Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the opening moments of a New York City press conference to reinforce a message he’s been delivering for several weeks: The worst is over, things are looking up, and Google is spending accordingly.
The New York Times is getting out of the radio business. Did you know the New York Times was in the radio business? Exactly. Anyway, now it’s not. The cash-strapped publisher has sold WQXR-FM for $45 million, carving up the asset into two packages for different buyers–local NPR affiliate WNYC and Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Radio. The money will go to paying down the paper’s debt: Not much, but more than the company may get for the Boston Globe.
Web radio darling Pandora has good news for its users: We’re saved! And a slightly different message for its heaviest users: Pay up. And perhaps a third message for potential investors: Want to write us a check?
The founders of Last.fm, the London-based Web music start-up CBS snapped up for $280 million two years ago, are leaving the company. No word yet on whom CBS will appoint to replace the founding trio of Felix Miller, Richard Jones and Martin Stiksel, or what any of the men intend to do next.
Miller announced the deal in a short blog post today. More shortly….
John Partilla, who oversaw “cross-platform sales” at Time Warner (TWX), is leaving the media conglomerate to take a similar post at radio and billboard giant Clear Channel. Partilla has been at Time Warner since 2004; prior to that, he’d worked for various ad agencies and had founded WPP’s Brand Buzz unit.
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.
A bad quarter for Disney, but it could have been worse–at least Wall Street was expecting it. After factoring out one-time charges and write-offs, Bob Iger and company earned 43 cents a share on revenues of $8.1 billion. Wall Street had been looking for 40 cents and $8.15 billion, respectively. The bright spot for the entertainment conglomerate is the same one you see at every media giant these days: Disney’s cable business.
Adam Carolla used to get paid a lot of money to host a morning radio show with a national audience. Now he’s spending his own money to produce a podcast for a fraction of his old audience. Does that sound like progress to you? It should.
Google is laying off 200 people from its sales and marketing group, the company announced today in a blog posting. Google has some 20,000 employees, so the scale of the sackings isn’t earth-shaking news. But the fact that they come from the group that Tim Armstrong ran until he decamped for AOL is interesting.
Hard to see how Twitter accounts and Web radio sponsorships are going to sell more soda. But Pepsi is trying this stuff out anyway. Here’s what it’s thinking.
Call me a crusty skeptic, but I think it’d be hard for entertainers to get Washington to help them out in the best of times. So my gut is that there’s little chance that Congress will pass something called “The Performance Rights Act,” which would force radio stations to pay musicians–or at least, music labels–whenever they play one of their recordings.
A nonsurprise: Google is getting out of the radio advertising business, yet another nonstarter the company is trimming from its extensive portfolio. Google says it will continue to work on audio advertising, though–in the nascent market for Internet audio streaming ads.
Just like everyone else who racked up lots of loans when the banks were giving cash with almost no strings attached, big media have a debt hangover. Clear Channel, whose private equity owners took on $17 billion in debt to acquire it last year, is getting hammered by investors who think it won’t be able to pay that money back. Next up for scrutiny: CBS, which has a big debt payment due next year and not that much cash on hand.
The Web allows you to legally order up just about anything you want to hear, for free. So who on earth wants to listen to conventional radio stations on the Internet? More people than you’d think.
I keep hearing that 2009 ad plans are in stasis until the end of the holiday shopping season, making any prognostication about next year even more of a guess than usual. But the analysts at Barclays figure they’ve got enough data to revise earlier projections they made this fall. You won’t be surprised to hear they’ve become more negative.
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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