My two-month contract gig at paidContent turned into eight years of covering the economics of digital media while we were living it. But after thousands of posts, many paidContent events, one funding round, and two sales, it’s time for me to pursue new challenges. Read more »
Media head Ross Levinsohn is leaving Yahoo after being passed over for CEO in favor of Marissa Mayer. The Google vet’s hiring despite Levinsohn’s solid performance as interim CEO signaled a choice of tech over media. Where will he go and who stays from his team? Read more »
The New York Times Co. used to rely on About/com for good news; now overhauling the info site is dragging down earnings. Meanwhile, reliance on digital revenue is increasing even as the company works to stem declines in digital advertising revenues. Read more »
The 2012 Summer Games are the start of a new era for NBC Universal — an Olympics streamed in real time for fans who don’t want to wait for the packaged prime-time experience. For Mark Lazarus, it’s a grand experiment in a $1 billion laboratory. Read more »
Tim Armstrong continues to believe local news network Patch is not only viable, it is vital to Aol’s future. He promises a new data-driven product in development now will wow Patch watchers and users in the fall. Read more »
Aol has been in turnaround mode for years — this time, it looks like the turns are in the right direction. Advertising up, revenue decline almost flat, subscription churn lowest in a decade, latest re-org underway. Read more »
People led the way for Time Inc. with full-access authentication for digital subscriptions. Now it’s the first to launch a mobile site with responsive design, a new ad format and the same content as People.com. Read more »
After more than a week of public squabbling and dark channels, DirecTV and Viacom have a new licensing deal that restores all 26 of the channels — and leaves open the possibility that premium channel Epix will show up on the satellite operator. Read more »
Marissa Mayer’s base pay as Yahoo CEO is $1 million a year. But that’s just a small part of a package potentially worth more than $60 million in cash, restricted stock units and stock options if she outlasts her predecessors. Read more »
Yahoo took a hit on layoff costs in the second quarter but still showed a small profit, eking out tiny single-digit increases in some meaningful metrics while keeping search from falling off a cliff. In a word, it was flat compared to the same quarter in […] Read more »
Shock. Awe. Wow. Huh? All valid reactions to the last-minute plot twist in Yahoo’s search for its third CEO in the past 10 months: the hiring of Google star Marissa Mayer as president and CEO. Read more »
Sixteen years after an unlikely duo launched news joint venture MSNBC on cable and online, Microsoft and NBC News are taking charge of their own digital news destinies. The rebranded NBCNews.com debuted Sunday night while MSN plans its own news unit. Read more »
News Corp.’s digital tabloid The Daily has been on borrowed time since it was an idea, given enough resources by Rupert Murdoch to launch but no guarantee of longevity. But Editor-in-Chief Jesse Angelo says reports that time may be running out are wrong. Read more »
Despite ongoing talks between Viacom and DirecTV, there’s no sign that subscribers locked out of their favorite shows will get a break anytime soon. Meanwhile, the companies are trashtalking on Twitter. Read more »
Listening to interim CEO Ross Levinsohn talk about a road map he may not be there to chart or navigate rang a little hollow at Thursday’s Yahoo annual meeting. Levinsohn may be the frontrunner but the board isn’t ready to sign off yet. Read more »
The Yahoo board seems determined to make who will be CEO the story, instead of what the CEO will do or what the digital media company is accomplishing. An announcement could come as early as this morning. We can only hope. Read more »
Aereo, a bold bid to transmit television via broadband using tiny off-site antennas, won a major victory in federal court Wednesday when a judge denied the plaintiffs’ demand for a preliminary injunction blocking the service from allowing timeshifting during a live broadcast. The judge found that […] Read more »
The latest dispute between a programmer and pay TV operator went right up to the wire — and then over the cliff as 26 Viacom channels went dark on DirecTV at midnight Tuesday. As usual, the subscribers are in the middle. Read more »
After an intense series of live sports events online — from the U.S. Open and NBA playoffs to Wimbledon and the Tour de France — it’s odd to hit a black-out window for the All-Star Game. Everything is geared to sending fans to their TVs. Read more »
Known to most for its link shortening service, bitly has raised another $15 million aimed at changing that perception. Bitly, a betaworks company, wants to be the “primary online service for sharing and discovering interesting content.” Look for a new round of hiring to follow. Read more »
Yahoo and Facebook announcing that they will avoid the patent version of the Hundred Years’ War should be enough to seal the deal for interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, credited with the change in strategy, to get the “i” word removed from his title. Will it be? Read more »
