Media

JK Rowling is the most inspirational entrepreneurial female role-model for young women in the UK, new research carried out by The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) has revealed.

The Harry Potter author came out top of the survey, ahead of other respected names such as Stella McCartney and TV's Dragon's Den star, and successful business-woman, Deborah Meaden.

Trinity Mirror may have stemmed falling profits, but the way it did so and its future strategy raises fundamental questions.

Chief Executive Sly Bailey (pictured) says the results show TM is "continuing to develop the business for longer term growth", but commentators have used words such as "ominous" and "fragile".

Trinity Mirror, which publishes the Mirror, People and Record newspapers, made pre-tax profits of £72.7m in the 53 weeks to 3 January 2010. The group, which also publishes regional newspapers, saw circulation fall and advertising revenue decline, but reports an increase in online users.

The performance comes on the back of a year in which Trinity Mirror axed 1,700 jobs, 20% of the total, closed 15 offices and one print plant, and shut or sold 30 regional newspapers. New online brands such as mirrorfootball.co.uk and 3am.co.uk took the group's number of monthly unique users to 17 million.

Has the BBC got itself into hot water over plans to axe services to minority audiences?

Judging by the public response so far, the answer is yes.

What is interesting is that the BBC is to go through a consultation process before it makes a final decision on the future of services such as 6 Music and the Asian Network.

But the fact that these services have been named already would appear to indicate that a decision has already been arrived at.

Despite staggering losses of £2.7bn in 2008, ITV bosses have today announced a return to annual profit with a £25mn surplus.

ITV television advertising revenues were down 9% at £1,291m but still ahead of the total market which fell 11% into the red.

Voting for your favourite act in The X Factor has made a major impact on ITV's profits. Revenue from phone voting and competition entries made £30m of the company's adjusted profits of £108m for 2009. There were almost 100 million 'viewer interactions', with 10 million votes cast in the X- Factor final.

But profits are down 4% on 2008, with advertising revenues falling 11% to £998m in what ITV says is "the worst television advertising downturn on record." The TV company's share of peak time viewing across all channels grew to 28.2% (up on 2008's 27.8%) and online users rose substantially.

It's fair bet the TV advert you remember the most from last year featured a gorilla playing a drum kit to the strains of the Phil Collins hit In The Air Tonight. The latest issue of ad industry creatives magazine Shots gives a fascinating insight into how the ad came to be, and its affect on Cadbury's sales.

During the ad's on-air period, sales of Cadbury's Dairy Milk boomed by 9%, with sales figures helping to drive the return on investment to four times the normal level of the fast moving consumer goods market. Over the whole of 2009, Dairy Milk sales grew 11%, helping Cadbury post a 30% rise in profits.

Let's face it, It is easy to criticise the BBC, it's a national pastime.

I heard someone on the train yesterday saying 'we pay our license fee for this rubbish'.

I thought he was talking about one of the string of reality TV/talent shows but in actual fact he was talking about Radio 6 Music, BBC Four and BBC Three.

Radio 6 Music as well as the Asian Network look set for the chop in BBC cutbacks and who knows what lifespan BBC Three and Four have.

Publisher Pearson, which owns the FT and Penguin among other brands, saw sales rise 4% to £5.6bn last year, with adjusted operating profit also up 4% to £858m. The figures form part of the company's preliminary results statement. Digital products generated £1.7bn of sales, 31% of the total.

Chief executive Marjorie Scandino says, "We increased sales and profits while investing heavily in the future," pointing to an investment last year of £500m on new education programmes, FT journalism and author's advances. Savings such as a redundancy programme at Penguin have also been implemented.

The British Library and others are calling for new legislation to allow it to archive web content without asking for permission first.

This relates to the Web Archive programme, which aims to retain copies of all of the websites in the UK. At the moment the Legal Deposit Libraries Act says every publication must be archived by a handful of key libraries but it doesn't specify anything on copyright.

A pressure group in the UK is calling for a reform to copyright laws to legitimise individuals copying a CD to their computer and maybe copying it to a music player.

What? You thought that was legal already? Well, if you're in the UK, you're mistaken, like the 73% of respondents to Consumer Focus' poll. It remains illegal to make a copy of something to which you don't own the copyright – only nobody cares, including the owners.

The Federation of Small Business has joined the attack on the troubled broadband tax proposal which has already met with disapproval from a group of MPs.

Only yesterday a Parliamentary committee criticised the plans as unfair – now the FSB says the increased broadband speed, if achieved under the proposals, will be too slow and that the tax will hurt start-ups.

The suspended sentence meted out to three senior Google executives has been condemned widely as a misreading of privacy laws.

Someone posted a video of an autistic teenager being bullied on the site's video section and an Italian judge decided this fell foul of privacy laws – and that Google was liable. This is fundamentally wrong.