The economics of multi-platform

That cheeky monkey Mark Thompson is back in London today, using an FT conference to help with the launch of a new subscription app from the New York Times. NYT Now, produced for smartphones by ten journalists, will offer a selection of the newspaper's top stories plus a morning and evening briefing, with no ads other than "native" i.e. sponsored pieces, for $2 a week, $104 a year.

At today's exchange rate, that's £62.87. Just over two-fifths of the BBC annual licence fee.

Canned

I wonder who or what was selecting images to accompany the mobile news feed for BBC News last night.

Handheld

We know of radio stations broadcasting from lap-tops, and some powered by iPods. Now Mixlr has come up with an app to run a radio station from an iPhone. Are you listening, BBC Property ?

Talking the talk

This is apparently a demo of the new Google Voice Search for iPhone and Android. Wonder if it will work with Machynlleth ?

Roaming

When mortals get stung for mobile phone roaming charges, they usually learn fast and find ways round the costs - a local phone, a local Sim, pre-paying to roam, texts not calls, Skype-ing through wi-fi, etc, etc.

Here's the top three in an FOI league table of BBC executives roaming charges over the last 23 months.

Alan Yentob          £2,870.05
Mark Thompson    £2,854.69
Peter Horrocks      £2,339.40

Alan and Mark's totals work out at over £120 a month. But Alan's bill was actually higher...

Please also be aware that in respect of the total provided for Alan Yentob, we have excluded the cost of any calls made in relation to his role as a programme maker. This is because such call cost information is held by the BBC for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature’ and the BBC is therefore not obliged to include this information and has chosen not to do so on this occasion.


We note that the BBC's Director of Future Media Ralph Rivera returned no roaming charges whatsoever. Either he's cracked it, and should share his tricks with Yentob and the others - or he just doesn't speak to anyone.

• 0700 Saturday update: An informed insider says many bosses have BlackBerries, which are locked down so they will not work with a local SIM. The contract with O2 is great for the UK, but punitive overseas. And, in a nervous nelly approach to the new, Skype is banned from most BBC computers - though widely used on radio output. 

Phoning home

I know it's a little late to suggest this, but BBC DG Mark Thompson might think about buying a second mobile phone to use in the States. According to an FOI response, he's top of the league of roaming charges for the  Executive Board.

Total Mobile Phone Roaming Charges for BBC Executive Board members
April 2010-February 2012

Helen Boaden £212.20
Tim Davie £99.29
George Entwistle £18.87
Zarin Patel £503.16
Ralph Rivera £0
Mark Thompson £2854.69
Caroline Thomson £188.74

Technocrat Ralph, who only joined halfway through this period, presumably borrows a friend's phone when on the road.

News on small Apple

There's a nice Flash demo of how the BBC News iPhone app ought to work here -two pars down. Neat ideas, its own look and feel, video properly at the top (not yet constrained by the design police I mentioned yesterday).

However I will be surprised if it's as responsive in real life as the demo... We'll have to wait til April.