As Yahoo’s July 12th annual meeting approaches, it looks like the latest search for a CEO might be ending soon. Will the new board stick with interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, who has been unwinding the last re-org, or go outside? Read more »
Major League Baseball is changing the rules for its contest to select the last two 2012 All-Stars, allowing tweets with official hashtags in the last four hours to equal browser or mobile votes. But can a tweet equal a site visit or SMS in value? Read more »
Last year, Major League Baseball fans cast more than 50 million votes for the last players to be added to the 2011 All-Star Game rosters. Voting is underway to do the same for the 2012 All-Star Game but should you chime in? Read more »
Rob Glaser resigned as CEO of RealNetworks in early 2010 but as founder and chairman, he never really left. Now, two short-term and one interim CEO later, he’s back running the company with “a sense of great urgency” while the board searches for yet another top exec. Read more »
There are write downs — and then there are write downs. Microsoft is wiping the books clean of almost all of the $6.3 billion it paid for interactive ad company aQuantive in 2007 and admitting its Online Services Division will not make big bucks, Read more »
The largest weather news and information provider is about to get bigger. The Weather Channel Companies, owner of the cable network and weather.com, is acquiring , is acquiring San Francisco-based Weather Underground with a pledge to keep the oldest internet weather brand going. Read more »
@RupertMurdoch managed to stay quiet last week while Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp., was doing last-minute maneuvers behind the scenes, then publicly pitch the break up of his company. But his Twitter alter ego is back with a vengeance. Read more »
Amy Howe used to think 3,000 live blog participants was a lot. Thursday, more than 500,000 users tuned into SCOTUSblog to find out how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on health care and what it meant. Read more »
Despite the “Google+ is a ghost town” mantra, a number of high-profile people are active users. They also yelp when they’re unhappy and when Google+ Events went live, flooding feeds, that’s what some of them did — drawing attention to a launch for all the wrong reasons. Read more »
Super Bowl winners head to Disney World; moguls with a new corporate agenda go on a media tour. Following the formal announcement early Thursday morning that News Corp. will split up publishing and media/entertainment, Rupert Murdoch covered all the bases. Here’s what he had to say. Read more »
One of the most important elements of any major corporate move is pitching it to the staff. News Corp.Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch called in some top execs for meetings earlier this week to talk about splitting the company; here’s how he’s explaining it to everyone […] Read more »
Three days after its talks about splitting the company went public, News Corp. makes it official. Rupert Murdoch has agreed to partially dismantle the conglomerate, spinning off its publishing and education assets into a new company — with him as chairman of both. Read more »
Newspapers built the foundation that became News Corp. but the bulk of the money comes from the entertainment assets Rupert Murdoch bought or launched. If Murdoch gives in on splitting the company, what would a 21st Century Fox look like? Read more »
The News Corp. board of directors is expected to decide within days whether to start the process that would split the publishing assets from the company. The board is meeting in New York this week in a session called to discuss the restructuring. A decision could […] Read more »
The PGA Tour is ending its production partnership with Turner Sports and will take control of its own digital destiny starting with the 2013 season. The parting is in the “it’s about us, not them” mold — but that doesn’t make it easier for Turner. Read more »
It’s been suggested before inside and out that News Corp. sell or spin off its publishing operations. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has resisted before but his own paper, the Wall Street Journal, says that may have changed. Read more »
With $5,647 per square foot sales, nearly twice that of Tiffany’s, Apple’s a high-end retail player that pays like its products sell themselves and has so many applicants, it can afford to do just that. At some point, though, retention may pay off more. Read more »
If you look at the NBA Finals viewership by comparing TV and digital, the temptation might be a shrug. But in the context of a live event airing during prime time, it’s not shabby — and it shows why ESPN is looking to video and mobile for growth. Read more »
The New York Times has been looking for a new CEO since Janet Robinson was forced out seven months ago, and BBC director-general Mark Thompson is said to be in the running for the job. But is he the solution to the newspaper’s problems? Read more »
