Commercial Monitors Signs Agreement with Dow Jones for global distribution of Australian broadcast summaries

Melbourne, 16 December 2008 – Leading media monitoring firm Commercial Monitors today announced it has signed a strategic agreement with global news and information service Dow Jones for the online distribution of broadcast news and current affairs summaries from Australian TV and radio.

Commercial Monitors will provide a direct feed of broadcast summaries sourced from media outlets around Australia to Dow Jones Factiva. “The addition expands coverage of radio and television news broadcasts in Australia to Dow Jones Factiva’s more than 1.8 million financial, corporate and government users around the world,” said Richard Hanks, chief operating officer, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.  “In fact, Dow Jones Factiva was the first to include text from the national broadcasters ABC and SBS and will continue to look for ways to enhance the content offered globally.”.

The broadcast summaries, updated hourly via a data feed, are fully indexed and will enable Dow Jones Factiva users to search and track Australian broadcast news items.  Users can click through to the Commercial Monitors website to order licensed video and audio content.  Hardcopy and digital distribution of broadcast content will be available on demand, with quick delivery worldwide.

“We are delighted to have formed this partnership with Dow Jones Factiva as it will take the distribution of our Australian broadcast content to a new global level,” said Commercial Monitors director Mark Scatchard.

“Australian broadcast media alerts will now be available to Dow Jones Factiva customers, providing an invaluable resource for corporate, government and financial clients to monitor what is being reported in the Australian broadcast media about their organisation, portfolio or industry.  We will be adding hundreds of updates from Australian television and radio each day to Factiva's global news and business information services.”

Mr Scatchard said that as part of the company’s ongoing development, Commercial Monitors will be releasing an online monitoring service that tracks news stories from hundreds of Australian newspapers, magazines and online publishers early in 2009.  The online news content will be integrated with the company’s existing advertising monitoring products to provide a comprehensive industry overview of marketing and news content.