Archive for January 10th, 2007
The parent company of The Rocky Mountain News, The Commercial Appeal and 18 other dailies said it’s considering separating its newspaper holdings from the company’s more profitable television ventures. Back in 2000, newspapers accounted for 55 percent of the company’s revenue. Last year, they made up just 25 percent. How averse are investors to newspapers? News that Scripps was thinking about the move sent its stock price up nearly 4 percent.
January 10th, 2007
Coming this Saturday, NBCSports.com will debut a 30-minute webcast called, “NHL on NBC Faceoff” that leads up to NBC’s live broadcast of its NHL games. There will be interviews with the team’s stars plus video of players warming up on the ice, as well as analysis from the web show’s hosts.
January 10th, 2007
Apple created bogus prototypes and phony code, and the company even prohibited employees involved with the project from telling their families. Neither Yahoo nor Google, partners in the project, saw the phone until shortly before Steve Jobs’ CES keynote. And Apple’s decision to go with Cingular was in no small part because of the carrier’s willingness to “let Apple be Apple.” Fortune has a fascinating write-up on other tactics Apple used to keep the iPhone secret.
January 10th, 2007
Seattle
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Cisco has owned the iPhone trademark since 2000, and last month it launched a line of VOIP devices under the iPhone brand. According to Cisco, Apple has been has been in extensive negotiations to gain the rights to the name — and Cisco said it even sent over an agreement on Monday, which Apple hasn’t signed. Now at an impasse, Cisco is asking for injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying the name. Too much money for Apple to pay? Or a stunt for even more publicity?
January 10th, 2007
We were all wondering where tech news resources were going this week - would they focus on CES, where there are tons of companies rolling out products, or Apple? The live reports were from CES (partly because Apple makes getting news out so damn hard). If I were a company rolling out a product at CES this week, I’d be pretty jealous. IMHO, Apple stole the spotlight. With one product, Apple put the news focus on itself. It took chutzpah to put Macworld 2007 up against CES. And it worked. But that’s IMHO. What do you think?
January 10th, 2007
Peter Chernin said he expects to exceed News Corp’s $500 million goal for digital revenues for the current fiscal year. Online video advertising has the potential to be “the single best (business) story” for media companies in 2007, he said. Chernin says ad rates for video are pushing into $25-30 CPM range, but he warned against overestimated the value of user generated video. There is very little opportunity to monetize” user-generated videos because advertisers are not always comfortable with their content, and “there is no scarcity value,” Chernin argued. He said Fox TV shows have been downloaded 4 million times to date, via Fox O&O sites and MySpace.
January 10th, 2007
Today at CES, MTV Networks and Amp’d Mobile announced a “first-of-its-kind deal for the industry” to work together to create original mobile programming for distribution on Amp’d Live. “MTV Networks and Amp’d Mobile are building an entirely new model for the creation, development and distribution of short-form programming for consumers to access on their handset,” said Greg Clayman, SVP of Mobile Media for MTV Networks. Under the deal, MTVN will retain the rights to expand the mobile shows to television, just like it did recently with the Amp’d show, “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States.” Press release…
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The three newspaper/media companies are planning to create an an online advertising network called the “Open Network,” reports the Wall Street Journal (sub. req). The move is likely in response to Yahoo’s recent deal to team up with seven other newspaper companies to gain scale. Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune (GMT, as they’re called) are likely to contribute 10 percent of their ad inventory to the Open Network in a bid to lure larger advertisers, but a source close to the matter says it’s still not a done deal. “Traditionally print newspaper companies have not worked well together to sell national ads in print,” says Jack Williams, president of Gannett Digital. “We intend to sell Internet advertising differently.” Meanwhile, Lincoln Millstein, SVP at Hearst Newspapers, said he hopes GMT will join the Yahoo consortium instead of striking out on their own. “We’re all struggling to get our fair share of national advertising revenues, and this partnership with Yahoo would go a long way toward achieving that goal,” he said. WSJ’s story does not answer the question whether Gannett and Tribune’s TV sites will be involved in the Open Network. (Full disclosure: I work for KING-TV, owned by Belo, which recently partnered with Yahoo for its newspaper sites.)
January 10th, 2007
