Mediagazer: Cable TV's Shift to Darker Dramas Proves Lucrative (David Carr/New York Times)

7:50 PM ET, April 29, 2013

Top News:

Barry Diller regrets buying Newsweek — IAC/InterActiveCorp chairman Barry Diller tells Bloomberg Television: “I wish I had not bought Newsweek. It was a mistake.” … * Diller calls Newsweek purchase “a fool's errand” (businessweek.com) — More from Bloomberg Television's transcript of the Diller interview after the jump.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, FishbowlNY, Hollywood Reporter, Washington Times, Bloomberg, Bloomberg and The Verge

Joe Flint / Los Angeles Times: Barry Diller says broadcasters are bluffing about going cable

Andrew Orlowski / The Register:

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now — Everyone = Silicon Valley [ad platforms] tech companies — Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, Instagram or Flickr? — If so, you'll probably want to read this, because the rules on who can exploit your work have now changed radically, overnight.

Discussion: BBC and Mashable

Alex Hern / New Statesman:

“Instagram act” under fire for treatment of copyrighted works — Is the Government handing your photos to media giants? — Instagram's website. — The Government's Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, which became law last week with the end of the 2012/2013 parliamentary session …

Sam Biddle / Valleywag:

That Horrible Tumblr Memo Was Actually a Fired Editor's Secret Revenge — Tumblr founder David Karp's abrupt farewell to his Storyboard team earlier this month was so disingenuous, so thick with noxious doublespeak, that it hardly seemed real. That's because it wasn't …

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

Twitter Hires CBC's Kirstine Stewart As Managing Director (And First Team Member) For Twitter Canada — Canadian broadcasting executive Kirstine Stewart has joined Twitter as managing director for Twitter Canada. — The announcement was just tweeted by Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue.

Discussion: AllThingsD, Macleans.ca and canada.com

David Carr / New York Times:

Cable TV's Shift to Darker Dramas Proves Lucrative — We used to turn on the television to see people who were happier, funnier, prettier versions of ourselves — people like Mary Tyler Moore, or Ashton Kutcher. But at the turn of the century, something fundamental changed and we began to see scarier …

Discussion: Prof Chris Daly's Blog

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Twitter Warns Journalists: “We Believe That These Attacks Will Continue” — “Please help us keep your accounts secure,” the urgent memo says. — In a memo sent to news organizations, Twitter warns that it expects high profile account hijackings — like the one that took down the AP's Twitter account last week — to continue.

Discussion: The Verge

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

ESPN: The Magazine Puts a Print Spin on Sponsored Content — Branded content has gotten plenty of attention as it's taken off online, where the division between editorial and advertising real estate can be fuzzier (see: Forbes, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Gawker), but publishers have shied away from using similar strategies in print.

Discussion: FishbowlNY and eMedia Vitals

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

New Der Spiegel Editor Will Also Oversee Web Business — SERRAVAL, FRANCE — The German news magazine Der Spiegel on Monday appointed a new editor, naming Wolfgang Büchner, the top editor at the newswire Deutsche Presse-Agentur, to a position that will for the first time include leadership of its Web site.

Chris Welch / The Verge:

Microsoft's latest Office 365 ad campaign turns Forbes magazine into a Wi-Fi hotspot — One major benefit of cloud storage is that you're able to access your data and documents from just about anywhere. And with its latest print ad campaign for Office 365, Microsoft is going to extremes to illustrate that point.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Knight, Gates donate $3.25M to project aimed at media metrics — The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are aiming some serious scratch at a problem Meena Thiruvengadam wrote about on Poynter.org recently. — “Despite advances in big data …

Discussion: New York Times, 10,000 Words, Knight Foundation and Knight Foundation

Jeffrey Rosen / New Republic:

Free Speech on the Internet: Silicon Valley is Making the Rules — A year ago this month, Stanford Law School hosted a little-noticed meeting that may help decide the future of free speech online. It took place in the faculty lounge, where participants were sustained in their deliberations by bagels and fruit platters.