“It’s really about low-cost shipping, but why is video in there? It’s kind of a confusing mess.”

Hastings has in the past dismissed Amazon’s video subscription efforts as well, and tends to point instead to HBO and its HBO Go service as its real competitors. That’s despite the fact that Amazon has been ramping up its content library in recent months. Earlier this month, Amazon singned a deal with Epix that will give its subscribers access to the Hunger Games, Avengers and other movies previously exclusive to Netflix.

There have been rumors in the past that Amazon would spin off its video service from Prime to turn it into a full-blown Netflix competitor, but the company has repeatedly denied any such plans.

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Succession

Lachlan Murdoch may yet end up running one of the companies some day but his father smacked down speculation that he will be the publishing CEO post-spin. FBN’s Neil Cavuto, did the house interview but also asked some of the same questions many of us would. Cavuto inquired about the fate of sons Lachlan, who left the company but is not on the board, and James, the deputy COO who was hit hard by the hacking scandal. Murdoch quickly reminded him (as he did another interviewer later) that he also has a daughter involved with the company. Cavuto shrugged that off and asked again about expanded roles for Lachlan and James. Murdoch’s reply:

“Well, they have to earn it, and they have to want it.”

He added, “Lachlan is very happy running his own businesses in Australia. And he loves living there. So we’ll see.”

Pushed on Lachlan as publishing CEO, Murdoch replied: “I think that is highly unlikely.” Cavuto didn’t ask the same question about James, and he seems to have forgotten about Elisabeth, who came back to News Corp. when it acquired her Shine production company. She has yet to join the News Corp. board as planned.

Murdoch’s succession plans have long been a concern and a matter of great interest, especially for investors. During an interview on CNBC, Murdoch, 81, passed up a chance to talk up Chase Carey as his successor, opting first for a flippant “you’ll have to talk to my board after they bury me” — before admitting there probably would come a time when he shouldn’t run the company. Carey, deputy chairman and COO of News Corp., is slated to be president and COO of the media and entertainment company; Murdoch touted him as his successor last year. But now he’ll need two.

What about James? Faber asked if James Murdoch, who has been under fire for his management of UK publishing unit News Int. as part of the hacking scandal that broke last July, has a damaged reputation now that would keep him from following his father. Murdoch defended his son, saying that if anyone’s reputation had been damaged, it was his own.

Publishing

And what about a CEO for publishing? (Someone not involved suggested to me this week that the best punishment for James, whose greatest success has been with BSkyB and other pay TV, would be to give him that job.) Murdoch said repeatedly that the expected length of the process, about a year, provides “plenty of time to make up our mind who actually will be CEO at my right hand.” He told Bloomberg News, ” We’ll be working exactly as we are today for approximately 12 months, and within that time, I will make my choice. … Unless there’s something very extraordinary I think it would be internal.”

That would seem to make Lex Fenwick, the new CEO of Dow Jones, a leading contender. Murdoch called Dow Jones the “center” of the new company, stressing its global expansion plans and paying digital subs. He also told CNBC he was considering a name change for the Wall Street Journal to WSJ.

Murdoch insists the publishing company not only can survive on its own, but can grow, telling Bloomberg’s Liu: “It will have a positive cash flow from day one with the assets going into it and it will have no debt. It will also have cash reserves. We have as a company very large reserves of cash in the bank earning next to nothing.”

Some of those billions are being used for the share buyback that helped the stock price improve following the hit from hacking and the loss of the deal to buy the rest of BSkyB.

He told CNBC: “We throw off plenty of cash in Australia but we reorganizing so we’ll throw off more. We’re making cash in Britain, not as much as before because News of the World is gone and we started the Sunday Sun. Dow Jones is very cash positive.”

Although revenue has been shrinking, the publishing division is firmly in the black without assets like investments in Australian pay TV being added. What about cost cutting? That’s already been going on at various properties. Murdoch told Liu, “We are going through a reorganization in Australia, which will result in cuts; we have some reorganizing starting in Britain. Here at the Wall Street Journal, we’re going to be as efficient as we can, of course. I would say net net around the world, we’ll be increasing our numbers and increasing our costs — and hopefully increasing our revenues.”

