Earlier this week, I caught this item on MetaFilter about how the Independent Press Association had kicked the bucket, and how magazines were on the down and down. (That's like up and up, just the other way). Of course, as big a tech-head as I am, I know that magazines aren't a totally dying breed, just one that's on a much sped up evolution, declawing, or whatever you want to call it.

At the time, I figured that Rex Hammock, of Hammock Publishing and rexblog.com, would have something to say, since that's his bailiwick (ed: I've used that word entirely too much in the last month). Tonight, I had a chance to catch up with Rex via IM and ask him what he thought about this, and he was more than happy to point me in the right direction to some things he's said in the past, offer some new thoughts, and point out something he blogged about just this week.

About two years ago - February, 2005 to be exact - Rex took part in an interview with Media Life's Lorraine Sanders where he talked about why magazines matter. I won't rehash what he said so much there as that outside of his obvious love for the industry and the medium, but I can't agree more with his thoughts about how things such as JPG magazine offer something that just can't be recreated online, at least not yet, even though it's all about digital photography.

Rex also pointed me to this item from just two days ago, where he linked to a review of a new book, The Last Magazine, which talks about this very topic. You'll get a kick out of his quote, too.

"Magazines that people display on coffee tables will exist as long as there are coffee tables."

Ain't that the truth.

While chatting tonight, Rex told me that "magazines will have a long goodbye." That's important, because he's intentionally non specific, nor should he be. I brought up a magazine that I'm a big fan of, one that I not only love to read on planes, but love to keep around, Dwell. On that topic, Hammock said that he "think(s) that the aesthetics of magazines will grow more important -- the "experience" of something like Dwell is what makes the medium unique." If you've ever picked up that publication - or a number of others at its level - you'll notice there is something to every little nook and cranny, including the paper's feel on your fingertips. At least at the moment, you can't replace that. "Experience" is just the right word for it. Sure, Dwell can do a lot online, and they have a big, fresh site - but it isn't the same thing as the paper pub. On the other types of magazines, including "information" focused ones, he says that they "will (are) be supplanted by the Web.) We've seen that particular thing happen over and over again, but that probably won't stop people from opening those publications anew.

So are (will) magazines die off? Sure. Is it any different from a lot of other spaces and types of publications? Not so much. It's all about if the publishers of said publications can adapt and provide the great content they currently do to their readership in a fashion that the readership wants, can use, or needs. If it needs to be bite sized, some people will figure that out and do so. Others won't, and will vanish, probably quickly. As for the rest of it, I would say that, and did tonight with Rex, that those who are the most technologically hardcore, of which I'd consider myself party, might be the ones who "save" some of the publications on paper that are hurting right now, because we might be the ones who don't take them as much for granted when we pick up a publication and sit down and pour through its pages.

The AP's Hope Yen reports on some new studies saying that if media consolidation were allowed to continue along the lines of what some "big media" entities are looking for, that there would be a dissolution of some genres of music on radio. It's kind of sad that just because it's easier to run multiple Top 40 stations in one marketplace, that you'd even choose to do, in a way just to dominate the tuner as far as maximizing value to advertisers goes.

This, of course, was not overheard in a Viacom chatroom and should be taken as humorously as possible:

ViacomBoardGuy: Like, did you notice that Sumner Redstone is making a lot of money?
ViacomBoardroomDude: No, really? Shocker.
ViacomBoardGuy: Why you gotta be such a hater? I say we give him a pay cut, I mean there's no reason someone working for a monster conglomerate should make a lot of money as far as executives go, right?
ViacomBoardroomDude: Whatevs. I gotta go. Best Week Ever is on.
TomBiro: a/s/l?

While there aren't any specifics, it looks like Viacom is cutting the cash that chairman Sumner Redstone will be snagging.

For anyone who's been blogging for awhile, you're probably familiar with the volume of pitches and other materials that have begun landing in your inbox from public relations professionals (and some not-so-professionals), especially in the last year or so. As someone whose day job it is to work with clients and our own business on developing relationships with online outlets and writers, working with them in a manner that is good for everyone, I'm able to shed light on a daily basis on what works and what doesn't, based almost exclusively on the fact that I've been at this whole blogging thing for a few years now. Something that I'm a fan of explaining to my colleagues and anyone else who asks is that to get the attention of bloggers that you're trying to reach out to, you need to a) personalize what you send to them, no mass-mails will do, b) actually show that you've read what the writer(s) have written in the past, especially if they've covered your company / client, or competitors, and c) stand out from the rest of the pack.

What's this all about? Well, about a month ago, I was contacted by someone at Sony Pictures Television, who commented on this blog, and noted that the company was going to be sending out a mailer to some bloggers, and that they were interested in sending me something if I would like to receive it. I'd accepted, and was expecting to see perhaps a screener or some basic press materials, something that I do receive on a regular basis, most of which I either pass on to other bloggers who might cover those spaces, or I pick up over at TV Squad if someone else hasn't already. A short while later, during a week of business travel, I came home to a package that I wasn't expecting to receive, as I had blanked on the fact that I had corresponded with SPT on this issue when I arrived, so it was a pleasant surprise. Next up comes where the whole "stand out from the crowd" came from in this situation.

So, as I opened up the box, I found a letter describing what was in the box - which was bigger than those that usually contain screeners, mind you - which included a Sony PSP, but not just any PSP, one that contained high-res images and interviews from three of Sony Pictures Television's new shows for the fall season, including "'Til Death," which features Brad Garrett of "Everybody Loves Raymond" fame. All these materials were available to be used by those of us who received them, before FOX, NBC, or the CW, or anyone else, was able to publish them. Of course, my receipt of all of this coincided with a vacation, some quirky TMD blog software happenings, and a number of other things, so I missed the exclusivity window, but not everyone did.

So, aside from the fact that this might seem completely outrageous to some people, let's think about the fact that this move, unlike a lot of other "send people stuff and see what happens" campaigns work, makes logical sense. Sony isn't just sending a PSP to people and then giving them access online to screeners and images and whatnot, they're actually using the PSP to show how that device works with different things. Now, I don't have a PSP, or didn't until this point. I do have two console systems, a Sony PlayStation 2 and an XBOX, and a computer capable of gaming, but nothing to take with me. On planes, I usually bring my iPod along, but it's not a video version, and I think the screen's a little small for that considering what that device can do, so I'm not such a fan anyway. Let's just say that watching these interviews on the PSP - which has a nice widescreen view to it - was flat out amazing. The still images of the shows were just like looking at high-res graphics on any computer screen I have, and the UI of the device is astounding. Heck, even connecting to the airport WiFi at Newark Liberty was a snap. And for a product with no keyboard, that's saying a lot, IMHO. So not only has Sony been smart and gotten the shows in the hands of persons who review and write about such things, but they're provided a device that is part of the Sony family of products and services to view it on. So not only am I talking up the PSP, which I hadn't really played with outside of in a store before, but I'm in the cool kids group with my friends who think it's awesome that I've had access to these shows well before they're aired.

There are pro- and con- arguments to whether people who write online should be accepting products such as this, and it's definitely in my own hands whether or not I choose to send it back or not, and I'm sure that people will criticize one way or another. And, to get facts straight, this isn't the first item that's landed in my meatspace inbox, but it's one of only a few that I've actually written something about. Journalism aside for a moment, let's just look at how this was done, and what it gets for Sony's various companies. Sometimes it's all about getting something in the hands of people and just letting it ride. For instance, I was given the opportunity to test out a Sprint phone and all of its' network services earlier in the year, and as someone who was never a fan of the phones they offered or the ability to make calls on the network, I've got to say that I have probably raved to dozens of people about the quality of the Power Vision network that you can get from them, television and all. Same deal here. Attempt to influence people you consider as influential.

On to the television shows, though. I'm not one to usually hit the sitcom scene, especially in the last few years - I just don't find them funny. "'Til Death" does its part to not be yet another show about a married couple by adding the twist of a newlywed couple living nextdoor to Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher's characters, and taking a lot of what worked for Garrett's character on "Raymond," which should help attract the audience that really enjoyed him as a costar on that show. Just as TV Squad's Joel Keller suggests in his review of the premiere, it feels a little more realistic than the average sitcom (no ridiculously built apartments that would never possibly exist here, thankyouverymuch), and offers a little bit of obnoxious behavior that FOX's "War at Home" also prides itself on, though not so "Ferris Bueller-ish" with the cutaways and whatnot. I'd expect this show to stick around, even if people aren't used to going to FOX for this type of comedy.

As far as the other two included programs, I'd say I was much more intrigued by "Kidnapped" than "Runaway," by far. For those of you into the whole TV Squad spiel on shows, you can check out Joel's writeup here as well. What caught me here was almost exclusively the "tone" of the show. It moved along nicely, had a realistic premise, and the cast is flat out fantastic. I'll have to echo Joel's sentiments about the length of this show as far as a season - or multiple seasons - goes, though. How long can this go on? Then again, I totally thought the same thing about FOX's "Prison Break," which not only is still going and in a second season, but made what I thought was a grave error in taking months "off" mid season to allow for other programming to take hold. I'd have thought that would slaughter a show, especially one that was minute-by-minute such as this one. NBC has had a kinda iffy experience with shows that have a take-no-prisoners cast. I mean, "Las Vegas" is amusing to watch, with James Caan, Josh Duhamel, Nikki Cox, Vanessa Marcil, and a host of others (how DID they get them all stuffed in this show, anyway?), but it isn't exactly breaking down doors. Cast doesn't make a full season, but if it did, along with some solid acting, then "Kidnapped" could stick around for awhile as well. Seeing Delroy Lindo, Dana Delaney, Timothy Hutton, and more on the small screen - together - could prove that the big cast formula will work, or could at least become a trend.

Today's Press Kit?
So, does that make this kind of communication and outreach the new style of press kit? Public relations firms and clients themselves have been coming up with creative ways to market their clients to journalists for years, and it's all about getting that particular piece of mail or package opened from the inbox in a timely manner and spark interest. Obviously they're not usually contained in an electronic gaming device - most of the time - but it appears that we've reached a point where certain companies and individuals have chosen to take a big step - no baby steps here - in order to catch the attention of those that they feel can push the needle. With those individuals not bound by the tenets of journalism, for the most part, that leaves some grey area that can be worked around. I'm not expecting any big screen televisions to start showing up at the Best Week Ever blog anytime soon, but I guess you never know.

Just read at CNNMoney.com that Ted Turner will not look for re-election to the Time Warner board of directors. In some ways, he's already exited stage left some time ago. In other ways, this is kind of a momentous moment for those of us who enjoy the world of media.

Over at the Fast Company blog on Thursday, Kevin Ohannessian posted his criticism of Wednesday night's coverage of craiglist on ABC's "Nightline" program - which he felt was unjustly critical of the Web service. Ohannessian even calls it a "sad defense of old media by old media."

You can read about it here and see a video of the segment at ABC News here.

W00t!

Chalk another one up for iTunes, as it was announced that it would carry highlights and other video content from NASCAR through its Music Store, writes News.com's Greg Sandoval.

CNNMoney's Paul La Monica writes Friday about how the splitting of Viacom into two different entities has been viewed pretty positively by the Street and business-thinkers, and what that means for the future. One of the theories included in the article is that the big company mentality might hinder the ability for some of the smaller pieces to function as well as they previously did - even though there might be financial savings elsewhere within the blending of the companies.

The Boston Globe's Keith Reed writes about this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where all kinds of "on demand" features and products will be unleashed on the media, only to land in our living rooms, on our cellphones, and on our computers in the next few months.

Proving yet again that the biggest thing that will come out of Web 2.0 - or whatever we're calling all the new and improved solutions, software, and technological advances - is choice, Microsoft has stated that Office 12 will do the one thing that many a person has wanted to do for years and years, but never bought the software to do - print files as PDFs.

On second thought...

Recently, a much ballyhooed topic floating around on blogs is that of iPodSubwayMaps.com's use of maps of NYC and San Francisco subway systems. Fred Wilson calls the situation "ridiculous," and is right in pointing out that the service being provided does make the use of the subways in those cities "easier" for those who use the service - being that it can be placed on a device that a lot of people are using already. However, I think Fred is off base when he (along with Jeff Jarvis) are stating that this isn't a copyright issue.

Sure, the subway system "belongs" to the people in the way that it is there for the public's use. But the physical maps are "owned" by whomever created them. Those maps are images, or artwork, and someone spent the time to put them together - whether by hand, mouse, or some other technique. The simple solution - and the one that the proprietor of the website has taken - is to just re-do the maps himself. Sure, the logic of the MTA and BART to go after the site might be off base - and I think it's awful shortsighted, but that doesn't mean that the previous works shouldn't belong to the individual or entity that created them, for as long as the copyright lasts.

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to sense a bit of logic-loss when it comes to people going after anything "big business" or "big government" these days. Just because you can do things doesn't mean that you should do so in the first method that pops into your mind. Companies are opening their eyes to the new way of doing things, and perhaps this was a chance for those of us who hold some of the cards (read: bloggers, iPodSubwayMaps' William Bright, and those who are on the Cluetrain). The triumphalism and chest beating isn't all it's cracked up to be, and is the reason that many people have a problem with the new world of media.

Earlier today, Gallup released poll results about people's trust and confidence in the media. The good news is that it's higher than it was at this time last year - though only slightly. The bad news is that it's still a few percentage points lower than it had been for the previous couple of years.

Frankly, the results don't surprise me at all, and as the media evolves at the speed of light, the definition will either need to be updated by those giving the surveys, or the figures will stay where they are. The public holds a grudge, of course.

Back in May, when the New York Times announced that its columnists would be going behind a paid wall through a product called TimesSelect, it wasn't highly thought of. Shortly afterward, the Times' Martin Nisenholtz discussed the decision and what was involved. Still, most didn't take very well to it.

This morning, at least one user is having some trouble using the service - and it's someone with a print subscription, to boot. It'll be fascinating to see how this works, as the paper's columnists are probably some of the most-linked-to articles on the Web right now - or, they were, at least. On Friday, Matt Sheffield gave the gasface to the Times' plan, making the point that those potential NYT readers who have no idea who the columnists were before might never know now, if they don't ever pay for a sub online.

