Media Companies

Now this is how you start a week: Aol is selling 800 patents to Microsoft for $1.056 billion in straight cash, homey. Aol is keeping over 300 patents related to advertising, search, content management and more. As part of the deal, Microsoft has a non-exclusive license to those retained patents.

Aol is returning a “significant portion of the sale proceeds” to its shareholders and as of right now, stock is up 42 percent. Quite a nice Monday for Aol.

You’d have to be a radio connoisseur to be aware of Connoisseur Media in this part of the country. The Westport, Connecticut based-company owns radio stations in several markets.

Connoisseur took a big step toward enhancing its name by agreeing to purchase four of Barnstable’s Long Island stations at a price tag of $23 million. The call letters are WKJY/KJOY, WBZO-FM, WIGX-FM, and WHLI–AM.

In a release, Connoisseur CEO Jeffrey Warshaw said, “We are so excited to have the privilege of continuing the legacy of service that Barnstable has created on Long Island. These are great operations with terrific people. I was raised on Long Island and grew up listening to these stations.”

With these acquistions going through, Connoisseur would be a Top 20 market operator for the first time. At the moment, this broadcast chain has no outlets in a market larger than the 72nd. 

Read more

Reader’s Digest Association is selling its Lifestyle & Entertainment Direct business as it continues to shed properties. The direct marketing segment sells a wide variety of products — like exercise equipment, music collections and videos — that are typically seen on infomercials.

A source told The New York Post that part of the problem at Lifestyle & Entertainment Direct was an inability to adapt by featuring new products, and that former RDA CFO Tom Williams was incapable of guiding the business out of its doldrums.

Lifestyle & Entertainment Direct reported an operating loss of $292 million last fiscal year.

The Onion, as we noted back in September, is moving its operations out of our great city and centralizing everything in Chicago. When staffers heard about the move from CEO Steve Hannah, many were angered by the situation. Now that the move is beginning, the numbers are showing that many were very upset: The Atlantic Wire is reporting that only five of the 16 staffers have agreed to move and thus keep their jobs.

Hannah thinks he did everything possible to make the move enticing:

While Hannah acknowledged ‘I could have been far more delicate about delivering the news,’ he said he’s tried to do right by the editorial team. ‘I regret the way that first meeting went but I certainly don’t apologize for making extremely generous offers for everyone. Every single New York writer was offered a raise and a relocation package.’

Look, we know it’s not easy to move from New York to Chicago. This is New York, and well, everywhere else is everywhere else. And leaving behind friends and real pizza for strangers and slop that vaguely resembles pizza is difficult. But writers turning down jobs, raises and relocation packages seems crazy. Hope it all works out for them.

Bloomberg News has fired its veteran financial editor and newsroom manager, William Ahearn. JimRomenesko.com first reported Ahearn’s dismissal Wednesday.

As the site mentions, Ahearn was editor at Bloomberg, charged with overseeing senior writer A. Craig Copetas, who was based in Paris. Ahearn supervised Copetas’  investigative pieces involving torture and fiscal corruption in the United Arab Emirates. Copetas was also recently fired.

“This is a crime.  Been stewing about this since Thursday and getting madder by the hour,” former Bloomberg staffer Wes Richards tells FishbowlNY. ”Not a whole lot of Bloomberg radio folks know him well.  But Bill and I go back more than 40 years and this is one fine guy, not to mention a fine writer, an excellent administrator, and a star quality editor.”

Ahearn, who worked at Bloomberg’s “World Headquarters” on Lexington Avenue for a dozen years, previously had a three-decade career as executive editor at the Associated Press.  

According to his LinkedIn page, Ahearn graduated from the University in Bridgeport in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science in journalism.

There’s been no reason given for Ahearn’s exit.

The New York Times and Reuters are reporting that CNN is going to acquire Mashable. Felix Salmon of Reuters said that the deal could be announced tomorrow and the price tag could be a hefty $200 million.

Salmon did add that he “didn’t know” if the rumor about the acquisition was true, and reps for CNN and Mashable declined to comment on the talks to the Times. The paper didn’t take that for an answer though, and did some sleuthing:

There was a social media hint about the potential acquisition early Monday morning when Adam Ostrow, the executive editor of Mashable, ‘liked’ on Facebook Mr. Salmon’s story for Reuters.

Stay tuned (glued?) for more details.

UPDATE:
Brian Stelter of the Times just tweeted that Mashable has denied the timing: “In email to staff, Pete Cashmore says it ‘isn’t true’ that @Mashable ‘will be acquired this week.’ (Doesn’t deny NYT report of talks w/CNN.)”

Hearst has a reason to celebrate. This week marks the media company’s 125th birthday.

It grew from a single San Francisco newspaper acquired by William Randolph Hearst in 1887 to a New York-based global operation with more than 20,000 employees.

Here are a few highlights from its history:

• Good Housekeeping Research Institute
• Launch of Cosmopolitan
• Connecting viewers of WBAL in Baltimore to color TV in 1952
• Launch of Motor
• Invested in Pandora
• Recent acquisition of 100 magazines (including ELLE) from Lagardère
• Expansion into healthcare industry companies with the likes of First DataBank

CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr. wrote a note looking back at Hearst’s history, fifty years of which he’s been a part of. Here are some excerpts:

In this very special year, there can be no more perfect connection between legacy and the future: Our revenue will be nearly equally split between print and electronic media, and digital revenue will approach the company’s total revenue in our centennial year, 1987.

Read more

In the wake of Reader’s Digest Association selling Weekly Reader to Scholastic Inc., the New York Post is reporting that about 40 staffers have been let go. Even though the deal was finalized last month, RDA is operating Weekly Reader through June.

Officials at Scholastic haven’t offered any clues into how many staffers will be kept once the publication is under their control. “We’re still working on it,” a spokesperson told the Post.

On the right is the Associated Press’ brand new logo. The design — the first update in 30 years — is part of an overhaul of the AP’s brand. A new website is launching next month, too.

“This new look, from logo to color system, translates to AP’s growing portfolio of digital products and platforms, and distinctively relays our role as the definitive source for news,” said Tom Curley, the AP’s President and CEO, in a press release.

If we had known the AP was going to unleash something so radical on us, we would’ve taken a Valium before opening the email. All kidding aside, it is a bit nicer, right? After all, this is the AP we’re talking about, it’s not like they could’ve went too crazy with it. Adding a mascot or something probably would’ve put a dent in its credibility.

The Associated Press is suing Meltwater News — a media intelligence software service  — claiming that Meltwater has repeatedly infringed on the company’s copyrighted material, and often copies AP stories word for word. Tom Curley, the President and CEO of the AP, had some harsh words for Meltwater.

“Meltwater News is a parasitic distribution service that competes directly with traditional news sources without paying license fees to cover the costs of creating those stories,” Curley said in a press release. “It has a significant negative impact on the ability of AP to continue providing the high-quality news reports on which the public relies.”

The AP says that the Meltwater lawsuit shouldn’t be taken as an attack on sites who link to AP news stories because Meltwater does it in the wrong way.

“Meltwater is not a typical news aggregator,” said Laura Malone, the AP’s general counsel.