Mediagazer: Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers' Web Traffic (Jeremy W. Peters/New York Times)

2:45 PM ET, January 18, 2011

Top News:

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:

FCC approves Comcast and NBC joint venture — The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday approved Comcast's acquisition of NBC Universal, allowing for a joint venture that puts a vast library of television shows and movies under the control of the nation's biggest cable and broadband Internet service provider.

Discussion: Media Decoder, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, The Consumerist and Gizmodo, more at Techmeme »

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers' Web Traffic — While newspapers around the world are anxiously asking themselves what would happen if they started charging readers to view articles online, a few answers have started to emerge. — Steven Brill's Journalism Online experiment …

Discussion: CJR, Gawker, About.com Journalism, NetNewsCheck Latest, The Next Web, Editors Weblog, ReadWriteWeb, Noted, Poynter and Stowe Boyd

Tom Junod / Esquire:

Why Does Roger Ailes Hate America? — An exclusive and unbiased investigation into the highly paid operative of a foreign-born tycoon, a man who reengineered political and media culture and fomented a revolt that threatens the very stability of our country — Today, here at Esquire …

Discussion: Poynter, Mediaite, FishbowlNY, TVNewser, The Wire, Gawker, Ben Smith's Blog, Runnin' Scared and New York Magazine

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Strong Ratings for Piers Morgan's Debut — CNN's “Piers Morgan Tonight” premiered to 2.1 million viewers on Monday, according to preliminary ratings from The Nielsen Company. — CNN said that Mr. Morgan's audience was 219 percent bigger than the channel's average audience during …

Discussion: ArtsBeat, The Huffington Post, Gawker, TV Squad, Mediaite, On Media's Blog, New York Times, The Wire and Yahoo! News

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:

CNN's Piers Morgan puts Twitter to work for TV debut — With a taped interview with Oprah as the premiere episode of “Piers Morgan Tonight” on CNN on Monday night, the show's host and staff gathered in the Presidential Suite of Mandarin Hotel in New York to watch the show's debut.

Discussion: Yahoo! News, The Wire, Mediaite, CJR, Mashable!, Multichannel, Tuned In, Broadcasting & Cable, Washington Post, New York Magazine, New York Post, Mediaite, The Wrap, Guardian, Moraes on TV, New York Observer, Hollywood Reporter and Frankly My Dear

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Facebook Books $1.86B in Advertising; Muscles In on Google Turf — New Estimate From eMarketer Shows Majority of Social Network's Ad Revenue Comes From Small Businesses — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It turns out Facebook is a lot like Google after all. — As the social network steams past …

Discussion: eMarketer, Between the Lines Blog, TechCrunch, SAI, The Business Insider, Mashable, Inside Facebook, SAI, Fast Company, VatorNews, The Equity Kicker, Inquirer, Noted and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme », Thanks:edmundlee

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam (With Updates) — Matt Cutts is the head of Google's anti-webspam team and tonight he came across what looks like a huge trove of scammy, spammy spam - on Facebook. And it involves Microsoft. Advertising publication AdAge reported tonight …

Discussion: The Business Insider, All Facebook, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Stuart Elliott / New York Times:

H.P. Updates TV's Old Product Demos — A mainstay of early television — live commercials demonstrating products like Polaroid cameras and Timex watches — is making a comeback, updated for a new century by migrating to new media. — Hewlett-Packard is teaming up with the YouTube …

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!: HP Launches Live Improv Comedy Show on YouTube

John Carney / CNBC:

Did Goldman Just Admit That It Leaked The Facebook Offering? — While the news that Goldman Sachs is restricting its Facebook investment fund to investors outside the US is already prompting cries that US securities regulations have become perverse, the media seem to be missing an important part of this story.

