Murdoch: Paid-content bell cow for 2010
Do you hear that clanging here in the wee hours of the new year? That sound is coming from the bell cow for paid content, Rupert Murdoch.
I wasn’t surprised to wake up this morning and read that Murdoch’s News Corp. and Time Warner Cable have extended their negotiations over retransmission fees for Fox Network programming that could have resulted in the yanking of Fox from several Time Warner systems as of last midnight. Fox wants somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 per subscriber for carriage. The cable company wants to pay much less.
Murdoch has been quite vocal in the past few months about a need to change the revenue paradigm for media. The high-profile bickering over the retransmission issue is just one of three areas in which Murdoch seems to be leading the charge to charge (or charge more) for content.
In addition to demanding more for retransmission of his television content, Murdoch has telegraphed forthcoming pay walls going up on the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other publications in his stable. And he’s threatened to block Google and other aggregators from access to New Corp. content, while exploring a possible exclusive arrangement with Microsoft’s Bing search tool.
If it was anyone other than Murdoch carrying the flag for this campaign, it might be easy to dismiss the efforts. But he seems willing to dig in and he’s also efforting to enlist others. In early December his Wall Street Journal ran an op/ed piece adapted from comments Murdoch made to the Federal Trade Commission. Here’s a link to the column. I’d recommend you read it now, while you can still do so free of charge.
Simply Hired receives $4.6 million in funding, now profitable
Esteemed online guru Rafat Ali reported this morning that job search engine SimplyHired has received $4.6 million in a new round of funding, led by IDG Ventures and Foundation Capital. The MountainView California-based SimplyHired, whose mission is to build the largest online database of jobs on the planet, has now secured a total of $22.3 million in funding including 43.5 million from Fox Interactive Media, owned by News Corp. SimplyHired has earmarked the money for an additional 30 staff and for international expansion.
“Job search is a global problem, and Simply Hired is committed to reaching both active and passive job seekers globally at both SimplyHired.com and at other online destinations through our network,” said Gautam Godhwani, co-founder and CEO at Simply Hired, in today’s announcement. “IDG Ventures enables Simply Hired to continue to expand its international footprint with additional resources and facilitates our relationship with the global network of 450 IDG online properties.”
Simply Hired crossed a profitability milestone, operated cash flow positive for the last 4 quarters, and had record revenue growth for the past 16 consecutive quarters, according to the announcement. The company recently launched localized job search engines for Brazil, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands. The job search giant now operates in 13 countries and seven languages across five continents. Other global markets include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Spain and the United Kingdom. The funding will enable Simply Hired to extend its global reach into new markets, allowing job seekers worldwide to search more than five million job openings.
Here’s some recent AIM news about SimplyHired.
News Corp reports loss – mostly due to MySpace
While News Corp. reported operating income of $3.6 billion for Q4 2009, the real news is how hard the media giant was hit by its MySpace downturn. The social media site recently laid off 700 and has replaced a founding executive with Owen Van Natta, the former CRO at rival Facebook. News Corp. acquired MySpace in 2005 for $580 million.
News Corp.’s current year revenues are $30 billion, an eight percent decrease from this time last year, although Cable Network Programming increased its revenue 32 percent. The Television segment of News Corp. suffered a whopping year-over-year income drop of 80 percent, while Newspapers and Information Services reported operating income of $96 million, far less than half that reported in 2008. Advertising revenue declined in all areas – the UK, Australia and Dow Jones in the U.S. The only two segments which actually reported a loss, howeer, were in Book Publishing by HarperCollins, and the Other category which included Fox Interactive Media and MySpace.
“The past year has been the most difficult in recent history, and our 2009 financial performance clearly reflects the weak environment that we confronted throughout the year,” said Chair and CEO Rupert Murdoch, on the earnings call. “We streamlined all our businesses and continue to do so, at the same time adjusting to the revolutionary changes taking place throughout the media industry.”
News Corp. reported a fourth quarter net loss of $203 million compared with net income of $1.1 billion in Q4 2008.
Here’s AIM Group’s latest coverage of the MySpace struggles.
Bearish media conference in Sun Valley
Liberty Media Corporation chair John Malone spoke at the July 8 Allen & Company Sun Valley Media & Technology Conference about the state of the media industry. According to Bloomberg.com, Malone told the attendees that television, film and publishing companies must find a way to charge for online content. “Sooner or later people will get addicted to some of these services and will pay for them,” he said. “Some media companies are running out of time as they struggle to generate revenue frm the Web. Newspapers are dropping like flies. Just changing the ownership doesn’t solve the problem.”
