Mediagazer: DDS and Mediabank merge to create single agency system (Mark Banham/Media Week)

4:00 PM ET, September 26, 2011

Top News:

Roger's Reality Show — First, Ailes dialed back the Tea Party talk. Now he's turning the GOP race into a political X-Factor—and steering the election agenda one more time. — It was part political spectacle, part American Idol, part YouTube extravaganza, a pure Roger Ailes production …

Discussion: Media Matters for America, The Huffington Post, Gawker, Business Insider, New York Magazine, Mediaite, TVNewser, The Huffington Post, The Corsair, Washington Monthly and Inside Cable News

Steve Myers / Poynter:
Howard Kurtz: Fox News is ‘edging back toward the mainstream’

Discussion: Media Matters for America and New York Magazine

Journalism.org:

HOW PEOPLE LEARN ABOUT THEIR LOCAL COMMUNITY — Contrary to much of the conventional understanding of how people learn about their communities, Americans turn to a wide range of platforms to get local news and information, and where they turn varies considerably depending and the subject matter …

Discussion: Center for Sustainable …, paidContent, Poynter, Free Press, O'Reilly Radar, @niemanlab, MediaPost, Media News and On Media's Blog, more at Techmeme »

Julie Moos / Poynter:

More Americans now follow local, national news closely; teens, adults both rely most on TV for news — Buried in the latest Pew research on where Americans turn for local news, there's this important trend: 72 percent of respondents — nearly three-quarters — say they follow local news closely …

Brian Stelter / New York Times: Pew Media Study Shows Reliance on Many Outlets

Jenna Wortham / Bits:

Tumblr Lands $85 Million in Funding — Over the past few years, Tumblr, a microblogging service, has steadily built a community of fans and users who like the site's combination of social networking features and simple blogging tools that lets them quickly post photographs, videos, songs, links and bits of text.

Discussion: Reuters, John's Tumblr, MediaPost, Betabeat, The Awl, Adweek, Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD, CNET News, VentureBeat, GigaOM, Business Insider, VatorNews, TechCrunch, TechCrunch and naming blogs is easy, more at Techmeme »

New York Times:

Netflix Secures Streaming Deal With DreamWorks — LOS ANGELES — DreamWorks Animation, the company behind successful movie franchises like “Madagascar” and “Shrek,” said it had completed a deal to pump its films and television specials through Netflix, replacing a less lucrative pact with HBO.

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Most - But Not All - Big Magazine Publishers Sign On For Amazon's Tablet — In 2010, magazine publishers got giddy about the prospects of selling their stuff on the iPad. This year's version of the story: Lots of enthusiasm, tempered with a little bit of skepticism, over Amazon's new tablet.

Discussion: GigaOM

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Ahead of Tablet Launch, Amazon Adds Fox Shows to Streaming Catalog — Amazon is adding more titles to its streaming video library, this time via a deal with Fox: In a note posted on his site, CEO Jeff Bezos announced that he's now offering movies and shows like “24,” “Arrested Development” and “The X-Files.”

Discussion: MediaPost, Lost Remote, MediaPost, TechCrunch, Forbes, Amazon.com, paidContent, Multichannel, Broadcasting & Cable, Hollywood Reporter, GigaOM, Gizmodo, Company Town, mediabistro.com and Home Media Magazine, more at Techmeme »

Michael Donohoe:

The Washington Post Social Reader app unnerves me. The act of “Reading” is now itself an action. You don't click any “read this” button. It may be benign to some but there are potential pitfalls on the privacy front. — What if your friends saw a steady stream of articles that you were reading?

Discussion: @harrisj

Jeff Sonderman / Poynter: With promise of audience growth, Facebook pulls news organizations within its walls

Jessica E. Vascellaro / Wall Street Journal:

YouTube Prepares to Launch Scheduled Channels — Will consumers put down the remote and tune into YouTube? — The Google-owned site is getting closer to finding out. — The video giant is finalizing contracts for its first of more than a dozen “channels” featuring regularly scheduled content …

Discussion: Electronista, MarketingVox News & Trends, The Wall Blog and Gawker, more at Techmeme »

Ben Fritz / Los Angeles Times:

Hollywood downloads a post-DVD future — The movie studio business model is poised for its biggest shift in years as Hollywood turns to Internet delivery as the only way to boost home entertainment revenues. — Rocket Video, a mecca for L.A. cinephiles, is closing after more than 30 years.

Discussion: 24 Frames and Medacity

Adrianne Jeffries / Betabeat:

Seamless, Fresh Out of Corporate Fetters, Buys MenuPages for $15 M. as GrubHub Comes Nipping — New York City-based online food ordering service Seamless, born SeamlessWeb during the dotcom boom in 1999, has purchased Menupages from New York magazine publisher New York Media for $15 million …

Discussion: Street Fight, TechCrunch, FishbowlNY, Bits, The Next Web, Gizmodo, AllThingsD and Business Insider, Thanks:nitashatiku

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Hearst and HGTV Enter a New Magazine in a Murky Market — With the economy sputtering, throw pillows and wicker baskets may not be at the top of many Americans' shopping lists. Nor perhaps is a glossy magazine about where to buy them and how to make them pop against your freshly painted pale avocado walls.

Discussion: Adweek, MediaPost, FishbowlNY, MarketWatch and Folio