Mediagazer: TV blackout wars in a quiet period (Brian Stelter/CNNMoney)

7:45 PM ET, December 27, 2013

Top News:

Robert Channick / Chicago Tribune:

Tribune closes $2.7B Local TV acquisition … Tribune Co. has closed on its $2.73 billion acquisition of Local TV, making it one of the country's largest television station owners, the company announced Friday. — The deal, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission last week …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and TVSpy

Tribune Company:
Tribune Closes Acquisition of Local TV Holdings

Discussion: St. Louis Post-Dispatch and FOX6Now.com

RT:

Greenwald: US and British media are servants of security apparatus — Journalist Glenn Greenwald condemned the mainstream media during an address at a German computer conference on Friday and accused his colleagues of failing to challenge erroneous remarks routinely made by government officials around the globe.

Discussion: Mediaite and The Register

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Game of Thrones tops 2013 BitTorrent downloads as piracy debate continues within TV networks — ‘Game of Thrones’ Most Pirated TV-Show of 2013 — Game of Thrones has the honor of becoming the most downloaded TV-show for the second year in a row. — With 5.9 million downloads via BitTorrent …

Discussion: NYT Bits, VatorNews, Comicbook.com, WebProNews, Quartz, Hollywood Reporter, Business Insider, Softpedia News, @sims, TVLine, Variety, BGR, BetaNews, UPROXX, Rolling Stone, The Wrap, The Verge, PopWatch, TIME and ArtsBeat

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Rdio Shuts Down Video-Streaming Site Vdio, Offers Amazon Credits As Reimbursement For Purchases — It's only been six months since Rdio launched its video-streaming platform Vdio to the world, but it appears that the company has already decided to give up on that experiment.

Discussion: Vdio Help Center, Variety, Home Media Magazine, Gigaom, The Next Web, Pocket-lint, The Verge, AllThingsD and App Advice

Barbara Ortutay / Associated Press:

Bye bye, bile? Websites try to nix nasty comments — NEW YORK (AP) — Mix blatant bigotry with poor spelling. Add a dash of ALL CAPS. Top it off with a violent threat. And there you have it: A recipe for the worst of online comments, scourge of the Internet. — Blame anonymity, blame politicians, blame human nature.

Discussion: bizjournals and Mediaite

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

Upcoming DJX news offering and integration with WSJ newsroom make 2014 critical for Dow Jones — Dow Jones' ‘make or break’ 2014 — Dow Jones is gearing up for a potentially pivotal 2014. — The 131-year-old financial information and media company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal …

Discussion: Variety

Andy / TorrentFreak:

Major Recording Labels Prepare to Sue Russia's Facebook — For several years, vKontakte, Russia's social networking giant, has been marked as a piracy enabler by rightsholders and even the U.S. Government. — In several Special 301 Reports published by the United States Trade Representative …

Discussion: The Switch, Softpedia News, TechCrunch and The Moscow Times

Brian Stelter / CNNMoney:

TV blackout wars in a quiet period — The TV industry has a holiday tradition straight out of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas:” End of year feuds that lead to channel blackouts for viewers. — But this year, everybody is playing nice. (It's almost as if the hearts of television executives have collectively grown three sizes.)

Steve Eder / New York Times:

ESPN received $260M in tax breaks and credits over 12 years to remain in Connecticut — For ESPN, Millions to Remain in Connecticut — BRISTOL, Conn. — The governor of Connecticut arrived at ESPN's expansive campus here to celebrate the groundbreaking of the sports media giant's 19th building …

Andy Carvin / Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth:

Andy Carvin, noted Twitter curator and NPR's senior social media strategist, says farewell — This...Was NPR. — It's my last day at NPR. — I can't believe how seven years have gone by so quickly. It feels like it was just yesterday that I first began chatting with then-VP …

Discussion: @acarvin, Andy Carvin's Waste …, @acarvin, @acarvin, @nprnews and @ninaism

Adi Robertson / The Verge:

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson aren't protected by copyright, US court rules — Sherlock Holmes' status as a copyrighted character is easily as complicated as any of the cases he's had to solve. Created over 125 years ago, Holmes would remain a fixture in author Arthur Conan Doyle's work until the late 1920s.

Discussion: ArtsBeat, Guardian and Comicbook.com

The Stream:

New report exposes digital front of Syria's civil war … Washington D.C. — Adults and children alike flock to the U.S. Botanical Garden in Washington, DC to see the model train display — A growing number of Americans don't identify with a religion. Some see Christmas as a cultural, not religious, holiday.

Discussion: @headhntr and @azmatzahra