This has to be one of the best lines I’ve read in a while, from SAI’s Nicholas Carlson’s piece on succession planning at News Corp. Know what happens when a boxing referee slips between the ropes and out of the ring in the middle of the match? A hint: The brawlers don’t sudde...

To wrap up the year, we will bring you a 2008 review / 2009 preview for each segment of the new media economy.  In today’s Part 1, we look at Video. I’ve now spent three years trying to develop a business around professionally-produced video content, publishing online, and syndicated ac...

Everyone is freaking out over the fact that YouTube is trying to monetize but 4% of its massive inventory. Truth is, I thought that number was lower.  But whatever the number, it’s a good thing. YouTube is much bigger than its competitors.  I do not think it’s easy for an outsider to r...

Reading that NBC will restrict coverage of the Olympics to NBC properties, I wonder if this will cause a rift between News Corp. and NBC. The two companies are 50-50 joint venture partners in Hulu. In all likelihood: Hulu will want access to the coverage (which NBC is only making available after it ...

The Misplaced Bet on UGC Back in 2006, we’d get the occasional call from someone pitching us a turnkey solution to add User-Generated Content (UGC) videos to our WatchMojo.com property, which houses professionally produced videos we have created. At the time, I thought it was an odd pitch, aki...

1 - “Content is king” was coined by Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, who argued that “as new distribution channels emerge, the need and value of content rises”.  I agree with the theory, in general. 2 - But I also agree with the premise that any one variable yields diminishi...

From spring 2005 until summer 2007, News Corp. went on a digital media acquisition binge that could only be described as dizzying: - Intermix, parent of MySpace - Scout Media - IGN (how they inherited me for six months via IGN’s acquisition of AskMen) - Photobucket - Flektor - Strategic Data C...

SAI asks an interesting question: Blinkx might be in play, and News Corp. and Google are suggested to be interested. Interesting. Disclosure: technically, all three companies are our distribution partners and News Corp. employed me briefly in 2005. Anyway, here goes: Should News Corp. Buy Blinkx? Te...

1. Google would have had to pay a large portion of revenues to Yahoo! as TACs (traffic acquisition costs).  This means more revenue to Google, yes, but no significant increase in profits… meaning that Google’s profit margins would have shrunk.  Analysts don’t like that, and as Go...

In one word: no. MySpace is not a startup, it’s a behemoth already and its sales cycles and patterns become quite normal. Last night when I commented on News Corp.’s recent quarter (and on missing Rupert Murdoch’s $1B target figure), the following slipped my mind.  News Corp.̵...