Reliable rating figures are vital to the future of multi-channel TV, but the jury is still out on which method it is best to adopt. Torin Douglas is BBC TV’s media correspondent

BP Oil UK has hired Tesco marketing controller Sally Bye to take control of its restructured marketing department. The company previously divided its marketing in two, with a fuel department dealing with petrol and diesel, and a separate department for its shops, which includes forecourt outlets and the Express shopping concept. After the departure of […]

After reading your Cover Story Brewer’s Swoop (MW April 19), the alarm bells started to ring. As brewers become more powerful through mergers and takeovers, and beer brands are streamlined, one can only predict a 1984-style scenario, with institutions like Bass dictating which beers we drink, in bars which owe more to dentists’ waiting rooms […]

BT has performed a dramatic U-turn by appointing a marketing and sales director to its personal communications division only three months after ousting Michael Biden and claiming the position was obsolete. The post is going to Michael Wagner, currently head of network marketing. He was recruited by Biden last September but Biden was forced out […]

The Diary was impressed to discover that our Glorious Queen, unlike many of her loyal subjects, is not a victim of what has come to be known as press hype. The Queen’s Awards for Export, Technological and Environmental Achievement 1996, having adopted an astonishingly unbiased, even if somewhat dubious judging process, has listed Anglo Beef […]

The home interest magazine market is gearing up for a circulation war with a launch, a redesign and a price-cutting initiative planned. Wallpaper Media, an independent publisher with backing from Austrian group Ahead Media, is launching Wallpaper magazine in September targeting 25 to 40-year-old urban flat dwellers. The magazine, which aims to bring style magazine […]

As the partners behind the launch of Liptonice go their separate ways, Jon Rees questions what went wrong and where Unilever and PepsiCo go from here

The idea that early man did not wear the trousers and that the Victorians rewrote history is evidently a mammoth lie

The market research feature, Public Enquiries (MW April 5), while highlighting several different agency types using “different” and “adventurous” methodologies, does not show how research can be made to be holistically more effective. We firmly believe that one of the key reasons for the lack of genuine innovation in the Nineties is because of researchers […]

Capital and MSM’s position burdens them with their responsibility of developing the medium of radio The radio industry faces a number of challenges as it works to consolidate and develop its gains of the past few years – challenges which were put into focus recently by two contrasting events. In the same week that the […]

Maiden Transport and TDI are investing in new products for the transport advertising market. Maiden has negotiated a ten-year extension to its Railtrack concession but solely for a secret new advertising product that will be unveiled in the next few months. Maiden told potential investors at the launch of its flotation prospectus last week that […]

Never mind own-label detergents and food, Britain’s supermarkets are now expecting own-label cosmetics and toiletries to deliver the kind of profit margins that they once expected from the aforementioned sectors. Safeway and Sainsbury’s have recently launched ranges of oral healthcare products (MW April 12). And both Tesco and Superdrug are now selling a much wider […]

Camelot is deliberately holding back on developing new games for its loss-making Instants scratchcard game so it can boost profits, according to rival scratchcard operator Scratch-n-Win. Scratch-n-Win chairman Lord Mancroft says he believes Camelot is stalling new game development so Instants sales will fall, and losses will be reduced. Weekly sales of Instants fell to […]

The growth of home shopping could shake up the take-home sector. Shilen Patel is a business consultant at Datamonitor