ABC certainly has been taking its sweet time in releasing the first episode of “V,” a sci-fi television series that debuted earlier this week on the Web in any substantial way.
The premiere of a redo of a 1980s miniseries about a lizardy alien invasion disguised as a peace mission by outerspace hotties turned out to be a big broadcast hit, but it is hard to watch online.
Until tomorrow, that is.
Apparently, not everyone leaves Yahoo to join Microsoft.
On Friday, sources said, it was announced internally at Microsoft that Karl Siebrecht, the former president of Atlas at aQuantive, is joining AdReady at the end of the month as president and COO.
AdReady, based in Seattle, bills itself as an “advertising technology company focused on making online display advertising accessible and effective for advertisers of all sizes.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave what he just had to know would be a much quoted comment to the Nikkei today, explicitly saying that the company had “begun seriously looking into acquisitions again.”
Music to the beleaguered mergers and acquisitions market, to be sure, especially after a recent uptick from other big companies pulling out their wallets again as the impact of the econalypse subsides.
According to sources, Google is working on at least a half-dozen acquisition deals, most of which are small start-ups in the online advertising and cloud-computing arenas.
That would be welcome news for many.
While John Hughes has almost nothing to do with the Internet, BoomTown–who is of a certain age–was saddened to hear about the premature passing of this director supreme of suburban teen angst movies of the 1980s.
He died yesterday of a heart attack at 59 years old.
His hit films included “The Breakfast Club,” “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He wrote “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles,” as well as “Pretty in Pink,” “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Home Alone” and tons of others.
Here are some great clips online.
Oh, who doesn’t just love, love, love the two latest viral videos to hit the Web–“United Breaks Guitars” and the joyful wedding dance of Minnesotans Jill and Kevin? Combined, they have more than 20 million views on YouTube.
While that’s all well and good, like a lot of these kinds of viral phenoms, neither is likely to make much money and become more than watercooler wonders.
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.
Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.
In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture NBC launched with News Corp.; and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”
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.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looking for the primo opportunity to curse at BoomTown.
Here are the online links to the transcripts, as well as video highlights.
We’ll be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.
According to several sources, News Corp. will officially announce its shaken-but-not-stirred digital lineup this morning, as former AOL head Jon Miller takes over as the media giant’s new chief digital officer.
And Peter Levinsohn–his predecessor at Fox Interactive Media, which Miller will inherit in a new form, along with a larger portfolio, all based in New York–will also officially take up his new post as the key digital exec at News Corp.’s film and television studios in California.
BoomTown and others had reported on the changes last week.
Peter Chernin might be going from News Corp. But he’s not forgotten, at the least by our little tech Web site (see, Peter, we still like you, even if you’re–almost–no longer our boss!).
In fact, you can see him in action after the jump in a video, talking about digital issues and more in a long interview I did with him onstage at the fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007.
Will the 57-year-old Chernin–who was top choice to head Yahoo and has been mentioned as a possible leader at Apple–have his next act in tech?
Here’s a longish video BoomTown did over the weekend at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
I was there to moderate a panel on Saturday titled, “Where Do We Go From Here? Icons of the Digital Age,” with YouTube co-founder and CEO Chad Hurley, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings.
I did interviews with each of them here, as well as a chat with my only indie celebrity friend, Jane Lynch, some scenes from the festival and an intro and outro from my own little stars, Louie and Alex Swisher.
BoomTown is headed to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival today, an annual journey I make to moderate panels about the tech industry. The festival officially opened yesterday in Park City, Utah. While still largely a confab of independent filmmakers, Hollywood deal types and various celebrities rifling though swag orgies, a lot of geeks are there too.
This week, “Saturday Night Live” comic and spoof video impresario Andy Samberg got some ink, because another one of his groin-focused rappish music videos–this one called “J**z in My Pants”–was racking up 6.7 million views on YouTube. But while “My Pants” is very funny in that overgrown teenaged boy sort of way that a lot of Samberg’s videos are, BoomTown is much more intrigued by the short episodic online comedy videos that he is making at his production company–The Lonely Island–with his longtime partners Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.
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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