Mediagazer: Washington Consumer Groups Question Comcast's Reported Bid for Time Warner Cable (The Wrap)

7:25 PM ET, November 22, 2013

Top News:

Katie Couric Negotiating ABC News Exit (Exclusive) — Couric is set to exit her role ABC News special correspondent early as she nears a deal for an interview show on Yahoo. — Less than three years after joining ABC in a lucrative and wide-ranging deal that included a daytime talk show …

Discussion: The Wrap, TVNewser, NY Daily News, New York Times, Capital New York, Broadcasting & Cable, Betabeat, Mediaite, Business Insider, Variety, CNET, @poniewozik, @brianstelter, The Verge, New York Magazine and The Huffington Post

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Comcast, Charter Said to Weigh Joint Bid for Time Warner Cable — Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications Inc. have discussed a joint bid for Time Warner Cable Inc. to divide its assets between them, people with knowledge of the matter said. — The talks between Comcast and Charter were preliminary …

Discussion: Deadline.com, Wall Street Journal, Businessweek, MoneyBeat, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and @jaredbkeller

The Wrap:

Washington Consumer Groups Question Comcast's Reported Bid for Time Warner Cable — A report that Comcast is considering bidding for Time Warner Cable drew immediate concerns from consumer groups in Washington, who worry that a combined cable behemoth could raise prices to consumers …

Discussion: Forbes and VentureBeat

Gautham Nagesh / Law Blog:
D.C. Ruling Could Make Comcast-Time Warner Deal Easier

Discussion: The Wrap, Thanks:@gnagesh

Chris Welch / The Verge:
Comcast reportedly seeking advice on potential Time Warner Cable merger

Discussion: AllThingsD, Gigaom, Capital New York, Forbes, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, @backlon, Reuters, CNBC and AllThingsD

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:
Time Warner Cable Has Reached Out to Comcast to Discuss Deal

Discussion: CNBC, bizjournals, @maccable and @jbflint

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at AJ+, Al Jazeera's upcoming online news network — Across from San Francisco's AT&T Park stadium, a small group of news junkies is working on building a different kind of startup. — The first thing you notice when entering their building …

Discussion: Politico

Jacob Hoffman-Andrews / Twitter Engineering Blog:

Twitter enables forward secrecy to avoid snooping, joining Google, Mozilla, and Facebook — Forward Secrecy at Twitter — As part of our continuing effort to keep our users' information as secure as possible, we're happy to announce that we recently enabled forward secrecy for traffic on twitter.com …

Discussion: NYT Bits, Forbes, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, ZDNet, Social News Daily, Techdirt, Mother Jones, The Verge and The Next Web

Chris Ariens / TVNewser:

NBC Shutting Down NBCLatino.com — NBC is shutting down NBCLatino.com with coverage moving to NBCNews.com when that site relaunches next year, TVNewser has learned. — A source tells us three positions will be eliminated, but those staffers may be offered positions in other parts of NBC.

Discussion: 10,000 Words

GlobalPost:

Haiti photographer wins $1.22mn in AFP copyright case — A US jury on Friday awarded a Haitian photographer $1.22 million in damages after ruling that Agence France-Presse (AFP) and its US partner Getty Images wilfully infringed his copyright in 2010. — The seven-member jury took five hours …

Discussion: Reuters, @wxbrad and NPPA

Lindsay Comstock / Photoforward:
Jury Awards Daniel Morel Full Extent of Law; Finds AFP, Getty Willful in Copyright Violation

Discussion: Gigaom, Editorial Photographers UK, @mattwaite, @markjkings, @ajsomerset, Photoforward, @markjkings and @mjenkins

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Almost quarter of shareholders at BSkyB oppose chief's £7m pay — Agm revolt after advisory services flagged concerns but BT challenge on sport not raised at brief meeting — Almost a quarter of BSkyB's shareholders rebelled against the £7m pay package of chief executive Jeremy Darroch …

Stuart Kemp / Hollywood Reporter:
James Murdoch Re-Elected to BSkyB Board

Discussion: Guardian, Variety, Telegraph and Politico

Peter Sterne / Capital New York:

Adrian Chen to leave Gawker, pursue freelance — Gawker editor John Cook announced in a memo today that longtime staff writer Adrian Chen is leaving the site to pursue a freelance career. — “It is with a heavy heart and barely subdued rage that I must report that Gawker senior writer Adrian Chen …

Business Insider:

Here's Why Maria Bartiromo Is Leaving CNBC For FOX Business — The financial media world was stunned this week when Drudge Report broke the news that Maria Bartiromo would be leaving CNBC for FOX Business Network. — Bartiromo, affectionately known as the “Money Honey,” has been a fixture at CNBC for two decades.