Discussion: Techdirt, Felix Salmon and Wall Street Journal, more at Techmeme »

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Goldman Blames Media Attention For Killing Off Its U.S. Facebook Offering

Discussion: New York Observer, SAI, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, DealBook, The New Yorker Blog, On Media's Blog and New York Observer

Claire Atkinson / New York Post:

Nielsen view of new TV just doesn't rate — While more viewers are getting up from the TV set and watching shows on the go, ratings giant Nielsen is stuck on the couch. — Video viewing on Apple's iPad and other mobile devices is exploding. Just last week, Google's YouTube …

Sam Petulla / Nieman Journalism Lab:

New Yorker web editor: The site is “guided by what's on paper” — In a 2006 post at Design Observer, Michael Bierut praised what he termed the “slow design” of The New Yorker: “the patient, cautious, deliberate evolution of a nearly unchanging editorial format over decades.” — It's an apt description.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

The Huffington Post:

Regis: It's Over — Regis Philbin says he's leaving the show that bears his name. — “This will be my last year on this show,” the 79-year-old host said Tuesday morning on “Live! with Regis and Kelly.” “It's been a long time, it's been 28 years since I've been here.

Discussion: NY Daily News, Media Decoder, Mediaite, ABCNEWS, mediabistro.com, New York Magazine, Moraes on TV, newsfeed.time.com and AOL News

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Cheezburger Network Gets $30M for More LOLcats and Failpics — Cheezburger — the blog network that brought you I Can Has Cheezburger, the Fail blog, Engrish Funny and many other similar humor-oriented sites — today announced that it has closed a $30-million round of funding from a group …

Discussion: New York Observer, TechCrunch, The Seattle Times, Softpedia News, Download Squad, TECH.BLORGE.com, techrockies.com, SAI, NetworkEffect, Pulse2, TechFlash, Mashable!, paidContent and VentureBeat, more at Techmeme »

Mark Sweney / paidContent:

Pearson Buys Controlling Stake In TutorVista For $127 Million — Pearson (NYSE: PSO), owner of the Financial Times and book publisher Penguin, has increased its presence in India, buying a controlling stake in education firm TutorVista for $127m (£79m).

Discussion: MediaNama

Market Wire:

Digital Publisher Vook Closes $5.25 Million Financing — Established Leader in Publishing Content for Tablets, Smartphones and E-Readers Builds on Its Momentum for 2011 — Vook, the leading digital publisher of mixed-media reading, announced it closed $5.25 million in Series A financing …

Discussion: Beet.TV, TechCrunch and The Vook Blog

Mercy Farm:

A Push-Button Network is Great, Until It's Not. Ask Sarah Palin — Given the state-of-play in media, it comes as no surprise that we are ending the week after the tragedy in Tucson chattering about a YouTube video. But the web video that turned heads wasn't the inchoate rantings produced …

Nick Summers / New York Observer:

Ads Trump Articles as Newsweek Limps Into Tina Territory — In early December, star Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley wrote a profile of Stanford professor John Ioannidis, whose research calls into question the medical studies performed by major drug companies. It's a great read.

Lisa Bertagnoli / Chicago Business:

Bloggers quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards — Jim Harbison launched a blog thinking it would be a showcase for his love of mid-century-inspired art and design—and maybe spawn a book deal or guest editorship somewhere. — “I wanted to participate in a world …

Discussion: The Awl

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Digital Marketing Company (And Lycos Owner) Ybrant Digital Raises $48 Million — Looks like investors are increasingly looking at India for financing fast-growing Internet companies. Helion, Accel Partners and Tiger Global just pumped $6 million into ecommerce site LetsBuy.com …

Discussion: paidContent:UK and MediaNama

Kim Wilson / Journalistics:

A Sure Sign News Teases Don't Work in Social Media — If you're a Virgo, like me, you are probably still reeling from the identity crisis you experienced upon hearing you may in fact not be a Virgo after all. The news that the zodiac calendar has shifted spread faster than the speed …

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: Entertainment News Company TheWrap Acquires ItsOnTheGrid.com — TheWrap, a venture capital-backed news organization focused on the business of entertainment and media, has acquired ItsOnTheGrid.com (IOTG), TechCrunch has learned. — TheWrap made the acquisition for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Waviimania Continues As Investors Flock To Parade — This is how to milk a stealth startup for all it's worth. — We first covered Seattle startup Wavii back in July. The company has raised somewhere around $2 million in angel funding from thirty or so angel investors - only a few of which are publicly known.