The new company will have enough to keep investing and experimenting but Murdoch told the Financial Times each paper ultimately will be expected to stand on ts own:

“You’re not going to see any print losses tolerated anywhere. We may start something that’ll take three years to turn a profit, or we’ll have maybe a bad time.”

The patron saint of paywalls

Murdoch wants to be viewed as the patron saint of paying for content, claiming that he was the first to say people should pay for digital news. It’s a dubious claim, even within his own company given that the WSJ’s subscription plans far predate News Corp.’s ownership — and that he initially promised to make WSJ.com completely free.

But he is passionate about it and about experimenting with it, investing $30 million in The Daily, the digital-only tabloid that launched on the iPad, implementing paywalls at the Times of London and Sunday Times, charging for apps, and earlier, selling Kindle subscriptions.

Why now?

Murdoch freely admits that he was the roadblock all along but it doesn’t sound like there was an “a ha moment” that changed his mind the split. His COO Chase Carey and CFO Dave DeVoe were among those internally who have pushed for the change, long urged by some investors and analysts. He told Cavuto, “They (Carey and DeVoe) look at the markets and I don’t — to the same extent. What brought me to it was after resisting … I’ve been 58 years building a company, gradually. …I realize the logic of it and how all the companies would be managed better, would be a lot better in every way.”

At CNBC, he added, “Frankly, I finally considered it, pros and cons. A couple of months, several weeks ago, I finally reached the conclusion I was right about it.”

It was time to change. The performance of other companies post-split helped sway him. “I think we’ve seen it at IAC … there’s now a Diller premium,” he joked with Faber. That’s a reference to a term — “Diller discount” or, in this case, a “Murdoch discount” — where the value of a company is depressed because of the majority shareholder’s control.

No, Britannia

Murdoch continues to resist linking the decision to the situation in England, when the uproar over phone hacking at the newspaper subsidiary dovetailed with efforts to buy the stake in BSkyB — and derailed it. News Corp. pulled the bid rather than face a regulatory decision on whether a company led by Rupert and James Murdoch was morally fit to own the pay TV operator, even after public apologies and the closing of the lucrative but damaged News of the World. Both were called to testify in various British proceedings and the fallout continues. Numerous ex-employees have been arrested.

But the events of the past year clearly soured him on investing much more in Britain. He first let loose with Cavuto (see the video clip at the top), telling him about BSkyB: “No, I think we have moved on in our own thinking from that. There were billions and billions of dollars and if Britain didn’t want them we have good places to put them here. I am much more bullish on America than I am about England.”

His repeated negative comments about investing in England plus his decision to be CEO of the larger company rather than the newspapers quickly led to conclusions that he was giving up on the papers there, too:

following @sdkstl on Murdoch. Unless I am reading it wrong it looks like the beginning of the end of the UK papers as Murdoch’s property

— emily bell (@emilybell) June 28, 2012

After listening to a few Murdoch variations, I think the message was aimed primarily at shutting down talk of a renewed BSkyB bid post split. But his attitude could come back to haunt. I also wouldn’t read Murdoch being chairman but not CEO of publishing as a sign that he’s pulling away.

But it is the pending end of an era.

@RupertMurdoch

One media outlet Murdoch has skipped so far: Twitter. The last time he tweeted out to his nearly 259,000 followers was June 24 and it was to scold Mitt Romney for his failures as a campaigner.

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Fuze Meeting has been released for all Android devices, but has been optimized for tablets, too. Unfortunately, the remote meeting app doesn’t utilize the front-facing camera of the Tab (which has two cameras) to permit video calls, which would be a distinct advantage over the iPad without a camera. Attendees using an Android tablet can view shared desktops on the display, something that isn’t practical on smartphone screens. Fuze Meeting is available in the Android Market.

The Wall Street Journal is betting on Android tablets with the release of its app with a subscription model. The app is for tablet-sized Android devices only, and while the app is free in the Android Market, a $3.99 weekly fee is required to get full access to WSJ content. The fee also provides access on other mobile platforms (BlackBerry, iPad  and iPhone) and to WSJ online content. The app syncs content automatically and offers notifications when new articles have been downloaded; articles are cached on the tablet for reading offline.

