Mediagazer: ABC's Australia Network faces the axe, but severing contract will incur costs (Guardian)

7:45 AM ET, May 8, 2014

Top News:

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:

Amazon, Netflix and tech giants defend net neutrality in letter to FCC — In a rare public stand for the internet retailer, Amazon has come out against the Federal Communications Commission's purported plan to bifurcate the internet into faster and slow lanes as part of its new network neutrality rules.

Discussion: The Verge, Kirk LaPointe's …, Re/code, @designhawg, @tonyromm, TIME, @tcarmody, @katyonthehill, The Hill, GeekWire, Free Press, Reuters, Washington Post, Broadcasting & Cable, iMore, NationalJournal.com, NationalJournal.com and Business Insider

Katy Bachman / Adweek:

Two FCC Commissioners ask Wheeler to delay net neutrality proposal, but Wheeler doesn't budge — Democratic FCC Commissioners Ask Wheeler to Slow Down Net Neutrality Proposal — Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler may have just hit a snag in rushing his net neutrality proposal …

Discussion: FCC.gov, Engadget, @amy_schatz, New York Times, PC Magazine, Bloomberg, Broadcasting & Cable, Electronista, The Verge and Talking New Media

Dominic Rushe / Guardian:
Protesters set up camp at net neutrality rally outside FCC headquarters

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, @eonnewsnet, Al Jazeera America and International Business Times

Seth Fiegerman / Mashable:

Marissa Mayer: Stop Asking If Yahoo Is a Tech or Media Company — In 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs visited Yahoo's headquarters and urged employees to decide once and for all whether it wanted to be a media company or a technology company. — Yahoo's identity crisis, if you want to call it that …

Discussion: New York Times, TechRadar.com, Tech Trader Daily, @art_policarpio and TechCrunch

Associated Press:

China detains veteran journalist for state secrets — BEIJING — A veteran journalist who was among prominent intellectuals jailed during China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown has been detained just weeks ahead of the 25th anniversary of the bloodshed on accusations of leaking state secrets.

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

Channel 4 cuts executives' bonuses as it reports £15m loss — Broadcaster's revenues fell during 2013 as its audience share slipped, but it says it expects to return to breakeven this year — Channel 4 has reported a loss of £15m in 2013, as the broadcaster's main channel sunk …

Discussion: MediaTel and Prolific North

Reuters:

Exclusive: Cars.com investor Gannett mulls bid for entire company: sources — (Reuters) - Gannett Co Inc (GCI.N), one of the newspaper owners of Cars.com, is exploring a bid for all of the auto sales website and has discussed teaming up with private equity firms in a deal that could reach $3 billion …

Discussion: Talking New Media

Guardian:

ABC's Australia Network faces the axe, but severing contract will incur costs — There will be costs incurred unwinding agreements and the Coalition will have to legislate if it wants to offer a new tender — The ABC will lose its Australia Network contract next week …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Sydney Morning Herald and TV Tonight

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

EndlessTV Serves Up Free Web Video to Your Phone, Minus the Ads. How Long Can That Last? — Lots of people are trying to figure out ways to help people “discover” digital video, and lots of them don't work because they don't solve a real problem: Most folks have no trouble “discovering” video on their own.

Jack Marshall / Wall Street Journal:

Major brands inadvertently supporting sites with pirated video via automated ads — Illicit Websites Use Automated Ad-Buying Systems to Their Advantage — It's easy for websites to make a profit selling online advertising. All they have to do is avoid paying for content.

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Publishers get creative with an à la carte approach to digital media — The all-you-can-eat approach to digital media is going away in favor of à la carte. — Consider Facebook. It launched Facebook Messenger and Paper as standalone apps following its acquisition of Instagram.

ABC:

Fairfax staff vote to end strike over job cuts — Employees of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald have voted to go back to work after walking off the job on Wednesday following the announcement of job cuts. — Fairfax announced plans to cut 80 jobs from the photography, editorial and Life magazine divisions in Melbourne and Sydney.

Discussion: @mediaalliance, mUmBRELLA, Yahoo! Finance, @mediaalliance and mUmBRELLA

Federico Mastrogiovanni / VICE News:

Photo Auction Raises Money for Another Murdered Mexican Journalist — Applause and hoots of laughter can be heard from the steep stairs that lead up to the small room at the Gimnasio de Arte Cultural Center in Mexico City, where an auction to benefit the family of murdered journalist “Goyo” Jiménez is taking place.

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Heritage Foundation to launch news service — The Heritage Foundation, a powerful right-wing think tank, is planning to launch a new news service that will cater to a conservative audience, sources familiar with the organization's plans told POLITICO on Wednesday.

Henry Taylor / TheMediaBriefing:

Beyond responsive: three mobile website design tricks becoming trends — The Los Angeles Times has a new-look website: a responsively designed effort from the same chaps behind sites for The Verge, Hearst and Mashable. — But apart from being mobile-friendly in its responsiveness …

Kristen Hare / Poynter:

College newspapers are following students online, but will revenue come along, too? — Late last month, The Columbia Daily Spectator at Columbia University announced a big change, Peter Sterne reported in Capital New York. The publication would still update its website daily …

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Reinventing the internet: What if AMC took the plunge and unbundled from cable? — There's been much speculation about the possibility that HBO could one day directly compete with Netflix by offering consumers a way to subscribe to its HBO Go service without signing up for cable.

Discussion: @dkthomp

Kevin Downey / TVNewsCheck.com:

ConnecTV Shifts Focus To Video Clip Sharing — ConnecTV moves from its original social media app function to video clip sharing, selling advertising and offering video clips that link to stations' websites and YouTube channels. It may be facing competition from Shazam …

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

TuneIn relaunches with a big focus on social to become the Twitter of radio — Streaming radio aggregator TuneIn relaunched its mobile apps and website Wednesday, introducing a Twitter-like follower model and adding new ways for podcasters, radio staions and brands to reach an audience.

Discussion: Digital Media Wire, Re/code and VentureBeat

Joe Lucia / Awful Announcing:

MLB is urging iTunes to pull team-related podcasts (UPDATE) — In one of the more disappointing things we've seen out of them lately, MLB is reportedly requesting that iTunes pull several team-related podcasts from their service. Among the affected podcasts are Twins podcast Gleeman and the Geek …

Discussion: HardballTalk, @bkoo, Poynter, @joe_toc, @jimmiebjr, @markcoddington and Electronista

J.K. Trotter / Gawker:

Fox News Just Unsettled Its $8 Million Hush-Money Settlement — Remember Brian Lewis, the former vice president of media relations for Fox News and even more former confidante of Fox News president Roger Ailes? This past November, Fox paid approximately $8 million in hush money to settle …

Discussion: @gawker, @davidfolkenflik, @gabrielsherman and Inside Cable News

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Publisher ‘DRMs’ Physical Legal Textbook About ‘Property,’ Undermines Property And First Sale Concepts — We've talked in the past about just how badly certain industries would love to expand the restrictions created by DRM onto physical goods. And that's because, unlike what copyright system defenders …

Discussion: The Laboratorium, Josh Blackman's Blog, @dangillmor and Washington Post