Media News

In this episode of "Cubes," we tour the worldwide headquarters of IPG Mediabrands, the media holding company responsible for $34 billion in global revenue from advertising agencies such as Universal McCann. IPG's work includes the Geico Gecko and Volkswagen's pint-sized Darth Vader.

Cubes: IPG Mediabrands

The death of singer Donna Summer is being remembered on the cable news channels this afternoon. Summer, known as the Queen of Disco for her songs, including "Last Dance," "Hot Stuff" and "I Feel Love," shared her own playlist with ABC's Nightline a few years ago. TVNewser has the video.

Donna Summer Shares Her Favorite Songs with Nightline

This freelance-heavy weekly is very open to pitches from new scribes who truly know Beantown.

How to Pitch: The Boston Globe Magazine

Today on the Morning Media Menu (MP3 link), we talked about the winners at the annual CLIO Awards.

AgencySpy editor Kiran Aditham (pictured) discussed Larry David's Charity Bribes-influenced decision to join Twitter. We also looked at one innovative teacher's zombie-based geography curriculum.

Follow this MP3 link to listen. The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog. Click here to receive mediabistro.com's Daily Newsfeed via email. Music by Kevin MacLeod.

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Media General Announces Agreements with Berkshire Hathaway for Purchase of Newspapers and New Financing (MarketWatch)
Media General, Inc. today announced that it has signed agreements with Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., for the purchase of newspapers and new financing. JimRomenesko.com Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is buying Media General's newspapers for $142 million in cash. The Tampa Tribune isn't included in the deal.

Japan's Rakuten Wins the Heart of Pinterest in $100M Funding Race With $1.5B Valuation (AllThingsD)
Rakuten, the largest e-commerce site in Japan, is expected to be the lead investor in the much-contested next round of funding for Silicon Valley's hottest start-up, Pinterest. The funding is expected to be announced tomorrow morning. WSJ Pinterest was last valued at $200 million in a funding round late last year.

Pharrell Launches Social Media Platform for Artists (SocialTimes)
Pharrell, the singer and drummer of hip-hop group N.E.R.D., is launching a new social media project called "i am Other", which, judging by the introduction video, is a social network dedicated by being different. It seems like it will be focused on giving a younger generation of really different people an opportunity to rise and show off their talent.

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CNN Hits Lowest Primetime Demo Rating At 9 P.M. In 15 Years (TVNewser)
Tuesday night was a typical, boring night, with little earth-shattering news to drive TV viewers to cable news. It was also May sweeps, with the season finales of NCIS: LA and America's Got Talent on NBC and Dancing With the Stars on ABC drawing an astonishing 39 million viewers between them at 9 p.m. Unfortunately for CNN, Piers Morgan Tonight was the apparent victim of the busy night, drawing only 39,000 viewers ages 25 to 54 at 9 p.m. Deadline Hollywood The news network itself averaged just 308,000 viewers in primetime with Morgan's show and Anderson Cooper's AC360 leading at 8 p.m. and again at 10 p.m.

Turner Broadcasting Invests In Social Video Site Funny Or Die (Lost Remote)
When Funny Or Die launched in April 2007, it enjoyed an early-mover advantage in jumping on the wave of socially-shared video. Today, it sports 1.7 million Facebook fans and 3.8 million Twitter followers who help contribute to the site's 6 million unique users and 60+ million video views per month. Those numbers -- and Funny Or Die's creative track record -- have led to a minority investment from Turner Broadcasting, part of a strategic partnership announced Wednesday spanning content and sales. NYT / Media Decoder The investment will link up Funny Or Die with two Turner brands on television: TBS, which is known for sitcoms, and Adult Swim, which shares channel space with the Cartoon Network and is known for irreverent cartoons, comedies and shorts. AdAge Funny Or Die will retain its sales force, although details around the teams and the reporting structure remain to be worked out. TechCrunch This isn't the first partnership that Funny Or Die has struck with a TV network. It also has a deal with HBO (which, like Turner, is also part of Time Warner) for its original series Funny Or Die Presents, now in its third season. paidContent Has a rush of new alliances between large cable programming conglomerates and independent producers of online video begun?

Several Brokerages Stop Taking Facebook IPO Orders (Reuters)
Investors who want Facebook Inc shares when the No. 1 online social network goes public later this week may have lost the opportunity. AllFacebook He (or she) who hesitates is lost when it comes to purchasing shares in Facebook's initial public offering Friday, as several brokers have reportedly stopped accepting orders for the long-awaited stock. WSJ / MarketBeat Brokers handling the social media titan's public-market debut this week have been reminded of a little-known rule, implemented in late 2011 and designed to dampen heavy price swings in newly minted shares. The rule blocks so-called "market orders" that may seek to buy at the opening of an initial public offering. Wired / Epicenter Sometime in early 2004, as Mark Zuckerberg was furiously coding the first iterations of The Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, the Internet passed what then seemed to be an impressive milestone: 750 million people worldwide had become connected. The exact birthdate of the Internet is difficult to pin down, but it's fair to say that it took at least three decades for the net to reach a population of that size. Today, after just eight years in existence, Facebook now has more than 750 million users all by itself.

