Social TV Startup Zeebox Seeks Impact With TV Campaign
photo: Zeebox
One of the nascent social TV space’s most interesting new second-screen software services will this week court mainstream users with a natio… Read more »
Los Angeles Times To Add Paywall
photo: Flickr / Rob Oxley
It’s been a big week in newspapers starting to charge for content. First it was Gannett; now the Los Angeles Times will launch a metered pay… Read more »
Google Scales Back E-Book Affiliates Program, Drops Some Users
photo: Getty Images / Justin Sullivan
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is cutting back on the e-book affiliates program it launched in June. Read more »
Amazon Sued Over Kindle Screensavers
photo: Flickr / puuikibeach
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), already facing a number of patent lawsuits over its Kindle e-readers, was hit with a new one this week. Read more »
Property Ads About To Quit Newspapers For Web, Rightmove Reckons
photo: AP Images
UK online property listings leader Rightmove saw profit improve by a quarter in 2011.
Now it forecasts a tipping point, saying newspapers a… Read more »
Journalism Online Sold For $19.6 Million; $15.3 Million Earnout For Brill, Crovitz
When RR Donnelley bought Journalism Online from Steve Brill, Gordon Grovitz, Leo Hindery, Jr., and their investors last March, I reported th… Read more »
The Plan By Yahoo, Hulu, Other Big Video Firms To Grab Upfront TV Ad Money
photo: Corbis / Jonathan Gelber
Madison Avenue’s upfront ad markets are the place where TV broadcasters and cable companies sell the bulk of their billions of dollars in co… Read more »
Say Goodbye To Blockbuster Stores
photo: Shutterstock / Chris Green
The Blockbuster brand emerged from the ashes of bankruptcy to have an impact on the bottom line of its new owner, Dish Network (NSDQ: DISH).… Read more »
Little, Brown Gets Print And Digital Rights For J.K. Rowling’s New Novel
photo: The Blair Partnership
J. K. Rowling is writing a new book, for adults, but she’s not keeping the digital rights for herself as she did with the Harry Potter books… Read more »
Why Amazon’s Kindle Battle With IPG Matters
photo: Corbis / I Love Images
Amazon’s decision to yank almost 5,000 Kindle titles from distributor Independent Publishing Group after IPG refused to give the retailer be… Read more »
Informa To Launch E-Book Portal As B2B Publishers Push Toward Digital
photo: EJ Press
Two business information publishers are reporting improving fortunes after pushing their print media portfolio toward digital subscription o… Read more »
Interview: Vogue Publisher Plans To Digitize Archives For Tablet Long Tail
In music, celestial jukeboxes like Spotify replace vinyl and CDs with unlimited back-catalogue access. Could magazine publishers grant their… Read more »
What Does Google Fiber Mean For The Future Of TV?
photo: Flickr / pasukaru76
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has filed for a video franchise license, which if approved could allow it to take on cable providers in markets in which… Read more »
Why Do We Need Academic Journals In The First Place?
It may not get as much attention as the disruption that is occurring in newspapers, e-books or other parts of the mainstream media industry,… Read more »
Gannett’s Big Paywall Play: Will It Work?
Gannett (NYSE: GCI) said it is “playing offense” again after years of cuts and contraction. Its touchdown strategy is a sophisticated paywal… Read more »
Update: Amazon Yanks 5,000 Kindle Titles In Fight Over Terms
photo: Flickr / bfhoyt
Updated: IPG’s full memo to publishers on page 2.
