Media Industry Archive

It always feels good when David Carr agrees with you, even if he doesn’t know who the hell you are. So I loved reading his New York Times‘ column today, in which he said he’d love it if the newspaper industry colluded in order to save itself: “My fantasy meeting goes something like this: a rump caucus could form where the newspaper industry would decide to hold hands and...

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Even as the collapse of the old media models seems to be accelerating, revealing systemic structural flaws that are catastrophic in nature, the outlines of a new media model are coming to life right before our eyes. Over and over, this past year, the potentials being unlocked by companies like Outside In and Every Block, and Topix to extend the news business down to a block by block level has...

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With the exception of the occasional crank, most newspaper execs have stayed silent about their relationship with Google News, and for good reason. They get more traffic referrals via the links on GN than from any other source, although Yahoo, MSN, and AOL also send significant traffic to the newspaper sites. I write this without being to able to supply any hard figures, because neither sources...

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That, my friend, is the question. This week brought us more exciting developments in the hyper-local space, one of Doctor Weir’s main prescriptions for saving the news business. First, some context: As we reported in January, The New York Times teamed up with Every Block, and NBC partnered with Outside In. Both of these MSM companies are exploring how to leverage their reporting resources...

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Been on a jag this week here at BNET Media about the upcoming network upfront, so I thought I’d end it with republishing the schedule for this year’s upfront presentations compiled by the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau (with special thanks to jackmyers.com for sending me a quality PDF). It starts with Nickelodeon next Thursday, March 12, and ends with a bang (oh, wait, I meant...

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Yesterday, my colleague Jim Edwards asked on the BNET Advertising blog whether the network upfront is an anti-trust violation. I’m going to use this post to respond to Jim and go through the explanation media buyers will tell you when you ask them why more ad dollars continue to get thrown at network TV when its market share is declining. It’s not just that the networks goose prices...

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Media companies are attracting “debt investors” — Several high profile investors, including former Yahoo investor Carl Icahn, are buying up media company debt. The purchase is not to save the company, but to be in a position to rake in high yields, have a voice in bankruptcy proceedings, or to acquire the company for an extremely reduced price. MGM, Sirius XM and the New York...

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Okay, I admit that I went for it. Whatever published authors may think about Google’s ambitious plan to digitize more or less every book ever published, the company’s recent settlement of a class-action lawsuit with publishers and authors creates a potential new revenue stream, albeit a small one, for us that I believe is worth pursuing. According to the terms of the settlement,...

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Before it gets lost in the shuffle, let’s congratulate CBS CEO Les Moonves for starting this year’s upfront-negotiations-in-the-press at this week’s Deutsche Bank Media and Telecom Conference. Why the hyphens? Because for all of the back-channel discussions that go on between media buyers and TV networks regarding buying ad time for the upcoming TV season,...

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Sometimes I feel as though keeping up with changes to Facebook’s interface is a fool’s errand — just when you figure out where they stashed your applications in the last version, Zuckerberg & Co. rearrange everything, as if to make sure you’re still paying attention. That’s why you may sense some hesitancy in my writing of this post, but there are a few important...

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