Viacom, Time Warner Cable Settle iPad Dispute (THR / Hollywood, Esq.)
Viacom and Time Warner Cable have announced a deal that will allow TWC's customers to see Viacom programming on the iPad and other supported devices. TechCrunch The legal fight erupted last year, after Time Warner Cable released its iPad app, which lets subscribers stream live shows to tablets inside their homes. While many networks grumbled about the app, Viacom was most vocal in rejecting it, taking its distribution partner to court over whether or not it had the right to stream to other devices. B&C Time Warner Cable said over the next few weeks it will add Viacom channels to the app lineup, including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV and VH1. In addition to the channels that will become available via TWC TV, Time Warner Cable will continue to carry Country Music Television and also will carry additional linear channels from Viacom, including MTV Hits, MTV Jams and Centric. Reuters Viacom settled a similar iPad streaming lawsuit with Cablevision Systems Corp last August. NYT / Media Decoder Cable and satellite distributors have raced to come up with their own apps that offer subscribers shows inside and outside the home on multiple devices. But those efforts lead to complicated disputes with media companies, which argue they deserve additional compensation. The companies also say that making content too widely available will cut into licensing profits to third-party streaming services.

Media Figures On Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Celebrities List (HuffPost)
There was a healthy sprinkling of media figures on Forbes' annual list of the world's most powerful celebrities, which was released on Wednesday. TVNewser So while Jennifer Lopez took home a healthy $52 million last year, that's chump change compared to Glenn Beck, who, while No. 23 on the list, is No. 11 (tied with Elton John) in pay, taking home an estimated $80 million, more than Leonardo DiCaprio ($37 million), Brad Pitt ($25 million) and Julia Roberts ($16 million) combined. Forbes / Mixed Media News hounds perusing this year's edition of the Forbes Celebrity 100 might be surprised to see Rush Limbaugh on there at No. 19 -- four spots higher than he came in last year. This despite a boycott that drove advertisers from his radio show and reportedly cost Cumulus Media, one of the radio station groups that airs it, millions in lost revenue. Forbes View the full list of celebrities.

Social Journalism Research Helps Explain How Information Is Verified On Twitter (Poynter / Regret The Error)
Alfred Hermida's research on social journalism can help journalists better understand verification and accuracy on Twitter.

The New Republic Plans To Establish A New York Office (Capital New York)
The New Republic will open up a New York office sometime in the coming months.

San Diego CityBeat Is Losing Writers Fast (FishbowlLA)
A little while ago we wrote about how the San Diego CityBeat was hitting some hard financial times, and was soliciting donations from readers to help keep it afloat. Doesn't look like that effort is going too well, because the paper is shedding writers.

For Its 2012 Elections Coverage, MTV Swaps Out Citizen Journalism For Gamification (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Taking cues from fantasy football, MTV is partnering with a group of news organizations on a game they hope will engage youth with elective politics. The network has long experimented with ways to engage young voters, but this year it's trading citizen journalism -- in 2008, MTV picked one correspondent in each state and D.C. to cover the presidential race -- for a gamification approach to elections coverage.

SAG-AFTRA Merger Opponents Drop Plans For Legal Action (TheWrap.com)
Opponents of the merger between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Actors have thrown in the towel and decided not to pursue further legal action against the merger. THR / Hollywood, Esq. SAG had argued that the suit was meritless. In a filing a month ago, the union added that the suit was both moot and, for other reasons, premature.

Flipboard's Josh Quittner Talks About Role, Explains Ad Platform (Adweek / Internet Week)
If you have an iPad or tablet device, chances are you've seen the Web through the glossy world of Flipboard. If you've ever taken the "social magazine" for a spin, you might know that while the user experience is silky smooth, the company has had to address concerns about the service's threat to traditional journalism and even in some cases, legality. Nieman Journalism Lab Flipboard already enjoys high user engagement. As of January the app has been downloaded 8 million times, the company says, and users spend an average of 90 minutes per month with it. Now Flipboard's smorgasbord of lean-back content gets a big addition: audio.

NBC Sports Network Lines Up Cable-Record 292.5 Hours Of Olympic Coverage (Multichannel News)
NBC Sports Network will kick off its cable-record coverage from the London Olympics with the U.S. women's soccer team taking on France. Coming two days before the opening ceremony, the July 25 telecast of the match at 11:30 a.m. ET from Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland will mark the first piece of NBC Sports Network's 292.5 hours of coverage, the most ever for an Olympic cable network.

Bonnier Adds Former MTV Digital Exec (FishbowlNY)
Michael Alex, a former veteran of MTV, is joining Bonnier as vice president of digital content strategy, a new role at the company. At Bonnier, Alex will work with the company's digital department heads on new content strategies for their collective brands.

NBC News Celebrates 20 Years Of Dateline (TVNewser)
Dateline, formerly known as Dateline NBC, will mark 20 years on the air with a primetime special next week. The show's host, Lester Holt, will present highlights of the last 20 years, including new interviews from some of the most memorable stories.

Changes At Australian Vogue (WWD / Memo Pad)
Kirstie Clements is out at Vogue Australia after 13 years as editor, to be succeeded by the current editor of Harper's Bazaar Australia, Edwina McCann, Condé Nast's Australian licensee NewsLifeMedia said Wednesday.

@mediabistro #mbchats Can Google+ do anything to boost popularity?

@mfdood It needs to position itself less as a social network, and more as a content sharing platform.

@spencer_haley I like G+, but its lack of popularity is a negative feedback loop. No one I know uses it regularly & utility is lost #TooLate

@VinceintheBay Google what?

@dkaps89 Nope

@OnColleges The Google+ commercials are often amusing. Keeping up with new ones would help!

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