Mediagazer: Why the BBC's old guard called time on the Wibbly Wobbly Web (John Naughton/Guardian)

2:40 PM ET, January 30, 2011

Top News:

Comcast completes NBC Universal merger — (Reuters) - Comcast Corp has completed its takeover of NBC Universal, creating a $30 billion media behemoth that controls not just how television shows and movies are made but how they are delivered to people's homes.

Discussion: TVNewser

Johnnie L. Roberts / The Wrap:

It's Got NBCU ... Now Comcast Has a Fight for Reinvention — From Hollywood to Madison Avenue, all eyes will be glued to Comcast's top-priority mission: scripting television's greatest comeback narrative at also-ran NBC, which the cable giant formally took control of on Friday.

Discussion: Multichannel and Broadcasting & Cable

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

U.S. Media and Entertainment Deal Volume Rose 3% in 2010 … NEW YORK - U.S. entertainment and media industry merger and acquisition activity rose slightly in 2010 when looking at the number of deals and outpaced the overall U.S. deal market, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Discussion: MediaPost

Aljazeera:

Egypt shuts down Al Jazeera bureau — Network's licences cancelled and accreditation of staff in Cairo withdrawn by order of information minister. — The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network's licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, The Wire and Associated Press

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:

Why Al-Jazeera Owns Internet TV's Egypt Coverage — Tanks were greeted by protesters, police vehicles went up in flames and looters started to empty the building of the ruling party NDP in Cairo late Friday: These and more astonishing images of a regime on the verge of collapse …

Discussion: BuzzMachine, News: News blog, Al Jazeera Blogs, ReadWriteWeb, Boing Boing and New York Times, more at Techmeme »

John Naughton / Guardian:

Why the BBC's old guard called time on the Wibbly Wobbly Web — The corporation's online arm is being cut off at the elbow... and many are secretly delighted — So the BBC is slimming down, in response to government pressure. The World Service is to lose five of its foreign-language services, and a quarter of its staff.

Michelle Kung / Speakeasy:

‘Like Crazy’ Wins Big at Sundance Film Festival 2011 — Earlier this evening, actor Tim Blake Nelson hosted the awards ceremony for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Dressed as a snowflake (prompting actress/director Vera Farmiga to dub him 'Tim Flake Nelson'), he bumped chests …

Discussion: The Wrap

Steve Safran / Lost Remote:

Networks are paying close attention to social media — Encouraging news came out of Friday's #TVNext conference in Boston: the networks are paying attention to social media and are working on strategies to merge it with their TV shows. The Boston advertising agency Hill Holiday put …

Discussion: CBS Boston and Future of Journalism

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Now This Is a Content Mill: Narrative Science Raises $6 Million for Human-Free Stories — Demand Media and its peers pay lots of writers small sums in order to generate lots and lots of content, with the help of computers. But you can do it for even less if you eliminate the writers altogether.

Discussion: Trends in the Living Networks