Mediagazer: YouView future to be secured by £100m-plus shareholder deal (Mark Sweney/Guardian)

12:15 PM ET, March 26, 2014

Top News:

Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:

The Times to launch NYT Now at $8/month and Times Premier at $45/month on April 2 — The Times Is Expanding Its Digital Subscriptions Offerings — The New York Times announced two new subscription plans on Wednesday, including NYT Now, a lower-priced app curated for a mobile audience …

Discussion: Poynter, Journalism.co.uk, The New York Times Company, AdAge, Capital New York, Gigaom, 9to5Mac, @ddknyt, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, @felixsalmon, The Raw Story, The Next Web, @periodistas21 and App Advice

Charlie Warzel / BuzzFeed:

The New York Times Bets On Its Own Reputation With Its New Mobile App — NYT Now is sleek and ambitious. But will anybody actually buy it? — NYT Now, the New York Times' soon-to-be-released mobile app is ambitious, sleek, and, for the most part, quite useful. More importantly, though, it's a wager.

Discussion: Gigaom, TechCrunch, @cdzombak, @katherinemiller, @mattfrehner, @cwarzel, @bydanielvictor, @derekwillis and @abeaujon

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing:

NYT CEO: 'We'll continue to have a newspaper 7 days a week for many years to come' — The New York Times is launching a series of paid products beginning April 2nd, starting with a cheaper digital subscription package in the form of an app called NYT Now. — Speaking at the FT Digital …

Thanks:@rorybrown

Rick Edmonds / Poynter:

Pew finds embattled newspaper industry still pulls in more than half of all news revenue — Pew's 11th annual State of the News Media report, out this morning, offers fresh measures of news media revenue and news staffing at digital-only start-ups. Both findings are arresting for those of us …

Discussion: LinkedIn Pulse, Journalism.org, Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter, TVNewser, Mediashift, AllAccess.com, VatorNews, Wall Street Journal, @rickedmonds, @timkarr, @poynter and Poynter's News University

Amy Mitchell / Pew Research Journalism Project:

State of the News Media 2014 — Overview — In many ways, 2013 and early 2014 brought a level of energy to the news industry not seen for a long time. Even as challenges of the past several years continue and new ones emerge, the activities this year have created a new sense of optimism …

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:
State of the media: Not out of the woods by any means, but some reasons for cautious optimism

Discussion: 10,000 Words, Erik Wemple, Knight Foundation and Journalism.org, Thanks:@mathewi

Andrew Stewart / Variety:

Number of Frequent Young Moviegoers Plummets in 2013 — Bizzers assert that technology can nonetheless spur interest in films — The number of frequent moviegoers in the all-important 18-24 age group plunged an unprecedented 21% in 2013, according to MPAA annual statistics released Tuesday at Cinemacon …

Discussion: @raju and @jerryrice_ie

Pamela McClintock / Hollywood Reporter:
CinemaCon: Global Box Office Hits Record $35.9 Billion in 2013 Thanks to China

Discussion: Los Angeles Times

Wall Street Journal:
Higher prices lead to increase in US box-office sales, but number of tickets sold slips 1.5%

Discussion: @davidmwessel, @kimberlyhyatt and @todayshow

News Corp:

Lachlan Murdoch Named Non-Executive Co-Chairman of News Corp — Lachlan Murdoch has been named Non-Executive Co-Chairman of News Corp by the Board of Directors, the company announced today. — “This appointment is a sign of confidence in the growth potential of News Corp and a recognition …

Hollywood Reporter:

21st Century Fox Promotes James Murdoch to Co-COO, Names Lachlan Murdoch Non-Executive Co-Chairman — A leadership shakeup is afoot at the Murdoch empire. — 21st Century Fox on Wednesday appointed Lachlan Murders non-executive co-chairman and James Murdoch co-Chief Operating Officer.

Discussion: New York Times, The Wrap, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNNMoney.com, Deadline.com, @neilchenoweth and Wall Street Journal

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Twitter Files For Lawsuits In Turkish Courts To Challenge The Country's Access Ban — Twitter has just announced that it has formally joined the cause of those defending use of its service in Turkey, by filing petitions for lawsuits in a number of Turkish courts after working with its Turkish attorney …

Discussion: The Twitter Blog, VentureBeat and ReadWrite

Al Jazeera English:
Turkish court orders halt to Twitter ban

Discussion: Hurriyet Daily News, Reuters, TechCrunch, @anonymiss_, BBC, Associated Press, Haaretz, Engadget and @turkishiranian

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Sony is closing Crackle UK amid increased competition from Netflix and Amazon — Looks like the video services war in the U.K. just produced its first casualty: Sony is closing down the U.K. edition its Crackle video service on April 1 (hat tip to Broadband TV News).