Finally, PaidContent's Staci Kramer has all kinds of good stuff on the service's launch, including the fact that advertising will be sold on the columnist pages, according to a spokesperson for the publication - a 180 from what was originally believed.

The Herald-Tribune's Lauren Mayk writes about an offer by Verizon of digital television service to the customers in an area of Texas where the telecom provider's new FiOS fiber optic services are available. Right now, Verizon and other telecoms face serious pressure from cable companies and other phone service providers, let alone mobile phone providers, for the voice minutes that used to be all theirs in the markets served by the company. The only way to get back in good light with customers in those markets is to bring them something they don't have - which an unprecedented (for most) level of speed on the Internet, reasonably priced phone services, perhaps in the VoIP manner, and television. Once again, this would all be on the same bill, but the provider would have total control over the various costs, unlike other Internet/phone/television combinations where partnerships are involved.

It's official - Viacom will bust up into two separate companies, one that will handle over-the-air television, and the other to work the cable angle. One company will keep the Viacom name - the cable one - and the other will keep the CBS branding.

This should attract the favor of anti-media consolidation proponents, but will most likely receive no applause because it doesn't help the continued cause of those organizations. It'll be interesting to see any continued linkages between the groups, as the world of MTV could rely on the CBS businesses, opening up over-the-air production opportunities to what MTV had to offer. Will this continue to occur going forward, or will a church and state effect sweep over the two companies? Only Sumner Redstone probably has the answer.

On Tuesday, Reuters announced that Tim Faircliff, previously the general manager of the Telegraph.co.uk website, had come on board as General Manager of its UK news and business information consumer products - just a few days after the news organization named MSNBC.com editor-in-chief David Wright to a role in the same organization.

Faircliff will be responsible for product and site development, as well as marketing and sales efforts for Reuters' attempt to attract consumers directly to its content - news and information. Will the company's partners catch wind (which they surely have already) of this plan and lessen the volume of Reuters news and information that they are currently utilizing, as they appear to be just the "middleman" for the company at this time? Or is the sandbox big enough for everyone to play nicely in?

Backstage.com reports that The New York Times Company has given $70,000 in grants to 27 NYC-based nonprofit theatre companies.

On Wednesday, Reuters named David Wright, formerly MSNBC.com Editor-in-Chief, to a new role the organization has just implemented - Senior Vice President / Managing Editor for Consumer Services. Reuters is looking to create new opportunities for distribution of their news content directly to readers/viewers, and Wright will be on the forefront of those efforts. Previously, Wright held roles at the Associated Press, Toronto Star, and San Jose Mercury News.

At a blog panel event that Reuters hosted a few months back, I had heard a few things about the group looking at mobile technologies as a direction to focus on, but the question still remains as to whether the average consumer will easily adopt Reuters as a source to get news and information - hence Wright's addition to the staff.

In big news of the day, Wal-Mart's online DVD rental business has been taken over by Netflix, the Associated Press is reporting.

[Thanks, Jerry!]

Urbana-Champaign's News-Gazette ran an article last week by Ernst Lamothe, Jr. about some discussions that took place last week at the University of Illinois, mostly about media consolidation. Included in sessions were Phil Donahue, Seymour Hersh, and Air America's Danny Goldberg.

On Monday, the New York Times announced that it would proceed with the subscription service it had been investigating recently, one that carries a cost of $49.95 annually - it's been named TimesSelect. While the subscription, which is set to begin in September, will open up the Times' archives (currently available on a fee basis) to all who sign on, it will close the doors to some of the more popular (especially with bloggers) features on the site, namely the op-ed columnist pages. As I suggested on May 3, "Publications are going to be moving to either a heavier reliance on advertising or some sort of online subscription service as print distribution declines, and there is no reason they shouldn't be able to recoup some of the cost of hosting that data - on a constantly live basis - from the reader." That being said, my prediction was leaning more towards the archived portion of the site, not new items.

While it's not surprising that newer features such as special audio/visual pieces and the ability to see articles before they hit the print edition ("Ahead of the Times," they're calling it) will be part of a paid service, dropping columnists and op-eds into the same bucket might be a mistake. Sure, some who truly want to read Frank Rich, Tom Friedman, Maureen Dowd, George Vecsey and others will either stick to the print edition or will sign on to the service, but this feels like a reversal of what the Wall Street Journal is currently going through, where the online service is gaining steam with users by offering up free content here and there to entice new subscriptions. In this case, taking something "away" that was previously free to everyone online and placing a value on it is going to be hard to justify in all cases.

Corante's Ernest Miller says that this is like the NYT proclaiming "We Don't Want People to Read Our Op-Ed Columnists," while Motley Fool's Alyce Lomax seems to think that the "mix of paid and free content...could very well be fruitful." Regardless of the stack of ticked off bloggers that aren't going to be able to Fisk every column link to the Times' op-eds, the paper will have to prove that the loss of revenue from a CPM standpoint on those particular pages will be offset by all the $49.95 subscriptions that come in.

Last Thursday, while in town for the BlogNashville event, I had the pleasure of visiting the Nashville bureau of Business Wire for a good portion of the day. My intent was to get a good sense of what a day in the life of the newsroom was, including the life cycle of a press release once it arrives at the wire service's offices. This entry will provide some insights into what I learned.

Most of the releases that are to go out on the Business Wire service come in online via Business Wire Connect. Some do come in through other methods, such as email, but they are predominantly directly filed by the client or the client's PR firm with Business Wire. Obviously email is an imperfect tool, and the direct access into BW can work to decrease the loss of important information. The Nashville bureau works for clients located in the area surrounding Tennessee, including Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri. This bureau has 14 copy editors on staff, spread out to cover 24 hours of time in the newsroom.

The average "time to market" for a "live" news release once it is delivered to the copy editors is approximately 15 minutes per page. This gives sufficient time for the editor to fully review the press release, ensure that it is directed towards the correct wire segmentations, check spelling, dates, etc. Editors are also responsible for adding a "Company Information Center" to each release, which leads items like stock quotes to the wire release. If a news release contains 10 pages of spreadsheets or financial information, it will obviously take longer than 15 minutes to hit the wire. Typically, financial results and other lengthy releases will be submitted well in advance of suggested distribution, such as in the case of quarterly financial results. The Nashville bureau sees anywhere from 100 to 130 news releases a day with a variety of distribution levels (national, industry specific, city-specific). Approximately one half of these releases will be considered "live," as in they will be distributed either immediately or at a specified time during that day.

Each release is timestamped the moment it crosses the wire services, so a client is aware of when its news has been distributed to sources like Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and Yahoo! News. Editors will typically contact a client by whatever means is requested to confirm that the release is ready to go, or has hit the wire. This ensures client satisfaction, and allows for a company to be prepared for any contact they might receive from reporters covering a story or other interested parties. What I found most interesting was the weight that clients put on the Yahoo! News service. While public companies are obviously following Regulation FD by putting their news on the wire services through either Business Wire or competitor PR Newswire, it was curious to see that a site like Yahoo! was so important. It appears that all the chatter you hear about the following that Yahoo! Finance has is true, from what I could tell.

As far as measurement, Business Wire members are able to get an idea of how many journalists registered on the PressPass service have viewed their press releases. While specific journalist identities are not shown to the customer, Business Wire offers various levels of clipping services and tracking options as a value add. This seemed very similar to services (manual or otherwise) that many PR agencies offer to their own clients.

The office seemed not unlike a publication's newsroom, with editors on the floor at all times, and a few staff members handling other functions such as sales and management. Additionally, having the Internet at any desk would make it very easy to monitor any difficulties with websites who receive the wire's feeds. Each editor can also see what is in the queue at the other Business Wire bureau, including being able to identify who is working on what release. In this office, editors effectively "took turns" going around the room as releases came in, length and effort needed on each release being kept in mind to help balance the workload.

So what's the future of the wire service? It's hard to say, at least from my perspective. The ability to adapt to market conditions is going to be more than important. The Internet has made it very easy for almost anyone with the ability to publish a story based on a press release. While a company like Bloomberg has the capability to do so on a much wider scale, they no longer have the edge of immediacy they once did. That said, a manner of "fair" distribution like what Reg FD requires appears to be staying in play for the near future. Additionally, many news organizations such as newspapers and online publications still rely on AP, Bloomberg, Business Wire and PR Newswire to provide them with the data they need to publish the news. That doesn't appear to be falling off the horizon anytime soon. And with both major wires adopting RSS as a syndication method, it's clear they are aware of where the bread will soon be buttered.

[editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to point out that the visit to the Business Wire offices was initiated by me, and staffer Mark Dunn, who attended BlogNashville, was nice enough to show me around town during the weekend.]

If Emmis Communications is truly interested in divesting itself of its television properties, then they may have at least one interested party. Journal Communications CEO Steven Smith seemed to offer that his company was interested in taking over some of the operations, wherever the FCC's rules on media ownership didn't preclude them from doing so.

In Tuesday's New York Post, columnist John Podhoretz writes about the staggering changes in the world of media these days, including significant circulation declines, drops in movie attendance, and a shift in certain age groups away from television.

What's NBC looking for next, we wonder? With Vivendi perhaps getting out of ownership of a piece of NBC, the media giant will have some more leverage with whatever they choose to do next, it appears.

In an announcement Tuesday morning, Emmis Communications stated that it was set to proceed on a "Dutch auction" buy of over 20 million shares of its Class A common stock on the open market. The company set a price that will fall between $17.25 and $19.75, the midpoint of which is a 20% increase over Monday's close of $15.45. As of 10:29 a.m. on Tuesday, Emmis (NASDAQ:EMMS) was trading at $18.50, up $3.05 in just under an hour of trading.

Additionally - and more importantly, for some - CEO Jeff Smulyan detailed the decision to work with financial advisors The Blackstone Group and engage legal counsel in Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP to "explore strategic alternatives for our television assets." Emmis currently owns 25 radio stations in the U.S. market along with 16 television stations, including WKCF-TV, WB 18 in Orlando, FL, KGUN-TV, ABC 9 in Tucson, AZ, and KHON-TV, FOX 2 in Honolulu. It is unclear whether all or part of the television stations would be sold off at this time.

A conference call will be held at 11 a.m. Eastern Time this morning, and can be heard at Emmis.com or on 1-517-623-4891, passcode Emmis.

For more on the paid model of news and information online, we need not look further than VodkaFish, where David Singer points out the way that ESPN.com is currently pushing its "insider" service, meaning content behind a paid wall for premium customers. It's usually more in depth analysis, trade rumors, and just stuff with bigger teeth. That doesn't mean it should be for everything, but there is a value to content - it's just that figuring out how to quantify that content, and which content to do that with, that is the problem.

For the last 24 hours, much has been ado about the Associated Press' announcement that they would soon be changing the way in which member publications gain access to content for online publishing - though not in a distribution sense - more like a financial one. Doug Fisher is spot on when he says that "The gorilla's been feeding in the background folks and is ready to exert its muscle." As in, no one should be surprised about this.

Perhaps an editor or two or maybe someone's budget just went bonkers, because at this point the financial contribution that AP member pubs were dropping was probably "factored" as print-only, and the online distribution was just a bonus. While it's not easy to say whether the total readership of a particular publication is higher these days, it's easy to take people from the print bucket and shift them to the online one when looking at circulation/readership declines, for the most part. What'd be interesting to find out is if overall readership is up at these newspapers, et al, showing that more people are getting news and information these days than before, percentage-wise.

It'll be one of those "sucks for the moment" kind of situations where the print side will be forced to continue picking up AP content while the online side pays for it as well, but we know a significant shift will ultimately come. The print side will pay a bit less, while the online side will bear the brunt of what was originally all on the print-only side.

I, for one, welcome our distribution chain overlords. As per my points in February about how the AP's move to add RSS feeds directly to end-users would be a big step in how news reached you and I, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that the AP could end up just feeding us all, if we chose to utilize their resources directly instead of "subscribing" to a local entity - which was the resolution to my original concerns about damaging traffic to local papers. That said, if the bulk of what I'm reading in the daily newspaper is coming from the AP wire anyway, why do I need the local distributor to get my non-local news? Can't the AP just serve it up, ads and all, to my desktop? There's no reason that can't happen. And yes, I know there is a cost situation that would have to be defrayed somewhere. But what a lot of people are truly not factoring in when they devalue these changes is that most online news sites are moving, at the very least, towards free user registration in order to add value to their media kit for advertisers. If it's not going to be a paid model, then it'll be somewhere in the middle.

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

BusinessWeek Online has launched a website containing free educational courses on home office design, entrepreneurship, business plan development, and more. The instructor-led classes will be available through bwcourses.com, and are currently being sponsored by Microsoft.

Right now, the site is featuring the following opportunities:

• The Wireless Mobile Office, instructed by technology writer James Gaskin


• Designing and Equipping Your Home Office, taught by writer Robin Allen


• Start-Up Basics for the First-Time Entrepreneur, led by designer Tim Ziegler

The site was developed by Powered.com, who has put together other successful interactive learning portals such as HP's Learning Center and CNET's Help.com. BusinessWeek now has the opportunity to leverage their site's "stickiness" with advertisers and site sponsors, as it will have more specific data about site visitors and course users - this is an excellent segue for a print publication's continued shift towards an primarily-online readership.

The New York Times Company's first quarter figures for 2005 are out, and they look pretty good overall, just not operationally. Earnings per share were $.76, double last year's $.38 for the same time period. The company reported net income of $111.0, up from $58.4 in 2004. That being said, the company recognized a $.43 per share gain on the sale of their headquarters. Had there been no sale of assets, operating profit would have been $85.1 million, as opposed to $208 million that was reported. In comparison, Q1/2004 showed a $109 million operating profit.

Overall revenues were up .5% to $805.6 million, while advertising revenues rose .9%. Circulation and Other revenues showed slight decreases of .3%, while overall costs and expenses increased by 4%.

Slate's Daniel Gross calls this week's move by GM to try and influence coverage in the Los Angeles Times by pulling advertising combined with Wal-Mart's sudden happy face for the media "clumsy," even going as far as to say that the moves "betray a cluelessness on the part of management about the problems in their own businesses."

Hey, who said that China having Most Favored Nation trading status with the U.S. wasn't a good thing? Heck, it's allowed for Clear Channel to make a 50-year deal with a Chinese government-owned company, Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group, to form a joint venture, Gehua Clear Channel Entertainment & Sports Company, Ltd., which will bring all sorts of concerts, shows, and other forms of entertainment to the country.