Fox Business Network television talked with News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch about the pervasive atmosphere at the confab. ”I’m shocked at the business mood, which is talking about either that we’re at the bottom or going lower, but that it’s going to take years and years, like five years at least, before we see any real growth coming out of this,” Murdoch said. “I would say the conference is very bearish, very bearish.”
The Allen & Co event is one of the year’s biggest gatherings of television, movie and Internet executives in the United States.
MySpace decline leads U.S. social media ad spend down
U.S. ad spending on social networks will fall 3 percent in 2009 to $1.14 billion in 2009, from $1.18 billion in 2008. That’s a significant turnaround from previous years. Spending grew an estimated 33 percent in 2008 and 129 percent in 2007.
The reason, says EMarketer which released the results, is due to a drop in spending at MySpace.
EMarketer estimated in its December 2008 forecast that marketers would spend $630 million to advertise on MySpace in 2009. That estimate has now been reduced 15 percent to just 495 million.
News Corp. executives said in a May 6 conference call with financial analysts that ad revenues fell 16 percent at Fox Interactive Media (FIM) in the January–March 2009 quarter, compared with the previous year. MySpace makes up the bulk of FIM’s revenues. (News Corp. does not break out MySpace revenues separately.)
MySpace’s woes are not reflected in estimates for other social networking companies. Ad spend on Facebook is expected to increase 9.5 percent in 2009, to $230 million, while US ad spending on widgets and applications is projected to reach $70 million, up 75 percent from 2008. U.S. spending on all other social network sites combined is expected to rise 1.5 percent to $345 million.
EMarketer has also issued estimates for ad spending on MySpace and Facebook outside the U.S., the first time the research firm has reached beyond the U.S.
Overall, marketers worldwide are expected to spend $520 million to advertise on MySpace in 2009, with $495 million coming from the US and $25 million from other markets. Non-US spending on Facebook is expected to reach $70 million this year, for a total of $300 million in 2009.
Amazon launches newspaper-ready Kindle
On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Kindle DX, a larger version of its popular Kindle eBook reader. The DX’s 9.7-inch screen is two and a half times the size of the original Kindle, making it more useful for reading newspapers, magazines, textbooks, even large format printed material such as cookbooks.
Amazon announced the Kindle yesterday in a press conference that also featured Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman and publisher of The New York Times. “We’ve known for more than a decade that one day an e-reader product would offer the same satisfying experience as the reading of a printed newspaper,” Sulzberger said. He called the partnership with Amazon an “experiment” and a laboratory to test new digital distribution strategies.
Three newspapers – The Boston Globe and its owner The Times, plus The Washington Post – will be offering a reduced price on the Kindle DX in exchange for a long-term subscription, starting in the summer for readers outside home delivery areas. Sulzberger did not give details on the size of the discount the papers will offer.
Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. is working on a Kindle competitor, not surprisingly, questioned the Amazon model which reportedly keeps some 70 percent of subscription revenues. “We will not be giving our content rights to the fine people who created the Kindle,” he told The Financial Times.
Amazon is also pushing the device as a textbook replacement. Five universities will allow students to try out the DX this fall: Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, the University of Virginia, and Pace.
The new device does not come without a price tag: $489, which places it clearly in the early adopter category. But if the first Kindle could sell close to half a million units already at a hefty $359, then who are we to judge?
The new Kindle has some other nifty features. You can turn it on its side and the page reformats itself (as with Apple’s iPhone). PDFs are displayed natively – a feature sorely lacking in Kindle 1.0. Also new: direct access to Wikipedia and The New Oxford American Dictionary.
Here’s a link to Amazon’s Kindle page.
- New Study Names Edmunds.com Most Popular Car Dealer Review Site
- HomeZada Integrates to Pinterest for DIY Projects
- Contact At Once! Dealer Chat Software Now Available to DealerRater Certified Dealer Partners
- United States:
- Vizu Moves into Social Media Ad Success Measurement
- McClatchy Names Elaine Lintecum As Vice President, Finance And Chief Financial Officer And Announces Other Leadership Changes
- United States:AutoTrader.com Announces New Leadership at VinSolutions
- Grenlist.com is a “Classifieds Community”, with environmental integrity! Every aspect of the site, has been created by the people, for the people!
- Canoe.ca publisher Quebecor reports Q1 2012 results
- Yellow Media Reports $3 Billion Quarterly Loss