Discussion: Compare Mobile Phones …, Digital TV Europe, Broadband TV News and Advanced Television

Alexandra Steigrad / WWD:

Scaling Capital New York's Paywall — It's been about six weeks since Capital New York started charging for access to about 80 percent of its content, which focuses on New York-centric news on City Hall, state politics and media. Called CapitalPro, the paywall was erected in February …

Discussion: @edgecliffe and @alexsteigrad

New York Post:

CNN producers busted trying to get into WTC site — Two CNN producers were arrested Tuesday for trying to sneak into the World Trade Center site to test its security — after The Post reported that a teen made it all the way to the spire of the world's top terror target.

Discussion: New York Times, Poynter, TVNewser, CBS New York, Nation, Newsy, Reuters, @jodyavirgan, @hollywoodswine, @heytammybruce, NY Daily News, Gawker, Mediaite and New York Magazine

Johana Bhuiyan / Capital New York:

Aereo C.E.O. says it's a Supreme Court win or bust — If the Supreme Court passes a decision in favor of television broadcasters in their case against broadcast-to-stream provider Aereo, the company doesn't have a backup plan, C.E.O. Chet Kanojia told Bloomberg TV's Jon Erlichman.

Discussion: FierceCable, Bloomberg, Telecompaper and TheHill

Andrew Wallenstein / Variety:

Oculus Rift Just Put Facebook in the Movie Business — Commentary: Virtual reality headsets pose (very) long-term threat to the theatrical business — Just as the movie industry gathered this week at CinemaCon to discuss its future, Facebook came along and changed it without even bothering to show up in Las Vegas.

Discussion: Oculus VR, New York Times, Forbes, The Verge, TIME, NetNewsCheck Latest, Forbes, The New Yorker Blog, Hollywood Reporter, Bloomberg, Felix Salmon, @besvinick and The Next Web

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:

Google's new online tools will keep voters in India and Indonesia informed ahead of upcoming polls — Google has launched a series of tools as it seeks to make itself useful to 1 billion Indian and Indonesian voters, who are heading to the polls next month.

Discussion: Google Asia Pacific Blog, New York Times, NDTV Gadgets and Rapid TV News

Abigail Edge / Journalism.co.uk:

Buzzfeed: ‘Emotional quotient matters more than IQ’ on social — In a keynote at today's Rethink Media conference in Birmingham, BuzzFeed's Jonathan Perelman revealed the two main reasons he believes people want to share content — Social sharing has put the “power” into the hands of readers …

Discussion: @mikeisaac and Birmingham Eastside

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

NewsCred Unveils Content Marketing Partnerships With Getty Images, Visual.ly, Others — Content marketing startup NewsCred isn't just connecting marketers with freelancers anymore — through a new partnership program, it allows them to commission work from organizations like Getty Images and Visual.ly.

Federico Guerrini / ZDNet:

Italy's artists line up to support the piracy tax: How much should you pay for the right to copy? — Summary: Italy's artists and creatives are hoping to have the levy charged on all blank storage increased, while consumers groups and hardware companies are opposed to what they see as an unfair tax.

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Google Takedown Notices Surge 711,887 Percent in Four Years — Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1998, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) aimed to ready copyright law for the digital age. — The law heightened punishment for copyright infringement over the Internet and criminalized circumvention of DRM.

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

YouView future to be secured by £100m-plus shareholder deal — Organisations, including the BBC, BT and TalkTalk, agree on funding with all seven backers retaining equal share — YouView's backers are set to sign a £100m-plus deal to secure the future of the internet-based TV service …

Discussion: Digital TV Europe, seenit.co.uk and Advanced Television

Steve Gray / INMA:

Media disruption: bad for us, wonderful for humanity — The smartphone is the most radical revolutionary technology ever devised, because it is enabling huge segments of humanity to go from near-zero access to near-full access to information. That temporarily spells trouble for the news industry …

Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Cuts Back on Streaming Scripps, Discovery Shows — Amazon.com Inc., which has furiously added streaming video content to compete with Netflix Inc., is getting more choosy. — The Seattle-based company in the past month dropped programming supplied by Food Network-parent Scripps …