Media Industry Archive

Google adds print magazines to Book Search — While there are some larger titles missing, Google has renewed its initiative to catalog the world’s printed information by adding select magazine brands to its Book Search. Eventually, the company plans on blending archived magazines with its normal search results. [Source: Googleblog] Yahoo! to lay off 10% of its employees, memo leaked...

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In listening to the interview of CBS president/CEO Les Moonves at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference today, I was curious to hear what he would say about NBC’s decision to hire Jay Leno to a five-nights-a-week  gig. He finally did get to say his piece — only after goading his interviewer into asking him what he thought about the move. Not surprisingly,...

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Insiders at Yahoo say that roughly 1,500 jobs will be eliminated starting tomorrow. This is not exactly “news,” since Kara Swisher, among others, have been forecasting the cuts based on sources inside the company over the past two months. What is not clear yet is whether any major product lines will be eliminated in the process. There is speculation within Yahoo this afternoon that...

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Newsday may be one of many newspapers to do a mass layoff (in its case of 100 people), but, it’s one of the few that has articulated a strategy for making it a viable entity going forward, thanks to new owner Cablevision. Today at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, COO Tom Rutledge explained how the unique ménage à trois among Cablevision, Newsday and the Long Island...

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Jay Leno to stay at NBC — To help prevent Leno from signing with a competitor when his contract is up next year, NBC has created a new 10 p.m. show for Leno to host.  Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Fallon are still set to take over The Tonight Show and Late Night, respectively.  [Source: Portfolio] The Pulitzer Prize will now honor online-only publications — Amidst the bankruptcy...

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Hiring Jay Leno for a five-night-a-week gig at 10 p.m. probably wasn’t always what NBC had in mind as a way to keep him. But times and network TV ratings being what they are, the hiring of Leno to take up five hours of primetime TV works. Whether his humor is your cup of tea is nothing near the point. So what is the point? It’s that signing Leno to so much primetime is a lay-up....

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The New York Times takes out a mortgage — Feeling the pinch of the economic downtown combined with the prospect of upcoming payments to its lenders, The New York Times has taken out a mortgage on its Manhattan headquarters.  The move adds $225 million of capital to the books that will aid in the restructuring of the company. [Source: Silicon Alley Insider] Chris Matthews to stay on as...

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The place to be in the media industry this week (if you’re not on an unemployment line) is the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, the annual three-day confab, starting today in New York, where anyone who is anyone in the media business comes to pontificate. This year’s cast includes Donald Graham, chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Co., Wenda Harris Millard, co-CEO...

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Okay, now the perpetual bad news for print media companies is starting to get a whole lot worse. With the economy reeling, advertisers slashing their media budgets, and consumers cutting purchasing of just about everything but necessities, the path to any sort of viable future seems to be closing for newspapers in particular. Confirming speculation that has been building over recent weeks,...

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Although I usually try to avoid these internecine spats, yesterday’s unwarranted TechCrunch attack on its competitor, Techmeme, simply demands a rejoinder. TechCrunch’s Arrington belittled Techmeme’s Rivera’s decision to hire a human editor to avoid disasters like the one Rivera had blogged about earlier: “Only an algorithm would feature news about Anna Nicole Smith’s...

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