Carrying The Torch: The Political Tightrope; The Olympic Games Under Fire; The Yahoo! & The Restless - Media Biz Buzz for April 14, 2008

Without insulting the Beijing Games as mere metaphor its recent travails show how we39ve truly become a Global Village Yes I said Village not Cosmopolis While the Games has striven since its charter to be apolitical and failed miserably at times this Summer39s event proves that the bonds between entertainment sport politics even geography are now indissoluble Likewise as Yahoo faces down Microsoft39s April 26th drop dead date a universe of rival configurations has crept into unlikely scenarios It was a week where Obama went defensive after taking a page from Howard Dean and early Bill Clinton in discussing why folks vote against their best interests while The View39s resident standup Joy Behar gave John McCain his hardesthitting interview in a month of Sundays JK Rowling39s appearance in court today is a reminder that notions of intellectual property copyright even the value of content are being contested Said China39s Hu Jintao regarding Tibet it39s quotentirely an internal issuequot No such thing anymore not for advertising for storytelling even political fundraising Game OnTime was airing the Olympics was a license to print Benjamins But as the torch erratically lights it way across the globe more and more world leaders the UN39s SecretaryGeneral Germany39s Cancellor the UK39s Prime Minister are taking a powder on the opening games NBC may well bray that its inventory is 75 sold out but a recent study by the Kelton Group finds that 1 in 4 viewers are considering turning off the Games because of China39s human rights record Last night the Dalai Lama indicated that he might resign if matters didn39t improve while the IOC is being pressured by Human Rights Watch to make a substantive statement on the matter While NSA chief Steve Hadley hedged on the Sunday morning shows on whether Bush would attend both the Wall Street Journal and USAToday provide guidance to brands on how to weather the storm Yahoo Tries Not to BlinkIf Yahoo were a reality competition it39d be Survivor Silicon Valley Its board met on Friday indicating that it would entertain further negotiations with Microsoft But in parallel it39s been multitasking Looking at combining with AOL Even more aggressively it began working with Google last week using 3 of its search ad inventory to test AdSense for search as a prelude to outsourcing its search ad sales This has given MSFT reason to play the quotAntitrustquot card and Congress hears 39em Everyone has a thought here a Sanford C Bernstein analyst on CNet likes an AOL union not so the Financial Times Fortune sees the MSFT union as forward looking an AOL merger as retro Gartner insists that MSFT needs Yahoo as Vista is imploding Valleywag39s contribution here is a simple poll Its readers currently prefer a MSFTY outcome vs AOLY and by a whopping 2 to 1 margin The Price of Content The Price of AdsZeitgeist knocking Across the Web last week there were parallel strands of discussion some supporting the adage that quotcontent is kingquot others nursing a thesis that content is fast becoming a commodity Jon Handel39s posting on HuffPo is a good place to start the entertainment lawyer looks at six reasons why content has become devalued I give him a thumbs up although I part company on his reasons why copyright is broken and his belief that rank amateurs have no desire for compensation Evan Kaplan has his version of the argument for music which TechCrunch finds it innately suspect since he39s a VP for Technology at Warner Bros Michael Arrington thinks it39s a ruse for the music tax that WB has been floating MediaFuturist is bullish over MySpaceMusic opining that if it leverages its community it can best iTunes Jack Myers weighed in on the matter in his Think Tank last week looking specifically at the concept of quotprice towards freequot for advertising He offers a solution tomorrow With the launch of Google TV Ads which will reach Dish39s 14 million settops anyone can become an advertiser While some pundits believe that we39ll see a fall in quality this doesn39t jibe with CurrentTV39s recent findings According to EPoll Market Research viewers preferred its VCAM viewercreated ad messages nine to one and recalled them fivefold compared to quotprofessional adsquot With advertising in flux Naked a consultancy in quotcommunications planningquot got a writeup in the Times With one hand Nielsen Media laid off folks across its trade magazines even as it gobbled up IAG Research for 225M with the other Behavioral Ads Are Targeted Both the FTC and New York State lawmakers debated guidelines Google and Yahoo cried foul even quotunconstitutionalquot while Microsoft allowed for the possibility of oversight although it preferred selfregulation In addition to its foray into auctionbased TV advertising and noodling with Yahoo Google owned online advertising its 306 share exceeding the sum total of Yahoo AOL and MSFT Google expanded its 10monthold collaboration with Salesforcecom launched the Google App Engine which depending on your POV is either a threat to Amazon39s S3 or Facebook39s F8 platform Broadcast TV BECAME The NewsEspecially if you were CBS Rumors buzzed around Katie Couric39s job security a plan to outsource newsgathering to CNN a court ruling over Dan Rather39s lawsuit JackMyers guest blogger Charlie Warner has a cure for what ails 39em Check out the Daily Show taking the piss out of Fox News in The Meter Is Running we39re ready for them to mock Blitzer39s quotBest Political Team On Televisionquot GE missed its targets even as NBC posted a 3 gain ABC39s Bob Iger was interviewed by Ken Auletta at the Newhouse School event our Gene DeWitt covered the event MIPTV 2008 was termed a watershed as ancillary platforms like mobile VOD and IPTV finally started to move the needle Losing again in Federal Appeals Court EchoStar vowed to see TiVo in Supreme Court chambers Even as Silicon Alley Insider posts its epitaph online video saw some programming deals cohere as MySpaceTV partnered with Elisabeth Murdoch39s ShineReveille to create original titles beginning with I Love ChiefTown and distribute them globally Look out AppleTV seems likely by month39s end that Blockbuster will be streaming movies Even sexier Adobe39s Media Player is RSS for video thanks to AIR it works offline RecessionProof BUY SELL INVEST LAUNCHCommunityConnect parent of social networking sites including BlackPlanet went to RadioOne for 38M IACbacked BlackWeb launched RushmoreDrivecom described as a specialized search portal for the AfricanAmerican community In a firesale PlanetOut Published sold its magazine and book publishing titles to Here Networks OLX Craigslist for the rest of the world secured 135M in second round fundingDatebookCatch the PopeMobile and the subsequent traffic snarl between Tax Day and April 20th in NYC and Washington DC Come April 17 the FCC has its targetquotblankquotampgtecond field visit over the issue of Net Neutrality this time at Stanford IBM Reminds UsOf infinite possibility Last week Big Blue made news unfurling Intel about its Next Gen memory technology Spintronics not a new form of aerobics will take us beyond hard drives making flash memory passe Whereas state of the art was the storage and control of flow of an electrical charge quotRacetrackquot will enable that storage and control down to the microscopic level the spin of an electron itself Once ready it will increase storage capacity by one hundredfold Without getting all New Age there39s a lesson here Towards the Within we find the stuff that we39re made of our essence

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Carrying The Torch: The Political Tightrope; The Olympic Games Under Fire; The Yahoo! & The Restless - Media Biz Buzz for April 14, 2008

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Jerry Weinstein

Empowering Women in Media: Insights from Industry Leaders (Video) - By E.B. Moss

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