In the ongoing fight between Redbox–which rents DVDs from kiosks for $1–and major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment just filed a brief to dismiss Redbox’s lawsuit against it.
The fascinating legal battle between Redbox and the studios centers around the issues of steep discounting, windowing and the price for premium content.
Time Inc.’s Fortune magazine–which never met a list it did not like to make–had a solid group of women tech types on its “50 Most Powerful Women 2009” roster, the annual survey that it posted yesterday.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz made the Top Ten this year, clocking in at No. 8, along with a lot of other tech-savvy women in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
If you want to get Hollywood movie studio types irked, mention Google. And if you want them steamed, bringing up Netflix will usually work.
But if you want to see the tops of their heads blow off, Redbox is just the ticket.
Except not to their movies, it seems, if the major movie studio execs have their way in an ever-growing legal battle with the DVD-rental kiosk company.
A typical consumer named Louie Swisher, though, begs to differ.
It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.
Sources said MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston.
In June, Time Warner online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media, a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics.
After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn’t deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.
That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.
According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.
Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, is the kickoff interview onstage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference, which is taking place over the next three days in Pasadena, Calif.
The event is packed full of Web and media luminaries.
So, BoomTown will be sitting in the front row and liveblogging some of the sessions here, including this one, titled, “Digital Kingdom: New Business Models for a Media Giant.”
Translation: When you Twitter upon a star, makes a–big–difference what you earn.
Which, right now, is not a whole lot, as Iger and others in the media business know all too well.
A few weeks ago, when I was having breakfast with legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen about his new venture fund, he talked about what he thought was critical to being successful as an Internet company.
Ticking off names, from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andreessen said he always favored technical entrepreneurs for one key reason: “You need someone who lives and breathes product.”
It’s a refrain I have heard a lot recently from a wide range of people in the sector, most especially when talking about two of the more challenging renovations of key Internet brands going on of late.
That would be: Yahoo and MySpace.
Two years ago, Index Ventures was part of a group that invested $45 million in Joost, the then-hot-and-hyped online video service, while bringing on well-known tech exec Mike Volpi as CEO.
Now, he is headed to Index as a partner in the venture firm, in what some might think is an ironic move.
That’s because last week, after much effort to get traction for Joost, Volpi announced that the service was undergoing a major shakeout–drastically cutting staff and shifting its business model and strategy.
Where is Microsoft spending its $100 million in marketing for its new Bing search service?
Here’s a photo that was forwarded to me showing an advertisement on top of a taxi in Manhattan of a goodbye message from Bing, as well as NBC, to the late pop legend, Michael Jackson.
Mike Angus, EVP and General Counsel of Fox Interactive Media, is leaving that job for another in New Corp., as new digital head Jon Miller continues to reshape the division.
Last week, BoomTown reported that FIM CFO Ed McKenna was leaving his post and the company, part of many changes taking place related to News Corp.’s digital properties.
It’s all part of a major rejiggering of the News Corp. digital unit, which came into being almost four years ago, although not an elimination of the unit, as has been reported.
More likely, it will likely include a name change–perhaps to the Digital Media Group–as well as a much streamlined organization that gives more autonomy to FIM’s Web, online advertising and publishing technology units.
Even if it never makes any money, Twitter certainly does provide fabulous material for television spoofs.
So far, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have done several funny bits on Comedy Central, deftly mocking the microblogging service.
And now, Conan O’Brien is doubling down with two skits so far dubbed “Twitter TRACKER” on “The Tonight Show.”
In them, a loudmouthed voice delivers pointless celebrity tweets as a flock of blue cartoon Twitter birdies is murdered in various ingenious ways.
San Francisco-based Sugar Media, which specializes in Web sites aimed at women, cut its ties with NBC Universal by buying back its shares and got a Series C funding of $16 million from Sequoia Capitol.
Sequoia has been an existing venture investor, having put $5 million into the start-up in late 2006. NBC, a unit of GE, invested $10 million in 2007.
Sugar, which runs the flagship PopSugar.com site, also announced it has bought video shopping start-up, Shopflick, and had hired its founder and CEO to run a new Los Angeles-based entertainment unit.
BlogHer, which bills itself as “the community for women who blog,” has gotten $7 million more in a Series C funding, which will bring the total investment in the site to about $15.5 million.
The new round includes a return by two existing investors, Venrock and Peacock Equity, a fund run by GE and its NBC Universal unit. Azure Capital is joining as a new investor.
In an interview with BoomTown, BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone said the site’s recent fast growth was the impetus for the new round, in order to improve tools offered to its 2,500 vetted bloggers as well as investing in better research and advertising technology.
Was it Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in Fraiche Yogurt with a Macbook Air? Or Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the streets of San Francisco with a Model S? Or, most likely of all, Marissa Mayer of Google in the penthouse with a Manolo Blahnik spiked heel?
For all the invective this trio has taken from him, all would certainly be prime suspects if some nefarious fate befell Valleywag’s always controversial gossip blogger, Owen Thomas.
Actually, the truth is a little more mundane: The self-described “scourge of [Silicon] Valley” is moving onto another digital job as head of NBC Universal’s new Bay Area Web site, whose motto is “Locals Only.” Deceptively fresh-faced Ryan Tate is his replacement.
Here are Thomas’s last words on the controversial gossip site.
On BoomTown’s recent grand tour of Europe, I paid a visit a week ago to London to moderate some sessions at Media Guardian’s Changing Media Summit 2009.
As in the U.S., a lot of the same questions were asked there about when and how the new media business would cross the Rubicon to transform into a strongly profitable and sustainable business.
And the answer to that query was just as hard to find as here.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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