Mediagazer: AOL Authorizes $250 Million Stock Buyback Program After Share Price Falls Off A Cliff (Robin Wauters/TechCrunch)

1:15 PM ET, August 11, 2011

Top News:

Yinka Adegoke / Reuters:

Rupert Murdoch endorses Carey as next in line — (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch said top lieutenant Chase Carey would replace him should anything happen to the 80-year-old News Corp CEO. — The comments were the clearest sign yet that Murdoch's son James may be sidelined after a phone hacking scandal swept …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Company Town, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Future of Journalism and Reuters

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

News Corp Says It Lost $254 Million On MySpace — News Corp lost $254 million on MySpace, the company said as it reported revenue that beat analysts' expectations. — The loss pushed News Corp.'s Q4 net income down 22 percent to $683 million. — News Corp said MySpace's losses during …

Discussion: PC Magazine, MediaPost, On Media's Blog and The Wrap

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:
Rupert Murdoch Isn't Leaving News Corp., Selling His Newspapers or Making Any Other News

MarketWatch:
News Corporation Reports Fourth Quarter Income from Continuing Operations of $982 Million, $0.35 Per Share

Discussion: The Huffington Post, AllThingsD and @jbflint

Forbes.com:

Forbes Update: Our New Article Page for the Era of Social Media Is Now Live — Subscribe to Forbes Get a Free Trial Issue … There's been a lot of teeth gnashing lately about the future of the article page on the Web. Some believe it too closely mimics newspaper and magazine formats.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals, Thanks:taylorbuley

Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:

AOL Authorizes $250 Million Stock Buyback Program After Share Price Falls Off A Cliff — AOL (which, in case you didn't know, has been the owner of TechCrunch for almost a year now) has announced that its board of directors has given the green light for a stock repurchase program that will allow …

Discussion: Business Wire, Forbes, MediaPost, Associated Press, Betabeat, VatorNews and The Wrap, more at Techmeme »

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter:

Study: Links from other news sites matter more than social networks — A new study of Web referrals to online publishers shows links from other content sites are more important than those from social media. — Links from content sites (including other news publishers or aggregators) …

Discussion: MediaPost, GeekWire and The Outbrain Blog

Al Tompkins / Poynter:

Facebook delivers tiny Minnesota TV station a big roadkill story — On a typical day, KSAX-TV in Alexandria, Minnesota attracts about 10,000 page views. Recently, the station set a record, 250,000 page views in a single day and a million views in four days.

Discussion: The Huffington Post, KRWF and TVSpy

Rachel Rodriguez / CNN:

From iReporter to CNNer (and beyond) — iReporter Jordan Sarver interned with the CNN iReport team in 2010. He now works at an Atlanta TV station. — (CNN) — When CNN iReport was created five years ago, it was intended to be a vehicle for people to share their stories with the world. And it is!

Discussion: TVNewser

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Would-Be Hulu Buyers Will Have Their Checkbooks Ready Next Week — Quick update on the Hulu auction: Would-be buyers are expected to offer up their initial bids by the end of next week, according to people familiar with the company. — That will end the first step of a sales process …

Discussion: The Business Insider

Todd Spangler / Multichannel News:

Cablevision, Viacom Resolve iPad App Spat — Companies Reach Out-of-Court Settlement on Distribution of Programming to IP Devices — Cablevision Systems and Viacom announced Wednesday that they have settled their litigation over the cable operator's apps providing live TV and VOD to subscribers in their homes.

Discussion: TVWeek.com, Company Town, Softpedia News, Media & Entertainment, mediabistro.com and paidContent

Ben Popper / Betabeat:

Twitter Finally Taps The Massive TV Ad Market with Help From Trendrr — Can Twitter finally make it rain...revenue? — There are an average of 200 weather related tweets per minute in America, with that number spiking to 2 million on a day of severe weather.

Discussion: GigaOM, Lost Remote and mediabistro.com, more at Techmeme »

Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:

Disney to put its shows behind a pay wall online, too — Fox might not be the only broadcaster to begin restricting access to its shows online and requiring next-day viewers to be pay TV subscribers. Disney is also working out deals with distributors that would allow viewers to watch shows sooner if they log on with a cable ID.

Discussion: Electronista

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

How Media Companies Play With Steve Jobs's New Rules: Give In, Go Around or Compromise — Apple's new subscription rules for its iTunes app store have been in effect for less than two months. But that's long enough for us to get a good idea of how media companies are responding.

Discussion: Forbes, TeleRead, GigaOM, Future of Journalism and MediaFile

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Amazon shows media companies the future of the web

Discussion: PSFK, Future of Journalism, ZDNet, CNET News, Forbes, SiliconFilter, GeekWire, GalleyCat and NetNewsCheck Latest, Thanks:ohowell

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Rebekah Brooks severs News International links - but university honour remains — For the record... Rebekah Brooks's formal resignations from four more Wapping-based companies have been registered by Companies House (see previous postings here and here and here and here).

Discussion: Adweek

Lucia Moses / Adweek:

Condé Nast Teams Up With Fremantle of ‘Idol’ Fame — What is the rarified Condé Nast doing slumming with FremantleMedia, the company behind reality TV phenomenon American Idol? It's all about the bottom line: The luxury publisher has been keen to wring new revenue out of its brands …

Patrick / Gametime IP:

Patent Owner With Ties To Intellectual Ventures Sues 100+ Media Companies — Although this news is fairly old at this point, the Intellectual Ventures connection to Mission Abstract Data's lawsuit against 116 media companies seems to have gone relatively unreported until last week.