Discussion: TVNewser, TVNewser, @felixsalmon, @mariabartiromo, Talking Biz News and TheBlaze.com

Rachel Bartlett / Journalism.co.uk:

Long-form publisher Matter stops charging for articles — Matter, which had adopted a micro-payments model when it launched a year ago, was bought by blogging platform Medium earlier this year — Read more — Other top stories — Also on Journalism.co.uk...

Discussion: Medium and Gigaom

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Turntable.fm Shutting Down So Company Can Focus On Turntable Live Events Platform — Today, Turntable.fm has announced that it will shut down its ‘virtual dj’ product entirely to focus on its new Turntable Live platform, which attempts to replicate the ‘being there’ experience of live performances.

Discussion: Turntable Official Blog, VentureBeat, The Next Web, Engadget and Consequence of Sound

Philly.com:

Judge reinstates fired Inquirer editor — A Philadelphia judge on Friday ordered that former Inquirer Editor William K. Marimow be reinstated immediately, overturning a personnel move that exposed deep divisions among the newspaper's owners and sparked a monthlong legal battle for control of its parent company.

Discussion: New York Times, JIMROMENESKO.COM, Poynter, @davedavieswhyy, @abeaujon, @jeffjarvis, NewsWorks, @phillyinquirer and NetNewsCheck Latest

Michael Depp / NetNewsCheck:

Behind Scripps' TV Paywall Strategy In Cincy — E.W. Scripps-owned WCPO in Cincinnati on Thursday announced that it will launch a digital subscription model around its premium content in January. The TV paywall is unprecedented and faces an uphill battle to win over consumers who align broadcast television content with being free.

Discussion: WCPO-TV, JackLail.com, Poynter and Broadcasting & Cable

Tim Peterson / AdAge:

AOL Pauses to Rethink Live Video Programming — HuffPost Live Soldiers On While AOL Live Is On Hold — AOL Live is still not live. — AOL has already made a substantial commitment to live programming on the web with HuffPost Live, but five months after AOL announced …

Discussion: MarketingVox News & Trends

Edmund Lee / Bloomberg:

Time Warner Files Plan to Spin Off Magazine Publisher Next Year — Time Warner Inc. (TWX) filed to spin off its Time Inc. division next year, turning the publisher of People, Sports Illustrated and Time into the world's largest publicly traded magazine company.

Discussion: New York Post, @chaughney and @fortunemagazine

BBC:

Tim Berners-Lee says ‘surveillance threatens web’ — Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned that the democratic nature of the net is threatened by a “growing tide of surveillance and censorship”. — The warning came as he launched his World Wide Web Foundation's annual web index report, tracking global censorship.

Discussion: TechCrunch, Guardian, Sky News, Channel 4, Financial Times, Mirror.co.uk, Malaysia Sun, Inquirer, The Register, Gizmodo, ComputerWeekly, Reuters, Telegraph, Techworld.com, Kirk LaPointe's …, Associated Press, The Drum and The Independent

Natan Edelsburg / Lost Remote:

Guided by second screen trends, REVOLT.tv rolls out interactive music site designed by Huge — Increasingly, social TV and music are mingling. Last week, we wrote about Bravo's partnership this season with Spotify, and on Tuesday, the music network REVOLT debuted the redesigned www.revolt.tv.

Discussion: PRNewser and AppNewser

Greg Bishop / New York Times:

New Territory, and New Challenges, for HBO in Macau Prizefight — MACAU — The boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Brandon Rios will start at the usual time in the United States (Saturday, around midnight Eastern), will be broadcast on HBO pay-per-view and will look, if all goes well, identical to any other major prizefight.

Patrick Goldstein / Los Angeles Magazine:

Hollywood trades and the fierce competition to be first — Pulp Friction — Time was, Hollywood had two “trades” that covered all things entertainment. Now it has has four, and the competition for news, ads, and readers is down and dirty, 24 hours a day — Remember how simple it used to be to stay informed?