing of books
A Times reporter finds fluctuating costs for his obscure chosen titles at the Internet retailer.
By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer
January 2, 2007

After getting 'burned' at Amazon for a title that he selected online but only decided to buy a few days later, a writer for the L. A. Times decided to do his own fantom shopper test.

David Streitfeld would add items to his basket while on Amazon and note the prices; then he would come back a few days later to 'check out' and pay. In this test, both the U.S. Amazon site and the U.K. Amazon site registered more price rises than declines for the items in Streitfeld's pre-Christmas basket.

Streitfeld was acting out the role of a buyer so rushed that first he skims through tossing stuff in a basket. Only later, after the rush of desire does he 'check out' to pay with his plastic number account. But most people in such a rush would not take the final step he took: compare initial price with check-out billing.

Instead of just name-calling, labelling the phenomenon "price gouging", the L. A. Times reporter went out and interviewed someone with expertise in the field of marketing practises:

"Sucharita Mulpuru, an e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research Inc., wondered whether Amazon was going down the path of dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing involves selling identical material for different amounts based on the customer's willingness to pay. In the physical world it's a common feature. Want to fly to Paris tomorrow? It's going to cost lots more than if you can wait a few weeks."

This feature business article, in a final understatement, says such business practises may be 'normal' but,

"There's also the risk of alienating customers."

Good point. Do we risk being further alienated all year long?

Will it be "Hold the steering wheel hon, I want to order 'that'," pointing to the passing billboard as the car swerves into the left lane and the driver pulls out a cellphone.