Mediagazer: AMC is succeeding by breaking the rules of legacy television (Zachary M. Seward/Quartz)

3:30 AM ET, August 15, 2013

Top News:

Elizabeth Spiers / Flavorwire:

How Not to Launch a Site for Women: An Open Letter to Bustle.com Founder, Bryan Goldberg — Yesterday BleacherReport.com founder Bryan Goldberg announced that he had received $6.5 million in funding for a new women's site called Bustle.com from a variety of investors including Social+Capital Partnership …

Tim Kenneally / The Wrap:

Time Warner Cable Slapped With Class Action Suit Over CBS Blackout — Three Southern California residents demand restitution over retransmission standoff — The stakes in the standoff between CBS and Time Warner Cable have just been upped once again — and this time it's angry viewers who are doing the upping.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Variety, Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.com

Sara Morrison / The Wrap:

Grim Day for Journalists: 3 Killed in Egypt, 1 Missing in Syria 365 Days Now — Three journalists were killed in Egypt on Wednesday as violence between ousted president Mohamed Morsi's supporters and police and military escalated. The deaths marked two grim milestones in journalistic freedom …

Discussion: Associated Press, New York Times, RT and TVNewser

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:
Committee To Protect Journalists Marks Grim Milestone Of 1,000 Killed

Discussion: Gulf News, Committee to Protect …, National Updates and Telegraph

Alex Weprin / TVNewser:

CNN Plans ‘Complete Overhaul’ Of Digital Operation For Fall — CNN is planning its most significant changes to CNN.com and the CNN digital platforms in more than a decade for the Fall. The channel is preparing to launch a redesigned site that not only looks different to users …

Discussion: Mashable, Variety, Lost Remote, NewscastStudio and AdAge

Dan Gillmor / Guardian:

What we can all learn from the New York Times website outage — The more we rely on digital information, the more vulnerable we are. Everyone needs a Plan B, independent of third-party hosts — Several hours after the New York Times website and mobile app went offline on Wednesday morning …

Discussion: USA Today, NPR, New York Times, @dangillmor, @mattseaton, Bloomberg and The Hairpin

Eric Celeste / FrontBurner:

Dallas Morning News Will Get Rid of Its Paywall and Debut New Premium Site in September — I asked some head honchos today about what newsroom sources have been telling me for weeks: that the DMN is switching to a “premium” site for subscribers and will do away with its paywall in September.

Discussion: GigaOM

Joan E. Solsman / CNET:

Aereo CEO: Service will turn a profit before turning in 1M subscribers — The upstart online TV service will have a “fabulous” business at 1 million users and an “extremely fabulous” one at 5 million, but registrations need only be in the hundreds of thousands for it to be profitable, its CEO says.

Discussion: The Verge

Zachary M. Seward / Quartz:

AMC is succeeding by breaking the rules of legacy television — It's good to be AMC Networks right now. — The season premiere of AMC's Breaking Bad drew 5.9 million viewers in the United States on Sunday night, double the figure for its premiere a year ago.

Discussion: Guardian and TIME

Kira Witkin / WAN-IFRA:

Publishers launch sponsored content factories, but ethics are unclear — A number of news organizations, including The Huffington Post and Wired, have recently launched in-house creative agencies to amp up lucrative sponsored content offerings. But the ethics in this new territory are unclear …

Discussion: @liquidstateteam and Kirk LaPointe's …

Tony Maglio / The Wrap:

Fox Sports 1 Finalizing DirecTV and Dish Network Deals - Time Warner Cable Talks Ongoing (Updated) — Want to watch NASCAR and UFC this weekend? You might want to call your cable provider t's not just you, CBS. Fox Sports 1, formerly Speed network, which is set to launch on Saturday …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Apple ordered to prepare for May 2014 trial on e-book antitrust damages — An order issued on Tuesday by U.S District Court Judge Denise Cote, who is presiding over the Justice Department's antitrust case against Apple's e-book pricing policies, notes all parties must by ready for a damages trial tentatively scheduled for May 2014.

Discussion: Reuters

Reuters:

Textbook rental company Chegg files for IPO of up to $150 mln — Textbook rental company Chegg Inc filed with U.S. regulators on Thursday to raise up to $150 million in an initial public offering. — The Santa Clara, California-based company provides homework help, textbooks, eTextbooks …