Mediagazer: HBO will offer a stand-alone streaming service in 2015 (Peter Kafka/Re/code)

6:35 PM ET, October 15, 2014

Top News:

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

HBO will offer a stand-alone streaming service in 2015 — HBO Says It's Going to Start Selling on the Web Next Year — HBO says it's finally ready: Sometime in the next year the pay TV service will be selling a Web-only offering. — HBO CEO Richard Plepler, speaking …

Alex Weprin / Capital New York:

‘Crossfire,’ ‘Sanjay Gupta,’ ‘CNN Money’ get the ax as CNN cuts continue — Even as Time Warner executives touted it as “the global gold standard in news organizations” at its investor meeting Wednesday, CNN continued to restructure and lay off staff to meet its “Turner 2020” budget targets.

Discussion: TVNewser

Georg Szalai / Hollywood Reporter:
Time Warner Has “More Than Sufficient Scale,” Will Double Earnings, Jeff Bewkes Says

Discussion: Variety, Reuters, Variety, @benfritz and Capital New York

New York Times:

Bill Simmons's Return Sets Intrigue in Motion at ESPN — A decade ago, Howard Stern got tired of fighting with the Federal Communications Commission over its decency standards and quit Viacom for satellite radio. — More recently, Glenn Beck clashed with his bosses at Fox News and started his own Internet channel, Glenn Beck TV.

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Netflix Q3 earnings: profit of $59.3M on revenue of $1.41B; shares fall over 25% on lower-than-projected subscriber numbers — Netflix Blames Missed Sub-Growth Targets on Price Increase, as Stock Gets Hammered — Shares fall 25% in after-hours trading on lower-than-expected subscriber additions

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, Gigaom, VentureBeat, TIME, ZDNet, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, Re/code, @sizpatel, Business Insider, @jonerlichman, @pkafka, @jyarow and @zseward

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

Hong Kong outlet wins at World Digital Media Awards — Apple Daily wins award for best mobile service as Norway's VG picks up two awards, Dagbladet, Guardian and BBC also win — A Hong Kong news organisation was commended for its digital work at the inaugural World Digital Media Awards …

Reuters:
China asks foreign media to report Hong Kong unrest “objectively”

Discussion: Wall Street Journal

Agence France-Presse:
China blocks BBC website amid Hong Kong protests

Discussion: Poynter, Tech in Asia, BBC, Townhall.com, broadcastnow.co.uk, TheJournal.ie, RSS Breaking News, VPN Creative, Business Insider, International Business Times and newsonnews.com

Catalina Albeanu / Journalism.co.uk:

BuzzFeed to build ‘new formats’ team in the UK — The team will include developers, designers and writers who will look at new ways to present stories and experiment with games and new tools — BuzzFeed is setting up a new development team based in London to look at new ways of telling stories and engaging audiences.

Discussion: @lukelewis

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter:

Judge Is Skeptical About Aereo's New Bid for Survival — The judge asks Aereo's lawyer, “How many bites at the apple does one get?” — On Wednesday, New York federal judge Alison Nathan considered a preliminary injunction against Aereo, the controversial tech service that upon launching …

Discussion: FierceCable

Todd Spangler / Variety:

NBC Sports Digital Launches ‘SportsWorld,’ Its Version of ESPN's Grantland — NBC Sports Digital has launched SportsWorld, a microsite within NBCSports.com dedicated to long-form storytelling stocked with stories, essays, videos and documentary films — an attempt to engage sports fans beyond …

Discussion: Multichannel News, NBC SportsWorld, NBCSports.com, HardballTalk, Awful Announcing, CollegeBasketballTalk, MotorSportsTalk and The Wrap

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

White House pool reporters test own news distribution system — White House journalists are creating an alternative system for distributing their media “pool” reports in response to the Obama administration's involvement in approving and disapproving certain content in official reports.

Discussion: Mediaite

Will Oremus / Slate:

The Decline and Fall of the San Francisco Bay Guardian — Another alt-weekly is dead. But this one wasn't just another alt-weekly. It was the San Francisco Bay Guardian, one of the most venerable, staunchly independent, and defiantly weird of America's great alternative weekly newspapers.

Discussion: JIMROMENESKO.COM, San Francisco Chronicle, PandoDaily, Cision, @mattlynley, @stevefennessy, USA Today, Hit & Run, San Francisco Peninsula … and SFWeekly

Jacob Kastrenakes / The Verge:

Nexus Player: first Android TV device, on sale Nov. 3 for $99, gaming controller for $39 — Nexus Player is Google's first Android TV device — Google tries to take over your living room, again — The first device running Google's new Android TV platform with be the Nexus Player, a set-top streaming box made by Google and Asus.

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, Gigaom, TechCrunch, PC World, Variety, Business Insider, Pocket-lint, The Tech Report and The Next Web

Roy Greenslade / Guardian:

ECHR finds Polish courts breached freedom of expression rights of journalists and their paper — Human rights judges find for journalists in press freedom case — Two Polish journalists and their newspaper have secured a significant press freedom judgment at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Knight Foundation:

18 news and information ideas receive Knight Prototype Fund support — Knight Prototype Fund winners met this summer to share ideas in Pittsburgh. Photo: Michael Bolden. — Eighteen projects will each receive $35,000 in funding and time to test their media and information ideas …

Discussion: Nieman Lab

Christine Haughney / New York Times:

Martha Stewart's Magazines to Outsource Business Side to Meredith — Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which has been struggling to make its award-winning magazines profitable, is outsourcing its advertising, circulation and printing operations to the Meredith Corporation …

Discussion: Folio, FishbowlNY, Talking New Media, @talkingnewmedia and @lmoses

Rebecca Greenfield / Fast Company:

“Ebola Deeply,” Launching Today, Is The Only Place You Should Be Getting Ebola News — Lara Setrakian hopes her newest website, Ebola Deeply, shuts down in six months. While that might seem like a strange goal for any other new venture, it's pure optimism for Ebola Deeply …

Discussion: @nekolaweb, Gigaom and @prezi

John Plunkett / Guardian:

BBC playing catch-up with Vice News, says Newsbeat editor — Louisa Compton admits frustration at being ‘shackled’ by technology that can take up to five hours to upload a video — The editor of BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat has admitted the corporation is playing “catch-up” with Vice News and that she is …

Discussion: @whatthebit, @lexinyt and @shanesmith30

Chris Roush / Talking Biz News:

Fortune.com's traffic up 27.5 percent since launch — Fortune.com, which launched in June after nearly a decade of the business magazine placing its content on CNNMoney.com, has seen its traffic increase by more than 25 percent in its first four months online.

Discussion: @heather_muse

David Crary / Associated Press:

Wounded AP reporter vows to return to Afghanistan — 10 photos — NEW YORK (AP) — Over and over, Kathy Gannon has re-lived the decisions that led to the death of her close friend Anja Niedringhaus and her own severe injuries, as they went about their jobs chronicling the story of Afghanistan.

Discussion: Poynter and Guardian

Lisa Richwine / Reuters:

Netflix movie push aims to freshen streaming content — (Reuters) - Netflix Inc is on a mission to start closing the yawning gap between the theatrical debut of movies and their availability for online streaming, forcing Hollywood to rethink where to release new films.