Image credit: Fuze and Slashgear

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RIM beefs up video, photos, music and App World discoverability in BlackBerry 6; new Blackberry OS features direct YouTube integration for easier uploads. (Pocketgamer)

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The websites will launch automatically whenever someone navigates to either NPR.org or WSJ.com, and will replace the standard sites, both of which feature pretty significant quantities of Flash content. Peter Kafka at MediaMemo also notes that this workaround ensures that iPad owners will be able to access content from the two news sources without the organizations having to rush out a dedicated iPad application.

According to Kafka, NPR is in the process of developing such an application, but it won’t necessarily be ready in time for the iPad’s launch. Also, having two options available for iPad owners means that no matter what a customer’s preference, they should be able to access all of NPR’s content. Just after the device hits the streets, consumer frenzy will probably be at its most heady, so anyone ready to go on day one stands to benefit the most by way of picking up new readers and/or customers.

The Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is doing something along the same lines, although it will be more sound and fury than substance. While NPR’s site is getting a complete overhaul, the WSJ will have a Flash-free front page, but if you start delving deeper into content, you’ll run into those annoying little mystery Lego icons. The WSJ and other sites using this tactic will likely wait and see how popular the iPad actually becomes before devoting many resources to a full-scale conversion.

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Apple’s subscription strategy makes the most sense when viewed alongside the introduction of a larger screen iPod device. Some will buy the “iPod Tablet” because it’s new and exciting, but at an average of $25 or more per season per show, iTunes as it currently exists won’t be replacing your cable company anytime soon. However, with a network-wide subscription service, the balance changes.

More devices means the same content in more places for the same monthly fee. Your Apple TV becomes the digital hub Steve always imagined it to be and, hopefully, gets upgraded by Apple to handle it’s new role as a set-top box. Your iPod Tablet becomes your TV anywhere device; not as good as your home TV, but much better than your iPhone.

Back in June, I wrote how cable companies and Apple were on a collision course, and the WSJ’s article only reinforces the points I made then. It’s not just cable companies of course; DirecTV, AT&T Uverse and other traditional media distribution companies will feel just as threatened. Cable companies, though, are the most established in the field and have the most to lose. Combined free HD over-the-air local broadcasts and a iTunes network subscription for premium content, and Apple really starts looking like a spoiler to Comcast and the like.

Cable companies bundle content to increase revenue. Subscribers can’t pick and choose channels a la carte. If you want ESPN, you often have to pay for Disney and ABC Family. To be fair, the networks, not the media distribution companies, are sometimes the ones forcing these packages down our throats. Want SyFy? Then NBC/Universal can make the cable company carry other owned stations such as MSNBC and Bravo. The cost of the additional channels is passed along to the consumer.

Pricing a few shows from the same network on iTunes today, I find it’s often cheaper to just buy the next tier with your provider rather than subscribe “per show” via iTunes. Apple’s new plan changes these traditional rules. According the the WSJ article, networks actually make more money by removing the cable company middleman. It’s the cable providers and local affiliates that are left hurting.

Not only do the traditional cable companies lose subscriber money, but they also lose their fringe revenue sources. All of a sudden people aren’t renting expensive DVR. They also lose lucrative “On Demand,” opportunities as well as local advertising dollars as consumers downgrade their channel lineup or drop their subscription altogether.

Is it any surprise that Comcast wants to buy NBC/Universal? Do they see where Apple is going? Probably. The value isn’t in the pipe providing content, but the content itself. Time shifting and place shifting are empowering consumers and raising expectations. Hulu, Boxee, Slingbox, iTunes, and Netflix allow us to watch our TV shows practically anywhere. Live sports is one area Apple hasn’t quite figured out, but it’s only a matter of time. Considering Steve Job’s relationship with Disney, which owns ESPN, I expect some innovative method of providing live content to the forthcoming tablet.

Apple pushed the music industry hard to allow digital distribution — and won. First, they got a majority of labels to provide content to iTunes, and then convinced them to drop the DRM. Does Apple have the muscle to push the TV industry while fighting local franchise authorities? Even with Steve Jobs on the board of Disney, I think Apple bit off more than they can chew.