[ed: warning: please make no attempt to diagram that last sentence.]

The Denver Post's Will Shanley describes an event that took place in the Colorado city on Thursday, where the topic of media consolidation was argued during a panel discussion. Both sides were well represented, with the Post's publisher joining a television station executive, a consumer advocate, a U.S. Senator and a university professor.

The Chicago Sun-Times' Eric Herman details the Tribune Company's decision to slightly increase CEO Dennis FitzSimons' salary year-over-year but cut his bonus by more than three-quarters, from $1.2 million to $260,000, citing cashflow and the refunds to advertisers for circulation scandals at some of the company's newspaper properties.

City Pages' G.R. Anderson, Jr. gives Clear Channel Communications a thorough runthru in this article on Wednesday, from how the company showed up in Minneapolis just a few years ago and has grown into a huge part of the entertainment industry in the area.

"No single business has had a larger cultural impact on the Twin Cities, ever--let alone in less than 10 years.

That's not to say that everyone is pleased with the company's presence - but it shows that as "bad" as many people believe Clear Channel to be, they have had positive financial impacts in some places. But it leads to a question - when is competition not really competition?

Editor & Publisher's Jennifer Saba details a Q&A with new Tribune Publishing President Scott Smith, who took over that role at the beginning of 2005. Included in the discussion were growth plans for both readership and revenues, and most prominently, the one model we've all been waiting for - online subscription fees.

Says Smith:

We are also implementing an online subscription fee. We believe most people use online sources differently than their printed newspaper. It's a hybrid approach.

While some publications already have a fee-based online model, including some "smalltown" newspapers, a major publisher doing so would most likely lead a wave of change in that manner. It's probably not the move that many bloggers are hoping to avoid - one that would "block" readers from blogs from reading current news, for free - but it shows a realization of the online distribution system becoming a priority on the supply side.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Dan Richman and Todd Bishop report Friday that both the P-I and Seattle Times will be raising their daily newsstand price from $.25 to $.50 as of February 28. For those not familiar with the newspapers, they exist under a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), one that the Times believes is damaging its ability to stay afloat. At the same time, the Times has made drastic changes to its paper, including laying off staff and taking out stock pages on Sundays. So at a time when the newspaper is only able to offer less, it is necessary to raise the price.

This begs the question: Would you continue to purchase your daily newspaper, if you bought it at the newsstand, if the price went up - or doubled - as it has in this case? What is the news worth to you? Finally, is it possible that this is only the tip of the iceberg, as newsgathering economics have changed drastically in recent times, especially with newsreading on the Internet becoming more of the norm.

On Thursday, Channelnewsasia.com featured an article by Choo Ai Leng about the shift of readership in some markets, many American, from paid daily papers to free "commuter" daily papers. Most prominent in the piece is the presence of Tribune Company as a participant in the free daily market, along with their own regular daily publications in multiple cities. This shouldn't be ignored, because just as the New York Times Company has been working on their purchase of Metro Boston of late, Tribune has amNew York in NYC and RedEye in Chicago.

For some time people have been aware that the younger set is "used to" free content, being the Internet "early" adopters that they are. So it's not overly surprising to see people curious, even internationally, about a shift towards more free offline content as well. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to how much of a newspaper's revenue comes from the individual subscriber or newstand sale, but it's not the majority of the monies coming in - hence advertising. It'd be interesting to see how many publications could exist without losing too much news (though shortening their column inches, surely) and ditching a daily cost altogether.

The Associated Press reported a short time ago that the Justice Department is working on a "preliminary investigation" into the New York Times Company's acquisition of 49% of Metro Boston. The concern here is that the free daily would "compete" alongside NYTCo's Boston Globe newspaper with the rival Boston Herald.

Also noted is a Gannett purchase of a "community newspaper publisher in Michigan." That company appears to be HomeTown Communications, which the publisher announced it would be buying in November of 2004. Less than a week later, on November 24, the Cincinnati Post ran a story [discussed here] where "scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department" was expected.

It should be pointed out - as it is in the AP item linked above - that the Boston Herald has been on the forefront of the antitrust push in that city. Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund commented on the situation this morning, coincidentally, before the AP story broke.

Reuters' Martha Graybow reports that Catherine Mathis, NYT Vice President of Corporate Communications has stated that the "We have not been contacted by the Justice Department, nor to the best of our knowledge have any of our advertisers."

The Orlando Sentinel's Richard Verrier writes about how Walt Disney Co. president Robert Iger might be just what the company is looking for once current CEO Michael Eisner departs.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Andrea Ahles writes Thursday about statements made by Belo Corporation CEO Dennis Williamson to analysts on Wednesday that the company's financials would be in a state of flux in 2005, and that the Belo believes that 2005 would "be a challenging year for most newspaper and local television companies."

Rumors of a fireworks display over at Pegasus News HQ were widely exaggerated, however.

[update] Reuters reports that after an analyst downgrade, Belo stock took about a 4% dip.

The Wall Street Journal's Sarah McBride, Phred Dvorak and Don Clark collaborated on a great piece in Wednesday's paper about up and coming technologies. The article specifically refers to the notion that the nifty new toys that "early adopters" are so fond of aren't being rolled out quite as quickly as the buzz is - and for a familiar reason.

It appears that the same issues that befelled Betamax and VHS are in play today, whether it's regarding DVD formats, HD TV, or copyright protection. If the companies can't agree on one standard, then multiple avenues are taken, leaving the consumer with potentially incompatible products. The authors do a great job summarizing the concepts of what is currently going on, referring to the battle in the online music arena.

Imagine that a movie purchased from a Best Buy store could only be played on a DVD player that also was bought at Best Buy -- and not on a player from Circuit City or Radio Shack.

In case you're not so familiar with the situation between RealNetworks and Apple, that's about the gist of it. Expect the broadcast flag to be the next hindrance to progress.

On Friday, the Associated Press reported that the Torrance, California-based Daily Breeze would be outsourcing the newspaper's printing operations. 87 positions will "eventually" be affected by this move.

The Associated Press has the story about $2 million in pledged donations from both the Las Vegas Sun's Brian Greenspun and Jim Rogers of Sunbelt Communications to Nevada State College at Henderson. The school is trying to build its first "permanent" structure on campus, and hopes to garner a few more donations to bring this to fruition.

The New York Post's Keith J. Kelly writes that Tribune's embattled Newsday has landed enough news staff "volunteers" to take a buyout that the paper will "will stop swinging the ax in the newsroom."

[ed: due to an importing mixup while changing hosts, the Newspaper RSS list can now be found here. Thanks!]

The Associated Press provides coverage of a conference call given Wednesday by Dallas-based Belo Corp., owner of the Dallas Morning News and three other daily newspapers, along with 19 television stations. The company stated that its fourth quarter revenues would be level or slightly down compared to 2003, even with the changes at the Morning News after circulation overstatements were made public.

An accompanying press release can be found here.

On Wednesday, DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. released its 3rd quarter earnings for the period ending September 30, 2004. The first nine months of the year have yielded $582.5 million in revenues, of which $241.3 million came in the third quarter alone. CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg stated in a press release that the "results for the third quarter reflect the strong domestic and international theatrical performance of Shrek 2, as well as continuing revenue generated by our growing library of films." Katzenberg also speculates that Q4 will be solid, with sales of the "Shrek 2" merchandise and video combined with revs from the "Shark Tale" showing. But the most important statement came in the middle of all the numbers:

The company also announced that it has decided to move its release of Shrek 3 from November 2006 to May 2007.

And you thought it was tough getting the cast of "The Sopranos" together to film a season. (BW)

Newsday reports that Tribune Company would be "eliminating 10 newsroom positions in Washington and Hartford," at the Hartford Courant, purely for financial considerations.

On Wednesday, OpinionJournal featured a piece by screenwriter Bridget Johnson that asked why the public murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam on November 2 hasn't been discussed more by Americans in the movie-making industry - and she's spot on. Think about it - we now live in a world where if you disagree with a film someone makes, something that might not even be their ideology (although, in this case, van Gogh was outspoken about Islam), and you kill them on a city street. It's not like Amsterdam is in the middle of nowhere, in an unprotected, uncivilized state somewhere at the corner of the globe - it's a major city.

While I can't say that anything has really "changed" in the world in the last decade, it's clear that "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" [credit: Network] has become the mantra for anyone willing to take things to another level. Is this something that could happen in Hollywood, New York, or even Bollywood? Absolutely.

Which leads back to the question - is it that film directors and writers in America aren't 'scared' of something like this happening, or are they just letting it pass like an extremist event that doesn't spell any trouble for their collective future?

If we aren't going to complain about the murder of a filmmaker over the content of a movie, then we should start worrying when magazines are banned from an entire country because the content in one article is deemed "biased," as happened with this week's issue of Newsweek in Pakistan.

[Hat tip: Ken]

[update: 11/30 5:12pm] Jeff Jarvis posts about a reaction from an unlikely source - "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak - who also gives a piece of his mind to those in Hollywood who haven't expressed their thoughts on the van Gogh murder.

The Associated Press reports Monday that the Scranton Times, which is distributed afternoons, and The Tribune will merge into one morning daily, the Times-Tribune. This will allow the papers' owner, Times-Shamrock Communications, to take advantage of efficiences in production and advertising.

Tuesday's Tampa Tribune featured an article by Walt Belcher about Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. and the "treasure" it has found in the Atlantic Ocean. The piece discusses a steamship wreckage that Odyssey discovered, which included a variety of valuables - including thousands of coins. Belcher wrote that "The company has sold $15 million worth of the coins it has recovered," according to Greg Stemm, co-owner of Odyssey.

On Wednesday, Odyssey (a public company trading on the American Stock Exchange: symbol OMR) put out a press release on BusinessWire to clarify the actual financial figures relating to the sale of the coins. Details as follows:

As reported in Odyssey's 10QSB filed on October 14, 2004, revenues for the six months ending August 31, 2004 were $9,578,629. Substantially all of this revenue was generated by the sale of coins from the SS Republic.

While the company anticipates sales of approximately six million dollars in the quarter ending November 30, 2004, there can be no assurances that the company will meet these revenue projections. Official revenue and earnings information will be released after the end of the quarter.

Uh huh. Most people call the newspaper and complain if there is an error in an article. I can't say I've seen a press release used to counteract comments made in a news article before, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been done. That said, Belcher tells TMD via email that Stemm did say $15 million during a telephone interview on November 9.

[update] Just spoke with a rep from Odyssey, who further explained the situation. This release was pure clarification of the statements made by Stemm in his interview with the Tribune, as the company is public and such statements could be construed as guidance on future earnings. Glad I can pull down the siren on this one, as it came off to me on initial reading as the company was concerned about a quote a journalist had published, which is absolutely not the case.

Newsday circulation was overstated by 16.9% daily and 14.5% on Sunday between October 1, 2002 and September 30, 2003, according to a press release Tuesday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Details as follows:

-Average audited daily circulation during the period was adjusted by 97,783 copies to 481,816 compared to 579,599 originally reported by Newsday - a difference of 16.9 percent.

-Average audited Saturday circulation during the period was adjusted by 24,181 copies to 392,649 compared to 416,830 originally reported by Newsday - a difference of 5.8 percent.

-Average audited Sunday circulation during the period was adjusted by 97,739 copies to 574,081 compared to 671,820 originally reported by Newsday - a difference of 14.5 percent

The ABC reiterated its order from July when it declared that the paper's owner, Tribune, must provide audit reports twice a year. ABC president and managing director, Michael Lavery, said in a statement that "These findings are a result of irregularities and errors identified during the course of ABC's annual audit of Newsday. The results of the audit are consistent with the ABC Board's decision in July to censure Newsday for its circumvention of the ABC's rules, rules to which all members agree to abide."

No word on when the twice-yearly audits will end for Newsday and fellow Tribune pub Hoy.

On Friday, Barrington Broadcasting Company announced the acquisition of KRCG-TV out of Missouri. The station, a CBS affiliate, was previously run by Mel Wheeler, Inc. and was the recipient of the 2003 Media Award by the Missouri Community Service Commission. KRCG has also been a CBS affiliate since its inception in 1955. (BW)

Bill Richards writes in Friday's Seattle Times that the joint operating agreement with the Post-Intelligencer is causing financial problems for the Times, primarily due to the P-I's circulation declines. Now, the Times' publisher, Frank Blethen, has "called on the unions to back The Times" in the battle.

Richards informs that there is speculation that this situation "is likely to lead to the death of one of the city's daily newspapers" by to those familiar with the industry.

Paul Colford has the scoop in the New York Daily News about the staffing cuts at circulation-frenzied Newsday.

The Miami Herald's Christina Hoag reports on a deal between the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) and ABC Radio Networks wherein ABC obtains syndication rights for three popular radio shows into major markets over the next five years..

On Tuesday, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed on a street in Amsterdam. The motive in his killing centers around van Gogh's criticism of Islam - and the eight suspects being held have been described as Islamic radicals.

Wednesday, Doc Searls posted about some comments made by Adam Curry, who, I have read, knew van Gogh personally. Curry included an image from a Dutch newspaper of the filmmaker's body, with a knife still in it, on the street where he died.

What I have since found out is that the photograph came from a photographer who used his cellphone in order to take the picture. Reuters' Lucas van Grinvsen writes that actually, this is the second time that the newspaper, De Telegraaf, has used a cellphone photo in the last month. And De Telegraaf isn't alone in integrating cellphone photographs into their publication.

On October 16, Debbie Gilbert wrote in the Gainesville Times about a format change on a Clear Channel-owned radio station that not only came as somewhat of a surprise to listeners, but to some employees of the station as well. As it turns out, Clear Channel's September 16 announcement that they would be switching formats on up to 20 of their stations to a Spanish-language broadcast had already started taking effect by the time the news hit the wires. On September 15, Spanish music started playing over the WHEL-FM 105.1's airwaves - with management of the news/talk station being told 10 minutes before it happened. And, according to the station's general manager Monika Demuth, "Clear Channel didn't do their homework to see what the demographics were" in the area - which is reportedly under 2% Hispanic.

