Mediagazer: Change afoot for Murdoch's minions (Stephen Mayne/Sydney Morning Herald)

4:20 PM ET, January 18, 2011

Top News:

Cecilia Kang / Post Tech:

FCC, Justice approve Comcast and NBC joint venture — Federal regulators 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.

The United States Department of Justice:

Justice Department Allows Comcast-NBCU Joint Venture to Proceed with Conditions … WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice announced today a settlement with Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co.'s subsidiary NBC Universal Inc. (NBCU) that allows their joint venture to proceed conditioned …

Discussion: paidContent, Reuters, Susan Crawford blog and Reuters, more at Techmeme »

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

DOJ's Approval Of Comcast-NBCU Contingent On Giving Up Role In Hulu — Maybe it's just as well that Jeff Zucker is leaving NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) when Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) takes over. Zucker and former News Corp (NSDQ: NWS). COO Peter Chernin banded together for an online video joint venture …

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 Rural Blog, The Next Web, Editors Weblog, ReadWriteWeb, eMedia Vitals, 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: Mediaite, Poynter, FishbowlNY, The Wire, Gawker, TVNewser, The Awl, Ben Smith's Blog, New York Magazine and Runnin' Scared

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, On Media's Blog, Mediaite and New York Times

Cory Bergman / Lost Remote:
CNN's Piers Morgan puts Twitter to work for TV debut

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, SlashGear, All Facebook, TechCrunch, The Business Insider, SAI, Inside Facebook, SAI, Fast Company, VatorNews, The Equity Kicker, Inquirer, Mashable, Noted and eMedia Vitals, more at Techmeme », Thanks:edmundlee

Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb:
Facebook's 3rd Biggest Advertiser is a Bing Affiliate Scam (With Updates)

Discussion: New York Observer, John Battelle's Searchblog, Search Engine Land, TechCrunch and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Gabriel Sherman / New York Magazine:

Venerable Lefties at Harper's Divided by Union — Harper's, one of the last bastions of old-line liberalism and a lonely defender of a certain idea of what literary culture should be, has long been supported by the largesse of its owner and patron, John “Rick” MacArthur …

Discussion: Poynter, New York Observer, FishbowlNY and Publishing Executive …

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

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Goldman Blames Media Attention For Killing Off Its U.S. Facebook Offering — Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are reporting this morning that Goldman Sachs has decided to limit its much ballyhooed private offering of up to $1.5 billion in Facebook shares to international investors only.

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

John Carney / CNBC:
Did Goldman Just Admit That It Leaked The Facebook Offering?

Discussion: New York Observer, Techdirt and Wall Street Journal

Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:

Scribd Raises Another $13 Million, Aims To Bring Social Reading To Every Device — Scribd, the document sharing hub that launched as a ‘YouTube For Documents’ and has since added other key features, including an online bookstore and a publisher analytics platform, has raised another big round of funding …

Discussion: paidContent, VentureBeat and NetworkEffect

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, Runnin' Scared and Chris Mohney

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Exclusive: Ad Tech Startups Banding Together To Take On Google And Microsoft — As the online ad technology industry consolidates, it is becoming tougher for startups to stand out among the giants. The 500-pound gorillas like Google and Microsoft keep integrating in new technologies …

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 …

Stephen J. Dubner / Freakonomics:

Yes, This Blog Is Leaving NYTimes.com — As reported in Forbes on Friday, the Freakonomics blog will be leaving NYTimes.com on or around March 1 and returning to its indie roots. — The Forbes piece and most of the followup coverage drew the seemingly obvious connection between …

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

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.

Discussion: paidContent and The Wrap

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

The Atlantic Pretties Up With Photos — The rise of the Atlantic's Web site is a good story, but that tale doesn't have much to do with pictures, only words. — That's supposed to change next month, when the site adds a new “In Focus” photo blog, curated by Alan Taylor.

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter and FishbowlDC, Thanks:jaredbkeller

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

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

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Ex-AOL CEO Randy Falco Lands At Univision As COO — Nearly two years after being ousted as AOL's chairman and CEO and replaced by Tim Armstrong, Randy Falco has a new job as EVP/COO of Spanish language media network Univision Communications. Falco, who also once served as COO of NBC Universal …

Discussion: TechCrunch, Moneywood, AdAge, rbr.com, MediaPost, Multichannel, mediabistro.com and The Wrap

Stephen Mayne / Sydney Morning Herald:

Change afoot for Murdoch's minions — Change is overdue at the head of News Corp's Australian operations, with Robert Thomson - one of Rupert Murdoch's leading lights - a possible candidate. — The Australian's Media section columnist Mark Day has long been regarded as someone …

Discussion: Yahoo! News and Talking Biz News

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 …

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 …