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has turned off the buy button on nearly 5,000 Kindle titles from dist… Read more »
Home Decor Flash Site One Kings Lane Expands Editorial Content
photo: One Kings Lane
In the hopes that users will be drawn in by the video on how to make a bed perfectly, then stick around for the deals on Scandia pillows, ho… Read more »
Condé Nast Aims To Unify Tablet And Mobile Magazine Production
photo: Mugshot: Conde Nast
Wired and GQ magazine publisher Condé Nast is amongst those now seeking a cost-effective cross-platform tablet production workflow for the… Read more »
Apps Are ‘Huge’ For Barnes & Noble
Seeking to advance the narrative that the Nook Tablet is a true multimedia tablet and not just a big expensive e-reader, Barnes & Noble (NYS… Read more »
Comcast Gives Subscribers One More Reason To Quit Netflix
photo: Comcast
Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to s… Read more »
John Paton To News Execs: Abandon The Gatekeeper Model
If there was an Uncle Sam-style campaign to recruit media executives into the “digital first” movement, John Paton would probably win the role of poster boy in a landslide. Even before he became the CEO of the giant MediaNews Group chain, Paton was calling on the media industry to give up its attachment to print and embrace the web and digital media — and he reiterated that message in a fire-and-brimstone speech to a journalism group in Toronto, Ontario recently. The bottom line, according to Paton, is that the time for deliberation is over: media entities of all kinds must give up the “information gatekeeper” model, he said, or they will surely perish. Read more »
Paramount Sues Puzo Estate Over ‘Godfather’ Sequels
The studio behind the famous Godfather trilogy is asking a court to make the franchise’s literary heirs an offer they can’t refuse. Read more »
Google Gets More Live Stock Data To Compete With Rivals
photo: 1suisse
Google (NSDQ: GOOG), whose own finance website trails rivals’, has signed a commercial deal to get real-time stock price data from London St… Read more »
Barnes & Noble Misses Estimates, Though In-Store Sales Rise Slightly
photo: Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) hopes to advance a narrative of momentum and the power of bricks-and-mortar bookstores in its third-quarter earni… Read more »
Boo! Ghostwriting Grows In Age Of ‘Book As Badge’
photo: Shutterstock / Ferenc Szelepcsenyi
The craft of ghostwriting is a dark art of sorts, replete with secrecy and scandal. But lately, it’s also becoming a booming business. Read more »
B&N Comes Down To Kindle Fire’s Level With 8 GB, $199 Nook Tablet
photo: Barnes & Noble
Hoping to compete against the $199 Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) has a new $199 tablet, the not-so-catchily-named Nook Tablet–8 G… Read more »
Is Twitter A Newspaper, Or Is It The Phone Company?
photo: Corbis / Dirk Rees
Is Twitter a publisher and distributor of information like a newspaper, or is it just a dumb pipe like a telephone network? Lawyers in Australia seem to believe that a case could be made that Twitter is a publisher, like a newspaper, and therefore it can be sued for defamation as a result of a single tweet. That may be a stretch — especially in the United States, which has legislation that protects online commentary from such lawsuits — but it highlights the difficulties that Twitter could have as it tries to expand around the globe and into different legal environments. Read more »
Magazine Publishers Running Ahead Of Auditors With UK Digital Editions
photo: Corbis / Alfred Schauhuber
Magazine publishers who publish digital editions have found those editions hit 1.7 percent of circulation in the UK – but auditing criteria… Read more »
photo: pressureUA / Shutterstock
Two Become One: How Magazines Will Ape Their Apps
In a reversal of today’s content publishing model, print magazines pretty soon could start looking a lot like their app equivalents. Read more »
Demand Media Rides Out Storm, Improves Earnings
Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) appears to be weathering executive churn and a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) downgrade. On Thursday, it posted earnings that… Read more »
Latin America Drives DirecTV’s Growth; 590K New Subs In 3 Months
DirecTV (NYSE: DTV) continues to provide a useful blueprint for other U.S. media companies looking to expand into Latin America. On Thursday… Read more »
Open Road Responds To HarperCollins E-Book Lawsuit
photo: Open Road Integrated Media
Open Road Media responded today to the lawsuit that HarperCollins filed against it in December over the digital rights to Jean Craighead Geo… Read more »
Let The Social TV Consolidation Begin! Loyalize Swallowed Up By Viggle
photo: AP Images
Social TV startup Loyalize has been acquired by Function(x), the company behind recently launched mobile app Viggle. According to former Loyalize CEO Todd Greene, the Loyalize product will remain a white-label platform for networks and content providers to build their own apps to increase engagement with TV programming as it’s being watched. Read more »
CBS And Turner Flip The Pay Switch For March Madness Mobile Streaming
Streaming March Madness tournament games next month won’t be as free and easy as it was last year, with broadcast partners CBS (NYSE: CBS) a… Read more »
Book Discovery: How Many ‘Touchpoints’ To Purchase?
photo: Goodreads
Social reading site Goodreads says the primary way its users discover new books to read is through search. Read more »
Revealed: Rate Cards Show UK News Sites’ Bulls And Beggars
What price do online newspapers put on their head? The amounts publishers charge advertisers indicates their bullishness about their busines… Read more »
News Corp Sees Digital Payments Soften But Not Reverse UK Sales Decline
More than a year and a half after News Corp.’s flagship UK “quality” papers introduced new paid digital outlets, their effect is becoming cl… Read more »
Indie Bookseller On E-Books: ‘I Don’t Think We’ll Ever Make Money On Them’
photo: flickr
Independent bookstore are unlikely to ever make money from e-books, in the opinion of Praveen Madar of San Francisco independent bookstore K… Read more »
Updated: Book Publishers Force Down Piracy Sites
photo: Shutterstock / Ayzek
Update: Andi Sporkin of the Association of American Publishers contacted me shortly after this story was published. She says the publishers… Read more »
Bleacher Report Launches Hyper-Specialized YouTube Channels
photo: Bleacher Report
Bleacher Report appears determined to prove that love of minutia-based sports fare has no bounds. Today, the upstart sports site announced t… Read more »