A lot of the growth of satellite radio as a way to get your music jones fulfilled is absolutely due to the lack of commercials on the stations. Some of the growth, however, is due to the disrespect many music fans have for the programming on their local radio stations. At the very least, we should look at radio and realize one thing - it's called "programming" for a reason. It's not what deejays and people with a feel for music as a whole want you to hear - it's what a playlist contains, and nothing more. Remember - as Clear Channel's previous CEO Lowry Mays said, "If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company. We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers products." Radio isn't in the business to give you music. You view it as a means to listen to music or talk. Radio views itself as a channel through which to get you to listen so you hear the advertising.

That said, let's get back to the programming. It's not a new concept that there would be a way of manipulation of how songs make their way onto the airwaves - "payola" was the old-school term, but is since illegal - it also shouldn't be a surprise that similar practices could still be in place to this day.

Michele at A Small Victory writes about the current methods of getting songs on the air, referring to this article in the New York Times where reporter Jeff Leeds describes how New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer now has some major music labels in his sights. It seems that some monies are making their way to radio stations via "independent song promoters" who are paid by music labelsto promote songs. The promoters are paying the stations for copies of playlists, and then recouping those costs from the labels when they "prove" that their songs have made it on air.

Chris Feola is looking into "the value of the content in newspapers," asking whether or not today's media companies have what it takes to survive in the long term. He makes the point that given that news has been "commoditized" quite a bit, (wire services, etc.) what differentiates one news outlet from another is minimal when it comes to original reporting.

Think about it, do you go to one news outlet because they offer more "Only on News X!" stories, or do you go to an outlet that you are used to for some other reason? If you had three local papers of equal price, size, and stature in your market, how would you choose which one to read? Would the editorial pages be your differentiator? The comic strips? Howabout the sports section?

Feola's point is that in today's world, the current costs of doing business as a major print media company are probably going to be hard to keep everyone afloat if company practices stay static. This is followed up with a counterargument to Frank Barnako's column from October 15, "Blogs: much ado about very little." Using Daily Kos as an example of a business model that attracts a ton of visitors per day, Feola extracts what kind of revenues that site could derive in today's dollars to show what kind of revenues are supporting an opinion/political-based site. Obviously Kos' "newsroom" is made up of a bunch of people who aren't paid for their time, and are dedicated to writing about certain topics and creating discourse. A newspaper has a completely different model, and it isn't totally apples to apples here - but it shows that, given a smaller amount of effort, a major impact as far as readership is feasible. Is it possible that, given that many people get most (or all) of their news in an online environment, that a print daily could move almost exclusively online and not look back? Using the statistics that Feola provided about pickup of commoditized stories plus newsy happenings that are "known in advance," i.e. press conferences, government announcements, and the creation of a small amount (15%?) of "reporting" being original and germane to that publication - all for much less than they operated on before - an online shift isn't so crazy. But of course, we will all long for newsprint, right?

This isn't meant to preach the dearth of news sources in print form. It's just a quick and dirty analysis of how the business models of websites - including blogs - work as compared to traditional media outlets. Remember, most blogs live off of sourcing these traditional media outlets in order to create entries. But the day is probably not so far where blogs are networked up and can afford to be utilizing the Associated Press, news photo sites, and are reprinting articles just like their publication counterparts are. It's a symbiotic relationship, not a "versus" one.

Bloomberg reports that the New York Times Company has announced a profit of $48.3 million for the third quarter of 2004, down about 4% from a year ago - increased printing costs combined with decreased advertising countered solid gains in sales revenue during this time.

A potential law in Ethiopia would prohibit a company from owning a newspaper and radio station at the same time, the Exchange News Network reports.

In a BusinessWire press release Tuesday, it was announced that WTVO out of Rockford, Illinois, was sold by Young Broadcasting Inc. to Scranton, Pennsylvania-based Mission Broadcasting, Inc. for just under $21 million. According to comments made by Mission's President, David Smith, it appears that the station will continue operating as is, although there is no word on whether it will stay as an affiliate of ABC.

In March of 2004, a U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a decision on behalf of the Professional Golfers Association, who was arguing that they held the rights to "sell" the scoring and results to any news organization that wanted to report on their events. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled similarly, the Associated Press reports. This situation stemmed from the actions of Morris Communications, who was gathering the scoring and then selling them to their customers as part of an information service.

As a result of the decisions all the way up through the Supreme Court, will other sport leagues look to create similar arrangements for providing scores to publications and media outlets?

North Carolina's News 14 reports Wednesday that media conglomerate Clear Channel Communications owes Cumberland County more than $60,000 as a make good for underbooking shows it said would be brought into a local entertainment venue. The Fayetteville Observer's Andrew Barksdale has more.

EContentMag.com reports that news and information solution Factiva will now include nine publications from Gannett, all focused on U.S. government and military topics.

The Arizona Republic's Max Jarman covers the ways in which Cox Communications - the big cable television provider in the Phoenix area - is trying to "stop the bleeding" with relation to the loss of customers to satellite providers over the last few years.

The Seattle Times has a special report Wednesday written by Bill Richards that discusses an ongoing dispute between the paper and Hearst Corporation, who owns the other big paper in town, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The two companies have a JOA, or joint operating agreement, which allows for companies to exist as newsgathering agencies, while creating "shared" services between them. Some of these shared services could include ad sales or printing. More information on JOAs is available here in an article from April of 2003, where the Seattle P-I was reporting that 12 cities still had these agreements in place as of that time.

In this particular battle, the Times is claiming that renegotiation of the JOA in a manner that Hearst is looking for would force the it to be sold to Hearst. Hearst disagrees, and counterclaims that the Times wants to "to turn Seattle into a one-paper town." The case may reach the Washington state Supreme Court, who, according to Richards, has not decided whether it would hear the case or not.

After agreeing to drop a portion of their lawsuits, a group of car dealers who are currently suing Newsday will begin having their ads run again, the paper's James Madore informs. According to the story, no further damages can be given based on future advertisements, and ads will resume immediately. The lawsuits arose after Newsday announced in June that it had overstated its circulation figures - which are used to justify advertising rates.

This also proves that the car dealers need something that the newspaper has - readers.

Jim Chisholm at Newspapers & Technology writes about the decline of newspaper circulation in recent times, and how this will affect publications in the future. Chisholm cites a drop of 1 to 3 percent per year for newspapers, but points out that television news programs have dropped by half - though he doesn't clarify over what time period.

Further on, the idea of print news moving to a different business model - let's call it the "short and sweet" model - comes along. The gist of it is that papers might move a lot more of their coverage into this "short and sweet" publication, one that is handed out on streetcorners in business centers or on public transportation, etc. Just as subscription and newsstand sales don't make up the revenues needed to put the publication together in the current media economy, removing them completely from the process won't be as brutal as it sounds because the printing cost will dramatically change. Advertisements will still make up for the cash flow needs of the publishers. Will this ultimately replace all daily newspapers? Probably not. But is it a way to stay relevant to dedicated readers? Probably.

But let's get down to brass tacks. This article is missing something - something big. Changing distribution methods isn't the savior for declining readership of print materials. Newspaper readership will continue to slow. Along the same lines, television, while it continues to grow in technological ability, still loses viewership in certain avenues to one thing - the Internet. I think that while this article makes some super-valid points, not mentioning the Internet as THE distribution method of choice for most people who consider themselves "well informed" is short-sighted. The "short and sweet" newspaper will help offer people a way to read the news in the manner they're most used to while checking it online - quickly - but with the prevalence of WiFi, PDAs, and data-enabled mobile phones, it is very possible that generations of people (not just Americans) will get most of their news without ever getting newsprint on their fingertips.

The Arkansas News Bureau covers the newly announced partnership between CenturyTel and EchoStar, the parent company of DISH Network. According to Wesley Brown's article, CenturyTel will now offer a bundled package to its customers by the end of 2004.

Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp covers new policies being put in place by the United States Labor Department that would affect how individuals are categorized to receive overtime. According to the piece, journalists could be considered as exempt from overtime - which could dramatically change how newsrooms compensate their staffs.

Bloomberg columnist Graef Crystal takes Viacom boss Sumner Redstone to task in a column Wednesday regarding pay increases for co-Number 2s Thomas Freston and Leslie Moonves - and Redstone himself. I think Crystal waits too long to pull in the compensation board as just as liable for this - it's the last thing mentioned in the article, and they have a significant say in what happens with pay raises.

Infinity Broadcasting has agreed to utilize Arbitron for ratings and market information going forward, according to an Investors Business Daily article on Tuesday. This is a reversal to an announcement on June 25, when Infinity stated that they would be doing business with The Media Audit.

According to an Associated Press report, Liberty Media International posted a second quarter loss of $1.04 million on Monday, against a gain of $10.5 million for the same quarter in 2003.

According to an AP story on Monday in The Daily Sentinel, Media General Inc. reported solid advertising increases in the month of July for its print, radio, and online outlets.

CNET's Dinesh Sharma confirms that online auction site eBay has purchased 25% of listing site Craigslist. No details on whether branding or other eBay information will appear on Craigslist, but Sharma quotes both companies as saying they would come together on "expertise, resources and creativity." On August 5, CNN/Money's Eric Hellweg speculated on Craiglist going public [via Techdirt], a move that many folks on the web thought was pretty unlikely. Looks like the "where there's smoke..." rule was partially right on this one.

[update] If you happen to read the CNET article linked above, make sure you check out Craig Newmark's post on the subject, too. It wasn't really clear in the CNET piece, but it looks as if this wasn't as simple as eBay walking in and asking for a slice of the pie.

Reuters reports Friday that Miramax COO Rick Sands will most likely leave the studio by October, citing "turmoil" as the reason.

Editor & Publisher's Jennifer Saba writes about a recent Merrill Lynch report covering circulation issues at newspaper publishers in 2004. "The circulation mess is not helping the tepid advertising recovery either, yet it's going to be hard to judge the impact," states Saba. Bingo - it's not necessarily the end of the world, but continued problems at publishers could lead to a frenzy of ad rate declines.

CBS 2 Chicago has an item about recent problems the Tribune Company has been having with work permits from the city of Chicago. According to the story, the Tribune-owned Chicago Cubs had to halt work on their property for a lack of permits. Soon after, the Chicago Tribune filed requests for information about work on the structure of City Hall. The paper cited "a tip" as the reason they were looking into the city's own permits, but speculation centers around the company looking for a "gotcha" with the city government. And to top it all off, Tribune's WGN television station was informed it had to stop the move of a satellite dish on its property on Thursday - the company believed it had the correct permits, and the city disagrees.

News Corporation posted its fourth quarter results on Wednesday, with a quarterly profit of $399 million for the three months ended June 30. Revenues experienced significant gains, up 20% from the same period last year to $5.5 billion.

Cablevision, the Bethpage, New York-based cable television provider, posted a net loss on Monday of $187.1 million for the second quarter of 2004, as compared to a $158.3 million gain for the same period a year ago. Most of the loss is attributed to one-time charges and losses from its satellite television operations. However, the company's press release states that cable televsion revenues increased 17% to $730.4 million while overall revenues jumped 25% to $1.2 billion as compared to the second quarter of 2003. Favorable revenues were primarily due to increases in subscribership to the Optimum Online high-speed Internet service, conversion to iO digital cable, and a 24% gain in overall advertising revenue over the prior year.

The Daily Herald picks up a Wall Street Journal article about the continued growth of satellite television in the U.S. One stat to keep in mind - while cable television has lost 900,000 subscribers over the last two years, satellite subscribership is expected to increase by two million - just in 2004. So non-pay television households are purchasing satellite systems, it's not just cable converts.

On Thursday, the Cox family members looking to take Cox Communications private were informed that 9 lawsuits had been filed against them by shareholder groups. The gist is that the Cox family doesn't have the best intentions of the shareholders in mind, according to those affected.

The Associated Press reports Thursday that Liberty Group Publishing is up for sale. The company owns 325 newspapers and local publications in 15 states, including the Kansas City Kansan and the Chicago Suburban Newspapers group.

Rafat Ali posts about the increase in revenues at spoken-word content provider Audible in the second quarter of 2004. The highlights: 82% year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter, and a net income of $237K.

Reuters' John Stempel reports Monday that the privately held Cox Enterprises, owners of almost two-thirds of the shares of Cox Communications, Inc., has offered $7.9 billion to purchase the remaining portion of the cable company.

On Friday, the Washington Post Company made its earnings announcement for the second quarter of 2004. According to the Associated Press article, the publisher stated profits of $84.9 million, a 40% increase over the $60.6 million gain for the same period in 2003. However, newspaper advertising revenue represented only a 5% increase in revenues while the Kaplan education division represented $29.4 million, more than one-third, of the profits by the company.

If the recent bunch of media company results are any indication, then there is definitely no "trend" that can be followed across the board when assessing their economic value going forward. Some publishers/publications are doing very well when it comes to advertising, some are continuing to have difficulties.

Hollywood Reporter's Georg Szalai reports Friday that News Corporation has re-signed its president and CEO, Peter Chernin, for five more years. In June, there was speculation that Chernin might leave the conglomerate should a "better offer" - such as the top job at Disney - came available. This leaves the man at the helm of News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, with a solid succession plan should he leave the position in the next few years. As previously reported, the long term plan is for one of Murdoch's sons, Lachlan or James (or some combination of both), to run the company at some point. Keeping Chernin on allows for a solid transition to that eventual point, and allows the younger Murdochs to continue growing their already established business acumen.

Radio Ink has the skinny on analyst firm William Blair & Company's stock rating assignments to both XM and SIRIUS. The firm assigned an "outperform" to XM and a "market perform" to SIRIUS, and say they "have greater confidence that XM will perform favorably" against expectations.

I find this particular set of ratings to be done very well because Blair has clarified what people should look to see from these companies - read: profitability - that as long as both services continue to make headlines and creep upward in revenues and subscribers, progress is being made.

Time Warner's second quarter of 2004 might not have been as successful as the same period a year ago, but it exceeded expectations of analysts, who predicted around 15 cents/share profit. On Wednesday, the media conglomerate posted a $777 million profit, or 19 cents per share. In 2003, Time Warner had an exceptional second quarter, reporting $1.06 billion in net income - although the Associated Press reports in the earnings coverage that the prior year's gains were assisted by investment profits and a settlement with Microsoft. That settlement, regarding browser antitrust issues, totaled $750 million - significantly impacting Time Warner's financials during that quarter.

