Mediagazer: Warner Bros. to Rent Movies Digitally on Facebook, Starting With ‘Dark Knight’ (Gregg Kilday/Hollywood Reporter)

11:45 AM ET, March 8, 2011

Top News:

Warner Bros. to Rent Movies Digitally on Facebook, Starting With ‘Dark Knight’ … Warner Bros. is turning to Facebook, where it hopes to find an electronic audience interested in digitally renting The Dark Knight. — Warners said Monday that it is the first Hollywood studio to offer movies directly on Facebook.

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

Meet Your New Media Company: Facebook — Social Network Starts Movie Rentals, Threatening Apple, Netflix, Hulu — A big, powerful wild card just entered the movie distribution business. Warner Bros. Entertainment announced today it will begin distributing movies for sale and for rent through Facebook …

Discussion: Company Town and MediaMemo, more at Techmeme »

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why Facebook Is Not the Cure For Bad Comments — There's been a lot of discussion recently about Facebook-powered comments, which have been implemented at a number of major blogs and other publishers (including here at GigaOM) over the past couple of weeks.

Discussion: BuzzMachine, TechCrunch, NBC Bay Area, Howard Lindzon, Engadget, Stowe Boyd, Technologizer, steve's blog, The Huffington Post, Scobleizer, broadstuff and Adam Sherk, more at Techmeme »

Ken Doctor / Newsonomics:

Nine Questions on the Dallas Morning News Pay Plan — Don't mess with Texas, Lyle Lovett has advised us. That may be worth keeping in mind as publisher Jim Moroney turns a lot of conventional wisdom on its ear and launches a pay wall in America's fifth-largest metro area and eighth-largest city.

Mike Orren:
Paywall, ho! — It's official- the Dallas Morning News paywall goes live tomorrow.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu and WebNewser

Brett Pulley / Bloomberg:

Gannett Considers Charging for Online Newspaper Content, CEO Dubow Says — Gannett Co., the owner of 82 newspapers including USA Today, is considering charging for its online content, Chief Executive Officer Craig Dubow said. — The company, which also owns television stations …

Discussion: Guardian, Poynter, Noted and Gannett Blog

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

YouTube Makes Acquisition to Move Beyond Home Videos — SAN FRANCISCO — YouTube, the video site owned by Google, formally announced on Monday that it had acquired Next New Networks, a Web video production company, in its biggest effort yet to move beyond short, quirky home videos to professionally produced content.

Alex Pham / Company Town:
Google's YouTube buys Next New Networks

Discussion: TechCrunch, Beet.TV, NYConvergence.com, MediaMemo, @pkafka and Beet.TV

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Spotify Toots Its Own Horn: One Million Paying Subscribers — Nope, Spotify still isn't in the U.S. yet. But the European streaming music service does have something to announce. It has a million paying subscribers, CEO Daniel Ek writes in a blog post. — Truth in blog posts about blog posts: The number isn't news.

Discussion: Spotify, Guardian, paidContent, CNET News, Music Ally, hypebot, Erictric, The Next Web, GigaOM, louisgray.com and SAI, more at Techmeme »

Michael Oneal / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune Co. bankruptcy nearing finish line — Questions, answers as lawyers for media firm, creditors head to confirmation hearings in Delaware — After 27 months of legal wrangling, Tribune Co. and its creditors are finally headed into what could be the deciding chapter of the company's tangled bankruptcy saga.

Discussion: Poynter and Media Buyer Planner

Jim Romenesko / Poynter:

Look out, TMZ!: Reuters to distribute ‘paparazzi-type footage’ — Romenesko Misc. — Reuters says distributing Hollywood TV's footage of celebrities serves “a crucial role for entertainment programming needs” and complements the celebrity and entertainment coverage currently offered by Reuters.

Deena Higgs Nenad / EditorandPublisher.com:

Former AP Reporter Nears Profit After Starting a Paper From Scratch — Former Associated Press reporter Dan Robrish learned many valuable lessons when he started a newspaper from scratch in a small south central Pennsylvania borough one year ago. The most critical: Wrap up personal stuff …

Discussion: J-Source and MediaPost

John Cook / Gawker:

Talk Radio Is Fake Now — Premiere Radio Networks, the radio syndicator that brings you Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, knows better than anyone that its audience consists almost exclusively of mouth-breathing illiterates. That can make talk radio, which theoretically relies on the ability …

Discussion: Mediaite, rbr.com, The Huffington Post and The Wire

Ben Sisario / New York Times:

Mog, the Digital Music Service, Takes Aim at the TV and the Car — The next frontier for digital music is not a tablet or a smartphone, but two items that have been part of everyday life for decades: the car and the television set. — For years, digital music has been confined mostly to traditional computers and phones.

more at Techmeme »

Andrew Wallenstein / paidContent:

Sheen On Ustream: A Wasted Opportunity — “The future of television is happening right now,” tweeted someone sitting pretty in the medium's present, Survivor host Jeff Probst. But from the looks of the video to which he linked, a live stream of the ubiquitous Charlie Sheen, the future is going to have to wait.

Discussion: Media News International, B&C, Company Town, Moraes on TV and VatorNews

John Shaughnessy / Thomson Reuters:

THOMSON REUTERS LAUNCHES NEXT-GENERATION PROFESSIONAL NEWS OFFERINGS — Reuters powers new services for science, legal, tax and accounting pros — Thomson Reuters, the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, is launching a suite of news products designed …

Discussion: Talking Biz News, Journalism.co.uk and paidContent

Mallary Jean Tenore / Poynter:

New York Times' Kristof: To get social issues on the agenda, get them on the op-ed pages — When Nicholas Kristof travels the country giving talks, the first two questions he gets from the audience almost always come from men. — “This is true even at a women's college …

Newsweek:

My Favorite Mistake: Harvey Weinstein — Harvey Weinstein on smoking with Kate Moss—and his failed social network. — There are two things that come very easily to me: rooting for New York sports teams and making mistakes. One of my all-time classics happened when I took a plane …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, MinOnline, WWD Media Headlines, The Awl, The Wrap, Grids, Scocca, Yahoo! News, Wall Street Journal, Runnin' Scared, CJR and Guardian

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

WSJ Europe deputy editor departs — Iain Martin has quietly departed from the deputy editorship of the Wall Street Journal Europe. It follows the arrival of a new editor at the WSJE, Tracy Corrigan. — A spokeswoman confirmed that Martin had left, but did not comment further.

Discussion: Press Gazette

Paul Bond / Hollywood Reporter:

Universal First Studio to Make All Movie Clips Available Online … Hoping to earn money from every snippet of a film, Universal has licensed rights to a vast portion of its library to AnyClip, a company that chops up films digitally and makes every moment searchable.

Discussion: Techland