Mediagazer: Murdoch's News Corp. May Have to Pay $17.4 Billion for Its BSkyB Purchase (Bloomberg)

3:25 AM ET, March 4, 2011

Top News:

David Kaplan / paidContent:

@ pC2011: Denton: The Internet Is A Mass Medium, Not A Niche One — In a very amiable dialogue about the nature of “internet success,” Gawker founderNick Denton told Reuters' finance blogger Felix Salmon that revenues were expected to be flat this year. Though Salmon floated a number ("It's about $2 million a month, right?")

Discussion: Beet.TV, The Wrap, Felix Salmon and Soup

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News:

Gawker Media traffic down 25 percent since redesign — A few weeks ago, Gawker Media disputed reports that its traffic had plummeted due to the redesign recently implemented across its blog network. And Gawker boss Nick Denton had even recently made a cash bet that the relaunch wouldn't cost him page views.

Discussion: The Wrap and The Wire

Steve Buttry / The Buttry Diary:

TBD made has made mistakes, but we understand our community(ies) — It is against my nature to hold my tongue. Or my keyboard. — I have refrained from saying much publicly about the recent cutbacks at TBD because ... well, because. The reasons are complicated and I still work here.

Bill Reader / E.W. Scripps School of Journalism:

TBD is CTD: The fast rise and fall of a CJ startup — Just six months after it launched to much fanfare, the Washington, D.C., area community journalism site TBD.com (short for, it is suggested, “To Be Determined") is CTD (short for “circling the drain"). Some suggest it was too ambitious …

Discussion: Poynter

Bloomberg:

Murdoch's News Corp. May Have to Pay $17.4 Billion for Its BSkyB Purchase — Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWSA) may have to raise its bid for British Sky Broadcasting Plc to as much as 10.7 billion pounds ($17.4 billion) to win over the pay- television operator's shareholders.

Discussion: Guardian, Guardian and Company Town

Joe Pompeo / Yahoo! News: Downloads for The Daily are in ‘hundreds of thousands’

Mark Sweney / Guardian:
Hunt approves News Corp plan for Sky News

Discussion: Crikey, Media Week, Press Gazette, Department for Culture Media …, Company Town, The Wrap, Editors Weblog, FishbowlNY, Jon Slattery and TVNewser

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:

CEO Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington Reveal AOL's Ambitious Hollywood Strategy … The following story appears in the upcoming issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine on newsstands Thursday. — On the set of a photo shoot at a Los Angeles studio, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong settles into salesman mode …

Discussion: GigaOM

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

How AOL's Patch Can Win And Prove Us Wrong When We Say It's A Horrible, Doomed Idea — AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's whole turnaround plan is to take cash flow from the company's dying subscriber business, and make big bets on content businesses. — As a framework, this is a good plan.

David Kaplan / paidContent:

Plum TV's Lehman Named NBCU's President, Digital Networks — Nicholas Lehman, formerly CEO of lifestyle Plum TV, has joined NBC Universal (NSDQ: CMCSA) as president of Digital for NBCUniversal's Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media division (E&DN/IM).

Discussion: MediaMemo

David Kaplan / paidContent:
@ pC2011: Zalaznick: Don't Blame Hulu For Lack Of Cable Programming Streams

Discussion: Techland and Broadcasting & Cable

Journalism.org:

BLOGGERS TAKE SIDES IN THE WISCONSIN STANDOFF — For the second straight week, social and mainstream media shared similar news agendas as the labor stalemate in Wisconsin and the violent unrest in Libya garnered the most attention. But while the traditional press focused more on the events …

Discussion: Poynter and WebNewser

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

The Twitter Story Fail — It's amazing to me how wrong The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times were on their Twitter fundraising stories last week. All claimed multiple independent sources, but everyone got the story wrong in the same way.

Discussion: Reuters, Fortune, L.A. Times Tech Blog, New York Magazine, Best of the Wire, The Tech Trade and Post Tech, more at Techmeme »

Megan Garber / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Baseless speculation! Frank Rich and the price of paywalls for writers — Jack Shafer summed up Frank Rich's upcoming move from The New York Times to New York magazine like so: “Unless the deal came with Bloombergian bags of cash, it makes no sense.” — True.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Future of Journalism, Scocca and MediaPost

Edmund Lee / AdAge:

Randall Rothenberg Talks About Coming Back to IAB — And What He Found at Time Inc. — At the Interactive Advertising Bureau's conference on Feb. 28, Randall Rothenberg could barely get a bite or a word out before someone in attendance came up to quickly offer thanks for his return.

Discussion: Poynter

David Kaplan / paidContent:

@ pC2011: Keith Olbermann: I'm Not Crazy For Joining Current Media — So here's the deal Current TV has for its new chief news officer: Keith Olbermann, who in addition to crafting the behind the scenes content for the cable channel will be back in his old 8pm time slot this summer, gets to say whatever he wants.

Discussion: The Wrap, Mixed Media, Yahoo! News, Beet.TV and FOK News Channel

Lauren Indvik / Mashable!:

5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch — The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. The line is fading between social media and traditional media. IDG's Matt Yorke talks about the rise of social and how IDG helps marketers create social campaigns. Read more.

TMZ.com:

Charlie Sheen: I Twitter for Cash! — Featured Blogs — Celebritology- Drudge Report- Essence- Evil Beet Gossip- Hollyscoop- I'm Not Obsessed- Perez Hilton- TooFab- Why Fame- WWTDD — Megan Fox Net Curtain Fetish Porn for Armani — Was Christina Aguilera's Mug Shot Photo Stolen?

Discussion: The Wire, Mediaite, Dealbreaker and AdFreak