Mediagazer: Cable companies, networks mull smaller TV bundles (Yinka Adegoke/Reuters)

6:55 AM ET, July 10, 2010

Top News:

Darren Rovell / CNBC:

Reporter Jim Gray Paid By LeBron Entity, Not ESPN — As Jim Gray has told it, it was his idea to make LeBron James' free agent plan an hour special. He took the idea to James' marketing agent Maverick Carter of LRMR, who then worked with William Morris Endeavor to put the package together in front of ESPN executives.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, New York Observer, Deadline.com, New York Times, Show Tracker, NY Daily News, USA Today, The Wire, Moraes on TV, New York Magazine, SBNation.com and Soup

John D. Sutter / CNN:

Cavs owner's letter mocked for Comic Sans font — Editor's note: NBA.com and CNN.com share the same parent company, Turner Broadcasting Services Inc. — (CNN) — Dear computer users: If you're ever going to write a fuming letter, think twice before setting the font to the oh-so-mockable Comic Sans.

Discussion: The Daily Fix, New York Times, The Huffington Post, McSweeney's, Geekosystem, TechCrunch and PopWatch, more at Techmeme »

Sports Illustrated:
ESPN's LeBron circus good for TV ratings, bad for sports media

Discussion: Vanity Fair, Romenesko and Wall Street Journal

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Journalists Worried About Content Farms Are Missing The Point: The Web Has Always Been Filled With Crap — There's been a lot of fretting lately in the journalism field about the rise of so-called “content farms.” These are operations like Demand Media or Associated Content …

Discussion: Writing / Editing

Globe and Mail:

Lisa LaFlamme to replace Lloyd Robertson at CTV — Lisa LaFlamme will replace Lloyd Robertson as anchor of CTV National News, the network announced on Friday. — Ms. LaFlamme, who began her broadcast career at a Kitchener-Waterloo affiliate in 1988, is currently national affairs correspondent for CTV News.

Discussion: TVNewser

Kara Swisher / BoomTown:

Yahoo Media Chief Jimmy Pitaro Talks About the Upshot of Content's Future — Whilst in Santa Monica, Calif., this week, BoomTown stopped in at the YahooPlex for a quick chat with the Internet giant's Jimmy Pitaro, who is VP of media. — The focus was a high-profile blog called The Upshot …

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

YouTube Starts $5 Million Fund to Finance Original Videos — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In a cautious move into the original content business, search titan Google announced that its YouTube property has created a $5 million fund to help finance more original videos.

Discussion: YouTube Blog, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Erictric, paidContent, NewTeeVee, VentureBeat, Hollywood Rewired, All Things Digital and MarketingVOX, more at Techmeme »

Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb:

Newspaper Wants Readers to Pay to Comment — Earlier this year, the Sun Chronicle, a small Massachusetts-based newspaper, closed down comments on its website after discussions in the paper's comment section got out of hand. Now, in order to “encourage intelligent and meaningful conversation …

Discussion: Techdirt and NetNewsCheck Latest

Stuart Elliott / Media Decoder:

ESPN is planning to introduce a campaign that seeks to burnish the cable channel's brand rather than to encourage viewers to watch specific programs. — The campaign, scheduled to get under way on Monday, carries the theme “It's not crazy. It's sports.” The campaign takes …

Discussion: AdAge, Romenesko, USA Today, Tower Ticker and MediaPost

David Brooks / New York Times:

The Medium Is the Medium — Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years. — Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington …

Discussion: The New Republic

Mark Carter / ArkansasBusiness.com:

Four KARK Employees Fired In Video Aftermath; Nexstar VP Apologizes — Three KARK on-air employees and a photographer have been fired in the aftermath of two profanity-laden spoof videos posted to video-sharing website YouTube, ArkansasBusiness.com has learned.

Discussion: Romenesko

MediaShift:

Rethinking the Role of the Journalist in the Participatory Age — Education content on MediaShift is sponsored by Carnegie-Knight News21, an alliance of 12 journalism schools in which top students tell complex stories in inventive ways. See tips for spurring innovation and digital learning at Learn.News21.com.

Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:

Cable companies, networks mull smaller TV bundles — Idaho (Reuters) - Cable operators and entertainment companies are talking about selling cheaper cable TV packages with fewer channels to attract and keep customers trying to save money in a weak economy. — The talks, which are still …