Industry headlines

James Murdoch has resigned from the board of News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, and Times Newspapers, the publisher of The Times and The Sunday Times. According to filings at Companies House, Murdoch's position as a director of the board of News Group Newspapers Ltd was terminated on 16 September, while his directorate at Times Newspapers Ltd terminated on 28 September. He retains his position as chairman of News International, News Corporation's publishing division which includes the three papers, and is still a director of NI Group Ltd and Times Publishing Holding Ltd

Freesat, the free-to-air satellite broadcaster, has signed a major marketing partnership with Northern & Shell's Channel 5, which will kick off with the headline sponsorship of 'Charley Boorman's Extreme Frontiers'. The deal forms part of Freesat's wider marketing campaign by VCCP and MPG Media Contacts which aims to promote the Freesat "Catch-free TV" proposition and follows a campaign from digital terrestrial TV provider Freeview. Freesat is jointly owned by the BBC and ITV and the tie-up with Channel 5 marks the first time a commercial TV broadcaster has carried its advertising

InStyle, IPC's monthly fashion and beauty magazine, has signed up seven high-end fashion designers to create seven limited edition covers for subscribers and short films exploring the notion of style. The collaboration, called Film InStyle, features designers Roberto Cavalli, Christian Louboutin, Mulberry's Emma Hill, Henry Holland, Paul Smith, Zac Posen and Diane von Furstenberg. The seven covers include an augmented reality feature for Henry Holland's edition. Consumers can purchase the different covers of the December issue by telephone, if they do not subscribe to the magazine.

New research by JCDecaux Airport has shown the untapped power of advertising in the Arrivals area of the airport. The ‘Arrivals Unlocked: AER III – The Final Chapter’ study shows that familiar and comforting advertising has a disproportionately positive effect among people returning to the UK and among visitors arriving in the country.

Global Radio is on the hunt for a new breakfast presenter for flagship London station 95.8 Capital FM, after announcing that Johnny Vaughan was leaving the station at the end of last week. In a statement on Friday (18 November), Global Radio said that after nearly eight years, both Global and Vaughan had agreed that "now is the right time to step down". Former ‘Big Breakfast’ presenter Vaughan replaced Chris Tarrant as host of the Capital Radio breakfast show in April 2004 and his contract was renewed by then owner GCap Media for a further three years in 2007. Vaughan and his co-host Lisa Snowdon are currently the number one commercial radio station hosts at breakfast time, with an average weekly reach of 1.13 million in the third quarter of 2011, according to Rajar.

UTV Media expects increased revenues at national radio station TalkSport to mitigate a slowdown in TV ad revenue in the last two months of 2011, in another note of caution for the TV ad market. In an interim management statement UTV Media reported revenue for the 10 months to 31 October at its Radio GB division, which operates national speech station TalkSport and 14 local radio licences, increased by 5% year on year. UTV Media said the increase compares with a market decline of 2%. However, figures from the Radio Advertising Bureau suggest the radio ad market actually increased by 2.6%.

Starbucks, the coffee chain, is installing a mobile payment system in the form of an iPhone app into 700 of its outlets across the UK and Ireland, following a successful US roll-out. The Starbucks app will be available for iPhone and iPod Touch users from 5 January and allows consumers to pay for their items through their phone with the aim to reduce transaction time by around 10 seconds. Consumers who own a registered Starbucks Card, part of the chain’s loyalty programme, will be able to link the balance on their reward card to the Starbucks app. Each consumer with a reward card will be given a unique barcode that will appear on the app and can be scanned at the till.

Apple has launched its first weekly charts for paid and free apps on the iPhone and iPad in the UK, although the company will not be disclosing sales figures. The media giant has teamed up with the Press Association to release a weekly chart based on sales and downloads from its App Store over the past seven days. Although the Apple App Store already features charts on the most popular apps within it for the past few hours, this is the first time it has pulled together the data to formulate a weekly chart, according to The Guardian.

HMV is to launch an on-demand film service featuring titles such as Harry Potter and The X-Men, as the embattled retailer turns to digital channels to counter slumping in-store sales. HMV has partnered with FilmFlex, the video-on-demand rental service joint venture between Sony Pictures Television and The Walt Disney Company, to launch the new service called hmvon-demand. The service – which will offer titles from more than 30 distributors, including all of the major Hollywood studios – is soft launching on Thursday.

Spotify has reached 2.5 million paying customers, as the company continues its subscription drive. The digital music service has accelerated uptake of its paid-for services this year to help it in its negotiations with record labels, as it capitalises on a successful US launch and a close integration with Facebook. As part of this strategy, it scaled back its free service in May, halving the amount of free music users can listen to.

Unilever is asking consumers which ’stain ambassador’ it should appoint for its Persil laundry brand, one of several marketing developments it is crowdsourcing ideas on using its Facebook VIP app. It is asking consumers to select who, if any at all, they think could best represent the brand’s message that “getting dirty can be fun”, from a list of 10 options. Choices include celebrities such as survival expert Bear Grylls, rugby player Mike Tindall and Kim and Aggie, as well as kid’s cartoon character Peppa Pig and non-celebrity mums and dads.

Boutique hotel directory company Mr & Mrs Smith has become one of the first upmarket travel brands to launch a profile on Google+. Mr & Mrs Smith, which was originally set up a series of guidebooks and later established itself as a hotel booking firm, will feature the latest hotel news, offers, photos and videos as well as travel tips across its profile on the Google social network. The travel brand joins the social network two weeks after it was opened up to let businesses create their own pages, previously it was only open to individuals.