Mediagazer: Maker Studios was losing $2-3M per month leading up to Disney sale (Tom Dotan/The Information)

6:45 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 …

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

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing:
NYT CEO: 'We'll continue to have a newspaper 7 days a week for many years to come'

Discussion: @murdochdavis, Thanks:@rorybrown

Alex Sherman / Bloomberg:

Dish's Ergen Said to Approach DirecTV CEO White About Merger — Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charlie Ergen recently contacted DirecTV Chief Executive Officer Mike White to discuss a merger of the two satellite television companies, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Broadcasting & Cable, The Verge, @pkafka, @sdkstl, Business Insider and CNNMoney.com

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 …

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 …

Peter Lauria / BuzzFeed:

Order Is Restored To The House Of Murdoch — Lachan, Rupert, and James Murdoch (from left to right) — The house of Murdoch is back in order. — For the small price of dividing his media empire into two separate companies — one consisting of its high-growth cable networks …

Discussion: Capital New York, @anildash, @mlcalderone, @peterlauria3 and Business Insider Australia

News Corp:
Lachlan Murdoch Named Non-Executive Co-Chairman of News Corp

Hollywood Reporter:
21st Century Fox Promotes James Murdoch to Co-COO, Names Lachlan Murdoch Non-Executive Co-Chairman

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

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

Willow Bay to lead journalism school at USC Annenberg — Annenberg school for Communications and Journalism — Willow Bay will be the new director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the school announced in a press release Wednesday.

Discussion: USC Annenberg School …, LA Observed, Deadline.com, Bloomberg, Reuters, @jeffjarvis, Variety, Los Angeles Times and @markkatches

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: @jerryrice_ie, @jbenton, @raju, @ainaabiodun and @gointothestory

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

Discussion: @davidmwessel, @todayshow and @kimberlyhyatt

César Puerta / The Twitter Blog:

Twitter rolls out photo tagging, ability to share up to four photos in a tweet — Photos just got more social — We're rolling out two new mobile features that make photos on Twitter more social. One is photo tagging, which lets you tag the people in your photo; the other is the ability to include up to four photos in a Tweet.

Discussion: Gigaom, TechCrunch, Poynter, The Next Web, SocialTimes, SlashGear, ReadWrite, Phandroid, The Verge, @dannysullivan, @katie_roof, 9to5Mac, Pocket-lint and MacStories

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Why Movie Streaming Services Are Unsatisfying — and Will Stay So — A team of web designers recently released an astonishingly innovative app for streaming movies online. The program, Popcorn Time, worked a bit like Netflix, except it had one unusual, killer feature. It was full of movies you'd want to watch.

Wall Street Journal:
Amazon Cuts Back on Streaming Scripps, Discovery Shows

Discussion: Variety, @shaliniwsj and @wsjd

Capital New York:

Colin Myler named president of Daily News — Colin Myler has been named president of the Daily News, a title he will tack on in addition to his existing one as editor-in-chief. — His “expanding role will involve working more closely with me on all Daily News strategic business initiatives and decisions …

Discussion: FishbowlNY

Humeyra Pamuk / Reuters:

Twitter challenges Turkey ban, Erdogan holds fast — (Reuters) - A Turkish court upheld an appeal on Wednesday to end a blockage of Twitter which has provoked public outrage, local media said, though it was not immediately clear whether that meant the bar would be removed.

Discussion: Hurriyet Daily News, Gigaom, The Switch, The Twitter Blog, TechCrunch, @zeynep, Associated Press, Guardian, Variety, VentureBeat, Haaretz, BBC, @chillingeffects, Associated Press, New York Times, Engadget, Mashable and Al Jazeera English

Joshua Benton / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Columbia's Year Zero, aiming to give journalists literacy in data, is now called the Lede Program … Last fall, we told you about Year Zero, a new program out of Columbia's j-school aimed at providing a grounding in data concepts — coding, databases, algorithms, and the like — to journalists and other humanities-ish types.

Discussion: Tow Center for Digital …

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

Dow Jones & Company:

Dow Jones Enhances Factiva to Improve Search Efficiency and Newsletter Capabilities — Dow Jones today announced a series of customer-driven enhancements to the Factiva product designed to increase search efficiency and refine newsletter capabilities. The changes are effective immediately.

Tom Dotan / The Information:

Maker Studios was losing $2-3M per month leading up to Disney sale — With Maker Acquisition, Disney Takes on a Tough Challenge — Walt Disney Co.'s $500 million buyout of Maker Studios has been described as many things: An endorsement of the YouTube economy, an admission by a media giant …

Dawn C. Chmielewski / Re/code:

Millennials Spend More Time Watching TV on Other Devices — The big-screen TV is losing its cachet. — A new study from Deloitte finds that teens and young twentysomethings spend more time watching movies and television shows on their computers, smartphones and tablets than they do on their TV screens.

Discussion: @bingchen, Channelnomics, BroadwayWorld.com, @bbynews, @comcast, App Advice and @chrisfaile

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Spotify Focuses On New Users By Giving College Students Half-Off Their Premium Subscription — Spotify is making a land grab. — In a space that continues to fill up with competition from small startups and incumbents alike, Spotify is trying to acquire as many new users as possible …

Discussion: Gigaom, TIME, The Next Web, Engadget, BGR, BetaNews, Pocket-lint and VentureBeat

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: @alexsteigrad and @edgecliffe

TechCrunch:

TubeMogul Files For $75M IPO, With $57M In Revenue And A $7M Net Loss For 2013 — Video ad platform TubeMogul has filed its S-1, declaring its plans to go public with an offering of up to $75 million. And it's doing so with what appears to be pretty healthy gross margins, though with an overall net loss.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Bloomberg, Gigaom, Wall Street Journal and AdExchanger

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

NYT boss attacks Bloomberg for saying it shouldn't publish anti-China stories — Mark Thompson says New York Times journalism will remain impartial and won't be swayed by commercial considerations — Mark Thompson, the chief executive of the New York Times, has hit out at rival Bloomberg …

Discussion: Politico, thedrum.com, @davidfolkenflik, Business Insider and The Atlantic Online