In this week’s roundup of media-industry shenanigans, VICE Media wants to be bought, Gawker doesn’t, General Electric starts an online magazine while Medium expands an existing one, and the New York Times is killing its blogs but says it still really likes blogging
Starting January 6, next-day access to full episodes of ABC TV shows will be restricted to cable or Hulu Plus subscribers. Everyone else will have to wait a whole week.
News Corp.’s acquisition of Storyful for $25 million is a sign of how important user-generated content has become, so I spoke with Raju Narisetti of News Corp. and Storyful founder Mark Little about their reasons for doing the deal
Hulu seems to love getting its leadership from its parent companies. Just weeks after it announced Mike Hopkins, a former executive at Fox, (S NWS) would take over as CEO after Jason Kilar left the position in January, the streaming video company has confirmed via blog post that former Disney (S DIS) executive Elaine Paul will join the team as CFO. Like Hopkins, Paul also has a history with Hulu: She was involved in Disney’s original investment in the company.
Fox executive Mike Hopkins, who had been considered the frontrunner for the Hulu CEO position, was officially named to it Thursday. Hulu says its revenues will be close to $1 billion in 2013, but co-owners Disney and News Corp have argued over the future of the service.
Dedicated magazine apps for tablets may look good, but I fear they’re headed straight to oblivion.
News Corp. has said it is finally shutting down The Daily, the iPad-only newspaper it launched in 2011. Although the media giant should be given some credit for experimenting with a new medium, there were obvious signs that The Daily was doomed from the start.
The Huffington Post has dropped the price of its iPad magazine to zero, and News Corp.’s The Daily has chopped almost a third of its staff — more evidence that the dream many publishers had about the iPad being their savior is still far from reality.
News Corp. billionaire Rupert Murdoch has confirmed that the company is considering splitting itself in two, with the newspaper assets spun off as a separate entity. What would — or could — the digital future look like for that standalone newspaper unit? Here are a few ideas.
Bernstein Research wonders if the decision by Providence Equity Partners to pull its minority stake out of Hulu is a signal that the entertainment conglomerates who own most of the streaming service — and who wish to uphold TV’s multichannel model — don’t want it to grow.
