After experimenting with video clips during the last year, another of our local papers is taking great strides in the new media world: The Forester has launched a regular internet video service - Ftv - providing video news bulletins.

It’s proving to be quite a hit: one of its reports, broadcast on YouTube, notched up sufficient hits to be the 12th most watched video in the UK that day, and the 50th most viewed news and politics video in the world!

The Forester’s editor, Viv Hargreaves, said: “I’m absolutely delighted that my news team have shown such enthusiasm for the multi-media approach which is really putting The Forester on the map. It has certainly enhanced their experience of journalism and should prove useful to them in future."

Interestingly, the venture has been made possible by The Forester having secured sponsorship from a local car dealer, with an advert for them being embedded in the news bulletins.

Reversing its marketing plan of two years, The New York Times announced yesterday that it would be cancelling its ‘pay to view’ system, TimesSelect, which required readers to pay almost $50 a year or $8 a month to read the work of its popular columnists.

It is making the move due to the greater potential revenue available from online advertising.

Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the NYTimes.com site explained: “Our projections for growth on [the] paid subscribing base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising.”

In particular, the paper had been surprised by the number of indirect page views received due to search engines such as Google and Yahoo, as well as by links from other sites.

Whilst the paper disclosed that its TimesSelect program had generated about $10 million a year in revenue, it declined to provide projected figures for revenue generated by online advertising.

Statistics released here by the Internet Advertising Bureau earlier this year revealed that advertising spend on the internet has now overtaken that in the national newspapers.

Hannah Roberts is on annual leave until the 10th September, relaxing away from a really busy time at Montage.

Following Matt's blog about the BBC iPlayer last week, Hannah spotted that a company has already cracked the new iPhone by Apple, so the Beeb is not the only company that is being slated by the techies at the moment!