Bloomberg's Jonathan Berr writes Tuesday that the current speculation around Time Warner's most recent quarterly results stand on one thing - advertising sales on its cable networks. According to Berr, ad rates on Time Warner's TNT exceed those of competitors in a lot of cases, especially during episodes of "Law & Order" - where ads dwarf those of USA Network and Comedy Central. That's all well and good that their rates are high - the key is that people are obviously buying. On Wednesday, analyst speculation will get a test when the media company releases its second quarter earnings.

On Friday, AP's David Koenig wrote that Clear Channel Communications posted a second quarter 2004 profit of $254 million, a 1% increase over last year's earnings for the same period. Acting CEO Mark Mays did state, however, that July & August ad revenues might not be so huge but speculated that September "looked strong."

According to a Reuters report, Viacom shrugged off their recent changing of the guard to post a $754 million profit in the second quarter of 2004. Television advertising sales seem to be the linchpin to the year's solid numbers.

Satellite radio provider SIRIUS announced its second quarter results for 2004 on Wednesday. The company stated a net loss of $136.8 million, $25 million more than the same period in 2003. While the company has increased its subscriber base substantially year-over-year, it has also dramatically grown its marketing expenses. These expenses include various promotions such as rebates and free or low cost systems to new subscribers.

The Baltimore Sun's editorial pages will be making a shift at the end of July when longtime cartoonist Mike Lane takes his leave of the company through a buyout he recently accepted.

Back in November of 2000, just months after Tribune Co. purchased the Sun from the Times Mirror Company, the publisher announced that buyouts were available to staffers who had been at the paper for 10 years or more. The move was thought to "eliminate the need for layoffs," the Baltimore Business Journal reported at the time. Many Sun reporters fell into that category, and slowly but surely, they made moves over the last few years. Lane finally decided to do the same a short time ago, and tells his story on the Cagle blog over at Slate. Check out the July 17, 2004 entry by Lane himself. (At the moment, it's entry #2 - sorry, no permalinks over there just yet.)

And that's they way I feel about drawing editorial cartoons: I think I'm getting the hang of it, and I'm going to continue drawing for Mr. Cagle, without the damp hand of editing I've known lately and without the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. I'm now free to actually create. Where will it take me?

If you're a fan of Lane's work, don't fret - Cagle Cartoons' Cari Dawson Bartley confirmed Monday that his work will continue to be syndicated by the company, even after his departure from the Sun. Microsoft's Slate also has his work on their site in their Cagle section.

According to an item by Reuters' Michele Gershberg, media conglomerate Clear Channel is making changes regarding their radio advertising strategy. On Sunday, Clear Channel CEO John Hogan announced that the company will actually put limits on the amount of advertising placed on their stations for two reasons: they realize the "annoyance factor" going on with their listeners, and that the glut of commercial space that is currently being offered provides no real value to the advertiser. This "glut" subsequently pushes ad rates down, adversely affecting the financials of radio stations.

Forbes picks up four earnings announcements from Thursday, including big gains by E.W. Scripps Co., who reported a 34% increase over 2003's mid-year profits. Advertising was a major factor in the announcements, with Scripps making big gains on political advertising on its television channels and Dow Jones reporting good numbers but "inconsistent trends in monthly Wall Street Journal advertising and ad levels," according to CEO Peter Kann. Tribune Company also disappointed the market by stating additional "misstatements" in circulation figures at two New York area newspapers, Newsday and Hoy.

On Sunday, the San Diego Union-Tribune had an article by art critic Robert Pincus that brought something to light that most people probably weren't aware of. Clear Channel is into art.

No, the conglomerate doesn't just like art, they own exhibitions that show it. This has Pincus and others a bit worried about how exhibitions will be viewed by the public. The critic finds that the first such example of a Clear Channel Exhibitions produced event was "all about size and scale," rather than art itself. While some involved don't see Clear Channel's participation as anything but supportive of the industry, there still seems to be a fear of commercialization underlying the situation.

[via The Raw Story]

Motley Fool's Rick Munarriz wants us all to "Give Disney Some Credit." In an article posted Wednesday, he points out Standard & Poor's positive move towards Disney's credit rating. Citing S&P's attitude towards the entertainment company, Munarriz says we should look at the Mouse in a better light, and that they can "overcome plumper yields and box-office duds."

However, this AP wire story doesn't lend any creedence to the Fool's theory. It's July, and Disney has yet to have a $100 million movie in the U.S. With other movies breaking even after their first week(end), Disney's got some serious work to do - their latest release, "King Arthur," took in just over 10% of the movie's costs on its opening weekend.

Looks like if Disney is going to be pulled out of the investment doldrums (it's disturbing to me that we consider them as having trouble when they're making $1/share) that the deciding factor isn't going to be its movie studio.

Rox makes a very deliberate statement when she says that daily newspapers are "merely vessels for advertising." She was following up on recent studies saying that people aren't reading - the study was mostly about book reading, but the point still stands true. But I have some trouble condemning newsprint just yet.

It shouldn't be a surprise to people that what you pay for the newspaper doesn't at all cover the costs of the paper's operating expenses - while advertising is used to close the gap and potentially bring about a profit. Hasn't the newspaper always been this way? It was kept at a low price (you've surely seen the newsboy yelling out headlines on the street in old movies) because of advertising subsidiziation of the company's costs. Sure, it's gone up from a nickel or dime since then, but has anything really changed? Even though I don't personally read the print newspaper every day, I don't think it's possible to write it off as a medium for getting news out. I believe we're still at too early of a time to say that it's an irrelevant news source by the time it hits your doorstep...or that the newspaper is any different today than it was fifty years ago. The advertising revenues may be larger and cover more costs, but it's not as if the only reason the publication exists is to get advertising out. There are still plenty of reporters, editors, cartoonists, and staff that are trying to get the news to people who want to read it. In the comments on Rox's site, she says that publications are now "creating products for the mere purpose of selling advertising." I'll have to say she's spot on there, but is it not possible that they're creating these free/low cost publications in order to further defray the costs of their main edition(s)?

Sure, the medium might change with the times, but all that will change in the vehicle - the "newspaper" will still be around for you to read it - even if you are doing it through your RSS reader or web browser.

TheState.com picks up on Associated Press coverage of earnings announcements today in the news publishing industry, including that of Gannett and Media General, Inc. Following Gannett's positive numbers, Media General reported a 7% year-over-year revenue increase, with much of that growth attributed to classified advertising gains.

The AP reports Tuesday that Gannett stated earnings of $354.4 million, an 8.3% increase over the second quarter of 2003. National and classified advertising had double-digit increases year-over-year, while local advertising revenues were up just under 6%. Gannett's flagship newspaper, USA Today, had an increase of 15.5% in advertising revenue in the latest quarter, with a 3.9% increase in advertising pages.

Back in February, three broadcasting companies discussed the possibility of bringing satellite radio service to Canadians. On Friday, Radio World Newspaper confirmed that the Canadian Radio-Television & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its plans to hold public hearings this November on the topic. What's even more interesting is that the three companies, CBC/Radio-Canada, Standard Radio Inc., and SIRIUS Satellite Radio are in discussions to form a new company between them to offer the services.

The Denver Business Journal reports that Fox Sports Baseball Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of Fox Cable Networks, has agreed to purchase a portion of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies.

Mark Tosczak wrote today about BusinessWeek's latest cover story, entitled "Quality News: Who Will Pay The Tab." The article talks about changes in mass media - namely, where the money to finance media outlets will come from in the future.

Tosczak suggests that the shift in advertising monies throughout the media world "supports the thesis of those advocating advertising on blogs." Why? Perhaps because blogs - at least niche ones - have a good handle on who their readers are. I would suggest, however, that trade publications can still make some headway in the market.

Tribune Media's Andrew Leckey writes that while Viacom has been going through some "plot twists" of late, mostly in the departures of top level executives, it's still a solid investment in the media/broadcasting sector.

This past Monday, a charity event was hosted by iStar Financial at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The event, the iStar All-Star Charity ShootOut, featured Indiana Pacers star Ron Artest, Nickelodeon's Christina Vidal, and Chris Heinz, John Kerry's stepson. They all participated in various basketball shooting competitions in order to raise money for two beneficiaries, the Robin Hood Foundation and Human Rights First, netting over $114,000 that night.

Didn't make it to the Garden that night? Luckily for the rest of us, one of those nifty "goodie bags" that the celebs received for participating just happened to survive the night without leaving on someone's arm. It's packed to the top with some stuff that is sure to be a hit, and if you're interested in giving some money to a worthy cause, then you should definitely bid on the bag. Yes, I said bid on the bag! Stephanie Klein of Klein Creative Communications [profiled by TMD here], has put the last bag up for bid on eBay. You have until 8pm on Friday, June 25th to try and make your mark as the winning bidder, all while helping two important causes (and getting some cool stuff for yourself!)

San Luis Obispo's Tribune has an item in today's "Biz Buzz" column about some distribution issues relating to local channels on satellite television in rural parts of California. This week's issue happened when DirecTV began offering local channels yesterday to customers in San Luis Obispo County, Santa Maria and Santa Barbara markets - but you only got the channels if you lived in those areas and were subscribed directly through the satellite provider. Pegasus customers were not offered access to the channels, and would have to upgrade their equipment in order to gain access to the channels. Interestingly, this happens as Pegasus and DirecTV are in various legal battles, including this one discussed a week ago wherein DirecTV was looking to take on the servicing of its rural customers itself, without any local company offering the services. Talk about creating evidence for yourself. [Did I just write that?}

This seems very similar to problems people I know faced when they purchased a cellphone and service from an "authorized retailer," and then had problems with it. They weren't able to go back to the carrier for problems, only the retailer. So while using the independent retailer for a "service" location, they soon realized they couldn't do other things at that shop, like pay a bill or make changes to coverage, options, etc. In both cases, the consumer is in an odd position, and makes me think that dealing with the source might be the best option - even though in the case of Pegasus, the customer didn't have the option to deal with DirecTV at the time.

While businesses across the globe have been using free instant messaging for work-related discussions for quite a while now, it was only inevitable that the world's largest ISP would get their hands around a business application for this concept. That concept is AOL's AIM@Work portal.

USA Today has a story today that describes how Time Warner's AOL arm is teaming up with online meeting manager WebEx and telecom solutions provider Lightbridge to offer what will be known as AIM Business Services. From voice conference calls to web meetings, AIM Business Services is looking to offer cost efficient communications tools through a medium that may already be utilized by a company's staff.

AOL has even taken the instant messaging username selection up a level with their Identity Services platform, which allows authentication of users who have a username@companyname screenname through the AIM product in order to add credibility and identity security to the system.

The only question remaining is whether companies will move their off-net telecommunications needs to a paid model on the Internet through AOL. The partnership with WebEx lends a significant amount of creedence to the service, IMHO, as many corporations have been using their web conferencing in conjunction with telephone conference calls in order to have meetings where people are in various locations, significantly lowering travel costs - but will companies leave their current "safe" telephone bridge away anytime soon?

Cleveland's Channel 19 informs us that Def Jam and American Greetings have gotten together in order to offer hip-hop ringtones for fans of the genre to download from the Def Jam website.

South Africa's IOL has an article this week from Reuters that confirms a change in policy at the BBC. According to Kate Kelland, BBC News correspondents will have bodyguards that would be "deployed as an exceptional measure." This announcement comes just days after one BBC staffer was critically injured and another was killed by attackers in Saudi Arabia.

In the piece, CNN states that their staff does have armed guards with them in some cases. However, both Reuters and David Dadge, editor at the International Press Institute seem to agree that having guards could make things worse for an already tense situation for journalists.

The Washington Post picks up this AP article by Dave Carpenter that details an announcement today by Chicago-based Tribune Company about its current financial situation. According to the company [full press release here], advertising revenue is experiencing "slower than anticipated growth," and this will be settled up with various "expense reductions." The announcement goes forward to detail what will be done, stating that "actions being taken include staff reductions, newsprint conservation programs and reduced spending levels in all departments."

This is somewhat counter to a related topic from last Friday, when debt ratings company Moody's raised its outlook on the Washington Post due to its opinion on advertising revenues looking positive going forward.

[update: 6/8/04 1:16pm] AP's Dave Carpenter wrote an update last night to the story referenced above about Tribune. In the followup, he clarifies that more than 200 positions will be cut at the media company.

The Hendersonville Times-News picks up an article from the New York Times' Geraldine Fabrikant and Laura Holson that discusses the fact that changes at Viacom have been quite pronounced while changes at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are coming in the near future - yet no one is paying much attention.

At the center of the discussion is Murdoch's statement that his sons Lachlan and James, currently in their early 30's, will be at the helm one day. The fact that there are two of them is a problem in itself, as we will soon see with the Tom Freston/Les Moonves shuffle at Viacom. Compounding the issues at News Corp. is that, according to the Times article, "several analysts said that neither [of the sons] appeared to have the broad experience needed to oversee the News Corporation itself." And while Murdoch has one of his current chiefs in line to replace him on a moment's notice, that individual - Peter Chernin - wants to be able to walk if someone else offers him a CEO spot.

A lot of people will bring the criticism to situations like this because it's really easy to take shots at a company that's the size of News Corp., Viacom, et al. But is that the problem behind the succession difficulties, or is it just the changing corporate environment we live in? With a lack of corporate loyalty to employees - as compared to 30-40 years ago - combined with (or causing?) a lack of employee loyalty towards their employers, it's no wonder that someone like Chernin would want to have such a clause.

Keep an eye on News Corp., Viacom, and the family-controlled Cablevision in the next few years. The new leadership at these companies will be the forces making a huge impact on the media economy as we know it.

Washington Business Journal's Jeff Clabaugh reports that, earlier this week, Moody's "raised its outlook for Washington Post debt from negative to stable." One of the main reasons for doing so was the "improving advertising climate." When looking for an objective party (read: not a publication) to say whether advertising is getting better overall, I'm guessing Moody's would have to qualify. So perhaps we have some positive news in the media world, backing up earlier claims that advertising revenues were increasing/stabilizing.

