James Murdoch: Free Online Content Cannot Be Monetized

James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, says that online content cannot be monetised efficiently if it is given away for free, according to a story at telegraph.co.uk.

Speaking at the Monaco Media Forum, Murdoch said: “The first rule: if you are going to monetise something [online], you probably shouldn’t give it away for free.”

News International, a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, recently erected paywalls around both The Times and The Sunday Times’ respective websites and is the first generalist UK newspaper group to charge for its online content.

At the beginning of November the company published the first official subscription figures on the impact of the pay wall around both of the websites. The UK arm of News Corporation said that there were 105,000 total transactions for its digital content between July and October.

There are also a further 100,000 print subscribers to The Times who have activated their free digital accounts.

Murdoch added: “You cannot start developing pricing models [for online content] until you have a retail price…We are transforming the business of digital journalism at News International.”

He went onto criticise newspapers specifically, saying that the “key metrics that these business were chasing were not creating value for them” – notably how many unique users each content site manages to attract each month. He said that the “number of uniques” were the wrong metric to focus on as all parties “were losing an absolute fortune” by giving their content away for free.

His position was in stark opposition to Eric Hippeau, the chief executive of The Huffington Post, a popular US aggregator and blog, and a fellow speaker at the Monaco Media Forum. Speaking at the event yesterday, Hippeau said: “We will never charge our users for content…We would lose engagement with a valuable audience.

Read more here.

Napolitano To Huffington: ‘How Can Anybody Take You Seriously?’

The guest list on Friday’s Freedom Watch, Fox Business Network’s libertarian talk show, was a roundup of the usual suspects– plus liberal media mogul Arianna Huffington. Huffington was there to plug her new book "Third World America".  Host Judge Andrew Napolitano repeatedly brought up Huffington’s conservative past asking, “how can anybody take you seriously?”

WGN, After Metheny's exit, Left To Mend Fences

Two people do not a radio station make, although, according to Phil Rosenthal at The Chicago Tribune,  they can unmake an awful lot if left to their own devices.

So WGN-AM 720 is now divorced from Kevin Metheny, the program director whom former Tribune Co. Chief Executive Randy Michaels hired almost two years ago and empowered to leave his imprint on the station. And Metheny presumably got custody of ousted host Jim Laski, whose communication skills were as suspect as the moral compass that led him into a bribery scandal while Chicago's city clerk.

WGN-AM paid a price in lost goodwill for the brusque, seemingly indifferent manner in which Metheny's makeover to boost lagging ratings was executed. It will take more than a pair of returned keycards for the station to open the window of opportunity their exits provide.

Its personalities need to have more fun, find ways to be engaging that don't always involve arguing and remind the audience of its importance. When WGN-AM has thrived most in its 86-year history, it is when it connected to that audience and delivered a product unique not just to Chicago but often all of radio.
Read more here.

New AM Drive Show Unveiled At KILT-FM

The 100.3 KILT (Houston) announced Friday that Corey Foley and Greg Thunder will serve as the station’s new morning show team, starting today.

Corey Foley most recently handled morning drive at KBWF (The Wolf) San Francisco and is a veteran of The Dave Ryan Show at KDWB Minneapolis. She has worked mornings at KDWB Minneapolis, Kiss 105.3 in Gainesville and Wild 94.1 in Tampa.

“I’m thrilled to work at such a legendary station and am excited to join CBS RADIO in Houston,” Foley said in a statement.

Greg Thunder comes to Houston from his No. 1-rated morning show at KS-95 in Minneapolis. He has worked across multiple formats at the likes of KMPS Seattle, KDWB Minneapolis, KALC Denver, WQHT New York and WPLJ New York.

“We’re all very excited about the new morning show for KILT," said KILT Program Director and CBS RADIO Houston’s Vice President of Music Programming Mark Adams. "Greg and Corey both possess a wealth of major market competitive experience and are dedicated professionals. I’m confident they’re going to be a great addition to our station.”

This move completes the 100.3 KILT weekday line-up with Foley and Thunder from 5:00–9:00AM, Erin Austin from 9:00–3:00PM and Rowdy Yates from 3:00–7:00PM.   Yates has been running the morning show since Hudson and Harrigan were shown the door.