Expect the hardest pushback from companies that provide both TV and internet service. Some will even employ internet bandwidth restrictions or tactics that violate the principles of net neutrality. They’ll also claim that since Apple isn’t a Multiple System Operator as defined by the FCC, Apple is an unfair competitor. Unlike cable companies, Apple isn’t bound by “Must Carry” rules, and the cable companies will cry foul.

Who will win? In reality, the networks and the cable companies are already at war, Apple just decided to choose sides. I want Apple to win so I can ditch the cable company, but I think the deck is stacked against the Mac maker, and the backlash of any small victories will prevent other networks from signing on. Only the Ghost of Christmas Future knows the outcome.

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• Mail for Exchange can now actively switch between WiFi and GPRS connections automatically if your phone supports Destinations.
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Mail for Exchange is part of a pretty convoluted — but free — setup that I’m using with the E63. I use the client for my GigaOM work mail on Gmail. To keep things separate between work and personal, I’m actually using the Google Mobile Gmail client for my personal Gmail. Contacts are coming in through the Google Sync application while I have three calendars in sync by using the previously mentioned NuevaSync beta. Told you it was convoluted! GooSync is likely a far better approach, but I really don’t want to buy an annual service for a loaner phone.

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This is something that most of the blogosphere, or at least the part of it that cares about accuracy and integrity, does pretty well. Sites like GigaOM and others update their posts when information is added or corrected, and in many cases link to critical or differing opinions (and if they don’t, they should). In that sense, truth — to use a loaded word — is not absolute, nor is it something that a single entity has a monopoly on, particularly around a developing or complicated issue. The most we can hope for is that an outlet of any kind, whether it’s a blog or a traditional newspaper’s web site, does its best to represent an issue fairly and completely, and that requires additions, updates, links and discussion.

The WSJ arguably failed that test on Monday, with its story on Google and how its position on “net neutrality” had allegedly softened.

There has been, and will no doubt continue to be, debate about whether the Journal’s perception of Google’s behavior is correct. Some believe that Google is actually giving itself a benefit that others can’t match (except, of course, other large web companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.). Others see it as a natural move by a large Internet company, and no threat to net neutrality at all. Whether you agree depends on what you think net neutrality is supposed to mean, and what Google’s role in it is. If you want to understand more about the issue and the way the Journal described it, read some of the links in David Weinberger’s post.

What isn’t in dispute, however, is that Google completely disagreed with the implications in the article, as company representatives made clear in a blog post written not long after the story went up on the Journal site. It’s understandable that Google might take issue with the story, of course, since it paints the company’s behavior in a negative light. But that’s not really the point.

What is important is how the Journal responded to these criticisms, both from Google and Lawrence Lessig (who was also quoted in the Journal story and noted, in his own blog post, that the description of his views was simply not accurate), and from other sources. Was the story itself updated? No. Were any links to the blog posts in question included, even as supplementary material? No. There was a blog post on the Journal site that mentioned how the story had “gotten a rise” out of the blogosphere, which included a couple of links, and then on Tuesday there was as second one, also with links to additional posts at Wired and elsewhere, as well as a description of what “edge caching” is.

No response to Lessig’s factual assertions about his views and the way they were described was provided. There is no acknowledgment of it apart from the Journal’s second blog post (which someone reading the original story might or might not even find). To any self-respecting blogger, this seems like a failure. Why not put all of that information, whether they be links to critical blog posts, updates on factual errors, or something else that is relevant, inside the original story? Why not allow those responses to help expand the way people look at the story? They’re going to do so anyway, once they come across them on their own. Is the Journal simply hoping that they won’t, and the story will remain pure and unsullied by criticism?

That’s an old-media approach. It’s a way of saying, either directly or by implication, “The truth is whatever we say it is.” Any critical responses, even from two of the major players in the story, are relegated to a blog post that gloats about the reaction the story got, but does little to treat it as valid or worthy of inclusion. As Scott Rosenberg of Salon points out, online media provides the tools for a real conversation, one that changes the way people look at an issue, and for a real “journalism as a process” approach to the news. It’s a pity the Journal couldn’t spot — or take advantage of — such an opportunity when it presented itself.

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