According to this article at advanced-television.com, Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV is looking to stave off a projected drop in rural customers who are currently serviced by Pegasus Communications. The linchpin to DirecTV taking control of the rural customers is the severing of a relationship with the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, the rightsholder to distributing DirecTV's services in some areas of the US.

Reuters' Peter Henderson reports that Disney boss Michael Eisner seems optimistic that a new deal could be formed with animation house Pixar, who ended the previous arrangements back in January of this year.

Disney hasn't shown the success level on its own that Pixar has in the 3D animation realm, and it is only logical that they would try and work something out. Pixar holds all the cards in this situation, at least for the moment. The point of contention is probably Disney's distribution abilities, which Pixar wouldn't necessarily have such a problem building anew - but it's just that - why start over when they could make arrangements accordingly.

Reuters reports tonight that Jonathan Dolgen, Viacom's entertainment group boss, resigned today. The latest changes in management structure at Viacom seem to be the primary reason for Dolgen's departure, with his television responsibilities moving over to CBS' Les Moonves, and his movie studio role shifting to MTV's Tom Freston.

Is this the end of the bleeding at Viacom - or just the beginning?

In case you hadn't heard already (which means you're in a cave in Tora Bora), Viacom President and COO Mel Karmazin called it quits on Friday, but the news just hit this morning. I awoke after a long weekend to hear Don Imus chattering about it in the 6am hour, complemented by his usual suspect of a guest Bo Dietl saying that Infinity guy Joel Hollander would be moving on up. Well, it doesn't look like Dietl is on the money there, but MTV's Tom Freston and CBS honcho Leslie Moonves will be co President and COOs for the time being. No word yet on who gets what role on which days of the week, but I'm sure they will come up with a solid arrangement.

Also announced was the coming departure of chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone, who says he will be leaving within three years. Interestingly enough, Redstone considers Moonves, who has been the boss at CBS only since 2003, as leading a candidate as Freston to take over the chief executive spot. But keep on the lookout for ex-GE guy Jack Welch, who is on the hunt for a monstrosity of a company to take over.

[update: 2:28pm]: CBS MarketWatch's Jon Friedman is pointing out this afternoon that the Moonves/Freston situation could create yet another battle for a top spot at Viacom, something that was seemingly fixed when Karmazin departed. And if you're thinking some "white knight" might show up to take over when Redstone walks, you're probably going to be disappointed - "Redstone said he would be "amazed" if an outsider came in to run Viacom," according to the article, describing what the boss had to say to analysts about the future of the company.

Tonight I came across this post over at J-Log, which talks about the newspaper habits of younger people - or, more specifically, lack of newspaper reading habits. What bothers me most about this is the ignorance of how the younger set has embraced the Internet as a channel to receive news and information.

Individuals aren't reading the newspaper's content less, they're just getting less ink on their fingers. Until someone starts utilizing the demographics harnessed by sites like nj.com and parent advance.net, studies like this will not be relevant, in my opinion. You can't just sit there and make a blanket statement about readership being down, circ is down, newspapers are dying, blah blah blah. Yes, print readership is down. Yes, circulation has dropped significantly over the last 10-14 years. But it's not like people have gained a stupidity level or something. If anything, I would venture to say that people are more informed than they were before. Not only the Internet as a whole, but sites like Google News and Topix make news from everywhere available to everyone. Blogs filter content for readers, and readers match themselves up with blogs they like. More and more people have obtained subscriber based television services like cable and satellite. Audio and Visual content has replaced a lot of print content for many people. While the loss of newspapers as the medium that provided so much news to so many people for so many years may seem harsh, it is reality in a sense. I don't think you'll see them going out of business or stopping all printing processes in the near future, but the declines will continue.

Australia's Daily Telegraph has an article by Christine Pouget that talks about where the newspaper industry stands from those present at the 57th annual World Newspaper Congress. The overall gist is that while circulation is declining for paid publications, advertising revenue is up. This could be for any number of factors, including some publications going out of business, causing a much more tight selection of outlets for people to read. Or, that the folks "still" reading the newspaper at this point can be more highly targeted by those wanting to advertise. The point is, companies are advertising and publications still exist. Most folks still like to have a little bit of print in their hands at some point - so don't expect your children to never hold a newspaper in their lifetimes.

Back in April, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, Instant Live LLC, announced a patent they had received which means they now "have exclusive rights to the recording and instantaneous distribution of media on-site at a show." Not just Clear Channel shows, but all live shows in the United States. If you record a show and distribute on-site, you're violating the patent unless you pay up.

It was only a matter of time before some dissent would come out from a label or media company, and that time is now. Two days ago, Santa Monica-based Kufala Recordings confirmed their dissent. Kufala's business is the distribution - within two weeks after a show - of a live concert, directly from the masters. The press release describes it as follows in a quote from president of Kufala, Brady Lahr:

“Unlike the Clear Channel model of recording and burning CDs at the venue, we simply record the music, take it back to our studio for a proper mix and master, then ship the live show recordings out to our artist’s fans. Fans place CD orders at the venue before, during and after the show. They know they will be getting a great recording and that the artist has approved the master. They also know that the band actually owns the recording and will be paid for sure. As artists and fans begin to figure out just how evil the Clear Channel patent is, our business will open up even faster.”

So the "loophole" described here is that fans don't get their recordings on site - but I'm sure that is built into the pricing, unfortunately. Not that Kufala is doing anything wrong in that fashion, because they are enabling the fans to acquire a recording. The item of concern I have is that, according to the press release, Clear Channel "barred Kufala from recording at one of their venues - a restrain which occurred regardless of the fact that the venue did not have recording capability, not to mention that the artist, their major label, and a non-Clear Channel affiliate radio station all requested Kufala's services." [ed: the "their" and "they" in the previous statement represent Clear Channel]

What do we think about this patent? While Clear Channel may have something to say about the recording on *their* site, I just don't get how this works. They're patenting an ability to record something with technology that Clear Channel didn't invent or own outright, and sell it on site in a method that has existed since man first sold goods to other individuals. If I'm following this correctly, I could actually patent the ability to record a business conference and offer it to attendees for a cost - or free. I could patent the ability to record a political speech and distribute it to a television station for viewing. I don't think I'm off base here with these ideas, do you?

[via eTeleases]

For the last day and a half, I had heard that the mysterious man (yes, we knew the author was a man) behind CableNewser would be revealed this Thursday in the New York Times. Turns out that it was Thursday, just not in the Eastern Time Zone. Lisa Napoli at the Times has the skinny on CableNewser.

Why all the hiding and secrecy, you might ask? Well, for good reason - at least at first glance. As it turns out, CableNewser is actually Brian Stelter, 18-year old sophomore at Towson University. While juggling some jobs at newspapers (off and on campus), doing web design, and working on the Towson news television show, Stelter was able to follow enough cable television news to be a very serious contender in the cable news coverage world. Some might consider Stelter and his site the cable news source right now. You can read some more details, straight from the source, here in the post he put up this evening.

Think this is going to hurt the site's traffic and followers? I don't. While a few people might be staring at their screens tonight or at the newspaper tomorrow morning (though if they're reading this firsthand in the paper tomorrow, they're probably not reading CableNewser regularly) saying to themselves, "Whoa, what am I thinking?", I think the credibility is built and there is no reason it should go away. What do you think?

This isn't the first time someone has had some pretty good credibility and turned out to be a surprise. Back in February of this year, I did an email interview with Marisa Hoheb, who is a senior (actually, has probably just graduated in the last week or so) at the University of Virginia. Marisa is also known as "Rachel" - the person on the other end of the "Rachel Speaks" column at Media Life Magazine. It's an advice column for people in the media world.

What does this mean for the world of media? Well, not only are the web and business savvy continuing to get younger and younger, but those with some industrious abilities are making a mark on the world, in a big way. There are probably dozens of Brians and Marisas out there that we haven't realized yet - or maybe they haven't realized it yet, either.

[update] I've been corresponding with CableNewser off and on via instant message for a bit now, and was able to corner him this evening to ask him a few things. Details below:

TMD: Hypothetical - someone offers you a media column at a publication - do you think you would take it, and do school at the same time? You've pretty much shown you could do it.

CN: Absolutely. I can juggle 7 balls in the air at the same time -- why not 8?

TMD: So why cable news - where does the fascination come from?

CN: It's a lot more influential than most viewers realize. I was in a newsroom today when Ashcroft spoke. Everyone stopped and watched CNN. Last week, I noticed FOX on TVs in a health club, at the bookstore, and a Starbucks. It's everywhere! And it shapes the news we see on the networks and in the newspapers.

Stories like Kobe or Laci or Chandra would have never been covered by network TV (or even the morning shows) ten years ago. It's because of cable. It's more influential than we think.

TMD: Do you think the stories would have been "national" like they are now, outside of television, without cable news networks?

CN: Not to the extent they are today. Some nights, Peter Jennings will introduce a story by saying "as Americans watched on cable this afternoon,..."

TMD: So what do you bring to the table to differentiate yourself from the usual media following suspects?

CN: An outsider's view. I'm just a viewer -- albeit one who views quite a bit.

TMD: Great answer. So you intend to stay on "this side" of the fence, at least to the best of your ability. So what happens when news co's start sending you their press releases?

CN: Well, I get their press releases everyday. And I get tips from all the networks from time to time. Certainly, I aim the site toward insiders and outsiders. It's a balance between the two.

My dream job hasn't exactly been invented yet. I'd like a job where I can write a news story for the newspaper, put an advance version online, do a package about it for the evening news, stream that package online, record a radio spot about it... I don't think it should just be "broadcast journalist" or "newspaper reporter," it should be Journalist, for many platforms.

Don't be surprised to see that type of role appear in the next two or three years - because if someone else doesn't invent it, Brian Stelter just might do it himself.

Earlier this week, I had posted about how journalists are concerned about financial pressures at their media companies can hinder the ability to do a great job. Steve Rubel goes one step further, suggesting that this and other trends "may soon drain popular columnists and even cartoonists nearing retirement age away from mainstream outlets to micro-media, such as Weblogs."

While this wouldn't be great news for the mainstream outlets, it would mean good things for the fans of writers and cartoonists who might "stick around" a little longer, now that they're not on formal deadline.

Newsday's Harry Berkowitz reports this afternoon that Cablevision wouldn't say no - to a good offer - if someone (read: Time Warner) wanted to purchase the cable company.

Obviously the Dolan family want the bucks, but I think more importanly, the Knick and Ranger fans should want new ownership - and push for this deal. Too bad they're both out of the post-season, or we could have some great signs in the stands - "Sell Our Team" or "Time Warner: First Columbus Circle, Now on Broadway!" And Ranger fans could fill in their favorite chants with "Dolan sucks!", giving Denis Potvin some time off.

Plus, this makes one less cable operator for TW to have to negotiate with to get their programming shown on.

If you've ever been to the racetrack - heck, if you've ever been to the corner deli, you've probably seen some folks with their Daily Racing Form. For over one hundred years, the Form has been a helpful tool to horse racing fans to sink their eyeballs into to get their fix on who's going to be the big winner that day. Now, the Form has a new owner, the New York Post's Paul Tharp reports this morning.

The buyer, Carter Bales, is probably looking to double his money on this deal - so I'm curious to see what changes might come about with this move.

Transperfect Translations, Inc. President and CEO Liz Elting was named Woman of the Year for 2004 by Entrepreneur Magazine, it was announced today.

Ms. Elting's company focuses on "translation, interpreting, typesetting and multicultural marketing to multinational companies worldwide." Since its inception in 1992 out of a dorm room, Transperfect has serviced hundreds of companies, from Alcoa to Waffle House. "You don't need a novel idea—you [just] need to do it better," she said. Great advice in a time where companies and executives are being more reactive than proactive, don't you think?

[via eReleases]

The Washington Business Journal's Tucker Echols reports that Radio One has purchased a radio station on the gulf side of Texas.

While it's not that strange to change formats of radio stations, and even their call letters in some cases, it's strange when you combine those actions with this quote: "Radio One says KRTS is one of the last high-powered, independently owned radio stations in the Houston market." Talk about tabula rasa!

Yesterday, Cox Communications announced that they would be joining in on an interesting event next month - Signal Theft Awareness Week. The event, which is taking place nationwide from June 1-5th, was started by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association this year. The NCTA's Office of Signal Theft regularly works together with local cable providers in order to strategize about how to lower the large amount of cable television signals that are "stolen". In researching this story, I found out via the Cable Television Public Affairs Association that "almost 11.5 million U.S. homes steal cable," which leads to almost $7 billion in lost revenue for cable operators across all markets.

Cox Communications also stated that this event will work in unison with new company initiatives put into place in early 2004, wherein all Cox service areas follow identical procedures to identify illegel connections and follow up on "repeat offenders." The company reports that in the last eight years during which time they have reported such statistics, they have converted 34% of all customers who were not paying for service to their active accounts roster.

Non-paying customers are urged to contact Cox at 619-262-1122 or at the local telephone number available to them. Anonymous reports of signal theft are also welcomed, and will be kept as such.

While many of the big media companies are controlled (both literally and through stock ownership) by their high level executives, shareholders are looking to (and have, of recent note) make an impact on how companies are run. No longer content to hold their stock and wait for their kids to go to college, shareholders are not only voicing concerns in the public eye, but are attending annual meetings and voting (or in Disney's case - withholding votes) for the executives they feel have their interests in order.

USA Today's Michael McCarthy writes in today's paper that some media bosses are being told what to do by their shareholders, and in some cases - are going to have to comply. Disney's Michael Eisner lost his chairmanship as part of his double-duty at Disney after shareholders held back a whopping 45% of votes for him to stay in the role. One of the most important instances of this could be whether shareholders of Time Warner decide that selling off the portion of the company (AOL) which actually purchased (more or less) the "old" Time Warner in order to straighten out finances is the way to go - which management seems to disagree with at this point.

Some changes are afoot, and it's not just the citizen's journalism movement, mateys!

"You Can't Spell Cheap Without AP," they say.

Know what else you can't spell without AP? Spokane.

This morning I was informed that the Associated Press' service desk department, which is hands-on with the print and broadcast members, got something much worse than food coma after lunch yesterday. Reportedly, they were all told their group would be moving to Spokane, Washington. It's even been said that the staff's telephones were shut off when they returned to the offices (which I have not verified as of post time).

