Media Industry Archive

There’s plenty of news on the eBook front these days:       Amazon is introducing its new Kindle today, with an exclusive new Stephen King novel available only on this device. Google announced recently that it has scanned 1.5 million public domain books and formatted them so they can be read on mobile devices like the iPhone. The startup Plastic Logic is unveiling the prototype...

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On the surface, this post may seem like an advertising story, but when the nation’s largest advertiser decides to exercise its cancellation options for second-quarter TV spending, nearly every TV network should stand up and take notice — and perhaps quiver a bit in their boots. Unfortunately, the dollars that that advertiser, Procter & Gamble, is pulling from the TV market are...

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Amazon launches new Kindle — Later today, Amazon is expected to announce the newest version of its Kindle e-reader. The e-reader, which uses a technology known as e-ink to make books easily readable on a digital screen, has been sold out for months. However, customers on the waiting list will receive the new edition. As part of the launch, Stephen King has written an e-book to be released...

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Looking over a decade’s worth of 990’s filed by Northern California Public Broadcasting (NCPB), which owns KQED and several smaller stations, it is revealing to see how rapidly executive compensation for the highest paid officials has grown. Jeff Clarke, who became CEO in 2002, recieved double-digit raises his first full three years on the job, until his salary and benefits rose...

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Many of us have long assumed that there are groups of dedicated users who game Digg to push their content to the top of the popular social bookmarking site. It’s valuable real estate that can send a surge of traffic to an otherwise obscure source, generating advertising revenue in the process, and where there’s easy money to be made, there are hackers ready to play. It is also...

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With most of the year-end numbers in for the major online media companies, it’s time to take a close look at how all of them are doing in generating money from that shrinking pool called revenue. In general, it’s not a great time to be in the online business — or any business except for being in repo — but even the worst players are by and large faring better than most...

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News Corp misses earnings estimates — Media giant News Corp. posted an 8.4 percent decline in revenues missing Wall Street’s expectations. The company saw a net profit of 12 cents per share. In a memo, CEO Rupert Murdoch stated that while he expected revenues to be low, the quarter was far worse than he anticipated. The company also urged investors to lower expectations for the...

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Fifteen floors above the financial district in downtown San Francisco, through a pair of unmarked double doors and past a maze of mostly uninhabited cubicles, Amra Tareen is determined to change the world — from the bottom up. A skeptic might question how much a well-heeled Harvard MBA, with a successful background in venture capital and technology companies, would know about the...

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Google asks AOL for their money back — After buying a five percent share of AOL in 2005, Google has sent the company a request asking Time Warner to either buy back the five percent share or spin off AOL.  Google recently wrote down its investment of AOL from $1 billion to nearly $250 million and has the rights to make such a demand per the 2005 agreement. Time Warner Chief Financial...

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Not to compare lost revenues to lost lives, but being in the media business these days has similarities to fighting wars simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s the analogy that can be made from comments that NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker made yesterday at a panel on “The Future of New York City,” where he described the pain the entire media industry is feeling in...

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