Media Industry Archive

Many reasons to read Staci D. Kramer’s interview with Hulu CEO Jason Kilar at paidcontent.org — particularly now that Disney has bought a stake — but her best question was why she sees so many damn PSAs on Hulu instead of real, revenue-generating ads. (OK, she didn’t put it quite that way.) Kilar didn’t really respond to the question, saying: If you look at 2008 versus...

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If you’ve been struggling to imagine how newspapers, magazines and books will be able to survive the historic transformation to online digital media, one answer may be that you may have gotten stuck at the desktop and/or laptop stage of thinking. That certainly was the case with me for a while. But sitting before a console, staring at a flickering flow of electronic text, has never been...

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It’s time to kick ‘em when they’re down. At his annual shareholder’s meeting in Omaha over the weekend, the world’s second-richest man (and most-renowned investor), Warren Buffett, answered one question by allowing that he wouldn’t buy most American newspaper companies “at any price.” Then, at a White House briefing yesterday, President Obama’s...

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This Apple-buying-Twitter rumor is so delicious that it deserves a little (virtual) ink, even if, I suspect, it really isn’t the best Twitter could do — and I’m not talking about the price. Other suitors, such as Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook, might be willing to pony up more than the rumored $700 million that Apple is allegedly willing to pay for Twitter, but the reason...

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If you were looking for NBC to provide lots of illumination about how Jay Leno’s primetime show will differ from his current, late night one, don’t look at the clip above. It’s amusing, but for the most part, it’s a three-minute send-up of the high murder rate on network TV during the 10:00 hour, with Leno promising his show will have “98 percent fewer...

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Of all the major newspapers on various “endangered” lists these days, one that rarely gets mentioned is the Washington Post. Unlike many of its competitors, whose stocks trade for pennies or a few dollars, the Post has been soaring up there in Google-like territory, at $350/share and a $3.25 market cap (~ four times that of The New York Times). But the daily newspaper in our...

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Boston Globe faces closure — Three hours before deadline, the Boston Globe unions issued a proposal that would cut $10 million from the paper’s budget. The proposed cuts included slashing 20 categories of employee benefits and a 3.5 percent pay cut. The union also offered furloughs, cuts in health care and unpaid holidays. The proposal was denied by executives, and management has...

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With the first of the four major broadcast networks, NBC, slated to unveil its new series to advertisers this afternoon, it’s time to take a look at how the network is going to strategize its way through what virtually everyone expects will be a down upfront sales market for it and its competitors. The answer? Hold as much inventory for the scatter market as you can get away with, and...

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UPDATE: The New York Times has now updated this story, saying that the Boston Globe is not necessarily under threat of closure, as previously reported. Clearly there are intense negotiations going on. Expect more contradictory reports. (11:18 am PST May 4, 2009) UPDATE 2: Here is the guts of the statement issued by The Times in its SEC filing today: Today, The New York Times Company released...

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Want to get a good bead on how complicated YouTube’s monetization issues are? Then read this story at Mediaweek about YouTube sending out notices to popular content providers on the service who have been doing their own branding integration deals without YouTube’s authorization (and without giving any revenue to YouTube). The clip above is an example. From a provider called...

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