Media Industry Archive

Research firm NPD Group released today new data supposedly proving that the digital video revolution is, “probably overblown” (at least for the moment). The findings: DVDs are still the most popular format when it comes to how U.S. consumers choose to purchase movies and other video content. The evidence: Less than one percent of Americans’ movie budget is currently spent...

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This week’s issue of New York Magazine is ruffling feathers with its cover story on the supposedly imminent death of the book publishing industry, titled simply “The End.” (Not even a hedging question mark. Ouch.) But the irony of Boris Kachka’s gloomy prognosis is that it leads — in the very first paragraph — with what might be the brightest point of hope...

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Over the past year, at the most senior level of the company, Google has been quietly pursuing an extremely significant effort to figure out how to improve Google News and also sustain good journalism at a time many fear it could all but disappear. Last week, one of the people involved in this project, Senior Advisor Richard Gingras, took some of the work the company has been doing public,...

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While most pundits have been busy leaking rumors about MySpace Music, expected to launch this week, Best Buy has made a surprise play with its $121 million purchase of Napster. Industry watchers are openly wondering why Best Buy would want the struggling music service that many still associate with illegal piracy and things that were cool back in 2000. Of course, most of the naysayers still...

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Every now and again, someone inside the newspaper business utters something so patently idiotic about what’s responsible for his industry’s downfall that yours truly gets angry and feels compelled to set the record straight. The current example is one Andrew Smith of the Dallas Morning News, who objects to Google’s massive News Archive Search effort that has the potential to...

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Several interesting observations from the Toronto International Film Festival, which closed this weekend — all regarding what it means that only three (yes, three) major deals happened. (Focus, Miramax, Lionsgate, Overture, and Sony Classics all walked away empty-handed.) Sure, smaller deals will start to trickle in after the fact, but Variety’s Anne Thompson put it simply —...

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Over the past four years, the volume of searches on the keyword “newspapers” has fallen by over 50 percent on Google. Ditto with “magazines.” During the same time frame, searches on the word “blogs” has effectively doubled, and now is consistently higher  than both of the others. It’s probable that there are around 200 million blogs now online...

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So many trends, so little time. Here in the U.S., every consumer or business trend seems to get examined by multiple analysts in microscopic detail. Yet, relatively few international trends get the same attention. Take Twitter, for example. Every day, there are new items about the mobile micro-blogging service and the way U.S. journalists, among others, are using it. But like every other media...

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For years, there’s been a fair amount of discussion about the prospect of digital newspapers, but much less about digital magazines. The reason is simple. Magazines usually are far more graphic, glossy and driven by their visual elements (including four-color advertisements) than are newspapers. Until recently, most screens have not been able to display photos and other art with a high...

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It now requires a determined effort to not mention Google on a daily basis, because the company is generating so much news it could easily justify a “Google Watch Blog” in English to complement the existing one in German. Today, for example, there at least six news items worth mentioning about Google. 1. Google has cut its retention time for user logs in half, from 18 months to nine...

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