Mediagazer: How Much Is That Netflix Show Worth? Stars Want to Know (Analysis) (Lacey Rose/Hollywood Reporter)

10:40 AM ET, May 1, 2014

Top News:

AT&T considering acquisition of DirectTV, in deal likely worth at least $40B — AT&T Has Approached DirecTV About Possible Acquisition — AT&T has approached DirecTV about a possible acquisition of the satellite TV firm, say people familiar with the situation, the latest sign of a possible shakeup in the television industry.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Broadcasting & Cable, The Wrap, multichannel.com, Los Angeles Times, Consumerist, App Advice, @paulcheesbrough, Electronista, Washington Post, Deadline.com, Engadget, The Next Web, Mashable, Variety, The Verge, Rapid TV News and Business Insider

Leo Mirani / Quartz:

Why LinkedIn is morphing from a social network into an online newspaper — On May 5th, LinkedIn will be celebrate its 11th birthday. It announced last month that 300 million people had signed up for the professional social network. This evening, LinkedIn will report earnings for first quarter …

Susan B. Glasser / Politico:

“The New York Times Is Not Going to Turn into BuzzFeed” — A frank conversation with the former editors of the Post and the Times. — Between them, Bill Keller and Marcus Brauchli have edited all three great American newspapers—the New York Times for Keller, both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for Brauchli.

Discussion: @neil_irwin, @sbg1, @brianstelter and @ethanklapper

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

For White House reporter Lesley Clark, so close and yet so far — Reporter Lesley Clark once got close enough to President Obama at an international summit to notice that he was chewing gum. “I think it was that nicotine stuff,” she recalls. — Okay, not exactly a major scoop.

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

Twitter has bet the farm on television, but does TV care? — Twitter has bet the farm on television. In its stated goal to become “The Global Town Square,” the service has tied itself to TV networks and companies through its “Amplify” program, arguing that when people watch something on TV …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Quartz, NPR, Talking Biz News and Forbes

Howard W. French / Columbia Journalism Review:

How the rise and fall of Bloomberg's China investigative unit harmed the news org's reputation — Bloomberg's folly — For foreign correspondents in China, breaking stories that the censored Chinese press can't touch has long been a core part of the mission.

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

NYT's big circulation gains include copies of international edition — Average Monday-Friday circulation at The New York Times was 15 percent higher for the six months ending March 2014 than it was in the same period the year before, new figures from the Alliance for Audited Media say.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, @poynter and investors.nytco.com

Gideon Spanier / London Evening Standard:

Google Maps and BBC iPlayer traffic surges during tube strike — Londoners used up a fifth more data on their smartphones during the Tube strike as millions of commuters were forced to make journeys above ground, according to mobile giant EE. — The owner of the Orange and T-Mobile networks …

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:

Viacom to Acquire U.K.'s Channel 5 for $760 Million — Entrepreneur Richard Desmond had bought the broadcaster for $171 million a few years ago. — LONDON - After Discovery Communications and British pay TV giant BSkyB dropped out of the auction, Viacom is set to announce a deal …

Discussion: Guardian, Capital New York, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, Variety, Associated Press, Bloomberg, London News, MediaTel, broadcastnow.co.uk and Telegraph

Lacey Rose / Hollywood Reporter:

How Much Is That Netflix Show Worth? Stars Want to Know (Analysis) — The multimillion-dollar question is being raised as ratings secrecy clouds cast renegotiations. Says one lawyer, “We've got to find a new metric.” — Seated among top television showrunners at a Hollywood Reporter roundtable …

Discussion: @nprmonkeysee

Oliver Knox / Yahoo! News:

Meet Jessica Allen, the aide scouring Twitter to act as liaison between press and White House — When the White House hates your tweet — For the Obama White House, tweets from reporters are a kind of early warning system. It's up to Jessica Allen, 24, to sound the alarm.

