Vevo, the music industry’s version of Hulu, now has its own version of Providence Equity, the outside investor that took a flyer on the Web TV and movie joint venture: Abu Dhabi Media Company has purchased a stake in the company from owners Universal Music and Sony. No financials released, though I’m told the deal values the JV at $300 million.
CEO Tim Armstrong says he’s still overhauling the Internet company in advance of its spinoff from Time Warner, but he has hopeful noises to make about ad sales. He has nothing, however, to say about chats with Microsoft.
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.
The more I hear about the supposed plan for an Internet cafe company to buy the world’s best-known illegal file-sharing site, the more I think that the whole thing is a farce.
So this one doesn’t even faze me: Swedish regulators are looking into insider trading charges at Global Gaming Factory X, which saw shares jump several days before it said it would buy The Pirate Bay.
It’s hard for Time Warner to have been clearer about this, but there’s still a bit of confusion out there about the company’s plans to spin off AOL. Maybe this will clear it up: Time Warner told the SEC today that it intends to spin off AOL.
TV and Web video executives have been trying to figure out why Disney’s Bob Iger is willing to consider an exclusive deal with Hulu. One possible answer: So he can hear what Google, Comcast and everyone else have to offer, too.
The New York Times’s top editor says the paper is considering trying to charge people for a digital version again–and notes that some people are already buying one via Amazon’s e-book reader. Not enough to be meaningful, but it does prove at that least some folks will pay for stuff they can get for free.
You’ve got to come up with a truly awful number to make people take notice of just how bad your ad business is doing these days. But IAC’s Barry Diller tried his best today: He says his company’s display ads may be down 50 percent this month.
The top executives at Sling Media, the people who brought you the Slingbox “place-shifting” TV gadget and Hulu competitor Sling.com, are leaving Echostar, more than a year after they sold their start-up to the satellite TV company for $380 million cash. Brothers Blake and Jason Krikorian, CEO and SVP-business development, are out, effective immediately. Jason Hirschhorn, who runs the company’s Sling Media Entertainment unit, plans on staying through the end of February; Ben White, chief creative officer at the entertainment group, will stay on through Feb. 1.
If you had any romantic notion that the beginning of holiday season meant an end to media layoff season, think again. This looks to be a particularly bad few days at Time Inc., where many of the magazines that asked workers to quit last month will now be firing them instead. But there are cuts, or planned cuts, coming to all manner of media companies.
The Huffington Post, the liberal response to Matt Drudge, has had an amazing ride in the last 12 months. Has it capped it off by raising another $15 million? Depends on who you ask. Also unknown–how the site will fare when there’s no George W. Bush to kick around.
The conventional wisdom is that the digital ad market started sputtering this fall. But Disney CFO Tom Staggs hints that it has been weakening for much of the year. So what does that mean for 2009?
Despite rumors, the co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Wenda Harris Millard says she’s getting along just fine with Martha Stewart and isn’t going to run Microsoft’s online unit. So who is?
What does Condé Nast publisher David Carey know that everyone else doesn’t? And who are these bullish advertising clients he’s talking to? Live from paidContent’s “Future of Business Media” conference, it’s … hope?
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 »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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