Mediagazer: Variety Makes a Necessary Change - Here Are the Risks (Sharon Waxman/The Wrap)

2:20 PM ET, February 26, 2013

Top News:

Sharon Waxman / The Wrap:

Variety Makes a Necessary Change - Here Are the Risks — Jay Penske has finally unveiled a strategy for his vision of Variety, a necessary move but one fraught with financial risk. — On Tuesday, with the Klieg lights barely cooled from the Oscar ceremony, the trade's new owner (below …

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

Variety will kill its daily print edition and online paywall, keep weekly magazine — Three editors-in-chief will head coverage of movies, television, and digital content in new web-first approach — The iconic entertainment publication Variety will discontinue its daily printed edition on March 18th.

Discussion: Variety, LA Observed, Deadline.com, Mediaite, Media Decoder, The Wrap, Mashable!, @edgecliffe, FishbowlLA, @edmundlee, @lfung and @variety_dscohen

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Maybe You'll Get the Pay TV You Want, After All: Cablevision Sues Viacom to Break Up the Bundle — Pay TV has a simple model: If you want to watch one channel, you have to pay for dozens — or hundreds — of others, whether you watch them or not. That model drives lots of consumers nuts, but it has looked very, very hard to dislodge.

Discussion: Multichannel News, Cablevision, @reuters_biz, paidContent, Media Decoder, TechCrunch, AdAge, Broadcasting & Cable, Los Angeles Times, The Next Web and @edmundlee

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

For the First Time Since Napster, Music Sales Are Growing — The last time music was a growth business was 1999 — back when people bought millions of Britney Spears CDs, and GeoCities was the third-most popular Web property in the world. You know what's happened since then.

Discussion: IFPI, New York Times, The Wrap, Financial Times, The Independent, Techdirt, Guardian, Telegraph, Globe and Mail, Bloomberg, Sky News, Reuters, Music Industry Blog, standard.co.uk, Music Week and Music Ally

Alex Knapp / Forbes:
Study Finds That Streaming And Spyware Are Killing Music Piracy

Discussion: CNET, Home Media Magazine and The Next Web

Jeff John Roberts / paidContent:

New York Times backs AP in lawsuit against news collector Meltwater — The New York Times is supporting the Associated Press in a controversial copyright case against Meltwater, a service that monitors the news and reproduces headlines and story summaries for its clients.

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest

Dylan Byers / Politico:

ABC News announces Susan Saulny hire — ABC News has announced the hire of New York Times reporter Susan Saulny as a correspondent. The news comes one day after ABC News announced the hire of Times national political correspondent Jeff Zeleny. — In a memo to staff …

Discussion: Media Decoder, mediabistro.com and New York Magazine

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

TV stations strong, newspapers weak in Scripps' 2012 results — Political advertising revenue at Scripps' television stations in the fourth quarter of 2012 was “higher than the full-year political total reported in any previous year,” the company said in an earnings report Tuesday.

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Broadcasting & Cable and Thomson IR

Dylan Byers / Politico:

N.Y. Times ups investment in conferences — The New York Times is increasing its investment in the events and conferences business, according to an internal memo sent to POLITICO. — The Times has named former Times Magazine editor Gerry Marzorati as general manager and editorial director of the conference business.

Discussion: Capital New York, The New York Times Company and New York Times

Reuters:

Tribune Co hires bankers to sell newspapers: source — (Reuters) - Tribune Co has hired investment bankers to sell off its newspaper unit, which includes The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, according to a person familiar with the situation. — The company has hired Evercore …

Discussion: Deadline.com, CNBC, DealBook and Wall Street Journal

Dashiell Bennett / The Atlantic Wire:

Pro-Assad Hackers Take Over AFP's Twitter with Syrian Propaganda Photos — After a couple of high-profile corporate hacks last week, a much nastier Twitter sabotage took place today on behalf of supporters of Syria's Bashar Al-Assad. Around noon Eastern time, the photographs-only account …

Discussion: The Verge, Agence France Presse and The Next Web

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

LinkedIn Is Turning Itself Into A Very Valuable Media Company — LinkedIn is successfully turning itself into a media company, notes Scott Devitt at Morgan Stanley. — This is fairly obvious to anyone who has been paying close attention, but it's worth mentioning again.

Steve O'Hear / TechCrunch:

Old Media, Meet New: European Publisher Axel Springer Acquires Second Screen App TunedIn — TunedIn Media, the German company behind the second screen “social TV' app TunedIn, has been acquired by European publishing giant Axel Springer. The amount isn't being disclosed …

Andrew Sullivan / The Dish:

Now: The Long Nag — First some great news. Tomorrow will be three full weeks since the meter went into effect on the Dish. Too soon for any serious assessment, but soon enough for some analysis - and for the transparency we promised you. In February, through the meter, we have brought in $93,000 or so in subscriptions.

Discussion: Mashable!, @hblodget, @hamishmckenzie, @sfiegerman, @mathewi and @mathewi