Unless you’re an employee of IAC, you’re probably reading this here first. … We’ve obtained an emailed memo from IAC chairman and CEO Barry Diller to his staff that went out around midnight Eastern as he prepares to fight John Malone’s Liberty Media in a Delaware court for control of the company he founded.
Ziff Davis, the troubled trade media company which sold off its enterprise division last year, is now close to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, we have learned. The company has not been able to come to an agreement with its bond holders and stopped paying interest on its debt several months ago (announced in August). Of course, this means the PE firm and owner Willis Stein, which bought Ziff Davis in 1999 for about $780 million, will take a big hit.
This time next week Beth Comstock will be reporting to work as SVP and CMO of GE, not president of integrated media for NBC Universal. Comstock, announced today as GE SVP and CMO, knew when she got on the phone with me today that her assurance in early January about not going back to GE was bound to come up: “At that point, it was still something we were talking about as out in the future. … In the past month, we started talking about it with a specific target date.”
Nine Inch Nails is taking cues from Radiohead’s experiment, and has launched their new album online, with record-setting options on both ends … free to very expensive. Its new instrumental album, “Ghosts I-IV” went live tonight. (The site’s very sluggish right now as fans hit the site in presumably crazy numbers).
We have seen it so many times: Any new service from Yahoo, however good or different it may be from others in functionalities, will never be able to shake off the catching-up-on-the-joneses tag. Such is the case with two new services Yahoo is launching today.
When a casual session with reporters following his appearance at the NBA Tech Summit turned to a la carte pricing and set-top box limitations, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin offered his usual example of what’s wrong: cable. But when he was reminded–OK, by me, since I have a DirecTV TiVo that’s functionally crippled–that cable isn’t alone when it comes to limiting services and access on set-tops or alone on programming prices, Martin insisted, “I’m not picking on cable. … Cable is the easiest analogy. You’re absolutely right; the same rules apply. Generically, our term is MVPD—multichannel video provider. It’s not just cable, it’s also satellite or telephone companies, whoever’s providing your multichannel video services. All these rules should be the same for all of them. … These are the rules that apply to everyone.” He also talked about the 700-MHz auction, bandwidth management, a la carte, competition and Sirius-XM.
From the vantage point of Jon Miller, former CEO of AOL and now a partner at the high-profile Velocity Interactive Group, the frenzied activity all makes sense, at least as a natural progression of the industry. Having worked in big media for a long time, and now looking at later stage start-ups as part of his investment thesis, he has a good grasp of the overall landscape. He is also among the possible nominees for CNET Networks board, if the consortium carrying on the proxy fight wins. I spoke to Miller yesterday on the issues, and more (before Time Warner announced its decisions on AOL today).
Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo, we keep hearing, represents the potential emergence of a solid No. 2 online. So what does that mean to Google? Does the combination of two weak online players create a strong–or, at least, stronger–competitor? The truth is that it’s too early to tell. We don’t even know what the market thinks, because Google’s current share decline of nearly 9% just reflects the moves made after it reported lukewarm earnings late yesterday. From the looks of it, the market isn’t pushing the company one way or another on this news alone. As the MSFT-YHOO wends its way forward over the coming months, there are a few things we can look out for, as they pertain to Google …
Twentieth Century Fox actually has two deals with Apple that Steve Jobs announced today with Fox Filmed Entertainment CEO Jim Gianopulos. A lot is being made of the video rentals, more on that in a bit. But we’ll start with a look at the DVD-download combo; the Apple version is only available for now with Fox. Fox first tried it with Windows on “Live Free or Die Hard.” Buyers get a digital version on the second disk of special editions; it can be uploaded to a computer and moved to portable devices. In iTunes’ case, the digital copy file goes straight to iTunes and can be used with only one iTunes library; it can be used on a PC or Mac, video iPods, iPhone or Apple TV.
When Marco Boerries and David Filo joined Jerry Yang on the stage of the Las Vegas Hilton Theater to show off new launches and upcoming concepts, the audience at their feet included most of Yahoo’s top management–among them Jeff Weiner, whom we last heard from here after he shook up the Yahoo Media Group. Weiner seemed a little taken aback by my comparison of Yang’s presentation with the one Terry Semel gave in 2006, particularly with how many elements of the strategy–for instance, Go, the three-screen approach to connecting–were still in place albeit evolving.
You’re reading it here first … The details are still a little sketchy, but Drew Buckley, who headed Yahoo Originals, and Jeff Karish, head of media strategy, have left the company and are joining former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel in a revamped version of Windsor Media, the investment firm he started before leaving to head Yahoo. (Semel still is the chairman of Yahoo’s board of directors.) Buckley and Karish confirmed that they left Yahoo at the end of the year.
Back in the Hilton Theater Monday afternoon for a session with execs from Hollywood–Albert Cheng, EVP-digital media, Disney-ABC Television Group; Dan Fawcett, president, Fox Digital; Tom Lesinski, president, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment; and four days into the job, Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
I’m about 20 rows back in the Palazzo Ballroom waiting for Bill Gates to deliver his eighth consecutive pre-CES keynote, but Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has a front-row seat. He’s next to Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, sitting roughly where he was this time last year with MTVN’s Judy McGrath. The keynote–the last for Gates before he moves away from heading Microsoft full-time later this year–has just started…
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