Screenmedia Magazine - digital signage, digital out-of-home, convergent media, screenmedia magazine

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the NASDAQ...China’s Focus Media is in the news once more this week, thanks to another attack by short-seller Muddy Waters Research on the firm’s claims for its networks.

But there’s a curious twist to the latest instalment. By my reckoning, Muddy Waters’ criticisms this time round are, if not nearly as sweeping, certainly a lot more persuasive than they were when the pair first tussled back in November. Yet Focus’s stock has regained nearly all the value that it lost in a calamitous fall after the original Muddy Waters report. Is this a case of investors simply getting bored of what is increasingly resembling a to-and-fro of besuited bitch-slapping?

Otherwise, it’s been a week of good news for the DOOH business. Also in China, there are signs that China New Media is getting serious about digital, with big new outdoor screens going up as well as promising revenue from its City Navigator kiosks.

In India, meanwhile, LiveMedia continues to develop its network – most recently with a game that cleverly combines advertiser branding with entertainment – while back in Britain, there’s encouraging response to hospital digital signage, and the first names on the speaker line-up for Screenmedia Expo Europe.