This comes just a few months after it was announced that the Associated Press would leave its storied Rockefeller Center locale for 450 West 33rd Street, which some of you might recognize as the home for Doubleclick and the Daily News. The building at 50 Rock was known as the Associated Press Building for almost 70 years now, and had left the building's owner, Tishman Speyer, with a need to fill a $60/square foot location, according to the News' Eric Herman. As of this momentTishman Speyer does not show 50 Rockefeller Center as available right now - only 30 Rockefeller is listed on their site for that location.

No details on the number of employees affected or a timeline for the changes were available on the AP's website, and a formal, public announcement of this change has not been made. Spokespersons for the Associated Press did not return telephone calls or emails today.

In case you hadn't heard, the big news about NBC getting together with Universal is all wrapped up, according to this article at ABC News. Now, I wonder if Vivendi will go back to selling water.

This big news should result in the loss of only 200 or 300 jobs - but hey, what's another 200 or 300 jobs in this country, right? Then again, Universal movies being under the NBC hand makes it really simple to put out "Friends" flicks, which can build our economy while letting NBC/Universal stick its tongue out at TiVo users.

With all these media conglomerates growing and growing, they've got to have some sort of big space duel at some point, right? I'm curious to see which of the companies makes itself look like Voltron. Thankfully, The Defamer posted today about the official NBC/Universal org chart that the fine folks at TV Barn put up for our viewing pleasure. Dick Ebersol might want to be the green lion, but Jeff Zucker is absolutely going to be saying "And I'll form the head!" You know it's true.

So if NBCUwhateverwe'recallingit is the lion-based Voltron, who gets to be the stupid vehicle-based Voltron? Probably CBS, right? Fox News gets to be the "Power Rangers" and ABC can be "Pokemon". Okay, enough end of day goofiness. This is what happens when your head spins from too much media consolidation in one day.

This week, both News Corporation's DirecTV and EchoStar's DISH Network announced earnings, with neither company faring very well. This doesn't seem to stop people from investing and believing in the service, as I believe both companies have consistently net positive subscriber levels.

EchoStar's operation took a $43 million loss for the first quarter, a big swing from their $58 million profit in Q4 of 2003. DISH Network is reporting about 9.78 million users on its network, an increase of about 360,000 in the first quarter.

DirecTV, the largest provider of satellite services in the U.S., also took a pretty big bath this quarter, losing more than half a billion more than this same quarter last year, when they had a net loss of just $50.9 billion.

And I don't mean just "mass media" when I say that. The Denver Post's Aldo Svaldi writes in today's paper about a theoretical monolith of a media company which could, one day, set foot on earth. This monstrosity? John Malone's Liberty Media and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Why would such a thing happen? Well, according to an analyst at Guzman & Co., David Joyce, "They do not have too much overlap." And if you start to really look at it - they truly are complementary in many ways. The article outlines what the features of each company are, including News Corporation having the Fox channels and Liberty Media owning some premium movie channels.

Have the recent changes at News Corp. and Liberty all been part of a huge orchestra of moves to bring the companies together in a way that would pass through the media consolidation bosses, or is it just wishful (disastrous?) thinking on the part of market observers? Less than a month ago, it was announced that News Corp. would move to the United States. Two months ago, Liberty Media detailed the spinoff of the International components of the company into a separate entity. Convenient news, or part of the plan?

This afternoon, Wayne, New Jersey-based Audible released its earnings for the first quarter of 2003. Their total customer accounts increased over 10% just in the quarter, closing at 344,000. First quarter revenues of $6.6 million were a 68% increase over the same period of 2003, and a 17% increase over the 2003's fourth quarter. This led to their first quarter of GAAP income from operations - they went from a $237,000 loss from operations from last quarter to a gain of just under $45,000 in Q1.

Audible is currently looking to perform a reverse split on their stock, currently listed on the OTC under the symbol ADBL, which they hope will increase the possibility of their re-listing on the Nasdaq. While reverse splits tend to have a negative feel to them, they typically don't come along with a company that is estimating a 45-55% growth in revenues year over year. Additional information about Audible and its results can be found at http://www.audible.com/ir.

[via BusinessWire]

I was just reading a Reuters article that you posted this morning entitled "Google risk: ads lone revenue source". While it might be a definite point of contention for the anti-Google camp that advertising is their lone source of revenue - or at least the bulk of their revenue - I thought it might be interesting to note some other mediums which have similar business plans. You might have heard of them before, but just in case, I outlined them below.

• All Non-Subscription Online Services/Content Providers
• Broadcast Television Networks
• AM/FM Radio Stations

To a lesser extent, subscription newspapers and magazines, but you know that most of their revenues to cover printing costs does not come from subscriptions. You can sell an advertisement much easier if you have more eyeballs reading your material than you can otherwise. Hence the $.50 newspaper.

So before you send people who are reading this article off the deep end about investing in Google, why not make some fair comparisons to other mediums first.

Sincerely,

Tom

The Associated Press reports that Clear Channel Communications increased year-over-year revenue for the first quarter from $1.78 billion to $1.97 billion, and gained $116.5 million, or 19 cents/share, up from last year's $71 million - 12 cents/share. A significant portion of the gains came from a 16% increase in outdoor advertising revenue and the sale of radio operations in some markets.

Charles Wright at Australian publication The Age wrote earlier this week about the music site operating out of Russia that seems to have gained a bit of popularity - allofmp3.com. The site, which of course isn't working as I write this, was apparently selling music downloads by the megabyte. Or, more specifically, US$5 for 500 megabytes worth of tunes. And the kicker - you get to download it in whatever encoding mechanism you want - MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, you name it.

Today, the site says:

Dear users! Due to a technical works you may experience instability while working with our site. Encoding and downloading are now disabled. Our services will become available at 10:00, 1.May.2004. We ask to excuse us for the inconvenience.

So I guess I'll have to wait until about 2am Eastern tomorrow morning to start binging....errr....yeah.

Primedia announced its earnings today, reporting that revenues were even with Q1/2003 at $328.5 million, but the push over the top from the sale of New York Magazine for $38.1 million helped the publisher reach net income of $5.9 million.

However, while advertising revenues increased just over $2 million for the same time period year-over-year, monies from circulation dropped by the same percentage. The claim here is that online advertising made up the difference - but shows a trend that readers are going online for their Primedia jones. Also notable - the publisher's claim that their drop in circ is actually only 5.3% in the "enthusiast" category doesn't sound as bad seems - they report that the industry average for the category is 11.3%, via the International Periodical Distributors Association.

[via BusinessWire]

Well, if you do, and you use iTunes, you're in luck - songs from Disney's animated films will make their way to Apple's iTunes music store, where they will be exclusively sold (at least online) until September.

The New York Times picks up this article from Reuters that describes the potential purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Sony and two other firms. This move could end up reaching $5 billion, according to the piece.

Sony initiated the talks, the sources said, partly because it wants worldwide distribution rights to MGM vast movie library that includes the James Bond movies.

I'd say that's probably enough right there for someone to do this. Okay, maybe not. But you catch my drift.

Here's something else to add to your daily reading... Radley Balko posts about the sheer amount of information that is out there for the taking for us humans. Some of the statistics are astounding.

While I would disagree somewhat that "media consolidation" created the way it is in the "Information Age", I do think that the largesse of some companies does allow them to stretch out their reader/viewer/listener-ships.

Reuters reported last night that the merger between Vivendi Universal and NBC has been approved by the FTC, and will proceed. Or more specifically, that the FTC "will not oppose" the deal.

The deal brings together two very interesting companies, in essence. General Electric, who makes everything from jet engines to the Conan O'Brien show, and Vivendi Universal, who used to just be a French water company, as Steve Hannaford describes briefly at Oligopoly Watch - and now just does the media thing. I can see the board meeting now...."This whole water thing is boring, let's get into cable television..."

USA Today's Michael McCarthy has an article today about some troubles that Time Warner may be having with the SEC, including formal charges of accounting discrepancies - and how those charges might bring about the spinoff of AOL and the public release of shares for their Time Warner Cable division.

In effect, placing the blame for their accounting woes on AOL allows a "way out" from the charges by spinning off the company. I'm sure there will be about 500 other companies that wish they had accounting discrepancies if this thing goes through.

Think that companies don't notice the power of blogs? Think again.

Jason Kottke reports that Amazon's A9 search service has launched - and with it comes a great thing. John Battelle's Searchblog was the place "chosen" to make the announcement about the site going live.

So while I don't want anyone in the traditional media world to get the impression that this is some sort of "war" and clarify that no one bloggers are not gunning for anyone's job (well, unless they deserve to lose it!) - this shows that a company believes in the power of word of mouth (or at least keyboards) in order to disseminate information. Realizing that the people who read blogs are, most definitely, in the first line of users who would go to A9 to try it out, was very impressive.

Online Journalism Review's Mark Glaser reports on organizations like Media Tenor and Your Media and how they are not only using the Internet to "watch" the big media folks, but are able to easily convey their findings to a broad audience.

I was amazed to hear that the Germany-based Media Tenor has over 200 people across the globe who are observing various mediums and reporting data on everything. That's pretty impressive, frankly.

Just as these organizations are put together to keep an eye on what's going on in the media, bloggers have been shown to do the same. Everything from "journalist watch" blogs that analyze and report on all pieces a particular writer publishes to sites like CableNewser, who digest all the "media data" that is out there and give us an idea of what is going on in the industry.

I had briefly read a few days ago about how Earthlink had teamed up with a company named Synacor in order to bring their customers a low-priced batch of sports-focused media for the minimal cost of $9.95. It had caught my eye as interesting, but after reading about it again tonight, I think it might be a good sign of things to come.

As the ISPs look to differentiate themselves (especially the dialup ones), a great way to do so is to offer something premium that absolutely catches the eye of a customer (potential or current). This announcement definitely does that. In offering NASCAR, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, the Sporting News, and other providers for $9.95 a month on top of your dialup or broadband connection charges, they definitely set themselves aside from their competition.

Synacor states here that it's a $40 value per month, so that should be enough for the average fan to read once and decide to sign up. I expect to see other features like this coming from the DSL and dialup ISPs going forward. Unfortunately, the cable providers really don't need to offer anything, because DSL isn't in the same neighborhood in most places (speed-wise) and there isn't competition in 95% of the markets in the USA. So why bother. Shakeouts are always fun. Since everyone is touting some product like AOL's "TopSpeed" technology now, what makes a difference to a user? In this case, there may be a winner - at least for sports fans.

Masshightech.com reports that Clear Channel subsidiary Instant Live LLC has landed the patent that allows for the on-site recording and distribution of live shows. In other words, not only can Clear Channel now decide what is going on the air in most markets, but they can promote the concerts (also deciding what is popular), and now have exclusive rights to the recording and instantaneous distribution of media (and it says any media) on-site at a show.

So while this seems like a kind of cool idea, keep in mind that you probably won't be seeing this at any show not promoted by Clear Channel, as other promoters are very unlikely to think about lining the company's pockets.

According to this article on Fox News, "good times are here again and should stay" when it comes to the "advertising dependent Internet companies." I don't know if we should all go running down the street screaming like banshees, but things are probably shaping up somewhat. People are recognizing the value of content, and advertisers (okay, some of them) are realizing how to create advertisements that are less intrusive and more valuable and directed towards their audience.

On the flipside, this will probably cause all kinds of random Internet companies to have their stocks go flying for no apparent reason. So partying "like it's 1999" will probably be a valid excuse for some people.

Mass Media conglomerate News Corporation is moving to the US of A in a process expected to be complete before 2004 lets out. The change is mainly due to being able to "lure a wider investor base and give it access to lower-cost capital," according to Geraldine Fabrikant in the New York Times article.

News Corp. controls DirecTV, the New York Post, 20th Century Fox, and newspapers and print media in the USA, Europe, and Australia.

Well, I wish I knew all about this before I traveled to Brazil last week... MediaChannel.org contributor Carlos Castilho writes about Globo, the media monstrosity in Brazil, and asks, "Is this the end?"

Think media ownership problems are limited to the U.S.? Think again. An on-going struggle in Brazil makes disputes over American-owned Big Media look like a game of Monopoly.

You had me at "Think", Carlos. One whiff of this story and I knew something had to be cooking burning. The article focuses on Globo, which owns a piece of every type of medium in the Brazilian market. While it's great to have a whopping 60% of all television viewers, it's unfortunately not surprising that they have obtained 55% of all debt owned by the media companies in the market.

By this account, Globo could fall down - and I mean all the way down the stairs - if they aren't able to secure funding to cover their short term debts. This is one to watch, even if you're not an ambulance chaser, frankly.

According to Bob Herschfeld at Folio:, starting a new magazine is kind of hot again. After a dip going into 2002 (and including that year), over 200 more magazines launched in 2003 than did in the year prior.

Who, you ask, is going out on the proverbial limb with a new publication? According to Herschfeld, it's mostly independent entrepreneurs who are taking their ideas to the masses.

What keeps these Marines hitting the beach? Whether publishing pros or neophytes, magazine launchers are almost all driven by a personal passion. They have a burning interest and expertise in a subject that gives them the stamina to overcome the hurdles. They also share a knack for inventiveness — when doors slam in their faces, they jimmy the window.

So does focus create success? One thing that has been mentioned to me about this particular blog is that I'm focused (at least most of the time). I try to mix in as much hardcore content with some opinion and some anecdotal stuff to make it interesting. Hopefully that formula will continue to work. But for a magazine, just because an idea is out there doesn't mean it's going to work. You also need capital, and lots of it. And attracting it isn't easy.

Definitely a great read, and it was very interesting to those of us with a little bit of entrepreneur in them. I suppose the rest of the readers would like it too =)

Law.com picks up this story from Richard Eustis about a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that clarifies what the Professional Golfers Association has the right to do with the scores it reports during its tournaments. Morris Communications had contended that it should have the right to access the scores and sell them to their customers. With one hitch - they didn't want to have to purchase the right to the PGA's proprietary system, the Real Time Scoring System (RTSS), as many other media outlets such as television and radio stations, do. The ruling was simple - "the PGA has the right to control those scores," said a panel of judges.

