Mediagazer: Mark Thompson faces MPs over BBC's £100m IT debacle

1:25 PM ET, February 3, 2014

Top News:

Super Bowl Underscores the Big Business of Must-See, Live TV — It is a fact of modern life that the mass has gone out of media, with television ratings reflecting that each of us is building our own little campfires on our phones, tablets and big screens at a time and place of our choosing.

Discussion: Kirk LaPointe's …, Reuters, @brianstelter and @carr2n

Dominic Patten / Deadline.com:
Super Bowl Ratings Down Double Digits From 2013; Still In Top 5 Ever Despite Blowout

Discussion: @carlquintanilla, @cschweitz and TVLine

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Releasing Ads Early Pays Off For Super Bowl Advertisers, According To Visible Measures

Reuters:

Ex-BBC chief Mark Thompson apologises for failed $170 mln IT project — U.S. media executive Mark Thompson apologised on Monday to the British public and parliamentarians for the failure of a 100 million pound ($170 million) digital project during his years of running the BBC.

Guardian:

Mark Thompson faces MPs over BBC's £100m IT debacle - live coverage — Full coverage as the former director general is grilled by a Commons committee over the failed Digital Media Initiative — Sort by: — BBC: we got DMI wrong, we're learning the lessons

Discussion: Politico, sourcingfocus.com and Press Association

Benjamin Wallace / New York Magazine:

Ezra Klein, soon VP at Vox Media, looks to build his new publication with fewer constraints — Here, Let Ezra Explain — What is D.C.'s most famous young policy wonk doing leaving the Washington Post? Trying to start a news organization he thinks could one day eclipse it.

Felix Salmon:

Viral math — This chart, from Newswhip via Derek Thompson, has been doing the rounds, and causing a bit of debate: — The question: What on earth is Upworthy doing so right? How is it that Upworthy's articles shared a good order of magnitude more often than anybody else's?

Discussion: Re/code, @arctictony, @lukelewis, @ryanchittum, @jayrosen_nyu, @trippenbach, @dennismortensen, @arctictony, @felixsalmon, @james_gross, @emilybell, @jeffjarvis and @mathewi

Jon Evans / TechCrunch:
Charting average shares per article in 2013: new media rises and falls faster than old media

Discussion: @britt_ehrhardt

Press Association:

Video of Al-Jazeera journalists arrested in Egypt released — A private Egyptian TV channel has aired video of the arrest in late December of two Al-Jazeera journalists at a Nile-side Cairo hotel. — The nearly 22-minute clip, likely made with a mobile phone, was broadcast late on Sunday on Al-Tahrir television.

Discussion: Associated Press, WorldViews and GlobalPost

Al Jazeera English:
Egypt court acquits Al Jazeera cameraman

Discussion: presstv.ir and Agence France Presse

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch to be inducted into US television academy hall of fame — Next month, lest it has passed under your radar since the official announcement in December, Rupert Murdoch will be inducted into the US television academy hall of fame. — He is one of six people selected by the academy …

Jeff Baumgartner / Multichannel News:

Aereo Sets San Antonio Launch Date — Broadband TV/Cloud DVR Combo To Debut On February 19 — Aereo may be tapped out of capacity in New York City, but it's gearing up to tap in to the San Antonio market. — Aereo announced Monday that it will launch its mix of broadband TV …

Discussion: CNET, Radio & Television …, TVNewsCheck.com, Home Media Magazine, Consumerist, World Internet TV, WorldScreen.com and Light Reading

Rem Rieder / USA Today:

BuzzFeed's investigative unit coming together — BuzzFeed's investigative reporting unit is coming together. — The site best known for its offbeat lists and dead-on sense of the digitally viral hired Mark Schoofs away from the highly regarded investigative site ProPublica to launch its unit.

Discussion: @susarm, @peretti, @gregorydjohnsen, @jwherrman and @mattaikins

Leslie Kaufman / New York Times:

YouTube stars warn of thinning revenue as video uploads and production costs outpace ad rates — Chasing Their Star, on YouTube — It is 3 p.m., and outside another brilliant Los Angeles afternoon beckons. But Olga Kay has drawn her blinds, leaving her living room in a semidarkened haze.

Discussion: BGR, mUmBRELLA and @gerrymcgovern

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

James Holmes' defense team will ask Supreme Court to intervene in Jana Winter case — Lawyers for accused Aurora, Colo., theater shooter James Holmes will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to compel Fox News reporter Jana Winter to reveal a source, the Associated Press reports.

Discussion: Aurora Sentinel

Press Gazette:

Sun editor David Dinsmore announces shake-up of senior team with focus on digital — Sun editor David Dinsmore has announced a shake-up of his senior editor to strengthen the paper's digital offering. — In a note to staff he said: “As you have seen from the recent press …