Mediagazer: Hasbro Aims to Show TV Channel Isn't One Big Commercial (Wall Street Journal)

11:45 AM ET, October 7, 2010

Top News:

Richard Johnson LA-bound — Tweet — It's the end of an era — Richard Johnson is leaving Page Six after nearly 25 years as editor of the world's most famous gossip column. — Emily Smith, who cut her teeth on Fleet Street before coming to New York five years ago …

Discussion: Runnin' Scared, Deadline.com, Hollywood Reporter, The Wire, Ben Smith's Blog, New York Observer, ClickZ, FishbowlNY, The Huffington Post, Romenesko, Gawker, New York Magazine and LA Observed

David Saleh Rauf / American Journalism Review:

From Covering Parties to Hanging with an Algorithm — Megan McCarthy's journey to Mediagazer, a media news aggregator with a heavy tech flavor — David Saleh Rauf (drauf@ajr.umd.edu) is an AJR editorial assistant — Megan McCarthy's career as a reporter blossomed from a single e-mail.

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

Reed Hastings' Six Lessons for the Newspaper Industry — Reed Hastings has been on a rollercoaster ride in the 13 years since he founded Netflix. From punchline to genius to toast to genius and back, several times over, it seems. In a talk Tuesday night in his hometown of Santa Cruz …

Discussion: Romenesko

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

Memo Hints at Name Change for MSNBC.com — NBC Universal and Microsoft, the parents of MSNBC.com, are holding high-level talks about a name change, something that could be a risky endeavor for the second most popular news Web site in the United States. — The two parents have determined …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Mediaite, Inside Cable News, paidContent, The Wrap, New York Magazine, WebNewser, The Huffington Post, NewscastStudio Blog and Collective Talent

Jason Fell / Folio:

Next Issue Media Names Tech Team, Hints at Digital Newsstand Plans — Nabs three former Nokia executives for tech ‘dream team.’ — Next Issue Media, the digital publishing consortium including some of the magazine industry's biggest players, has expanded its senior technology team and …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and paidContent

Lucia Moses / Mediaweek: Next Issue Media CEO Guenther Short on Details

Henry Unger / The Biz Beat:

Ted Turner worried about right-wing alternative to CNN long before Fox — Ted Turner is a pretty good prognosticator. — Years before Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News, Turner thought the biggest threat to his CNN operation would come from “a right-wing news alternative,” he said Wednesday.

Discussion: Inside Cable News

Chris Rovzar / New York Magazine:

What Would a Tina Brown-Helmed Daily Beast-Newsweek Hybrid Look Like? — This morning, to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Daily Beast, founding editor Tina Brown interviewed herself. As to the hot rumor of the moment, that she may become editor of Newsweek and bring the Beast along …

Nicholas Carlson / The Wire:
Daily Beast - Newsweek Merger Talks Heat Up - Staffers Feel Like It's A “Done Deal”

Discussion: Folio, Press Gazette, Runnin' Scared, FishbowlNY, Gawker and MediaMemo

Wall Street Journal:

Hasbro Aims to Show TV Channel Isn't One Big Commercial — Hasbro Inc. is set to launch a children's cable network Sunday, in its evolution from a toy maker to a full-fledged entertainment company where playthings like My Little Pony and Transformers morph into TV shows and movies.

Discussion: Free Press, Company Town and AdPulp, more at Techmeme »

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

College Humor Gets a New Grownup: Time Inc Digital Dude Paul Greenberg — Here's the new adult supervisor at College Humor, Barry Diller's much-smarter-than-you'd-think humor site: Paul Greenberg, who most recently has been running digital operations at Time Inc.'s Lifestyle group.

Michael Cieply / Media Decoder:

Ex-Variety Critic McCarthy Lands at Hollywood Reporter — LOS ANGELES — Todd McCarthy, fired as Variety's chief film critic seven months ago, has landed — again. Shortly after losing his long-standing gig with Variety in a round of cost-cutting last March, Mr. McCarthy joined …

Discussion: Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, Thompson on Hollywood and New York Magazine

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Guarded Pals In a Critical TV Rivalry — “Welcome to 8,” read the Twitter message from Dan Harmon, an executive producer of “Community,” to Bill Prady, his counterpart on “The Big Bang Theory.” — It was May 19, and CBS had just made the biggest television scheduling move of the season …

Laura Oliver / Journalism.co.uk:

WEFHamburg: Paywall will not remove NYT from ‘online conversation’, says CEO — The New York Times will not retreat from the “online conversation” when it goes behind a paywall next year, the New York Times Company president and CEO has said. — Speaking to the World Editors Forum in Hamburg …

Media Week:

IPC profits fall 37% in recession-plagued 2009 — Time Warner-owned IPC Media, publisher of Now, In Style, Look and Wallpaper magazines, has reported a 37% drop in pre-tax profits for the year to 31 December 2009. — IPC: latest results reveal 37% fall in annual pre-tax profits

Discussion: Press Gazette

Gillian Reagan / Capital New York:

Taking time to read on the web: Instapaper gets ready for the big show — Photo via davidville's flickr stream. — A couple of years ago, Marco Arment, who was then the lead technologist of the social-blog platform Tumblr, became frustrated with the way the web made his ideal reading diet difficult.

Discussion: GalleyCat, Nieman Journalism Lab, ReadWriteWeb and Tomorrow Museum

Michael Oneal / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune Co. bankruptcy muddled as mediation founders — Rival creditor groups preparing restructuring plans; New York Times story a black eye for company management — Mediation talks broke down once again in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case this week, sending rival creditor groups …

Discussion: Romenesko

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

News Video on Twitter to Expand as Brightcove Completes Implementation — NEW YORK — With last month's launch of the new Twitter Web page, selected beta users have been able to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo. — Now, Brightcove has been authorized by Twitter to have its videos embedded.

Joy Mayer / RJI:

What “engagement” means to Tracy Record and West Seattle Blog — Lately, I've been immersed In a sea of motivated, passionate, scrappy people making a go of it in community news, trying a bunch of techniques and wondering what will work. It was therefore a yank into another world …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest