While Rupert Murdoch is busy thumbing his nose at Google, he is making more friendly overtures to other media players. Sources tell me his News Corp. may join the digital e-reader storefront that Time Inc. and other magazine publishers are putting together.
News Corp. is reportedly interested in purchasing the Travel Channel from Cox for something like $800 million. Here’s one way to help pay for a small piece of that deal: Sell off Fuel TV, its modest surf, skate and snowboard-themed cable channel.
The New York Times announced plans to cut eight percent of its newsroom payroll this week, citing “economic thunderstorms,” which suggested that this morning’s earnings results were going to be particularly unpleasant. Surprise! They’re not that awful, at least by the diminished standards of the newspaper industry.
Is there anything you people won’t watch online? Doesn’t look like it, based on the newest Web video numbers from Nielsen. While stats show that the overall size of the Internet video audience has increased by 12 percent in the last year, the amount of video consumed has shot up 25 percent.
Google and Yahoo both expect mobile ads to provide big boosts. Time to rethink that notion, says Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay, who says mobile will be a modest niche business for the big guys.
Vevo, the music industry’s attempt to create a Hulu-like hub for its videos, is going to attract a lot of eyeballs when it launches later this year. Here’s the guy who’s supposed to attract advertisers: David Kohl, a former Nokia executive who starts work today as the site’s sales boss.
In order to move from money pit to profit center, YouTube has to spend less, which is hard for the site to talk about. And it needs to sell more ads on more videos–which YouTube is happy to talk about. Hence, yesterday’s news that YouTube would start selling against “viral videos.”
Yet another addition to the growing list of programmers signing on to Comcast’s “On Demand Online”: CBS will join the cable provider’s trial program, which will allow subscribers to get Web access to shows they get on TV.
CBS will join previously announced partners Time Warner, which is offering up programming from its Turner channels and HBO; Liberty Media’s Starz, and smaller players like Scripps, Rainbow and A&E. The twist is that CBS is the only broadcaster to sign up for the trial.
Google has already shut down its radio and print advertising programs–because “they didn’t work well enough,” in CEO Eric Schmidt’s words. But the company is still hoping that its foray into TV pans out. Latest (small) milestone: The search giant is boasting that it has gotten marketers to commit “upwards of seven figures to buy ads” through its automated system.
There are plenty of question marks surrounding Vevo, Universal Music Group’s new music video site that’s scheduled to launch later this year with a big assist from Google’s YouTube. But here’s one answer: The venture will be run by Rio Caraeff, who currently oversees UMG’s digital business.
YouTube generates billions of views but no profits. That’s because Google’s video site only sells advertising on a small portion of the clips it shows. That may be changing, argues Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay.
I’ve only watched a couple minutes of March Madness so far, and I haven’t watched a second on my laptop. But apparently I’m in the minority: CBS, which is streaming the entire college basketball tournament for free on the Web, says traffic to its video player is up 56 percent compared to last year.
How did Google become the most powerful company in the media business? One client at a time–many times over.
BlogHer, a women’s ad network/publishing network and conference organizer, is cutting the amount it pays to its blog partners by 10 percent. That’s really sort of a double cut, since the blog owners/writers in its network get paid based on the ads BlogHer can sell, and ads are already under pressure.
Google is letting advertisers who buy AdWords–its main revenue engine–automatically buy mobile advertising, too. The company says AdWords buyers can choose to have their AdWords automatically show up on phones that support “real” Internet browsers like T-Mobile’s G1 phone and Apple’s iPhone. That’s a relatively small market, but one that’s growing fast, and Google’s first real opportunity to show that it can make money on mobile.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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