Archive for June 13th, 2007
A coalition of musical acts and music industry organizations will launch an effort today to push for increased compensation by AM and FM radio stations. Under current rules, radio broadcasters only pay a royalty to songwriters — the actual performer sees no cash (the idea being that radio stations help fuel sales of songs through airplay). That fact has come under fire in the heated debate over Internet radio royalties, as recent rulings could force net-casters to pay royalties on songs. According to radio industry site AllAccess, a wide variety of artists are on board for the musicFIRST campaign, including Christina Aguilera, Jimmy Buffett, Toby Keith, Patti Labelle, Jennifer Lopez and others.
June 13th, 2007
Apple will start selling the iPhone at exactly 6 p.m. in each time zone on June 29th. As CNET’s Tom Krazit writes, “(It’s) yet another blatant example of East Coast bias.”
June 13th, 2007
CBS sold stations in February, and today the pattern of networks selling their owned and operated stations continues. News Corp. announced its intention to sell nine of its 35 stations: WJW, KDVR, KTVI, WDAF, WITI, KSTU, WBRC, WHBQ, WGHP. There are plenty of TV stations on the market: last month Lin Television and Nexstar Broadcasting said they were exploring potential sales. Press release from News Corp. after the jump…
Read the full post June 13th, 2007
In a major internal change, the Wall Street Journal has made the last steps to integrate their old media and new media products. Among the changes is Bill Grueskin, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, has been named deputy managing editor for news. Today’s announcement says the changes are “aimed at better positioning the Journal to benefit from the profound changes sweeping the news business.”
Also: Bancroft family and Murdoch still far apart on key issues (WSJ sub. req.)
Press release on reorganization below…
Read the full post June 13th, 2007
Charles Gibson is at the top of the charts for network newscasts. After May sweeps, there was no doubt that World News Tonight is number one. But in an interview with Marketwatch, Gibson said something that made me think. “I wish we published newspaper circulations!” he said.
Showing the shrinking circulations for newspapers might make his point, but wait until those digital media companies (newspapers) combine their numbers with their website numbers. Where does World News stand up when you merge the reach of NY Times in print and nytimes.com? We’re not far from viewers, uniques and circulation all being merged into one big reach metric.
June 13th, 2007
NBC Universal and Nissan have extended a product integration deal for the show Heroes - that is designed to provide marketing support to both the automaker and the superhero series. Nissan will sponsor the online premier of the show, and purchased product placement for its new SUV, Rogue. Nissan will also launch a co-branded Heroes campaign with on-air, online, wireless and other advertising formats.
June 13th, 2007
Members of rock band Journey should send Sopranos creator David Chase a nice big basket of fruit. Chase used the band’s 80s hit “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the much talked about final scene of the mob drama Sunday. That scene created quite a little buzz Monday - and it was nearly impossible to miss the song. The show and all that coverage is having another benefit: The song is racing up the iTunes Top 100 chart. It was #27 when I checked last night, and as of this writing stands at #21. MTV notes the song has seen this type of bump before. When the song was included as part of a Family Guy episode, it hit #4 on the iTunes chart.
June 13th, 2007
Most of the Apple WWDC coverage seems to be pegged on the iPhone, but the sleeper tech story of the week is the release of Adobe’s Integrated Runtime (AIR), which has been working under the moniker Apollo. A lot of shogun developers like it, including Jesse James Garrett, who says that the integrated HMTL/Javascript support with Flash will help blur the line between desktop and online apps in a very good way, increasing creativity and flexibility and speeding up development time. Generally, such heavy development talk is a little deeper in the hardcore than the LR faithful want, but when the father of AJAX speaks in praise, we should all take note.
June 13th, 2007
“It’s insulting and disappointing that Les Moonves, who know a lot about entertainment, would try to mask the real point of that comment,” said Dan Rather during an interview on Fox News. The point, Rather explains, is the line between news and entertainment has blurred. “This isn’t a Katie Couric problem… These days, they don’t know what news is, they know about entertainment.”
Earler: CBS chief said Rather’s comments were “sexist”
June 13th, 2007
