File this one under “hard to say it’s news”: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company would consider more layoffs–if the economy falls off another cliff. Gotta credit him with consistency: He said the exact same thing a week ago.
Apple says its customers have downloaded one billion apps for the iPhone and iPod touch from its iTunes store. You can learn more by reading one of the many stories about the milestone or by visiting Apple’s site. Or you can visit the homepages of big Web publishers like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or CNET.com, all of which have once again handed over prime real estate to Apple for another intrusive/interesting ad.
Here’s Google’s sort-of answer to Hulu: A newly designed page to showcase TV shows and movies, along with new players and a new ad strategy. What’s not included: almost any first-run TV show or newly released movie. That’s the content that’s made Hulu successful and what’s also driven traffic to offerings from CBS and Disney’s ABC. You can’t accuse the Google guys of overselling this: In a press conference today, they described it as a “first step, a baby step.”
This is what passes for good news in the newspaper business these days: Someone bought some shares of one of the industry’s biggest companies. Alas, even that story is old news. And the headlines coming out of Gannett later this week won’t be pleasant either.
My colleagues over at The Wall Street Journal have been able to convince more than a million people to pay for full access to the paper’s Web site. Can it find even more people who are willing to pay for even more online stuff? We may find out: WSJ.com is contemplating what sounds an awful lot like trade newsletters.
Google is the most successful advertising company in history. So why is it spending money trying to convince advertisers to spend even more money online?
There’s increasing evidence that Web surfers have responded to the crush of online advertising by training themselves to ignore the ads altogether. Bad news for marketers and publishers alike. Apple’s solution: Place the ads where you’re not used to seeing them. And make them so big–and so interesting–that you can’t look away.
YouTube, the world’s biggest video site, and Universal Music Group, the world’s biggest music label, are talking about creating a YouTube Music site. About time.
Zilch. That’s the snap consensus from the Web pundits, who are baffled by Cablevision’s plan to start charging for access to the online version of Newsday, the Long Island daily it overpaid for last year. Will someone please explain what the cable guys are up to?
Can the New York Times effectively cover Carlos Slim now that the billionaire is a major investor in the New York Times? It’s going to try. First up: A look at the Mexican telecom magnate’s media relations history in his home country. It’s…mixed.
What happens when you pay a whole lot of money for a newspaper as the newspaper industry is in freefall? You have to make an embarrassing admission to shareholders a year later. Last week, we saw News Corp. go through this exercise when it wrote off half the value of the $5.7 billion it spent on Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. Now it’s Cablevision’s turn: The Long Island-based cable company is writing off as much as 70 percent of the $650 million it spent on Newsday last year.
Last year, Rupert Murdoch spent $5.7 billion to purchase The Wall Street Journal. Now the News Corp. CEO is telling shareholders that he paid twice as much as he should have.
Longtime Rupert Murdoch fan Rich Greenfield says he’s worried that money losers like Dow Jones will pull News Corp. down, and cut his rating to “sell.” Perhaps this will cheer him up: The Wall Street Journal is reportedly bracing for layoffs next week.
U.S. News & World Report, which used to be a weekly news magazine, then a biweekly one and is now a monthly publication, is going to try producing a weekly magazine once again. Online. And it wants you to pay up to read it. I appreciate the effort, but I don’t see how this one pans out.
There’s been lots of dark muttering about Carlos Slim, the New York Times’s new benefactor/loan shark: Exactly how did he make his money, after all? And what does he want with the Times? In any case, it turns out Slim probably has some questions about the Times himself. Like who runs it and what they do?
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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