Discussion: Politico, The Huffington Post, @anamariecox, @stewsays, @katherinemiller, @jbendery, @davidseawright, @atotalmonet, @cuffymeh and @tamarakeithnpr

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Bill Introduced On Reforming U.S. Foreign Broadcasting Outlets — Two lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have helped prepare a bill that would clarify the mandate of the Voice of America and reorganize other U.S. government-funded radio stations.

Discussion: Foreign Policy, BuzzFeed, The Voice of Russia, News, MintPress News and RT

Ed Christman / Billboard:

Kobalt Launches YouTube Matching Tool ProKlaim, Boasts 1bn Processed Streams Per Month — With YouTube royalty revenue on the upswing, music publishers and labels are getting more proactive in making sure they get their share of payments. — In the latest move, Kobalt Music Group has launched ProKlaim …

Paul Carsten / Reuters:

China censors assert online authority in blow to U.S. TV shows — China's censors are asserting their authority over foreign TV content on the country's booming online video sites, after years of hands-off regulation, raising the risks for U.S. distributors left in the dark about which shows might fall foul of the rules.

Discussion: TechPresident

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

YouTube Tunes Up Its Ad Pitch — YouTube has spent the last few years trying to figure out how to put on a show. It is getting the hang of it. — Not a Web show, of course — YouTube is already packed with stuff people want to see, and they watch six billion hours a month.

Discussion: Billboard and @pkafka

Erich Schwartzel / Wall Street Journal:

Katzenberg Predicts Home Movie Viewers Will Pay by Size of Screen — BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg offered his vision Monday of what moviegoing will look like in 10 years—down to the inch. — A decade from now, he predicted …

Discussion: BBC, Fast Company, Film School Rejects, TheCelebrityCafe.com, Bleeding Cool Comic Book …, Variety and Cinema Blend

Sandra Oshiro / Poynter:

AP posts profit after cost-cutting, but revenue declines — AP reported its net income grew in 2013 to $3.3 million, an improvement over the previous year when the company ran $25.5 million in the red, according to its annual report distributed Wednesday. — But revenue dropped by 4 percent …

Discussion: Globe and Mail and ap.org

Kyle Stock / Businessweek:

HBO Teaches the Streaming Wannabes How to Make Big Money on Original Shows — Despite a flurry of original, lavishly produced TV programs from Hulu, Netflix (NFLX), and Amazon (AMZN), HBO is quietly becoming the next HBO. — True Detective, the eight-episode cop thriller that ran from Jan. 12 to March 9 …

Discussion: @tcarmody

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Press regulation: Newspapers lose court of appeal battle over rival royal charter — Industry wanted judicial review of government's rejection of their own version of charter — The newspaper industry has lost its latest battle for a judicial review of the government's rejection of its version of a royal charter.

Discussion: BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

Hillel Italie / Associated Press:

“To Kill a Mockingbird” finally going digital … NEW YORK (AP) — Harper Lee has signed on for Scout, Boo Radley and Atticus Finch to enter the electronic age. — Filling one of the biggest gaps in the e-library, “To Kill a Mockingbird” will become available as an e-book and digital audiobook on July 8 …

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

Danish magazine at the centre of a phone hacking-style scandal — A media controversy has broken in Denmark that is being compared to the News of the World phone hacking scandal. — Police in Copenhagen are investigating claims that an employee at a Danish IT company leaked details …

Discussion: India & World and cphpost.dk

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

BSkyB's TV customers rise by 74,000, but broadband growth slows — Company says focus on investment in Now TV is starting to pay off as revenues rise 6.6% in nine months to end of March — BSkyB added more than 70,000 TV customers in the three months to the end of March …

Discussion: Telegraph, @skynewsbreak, Broadband TV News, thedrum.com, Bloomberg, Press Association, Life Style Extra and Reuters

Alexis Sobel Fitts / Columbia Journalism Review:

How Upworthy aims to alter the Web, and could end up altering the world - See more at: http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_king_ of_content.php#sthash.7hjruHPr.dpuf — In the summer of 2010, a conservative talk show host named Michael Graham scheduled a pit stop on his tour of Ireland to debate a spokesperson from the country's Labor Party.