Mediagazer: Jon Stewart's Hulu Price Tag: At Least $40 Million (Peter Kafka/MediaMemo)

3:00 PM ET, February 3, 2011

Top News:

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Jon Stewart's Hulu Price Tag: At Least $40 Million — Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were two of Hulu's biggest draws until they left the video site last March. And it will cost Hulu at least $40 million to get them back. — That's according to people familiar with the new deal …

Discussion: New York Times, paidContent, Mediaweek, rbr.com, VentureBeat, Lost Remote, TVNewser, Company Town, Gothamist, The Wire, Electronista and CNET News, more at Techmeme »

Jason Kilar / Hulu Blog:

Stewart, Colbert, and Hulu's thoughts about the future of TV — We are extremely happy to announce a broad content agreement between Viacom and Hulu that brings The Daily Show and The Colbert Report back to Hulu and now also to Hulu Plus, beginning this morning.

Henry Blodget / The Wire:

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar Infuriates TV Bosses/Partners With Unapproved Comments About Traditional TV — Three years ago, when Hulu was created, we expected the company would eventually fall prey to the massive conflicts of interest between its TV owners and its online product and customers.

Hollywood Reporter: Hulu, Viacom Announce Content Partnership

Justin Ellis / Nieman Journalism Lab:

“Serendipity and surprise”: How will engagement work for The Daily? — All of us here at the Lab watched the unveiling of The Daily (even those of us who are on a beach sipping umbrella drinks). — But there was something that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said that seems significant now that the genie is out of the bottle.

Discussion: Poynter, The Next Web, CJR, The Huffington Post and Future of Journalism

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Fake, unofficial Daily Tumblrs terrorize Murdoch's iPad pub — The Daily, as a full editorial package, is only available to people willing to pay $.99 cents a week or $39 a year to have Rupert Murdoch's just-launched tablet newspaper delivered to their iPads each morning.

Discussion: Audience Development Blogs RSS, TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb

Rex Hammock / Rex Hammock's RexBlog.com:
The Daily isn't as bad as Virgin's Project

Discussion: Waxy.org, Media Nation, Gannett Blog, contentious.com, Chris Houchens, bookforum.com, GigaOM and magCulture.com/blog, more at Techmeme »

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:
Who is The Daily trying to reach? What problem is it trying to solve?

Discussion: CJR, Poynter, Magtastic Blogsplosion, Garcia Media, GigaOM, TechCrunch, Daring Fireball, Company Town, NetNewsCheck Latest and Innovation in College Media

Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:
Daily economics — I have not seen News Corp's Daily …

The Daily:
Welcome to the newspaper of the 21st century

Discussion: Runnin' Scared, tag me with a spoon, The Wire, Canadian Magazines and Media Decoder

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:
So, wait: The Daily uses AP content?

Discussion: Editors Weblog, TheMediaBriefing, Product Reviews, Guardian, Darren Herman and Mashable!

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Quarterly Income Fell 26% for The New York Times Co. — Reflecting a slow advertising recovery across the newspaper industry, The New York Times Company reported on Thursday a 26.2 percent drop in net income in the fourth quarter from the period a year before.

Discussion: Guardian, The New York Times Company, Gawker, The Wrap, FishbowlNY, Poynter and Media Buyer Planner

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

New York Times will release paywall details in ‘near future’ — Since last summer, New York Times Co. executives have repeatedly said they would announce details about the paper's online metered pay model “soon” or “closer to launch” of the revamped nytimes.com site.

Discussion: Poynter

Robert Andrews / paidContent:UK:

MTV UK Tries Charging For Online Catch-Up TV — If you thought that pay-per-view online catch-up TV had been replaced by the free, ad-supported model, think again - MTV has launched a dedicated UK VOD portal, MTV OD, costing £1 ($1.61) a day or £2 ($3.24) a week.

Discussion: The Next Web, Pocket-lint and WatchingTV Online

Committee to Protect Journalists:

Journalists under physical assault in Egypt — Supporters of President Hosni Mubarak have begun violently attacking journalists reporting on the streets of Cairo today, a shift in tactics from recent media censorship, the Committee to Protect Journalists said.

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

Apple, Campbell's Say iAds Twice as Effective as TV — A Nielsen Study Shows iPhone Users Are Paying Attention, While TV Viewers Not so Much — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — It's been seven months since the first iAds — Apple's bid to reinvent mobile advertising — started popping up on iPhones and iPods …

Discussion: TechCrunch and Fortune

Joe Grimm / Poynter:

Ongo.com CEO: Centralized subscription removes ‘high frustration walls’ between readers & news — Some early observers of Ongo.com may be missing the point. — The subscription site, which launched Jan. 25, is intent on being a great “personal news experience.”

Discussion: paidContent

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Medill and McCormick launch a news innovation lab with $4.2 million in Knight funding — In 2009, while announcing that year's Knight News Challenge winners at a conference at MIT, Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen mentioned the foundation's desire to launch “test kitchens” …

Discussion: Tower Ticker, Knight Foundation News … and KnightBlog

AdAge:

Groupon Snags Last-Minute Super Bowl Ad Time — Social-Shopping Phenom Had Been Relegated to Pre- and Post-game Spots — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Groupon's got game time. — Less than a month ago, the online company was shut out of the Super Bowl and was planning on only pre-game and post-game commercials.

Discussion: The Wire, rbr.com, CNET News, newsfeed.time.com and AdFreak

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:

News Corp sees profits rise — News Corp chief refuses to talk about issue at press launch for the Daily, and misses quarterly reports Q&A — Rupert Murdoch dodged questions about the widening phone-hacking scandal yesterday. The chairman and chief executive of News Corp …

Discussion: CNET News, Gawker, The Daily Beast, VentureBeat, Mixed Media and Scott Rosenberg's Wordyard

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Storify Gets Funding From Khosla Ventures to Reinvent Media Online — Storify, a San Francisco-based startup that launched a social-media aggregation service for journalists last fall, announced today that it has closed a $2-million Series A round of funding from Khosla Ventures …

Discussion: TechCrunch, paidContent and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Matthew Lasar / Ars Technica:

Appeals Court: free Internet porn isn't unfair competition to pay sites — One day in March of 2009, the proprietors of Redtube.com were minding their own business, streaming free pornographic videos to the public, when they received notice of a lawsuit against them in the mail.

Discussion: Indecision Forever and The Daily Caller

Joseph Tartakoff / paidContent:

The AP's Digital News Licensing Agency Will Launch This Summer — The Associated Press is moving ahead with a plan to establish an independent news licensing agency to help news organizations make additional money off of their digital content. The AP initially announced its intention …

New York Post:

Now, the real work begins at Brown's NewsBeast — The NewsBeast is ALIVE! — But it has problems aplenty, not the least of which is surviving Tina Brown's star system — great if you're enjoying most-favored reporter status and hell if you are not. — The inevitable result is staff discord …

Discussion: New York Observer