In the wake of the Jayson Blair and Jack Kelley affairs and a million copied term papers, companies are cropping up with plagiarism-detecting software, according to Wired's Randy Dotinga. While companies like Reuters are using software to track down use of their work on the 'net, universities are using software packages like Turnitin to see how papers were written by their students.

Is this the next big business? I suppose as the "citizens media" gains ground, the ability for less editing (read: no editors) leaves open the potential for such a thing on the Internet, especially in blogs, where everyone can write about whatever they want. So now we have spam to fight and text-robbers to chase down.

This morning I had seen on the television news that EMI was making some big changes, namely getting rid of 1,500 jobs and outsourcing (oooh, buzzword) a good portion of their work...

But most interesting is not only that they are getting rid of jobs, but they're dropping 20% of the artists on their label.

[I finally found the " key. It's where the ~ usually is.]

On Wednesday, I had posted about the the announcement that Reuters would use FAST filtering technology to find sites that are stealing their work, and had expressed concern about its effects on bloggers. At the time, I had contacted Reuters through their website, and am happy to report that I received a response which everyone should be happy with.

I'm posting this without asking if I could post it, but did fully disclose what I use Reuters' services for. So that shouldn't be an issue.

Response (Webmaster (SP)) 26 03 2004 06:32 PM
Thanks for contacting Reuters. The purpose of the solution built with FAST technology is specifically to monitor Copyright violation. The tool has been designed to identify where a party goes beyond fair use of our stories - where they copy a full story and post it without license or they derive a story from our content without sourcing it.

Infringements of our copyright does not include where bloggers quote from and link back to our original story, or where sites display our headlines and link back to reuters.com. We are very comfortable with these practices.

Regards

Reuters Corporate Webmaster
www.reuters.com

Customer (Tom Biro) 25 03 2004 03:06 AM
Good day - today I read about Reuters plan to go after Internet sites which post Reuters data/writings without referring or without explicit permission (found here: http://p2pnet.net/story/1062 ). I understand that there is a subscription service that Reuters offers, but what about webloggers who post links to articles that have come from Reuters, either linking directly to you or to the newspaper/magazine sites they found it on?

I know for my site I'm generally giving credit where it's due (newspaper authors, wire services, etc.) but know that isn't the case for everyone. Do you see this being an issue?

Thanks,

Tom
tom@themediadrop.com

I think that sounds good to everyone, right? Credit goes where credit is due, and everyone's happy. Glad we cleared that up!

I've often been reminded by friends not to underestimate the power of professional wrestling. No, not literally - but media-centrically. So I wasn't surprised to read the announcement here that World Wrestling Entertainment® was bringing something else to the table. Yep, you guessed it, it's all high-flying action, all the time at WWE 24/7.

"WWE is ready to move even more aggressively into the digital age by providing new services that will fit with the active lifestyles of our fans and meet their demand for new and innovative content," said Vince McMahon.

"Our fans want more WWE and classic sports entertainment programming, and we have demonstrated our track record of providing content of the highest quality and value. I'm confident we can move into this new distribution platform for television as successfully as we have for syndication, cable, broadcast and Pay-Per-View."

I'd say Mr. McMahon is probably dead on. Irrelevant of making it easier for other production outlets to get access to content, the linchpin to this announcement is the "subscription video-on-demand service that will feature highly-rated Pay-Per-View". Your digital cable provider wouldn't have a problem adding another channel to your lineup where you could now pull every single Wrestlemania(tm) event, or whatever floats your boat.

Every time this company seems to get beat down, it gets right back up and comes up with something new. Does this business venture have a positive future for McMahon and family too? (BW)

Last night I read a press release that New Jersey-based Audible was running a promotion where you get an instant $100 rebate on the purchase of an iPod at retailers like Amazon.com if you sign up for one year of Audible's services. The monthly charges range from $14.95 for the "BasicListener" product to $19.95 for the "PremiumListener" product.

Yes, I understand that by doing the math it'll cost you more than just the iPod's price, but you don't have to shell out that $100 worth of the Audible product cost right now, and you are getting something for that additional spend. I'd have to say that might be incentive enough for a lot of people to purchase an iPod, perhaps even those techno-folks who like their content to be a little longer than 3 minutes and 14 seconds and haven't purchased an iPod for that reason. (BW)

This afternoon, the Chicago Tribune's John O'Dell writes about Howard Stern's recent discussions about moving to satellite radio to avoid the FCC's fine-tuned ears and do his show in peace. Many have speculated that this would be a boon to XM and Sirius, the two companies currently providing satellite radio service. Stern's listenership far outweighs the total listeners on both of the providers, and could translate to new subscribers - but first we'd see if people are willing to pay for Stern.

Hugh Panero, XM Satellite's chief executive, pooh-poohed the possibility, saying he doubted whether XM or Sirius could afford the reported $20 million Stern pulls down a year through his contract with Viacom Inc.'s Infinity Broadcasting."

Well howabout this idea - Stern goes solo, and both Sirius and XM pick up his feed, giving both systems his show? I think Stern has the clout, knowhow, and contacts to have his show self-produced and "sell" the rights to the stations. If "normal" radio stations wanted to buy in, they could, but would suffer the consequences of whatever Stern had to say. I think the latter is least likely, but why couldn't both satellite radio folks team up on something like this? It's in Stern's best interests to be involved in both if he's truly gung-ho on this idea, so why not give it a whirl?

[update: 10/6/04] It's a done deal.

Today, sports and entertainment product publisher Upper Deck announced that LPGA champ Annika Sorenstam had signed on as the first female athlete to be featured by them in promoting their memorabilia and trading cards. Ms. Sorenstam has 48 tournament wins and is the all-time leading money-winner on the women's tour. Of the deal with Upper Deck, she said "Every athlete aspires to be recognized as the best in their sport and be part of a winning team. Today's deal with The Upper Deck Company means that I've joined a team that is the undisputed leader in the collectibles industry, but also allows me to be part of a great group of world class athletes representing their products." And that she is - the names on UD's roster of athletes include Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, and Wayne Gretzky.

Annika wholly deserves this sponsorship deal, and I think it's smart of Upper Deck to embrace not only the cultural icon that she represents, but moreover the value of women's sports in our country. (BW)

Be sure and check out Michael Shields' article at MediaPost about the tough tasks that online media planners face when it comes down to getting into the search-term advertising world.

From choosing the right words and outbidding your competition to seeing which search term companies are powering searches on which site, it's a complicated game to be playing.

If you've not heard the term, it's one I learned first in Economics class in high school, where my teacher, Mr. Masiello, would use it liberally. "There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" is the blown-out version, but TINSTAAFL was much less of a mouthful - although Mr. Masiello talked fast enough that it would have been okay.

I thought this was a worthy description of the situation after this announcement by Yale University stating that the free one-year "Law for Journalists" program would cease to exist going forward. Under this program, journalists could apply, be accepted, and go to Yale Law for one year to "gain a better understanding of legal issues." The current funding comes from The Knight Foundation, who have been covering the costs for a few journalists a year to attend Yale. Knight has chosen to use its funding elsewhere, dropping Yale from the list of schools it endows journalists to attend. The other schools are the University of Michigan, Stanford, and Harvard.

Well, it is if you're CEO of Clear Channel, Lowry Mays, whose salary more than doubled from 2002 to 2003. There is an "anomaly" in this calculation, of course, in that Mays received options in 2003 that he didn't in 2002. Which is fine - but you wouldn't normally offer them in such a way (nor would he want them!) if things weren't moving along.

I love the fact that this is happening and I have a friend at a Clear Channel company who was told at one point that her group was using too much fax paper. Oooh, please don't fax me too much! You gotta stop sending me those important documents! For real.

Wired's Katie Dean reports that in some cases, music sharing drives music sales. At least that's the case in the independent music stores in some of the cities she writes about. Quote of the article: "The file sharing, the Internet -- just makes them music junkies," says Steve Wiley, co-owner of Hoodlums Music, which resides on the Arizona State University campus.

According to this article in the New York Post, "critics worry that RSS will be used to bypass advertising the way TiVo is used to skip commercials."

Except in this case, it's not meant that they're directly skipping the advertising on purpose. Sure, there's a "speed" factor into skipping commercials on your DVR/PVR, but you're making a point to remove advertising. RSS not only skips over advertising, but it skips over tons of other content. It's a pure speed driver, and allows readers to quickly scan their favorite news sites and blogs for things that interest them, without having to open a browser window for the software based-sites, or just going to a site like Bloglines, which has amassed a huge user base and feed list. I, for one, use Bloglines for my own reading, and am able to scan a massive amount of information in a short amount of time, figure out what I want to read/blog about, and move on. It makes lunch hours much more productive (at least in terms of posts!)....

There are some advertising/sponsorship based models out for RSS feeds at this time, and I'm sure someone will figure out how to make the perfect balance between the need for a revenue stream and the need to make your users happy.

The BBC chimes in about the recent announcement that Apple's iTunes will sell somewhere in the 70-75 million songs range by April. Originally, Apple's Steve Jobs had speculated they would sell 100 million tracks by that point. Jobs also said that there were slower amounts of downloads in the Pepsi promotion currently going on. I'm guessing those songs don't count in the sales number? (I've only downloaded 12 so far, BTW)

In any case, it's a big number.

Media magnate John Malone's Liberty Media will spin off its international components later on this year, perhaps by early/mid summer. An interesting way for domestic-focused investors to make an entrance into other markets.

In a related story, UnitedGlobalCom has announced plans to purchase Noos, France's largest cable operator. UnitedGlobalCom is a part of the Liberty Media empire that will be spun off in this package.

If you're interested in learning a little bit about the bigger companies and some great information about those industries in which a few large parties happen to run most of the show, you need to regularly read Oligopoly Watch.

Yesterday Steve Hannaford, Oligopoly Watch's editor, put up a great writeup about News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's "800-pound gorilla" of the media and broadcasting world. Mr. Hannaford has a great way of digesting massive amounts of information and churning out quality articles about companies, merger & acquisition happenings, among other things. It's one of my favorite RSS feeds to keep up with.

CNNMoney's Paul La Monica writes, "Will the self-proclaimed King of All Media help bring satellite radio from the fringes to the mainstream?" in the first paragraph of his article talking about the effect Stern's possible defection from airwaves to, well, satellite airwaves would have.

He thinks it could be a driver for people to at least think about signing up, but the question still remains - can you get a group of listeners to start paying to hear your show when they haven't spent a dime, directly, to hear you up to this point?

Also talking about the economic results of the satellite systems is News 2 from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Here's the clincher for me - a quote from Mark Aronson, who uses XM's services, "I don't listen to enough music to know what I would want to buy for CDs, but now I don't need to buy CDs."

[update] Another good read: Rob Eshman, Editor-in-Chief at the Jewish Journal of Central Los Angeles is talking about the potential of Stern getting fired, and the fact that the FCC is treating Howard's content like it's something new - since the Super Bowl. He even states that sometimes the show "bores or offends" him, and he just changes the station. Wow - what a concept. Perhaps some other people should realize that feature, which you'll know is available if you have one or more of the following: a tuning knob, buttons that say "Scan" or "Seek" or have "+" or "-" symbols on them. Try it, you might like it.

David Hoffman has a New York Times editorial today about the new media commission in Iraq. It's being done partially to create a "PBS-style public interest broadcasting corporation" out of the current Iraqi Media Network, instead of having a state-run network whose reporting isn't necessarily based on reality.

As Mr. Hoffman states, "Western governments should support the new media commission, but they should not seek to control it." - this should be followed to a "t", because heaven only knows what would happen if our current tendencies (I call them that because they will change in a few years) would go over very well in Iraq.

You know those songs that come up on the iPod commercials that you just don't know? Well there's one I had been trying to figure out for months. Finally this week (or maybe it was last week?) they added an "iPod Ads" section to their site, and it links to the four songs that are currently on blast.

The kind of funkdafied, reggae-ish track is Black Eyed Peas' "Hey Mama" and it was worth all $.99 I spent on it. The garage-rockish track is Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl." Third on my self-ordered list is N.E.R.D.'s "Rock Star", and last, but not least, is the jazztastic "Channel Surfing" by Feature Cast.

Keep on the lookout for your favorite commercial and then go get the tunes. Great inter-divisional marketing on the Apple side - though I wouldn't expect anything less.

Tim Karr over at MediaChannel.org writes about the announcement yesterday made by Salon.com regarding their election year efforts and how they are positioning themselves as "the largest independent news organization in the country." They are also going to be "exchanging" articles with The Guardian and have a "story of the day" on upcoming radio network Air America.

Could this be a huge kickstart to fend off the seemingly regularly scheduled demise of Salon?

While Claudia Perry is reporting today that Howard Stern is indeed expecting to be fired this week, his advertisers seem to be staying put. Or so they say in Sarah McBride's article at the Wall Street Journal today [subscription required].

For instance, Gerry Howatt from the Vermont Teddy Bear Co. says "Guys who listen to Howard Stern still have birthdays, still have anniversaries." Which is totally the logical approach to advertising. If you're a conservative company, you might be shying away from Stern - but if that's the case, you probably wouldn't have been advertising with him in the first place - so it shouldn't be an issue, right?

Fifty years ago today, PR Newswire sent the first electronic version of a news release to (a whopping!) 12 news mediums in New York. Today, PR Newswire is distributing news to a global audience in 135 countries, translated into 30 languages.

Be sure and check out this release and some interesting video spots about the service. Happy 50th PR Newswire!

Hollywoodreporter.com is reporting (that's what they do!) that Rockstar Games is all set to release the next exciting game in the Grand Theft Auto series. No details on the site about "San Andreas", but you can bet it'll sell like hotcakes.

While it's definitely "controversial", I have yet to go out and carjack anyone or drive a motorcycle off of a roof in order to get bonus points for anything. Perhaps I have self control, which counteracts those ill effects some people are so worried about, or perhaps some people are overreacting. I'm guessing that due to the "changes" we're all experiencing at the moment with decency, that the secret codes to get various levels of indecency will be back for the next installment.

Rachel over at Media Life Magazine answers a reader when they ask for her advice on how to find a new position in the media industry when they "Want Outta Here" as their name suggests.

You, too, can ask Rachel your career advice questions by writing her at askrachel2004@yahoo.com. No word on whether Rachel's email will change when 2005 rolls around.