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.
Well look at that: EMI Music Group, which had been working on a licensing deal with music start-up Grooveshark but ended up suing it instead, now has a licensing deal with Grooveshark after all.
Employees at News Corp.’s MySpace have been waiting to find out who their new ad sales boss will be. And, here she is: Nada Stirratt, who until today was running digital sales for Viacom’s MTV Networks.
Stirratt has her work cut out for her. The struggling social networking site, HQed in Beverly Hills, has been trying to reboot its image, spur innovation in its product and, most of all, pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook, has seen explosive growth.
Steve Ballmer says he doesn’t expect to do much search-related M&A, which makes sense since there’s little left to buy. But he may be willing to pay for search. Ask AOL.
Maybe this is why Comcast rushed to knock down a story that said it bought NBC Universal from GE: It knew Wall Street would hate the idea.
You already know this, but it’s always good to be reminded: In online video, there’s YouTube, and then there’s everybody else. Today’s data point: ComScore’s August video report, which shows Google’s video site generating 10 billion views and owning 39.6 percent of the market. That’s 10 billion views, and that’s just counting Web surfers from the U.S. Factor in international visitors and…it would be a lot bigger.
Doesn’t anyone want to cover the media beat anymore? First, BusinessWeek’s super-sourced Jon Fine departs for a six-month globe-hopping sabbatical. Now the New York Times’s Tim Arango is leaving town as well: Instead of writing about moguls and mergers, he’ll be reporting from Iraq.
Rupert Murdoch has been pushing The Wall Street Journal to raise its prices. Here’s one way to try it: Levy an additional fee for subscribers who want to use the paper’s iPhone or BlackBerry apps.
Daylife, a news aggregator that launched a few years ago with a good deal of hype but has since retreated to the back pages, has landed another investor: Getty Images has bet $4 million on the company, which has raised some $12 million to date.
Is Time Inc. building a Kindle Killer? Nope.
A report suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.
That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp., are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.
Sure, you’re watching lots of video on the Web. But that doesn’t mean you’re cutting back on your boob-tube time. At least not yet.
Does Google need a Hollywood guide? It may be getting one: Jim Wiatt, the former head of the fabled William Morris talent agency, has been talking to the company about a consulting gig for its YouTube video site.
Wiatt, who is leaving his old job in the aftermath of his agency’s highly contentious merger with the Endeavor agency, discussed the idea with Google and YouTube executives in Mountain View last week, multiple sources said.
Just how big are MySpace and Facebook? Big enough to account for nearly one in five of the display ads Web marketers buy in the U.S. That has nothing to do the number of dollars the two social networks generate, since their ad impressions are famously cheap. But at least it gives you a sense of the services’ potential.
If you’re out of town and on the move and still want to watch your favorite baseball team, Major League Baseball is about to make you a very interesting offer: The ability to watch a game streamed live to your iPhone, for 99 cents a pop. That will make baseball the first pro sports league to sell mobile access to live games on an on-demand, a la carte basis.
Spotify is the best music service you’ve never used. That’s because the much-hyped streaming music company is only available for Europeans and for a select few in the U.S. who have either gotten sneak peeks or hacked their way into it. The service took one step toward wider distribution today when Apple approved its iPhone app. But that won’t help U.S. users until the big music labels agree to American distribution deals.
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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