The four-hour show will debut Monday, Nov. 15 at 5:00AM and can be heard on-air, online.

Houston Country Match-Up (6+ PPM)

KILT       3.3   3.3     3.9        993,600

KKBQ    3.7   3.6     3.8     1,011,700

Kanye West Cancels 'Today' concert

It comes after Matt Lauer interview

The hits just keep on coming in the Kanye West vs. Today Show slugfest.

According to the nydailynews.com, the Grammy-award winning rapper cancelled his Nov. 26 performance on the NBC morning show after host Matt Lauer aired an interview that featured an irritated West apologizing for calling George W. Bush a racist.

"I'm not performing on the Today Show for obvious reasons," he tweeted Friday from Dubai. "I'm happy the world got to see just a small piece of ‘the set up.'"

The singer went on a Twitter rampage earlier this week, declaring that Lauer tried to force his answers during an interview. West appeared on the show Wednesday to apologize to the former president over his remarks declaring "George Bush doesn't care about black people" in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 

After posting the angry tweets, the morning show aired more of the interview the next day. Lauer maintained he did nothing wrong and was looking forward to West's live performance.

West's responses were marked by awkward pauses and the performer seemed at a loss for words.



Read more here.

Also read here.

Kanye West's 'Media Trainer' Reportedly Quits (New York magazine)

WSB-TV Report: Cam Newton's Dad Admits Money Talk

A source close to the situation exclusively told WSB-TV2 Action News investigative reporter Mark Winne that the player's father, Cecil Newton, has admitted having conversations with an ex-Mississippi State University player about the possibility of under-the-table money if Cam Newton signed to play football at Mississippi State, though he's steadfastly maintained that no money ever changed hands and said no official at Mississippi State ever made such an offer.

According to Winne’s source, Cecil Newton said his son’s hands are clean, and has made it clear that Cam Newton himself and his mother knew nothing about the money discussions, nor did Auburn University, with whom the Westlake High School grad from College Park eventually signed with out of junior college.

Read more here.

Yankees Deal With WCBS-AM Expiring

Future of John Sterling & Suzyn Waldman up in the air

Is the curtain falling on Ma and Pa Pinstripe? Will next season be John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman's last in the Yankees radio booth?

A nydailynews.com story by Rob Raissman says right now their future is up in the air. The Yankees contract with 880 WCBS-AM, worth about $12 million per year, expires at the end of the 2011 season, so do Sterling and Waldman's pacts. Sterling has been the radio voice of the Yankees since 1989. Waldman joined him in 2005.

There has yet to be any serious negotiations between the Yankees and WCBS. The job status of Ma and Pa cannot be resolved until a new radio-rights deal is cut.
Outside of WCBS, which probably wants to keep the Yankees, it's highly likely ESPN will - if it hasn't already - stick its beak into the mix. For ESPN-1050, the process of trying to chip away at WFAN, longtime Mets rights holder, has not been easy.

Adding Yankees radiocasts to the mix of Jets, Knicks and Rangers would help change the equation - drastically. But how much would ESPN be willing to pay for the radio rights to Yankees baseball? And would pinstripe honchos be satisfied having their games go out over ESPN-1050's weak signal?

Where does this leave Sterling and Waldman? If WCBS retains Yankees rights the chances of them returning are much better than if a new outlet takes over. If that happens, all bets are off, according to Raissman.

The Yankees regime, led by Hal Steinbrenner, will be more concerned with obtaining maximum dollars in a new radio deal than who the broadcasters are. Loyalty ain't even a factor here. This would give a station the freedom to make that call. A call that will determine the future of Ma and Pa.

Read more here.

The Sunday Funny

Mike Marino thinks we should have an Italian president from New Jersey!

The Saturday Aircheck

In August, 1986, after being the dominant Top 40 radio station in Northern California for two decades, KFRC, The Big 610 changed formats. This is raw video from the final Top 40 show on KFRC for morning star Dr. Don Rose. George Zema is Dr. Don's engineer.

Beck’s Attacks on George Soros Draw Heat

The Fox News host Glenn Beck was criticized Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish advocacy organization, in response to a televised segment about the financier George Soros and the Holocaust.

