Our gaming guru wins IT award. A belated moment of self-indulgence: gaming writer and academic Daniel Golding has won a “Lizzie” award for technology journalism for his work on Crikey. Golding was named best gaming journalist at the annual gongs, handed out at Sydney’s Luna Park on Friday. His writing for Crikey blog Game On also earned commendation in the category of best new journalist at the 2013 IT Journalism Awards, where SMH.com.au was named best title and Gizmodo best website. We couldn’t be prouder — even though the young Melbourne gaming guru’s rising talent caused him to be poached recently to write for the ABC’s online arts portal.

Bloomberg snoops caught out. The snooping and privacy crisis at Bloomberg, the world’s major financial data company, continues to grow, with the some of the world’s most powerful central banks and regulators now asking the company for assurances their executives and operations were not compromised.

The Financial Times reported this morning the European Central Bank and Germany’s Bundesbank had joined the list of major customers expressing concern about the snooping and data collection activities of Bloomberg. At the weekend the powerful Federal Reserve and the US Treasury expressed concerns and said they had asked Bloomberg for details of the practice.

The scandal erupted late last week with the news Bloomberg journalists had been able to access some of the details of what clients had been doing on the 315,000 terminals Bloomberg has operating around the world. It deepened overnight with FT reporting that around 10,000 instant messages from Bloomberg clients were posted on the internet and had been since 2011. They were removed when the paper drew them to the attention of the financial services group. It would seem Bloomberg management had no knowledge these confidential and sensitive messages were posted online.

The latest disclosures came as Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor, joined his CEO (Daniel Doctoroff) in apologising. Goldman Sachs had originally complained about the way some Bloomberg journalists seemed to be able to tell who was working at the bank by how often they accessed their Bloomberg terminals. That was quickly confirmed by numerous former Bloomberg reporters in newsrooms and other financial businesses. — Glenn Dyer

The outrageous cost of Foxtel. Foxtel’s  2.3 million Australian subscribers are paying on average $US99 a month for their service, or close to $US1200 a year, according to latest News Corp filing for the split in the company into content and publishing companies that was lodged with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s one of the highest around the world for subscription TV, according to industry reports.

Figures in BSkyB’s recent quarterly report show that the company had an average revenue per user (ARPU) of 576 pounds a year, or around $US884, which equates to around $US74 a month. BSkyB says it sells its 10.2 million subscribers an average of 2.8 services a year (which include the basic subscription TV service, plus broadband, mobile phone, mobile video or video on demand). Foxtel has only one service, its subscription TV business. That makes Foxtel much more expensive than BSkyB for each subscriber. Foxtel has a churn rate (or the rate at which subscribers leave and new ones are recruited) of 14.4%, compared with BSklyB’s churn at just over 10%.

The filing said that for the nine months ended March 31, 2013, under U.S. GAAP (American accounting rules, different to ours):

“Foxtel recorded revenues of $2.4 billion, net income before income taxes of $159 million, interest expense of $173 million and depreciation and amortization of $343 million, calculated before purchase accounting adjustments.”

Foxtel had $2.1 billion in debt as of March 31, 2013, according to the SEC filing. — Glenn Dyer

Front page of the day. With news of tourists being s-xually assaulted in Brazil making world headlines, Sao Paulo paper A Cidade has a provocative front page reporting a woman is assaulted in the city of Ribeirao Preto every six hours …