Archive for November 12th, 2007
Real estate site Zillow (which is known for its estimates of property values) has teamed up with Hearst, Media General, Scripps, Journal Register, MediaNews and six other newspaper companies — a total of 282 newspaper sites in all. Local advertisers who post listings on the newspaper sites will have the option of posting their listings and open house ads on Zillow. And the newspaper sites will integrate content from Zillow. “More newspaper companies are expected to join the network prior to launch,” says the press release. The launch date is Q1 of next year. Press release with more details below…
Read the full post November 12th, 2007
The voice behind AOL’s extremely well-known welcome message works in local TV, if you can believe it. Elwood Edwards runs the graphics department at WKYC, and Brian Williams interviewed him here (video). Meanwhile, WKYC blogged Williams’ visit here, complete with photos and video.
November 12th, 2007
MSNBC’s Ashley Wells is brave enough to post some of the designs his team tested over the last year. And some of them are, well, avant guard. Like this one:
Wells says, “Don’t tell our editors, but I really just designed this one to scare them.” If you look carefully under the logo, the slogan says “Now with more cowbell.”
November 12th, 2007
FishbowlDC has a blurb that Copely News Service, owned by Copley Press Inc, the parents of the San-Diego Union Trib, is shutting down its bureaus in Los Angeles and Washington, DC. What remains of the reporting staff after a very hard year will reportedly get absorbed elsewhere in the company, and it is reported that the news syndicate business will continue, but it is not clear what content they will distribute.
November 12th, 2007
An AP/AOL poll states that 43 percent of parents never play video games with their children. Another 30 percent say they spend less than an hour a week doing so, adding up to about three in four parents of young gamers never or hardly ever touch games. The poll has some other interesting numbers about which age-groups of parents are more likely to play along and what factors contribute to purchasing decisions. The anecdotal lead of the linked story isn’t sitting well with me: a guy who calls games ‘a waste of time’ has a son who is reportedly spending a dozen hours a week playing. Not to pass any judgments, but shouldn’t parents be keeping track of what their kids are doing through engagement instead of issuing broad condemnations?
November 12th, 2007
No, it wasn’t the crush of traffic to Safran’s final address (above) that took Lost Remote and hundreds of other sites offline. Instead, a truck hit a transformer and caused a power bump at a Dallas RackSpace datacenter. Generators kicked in, but problems ensued - since they didn’t have enough juice to keep the datacenter properly cooled. The RackSpace outage sent dominoes crashing into Laughing Squid, which hosts LR and hundreds of other sites.
November 12th, 2007
With traffic at the major portals beginning to level off, they’re looking to lock in deals with niche sites for fresh, original content. Explains Emily Steele in the WSJ (sub req.): “Big Internet companies such as MSN and Yahoo have small teams whose job it is to ‘discover’ these smaller sites before their competition does. They scan the Web, attend industry conferences and hobnob with start-ups to get names of talented but obscure content providers.” AOL told the Journal that it’s starting to ink informal deals with smaller blogs to fast-track the process, because the contact process “can be slow.”
November 12th, 2007
Lifetime Networks has relaunched LifetimeTV.com at MyLifetime.com with the hope to become a go-to destination for women. At its core, the site features content from Glam, About and Hearst Magazines (Country Living, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Quick & Simple and Redbook). MyLifetime also features a community and casual gaming. “The relationship that Lifetime has with its female audience is incredibly strong and we plan on leveraging that special bond by providing the place where women can connect, play and share,” said Dan Suratt, executive VP, digital media and business development, Lifetime Networks. Home page screen grab…
November 12th, 2007
If the strike stretches into January, Fox stations will likely see a big boost with the return of American Idol while the other networks contend with reruns. “It’s in everybody’s best interest to work this out fairly immediately,” says WREG Memphis (CBS) GM Ronald Walter. “It definitely impacts us adversely if it goes on for a long time.”
- Broadcasting & Cable: Why the strike will be a long one
November 12th, 2007