Throughout three programs this week, Beck has portrayed Soros, a billionaire investor and philanthropist, as a “puppet master” who is “notorious for collapsing economies and regimes all around the world” and whose “next target” is the United States. Citing Mr. Soros’s statements about the decline of the dollar, Mr. Beck said, “Not only does he want to bring America to her knees, financially, he wants to reap obscene profits off us as well.”

Brian Stetler at nytimes.com writes Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, took issue with Mr. Beck’s depiction of Mr. Soros as a “Jewish boy helping sending the Jews to the death camps,” calling it “offensive” and “horrific.”

On Tuesday on his Fox program, watched by about 2.8 million people, Mr. Beck said that during the Holocaust, the 14-year-old Mr. Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off.”

Mr. Beck continued: “I am certainly not saying that George Soros enjoyed that, even had a choice. I mean, he’s 14 years old. He was surviving. So I’m not making a judgment. That’s between him and God.” He also said that “many people” would call Mr. Soros “an anti-Semite,” though “I will not.”

Fox stood by Mr. Beck. Joel Cheatwood, a senior vice president at Fox News, said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the “information regarding Mr. Soros’s experiences growing up were taken directly from his writings and from interviews given by him to the media, and no negative opinion was offered as to his actions as a child.”

Read more here.

Also Read Here:

George Soros Is REALLY George Schwartz And 10 More Terrifying Things We Learned From Glenn Beck's Expose  (Business Insider)

Beck Responds to ADL Statement Calling His Soros Reporting ‘Horrific’ & ‘Offensive’ (The Blaze)

Newsweek, The Daily Beast To Wed

Some weddings take longer to plan than others

From Tina Brown:

The union of The Daily Beast and Newsweek magazine finally took place with a coffee-mug toast between all parties Tuesday evening, in a conference room atop Beast headquarters, the IAC building on Manhattan’s West 18th Street. The final details were only hammered out last night.

What does this exciting new media marriage mean? It means that The Daily Beast’s animal high spirits will now be teamed with a legendary, weekly print magazine in a joint venture, named The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, owned equally by Barry Diller’s IAC and Sidney Harman, owner (and savior) of Newsweek. As for me, I shall now be in the editor-in-chief’s chair at both The Daily Beast and Newsweek, bringing with us as CEO my Daily Beast business partner Stephen Colvin, who launched The Week Magazine in the U.S., as well as Maxim, as president of Dennis Publishing. His dynamism has created 66 new ad campaigns for us since I persuaded him to join The Daily Beast a year ago.

It’s a wonderful new opportunity for all the brilliant editors and writers at The Daily Beast who have worked so hard to create the site’s success. Working at the warp-speed of a 24/7 news operation, we now add the versatility of being able to develop ideas and investigations that require a different narrative pace suited to the medium of print. And for Newsweek, The Daily Beast is a thriving frontline of breaking news and commentary that will raise the profile of the magazine’s bylines and quicken the pace of a great magazine’s revival. I'm impressed with how Newsweek's outstanding staff has continued to put out a lively, well-informed magazine after the departure of their tireless editor, Jon Meacham.

The Daily Beast houses many top talents from the print journalism world: Our executive editor, Edward Felsenthal, and managing editor, Jane Spencer, are formerly of The Wall Street Journal. We’re also home to columnists like Howard Kurtz, who only recently arrived from The Washington Post, and Peter Beinart, formerly of The New Republic. They and many of our other contributors from newspaper and magazine journalism joined forces here with the young digital natives of our newsroom to make something new at The Daily Beast. Today, we look at print from the refreshed point of view of an expatriate who sees the old country with new eyes. That will create a great new creative energy—just as on the business side, it offers a superb dual marketing platform.

It takes two inspired entrepreneurs like Barry Diller and Sidney Harman to undertake such a challenging media experiment. Barry Diller brought me to IAC to partner with him in his vision of a new website that would curate the news for smart readers, with a distinctly independent point of view. With nearly 5 million unique visitors a month after just two years, The Daily Beast has evolved into a site that also, and now predominantly, offers original journalism. Barry’s support, insights, and intellectual daring have been a joy to work with every step of the way. Both of us look forward to joining with Sidney Harman, who made his fortune and reputation as founder of Harman International, the worldwide audio manufacturer, and has a mind that’s alive with a cultural curiosity that’s exactly what you need to succeed in the publishing world. I very much admire his passion to restore Newsweek to its glory days, and with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, we will. Join us for the journey!

Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.

WGN Fires Metheny, Laski

Kevin Metheny, the WGN-AM 720 program director whose abrupt moves to grow the audience grew a well of resentment among some long-time listeners, is leaving the station along with his most controversial hire, former convicted Chicago City Clerk Jim Laski.

Phil Rosenthal at The Chicago Tribune writes the station said Thursday a series of hosts will fill in for Laski, whose show airs weeknights at 7 when not preempted by sports play-by-play, until a new show is announced. Newsman Steve Betrand is set to be the first substitute.

"The next step in the station’s evolution is the development of a show from 7 (to) 10 p.m. that best complements the rest of our evening programming—something on which we will be very focused going forward," Tom Langmyer, the station's vice president and general manager since 2005, said in a statement.

"Our goal is to continue developing engaging and relevant programming, while still keeping the hometown connection that Chicagoans have come to identify with WGN radio."

Metheny's exit, after 23 tumultuous months in the job, comes less than three weeks after the resignation of long-time radio executive Randy Michaels as chief executive Tribune Co., parent of WGN-AM as well as the Chicago Tribune. Metheny had enjoyed the backing of Michaels, who installed him in Chicago.

Read more here.

Apple-Twitter Partnership a Win-Win

Why Didn't Facebook Take the Deal?

Thursday, Apple's Ping service unveiled a new partnership with Twitter.

The deal gives Twitter users the option to link their accounts to Ping, iTunes' troubled social network, and port activity between the two services. It's a huge win for both Apple and Twitter, but the real question asked by Austin Carr at fastcompany.com is : why didn't Facebook take the deal?

Clearly, Facebook was Apple's first choice. Steve Jobs desperately wanted the networks' 500 million users (Twitter has 175 million) to help populate Ping through Facebook Connect.

But after a reported 18 months of negotiations between Apple and Facebook, the deal crumbled. Why?

Because of Facebook's demands for "onerous terms," according to Steve Jobs.

Critics might argue Facebook made the right move. After all, giving Apple access to its half-billion users is a lot to stomach. On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. may have lost out on something more valuable: user behavior. Apple, through iTunes, has created a community of very willing customers: Users let Apple store their credit card information, and are eager to buy apps and songs and movies and books. No social network has reached that point, and Apple could be the key.

Read more here.

Talk Host Already Out As Chief-of-Staff

Radio host Joyce Kaufman, whose comments may have triggered a threat against Broward County schools in Florida , has announced she won't become chief of staff for conservative Congressman-elect Allen West.

Meanwhile the phone call warning of the attack that led to a three-hour lockdown has been traced to a caller outside South Florida, Pembroke Pines Police said Thursday.

Kaufman said she didn't want to tarnish West's reputation. I will not be used in an electronic lynching by proxy,'' Kaufman said Thursday.

According to the Miami Herald, police said the call that came into WFTL 850 AM was made by a woman from outside South Florida, who said her husband was planning to carry out a mass shooting in Broward County.

Because the threat involved government buildings and because it was made from another part of the state, the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have joined the investigation. According to Capt. Dan Rakofsky with the Pembroke Pines Police, WFTL received an e-mail addressed to Kaufman late Tuesday, expressing the threat. The call came into the radio station the next morning.

While police will not say whether the call and e-mail were threatening toward Kaufman or in defense of her, there is some suggestion the e-mailer may have been upset that Kaufman has come under media scrutiny lately for alleged inflammatory comments she has made on her radio show.

Read more here.

35 Hours Of Video Uploaded To YouTube Every Minute

Remember in March The official YouTube blog 'Broadcasting Ourselves' reported that more than 24 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute?

Well, the amount of video uploaded to YouTube has now increased to 35 hours per minute. That breaks out to 2,100 hours uploaded every 60 minutes, or 50,400 hours uploaded to YouTube every day.

If we were to measure that in movie terms (assuming the average Hollywood film is around 120 minutes long), 35 hours a minute is the equivalent of over 176,000 full-length Hollywood releases every week.

 Another way to think about it is: if three of the major US networks were broadcasting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the last 60 years, they still wouldn’t have broadcast as much content as is uploaded to YouTube every 30 days.

Read more here.