Media Industry Archive

What I, and maybe you, really want to know about the Michael Jackson memorial service is how the Internet held up during what may prove to have been unprecedented traffic, and streaming — so, as a public service, I spent the last few hours monitoring it. First, some top-line observations, and then, below, my presentation of the Michael Jackson Memorial Streamies, highlighting the best, and...

More...

While I’m sitting around waiting for New York magazine to get back to me about whether it outsources subscriptions to the non-BBB accredited D&T Connection thought I’d post about Maghound. What? haven’t heard about this service, which lets consumers package a certain number of magazines into one low monthly cost? As low as $4.95? Well, me neither. Turns out it’s a...

More...

Hulu put out on its Twitter feed moments ago that it would stream Michael Jackson’s memorial service tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST. You can be sure BNET Media will be watching, if for no other reason than to see if the site can live up to the bandwidth demands. What’s interesting about Hulu’s involvement is that, in airing the memorial service, it is making sure that on what will be...

More...

Leading up to the big holiday weekend, Amazon quietly applied for patents to insert ads into e-Books, including old and out-of-print publications, as well as in any versions available via the emerging world of “on-demand printing.” (More on that in a minute.) Here is how the online discount retailer describes the context for its new ad-serving technologies: “The publishing...

More...

While seemingly everyone in the TV and media buying communities sits around waiting for the upfront ad sales market to start, I’m finally seeing some hints that NBC won’t exactly get primetime rates for its new 10 p.m. “The Jay Leno Show,” which breaks from the broadcast tradition by putting one show — and not a drama! — on at that hour, five nights a week. While NBC...

More...

Continuing our exploration of the value of links to news sites, today we hear from blogger Simon Owens, who writes about the media at Bloggasm. Last Friday, he posted about NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard’s unresponsiveness to an invitation from Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald to appear on his radio show to discuss NPR’s policy to label the politically-loaded euphemism, “enhanced...

More...

Sometimes the comments thread behind one of my posts raises points that deserve more than a simple response from me — they deserve a full airing and perhaps a debate. Last week’s “Posner Advises Press to Commit Business Suicide,” drew a bunch of comments, especially from people who felt I’d misinterpreted Judge Richard Posner’s suggestion that copyright law...

More...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is drawing up guidelines that will allow it to investigate bloggers who promote products, as well as the companies that pay them to do so, when such conflicts of interest are not disclosed to readers. The agency also will investigate any false claims by the bloggers that result from this practice. According to an Associated Press report, “Many bloggers...

More...

Gannett Co. is axing 1,400 newspaper jobs. Fitz & Jen published an internal memo that explains, “Unfortunately, we must take these steps because the advertising environment remains challenged. There have been some promising signs of a recovery, but the reality is the improvements are not broad-based and the economy continues to be fragile.” Most of the reductions are to occur by...

More...

Yesterday, I wrote about people representing a sketchy magazine subscription company showing up at my door; today, let me tell you about the robocall (or robopoll) that I got from ABC 7’s Eyewitness News station in New York. “Hosted” by Eyewitness News anchor Bill Ritter (right), it asked me who was at fault in the mess in the New York state legislature along with demographic...

More...