Media Industry Archive

When here at Bnet we started suggesting last year that The New York Times was headed for financial trouble, I heard from some readers who scoffed at the notion that the nation’s top newspaper could falter. What had led to my concern was problems with the company’s financials as revealed in filings to the SEC (U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.) Since being downgraded to junk...

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Suddenly, it’s all about the apps, and media companies that haven’t already done so need to sit up, take notice, and start cranking out code. Just in the last week, there have been these notable stories and announcements in the seemingly recession-free app universe. A New York Times piece on the iPhone app gold rush, which features the success of one game developer who has made...

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Boston Globe threatened with closing – The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut down The Boston Globe if the Globe’s labor unions do not agree to cut $20 million. Possible concessions include pay cuts and the end of company pension contributions. The union has stated it is willing to make cuts if management and the rest of the company also agree to similar concessions. With its...

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One of the nice things about being a gossip columnist, as opposed to a journalist, is that you can trade in rumors while they are hot. Starting mid-week, I followed closely headlines like  Wired.com ‘Gutted’ in Conde Layoffs. Bad news travels fast, especially online, and even faster when it involves media sites that cover other media sites. The only problem in this case is the...

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There’s a new party getting blamed for the death of newspapers — the good-old Association Press. The line of reasoning goes like this: By allowing Yahoo, MSN, Google and others access to its news wire, the non-profit news cooperative is undermining the very companies that own it. Writing in the American Journalism Review, journalist Paul Farhi advances this case by making a number...

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The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Biz Stone comedycentral.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest I’ll close the week out with this interview of Twitter founder Biz Stone on “The Colbert Report.” Colbert, as you might expect, is skeptical about tweeting. A compendium of Colbert’s best lines: “Did [the...

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Not sure how illuminating this clip from 3-Minute Ad Age is, but the video above, from the Advertising Research Foundation conference earlier this week, features Canoe Ventures CEO David Verklin talking about how the this consortium among the six biggest cable providers is progressing. Verklin predicts it will “revolutionize the way video is being used and consumed by advertisers as well...

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Here’s a gratuitous piece of advice for a young reporter, (assuming there still are any young people interested in becoming serious journalists out there), and that is this: Don’t believe every “study” that gets published. Rather, be extremely picky and choosy. Stay skeptical. Our Bnet Tech Industry analyst, Erik Sherman, illustrates this principle of informed skepticism...

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You know how it’s such a brilliant idea for NBC to put Jay Leno on in the 10 p.m. slot? Well, they don’t think so in Boston. The NBC affiliate there, WHDH, has decided to run an hour-long newscast instead of Leno. The station believes that the move of Leno to 10 p.m. is going to kill the lead-in audience for its 11 p.m. newscast, which apparently has already been seeing ratings...

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Suppose we should get this rampant “Google buying Twitter” rumor out of the way. I’m connecting the dots here, but seems there is a correlation between the post on TechCrunch that started it all, the post on Kara Swisher’s blog saying that the rumor started because of some “product-related discussions” between the two companies, and a story on Adage.com which...

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