The Media Dish

[themediadish-blog]

@Spotify Comes to Facebook

Let's introduce music to your social life! Spotify and Facebook have come together to help you discover more free music than ever before. Just click any of the play buttons on Facebook to get started. Spotify is the award-winning music service that gives you free and instant access to over 15 million tracks. Sign up now to enjoy our unrivalled free service. Visit spotify.com to find out more.

[themediadish-blog]

Viacom is in the process of company wide layoffs in its New York offices. Sources told Adweek that pink slips were served on Thursday afternoon.

The downsizing took place the same day Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman told financial analysts at a Goldman Sachs conference that the company's advertising revenue growth this quarter is expected to miss the company's double-digit targets. That announcement sent Viacom stock down about 8 percent.

A source told Adweek that the layoffs are affecting a number of personnel throughout most Viacom departments. Viacom representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[themediadish-blog]

Here is another thing for New York Times readers to feel smug about: According to a study, the comments on the newspaper’s website are the smartest among six top news sites. Tim Libert, a web developer for NYU’s journalism department, recently surveyed the comment sections on the Times, CNN, MSNBC, Wired, ZDNet and the UK’s The Register, and found that the conversations on the Times were just plain smarter.

Libert initially conducted the research to learn what people thought of the hacking group LulzSec, but while doing that he noticed patterns in the way people commented on the sites. Times readers’ comments were “thoughtful and nuanced,” while CNN comments had “a significant amount of name-calling, off-topic comments and what I suspect were fake accounts,” wrote Libert. MSNBC comments weren’t much better than CNN’s, as they tended to feature “long-winded personal attacks.”

There you have it. More completely scientific and undeniable proof that people who read the New York Times are smarter than everyone else. If any non-Times readers dispute this, they’re probably just jealous.

[themediadish-blog]

(Reuters) - Hulu, the popular online video service which has been put up for sale by its joint owners, now has more than 1 million paying subscribers, Chief Executive Jason Kilar said on Wednesday.

  Earlier this year Kilar forecast that Hulu would have 1 million subscribers by the end of the year. He confirmed that it reached that milestone at the end of the summer and the site is now on its way to easily exceed that number by year's end.

  The site made its name as a free service for popular broadcast TV shows like The Office and Modern Family soon after the shows had been aired.

  The shows and movies it initially featured were supplied by its joint equity owners News Corp, Walt Disney Co and Comcast Corp's NBC Universal. Its fourth co-owner is private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.

  Hulu launched a subscription tier last November and has since added more content from partners including Viacom and Hollywood studio Miramax.

  Kilar said customers' preference for TV shows and library content on Hulu and Netflix Inc is a function of the deals the sites are able to reach with programmers within the constraints of their respective financial models.

  "We will invest over $375 million in content this year," said Kilar, speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.

  Kilar has previously said the company will have around $500 million in revenue this year.

  Some programmers have been reluctant to do major U.S. deals with Hulu due to concerns that it might undercut their relationships with pay-TV distributors. CBS Corp boss Les Moonves in particular has been the most vocal about his caution with Hulu, even though his company inked a deal with Hulu in Japan.

  "I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll work with everyone over time," Kilar said.

  Kilar was complementary about the risks Hulu's owners had taken in setting up and supporting the business to date even though those owners put Hulu up for sale earlier this year.

  Reuters reported last week that the $2 billion sale had hit speed bumps in recent weeks as the owners reconsidered whether a sale is still the best strategy.

  "We're still evaluating the situation," said News Corp Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the conference -- reiterating recent comments on a quarterly earnings call. He declined to comment further.

  Earlier in the summer Disney CEO Bob Iger had said the owners were fully committed to selling Hulu.

  NBC Universal is not actively involved in the sale process. Comcast agreed NBC Universal would not participate in management decisions of Hulu in order to receive regulatory approval for its takeover of the broadcaster and cable giant.

  Critics of the plan to sell Hulu argue the owners should keep hold of a major distribution channel of the future rather than sell to possible new owners like Google, Amazon.com or Yahoo.

  (Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

[themediadish-blog]

When media mogul Oprah Winfrey bid farewell to 25 years of The Oprah Winfrey Show in May, she left viewers with a cliff-hanger. “I won’t say good-bye,” Winfrey said on her final show. “Until we meet again.”

But the promise of that glorified gathering place on her glittering new cable network, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, has fallen short of expectations. OWN’s 24-hour-a-day programming launched on Jan. 1 in 80 million homes as a partnership between ­Winfrey’s Harpo production company and cable programming powerhouse Discovery Communications. The goal was to remake a forgotten, high-numbered cable channel into Oprah-branded gold. Ratings quickly tanked. Chief Executive Christina Norman was shown the door in May. Winfrey became the chair, CEO and chief creative officer in July. Now the pressure is on Oprah to save TV’s feel-good network.

Winfrey admitted to fans on Facebook that OWN hadn’t found its flow because she and her staff had been too focused on ending the syndicated Oprah TV show. (Winfrey declined an interview with FORBES.) Critics argue that the issues run deeper. Since OWN’s launch in January its average prime-time audience dropped 37% to 250,000 viewers in July, according to Nielsen. An average of 109,000 viewers tuned in on an all-day basis that month—just one-third of the viewership expected by ­advertisers.

Robert Thompson, the founding ­director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University, believes OWN launched too early, without enough programming. The shows it does have are weak, he says. Adding to the troubles: OWN is difficult to find on the channel guide. “Some people thought anything Oprah introduced would be a hit. She could introduce the chicken pox, and people would want to get it,” says Thompson. “We now know Oprah’s name isn’t enough.”

Discovery Communications Chief Executive David Zaslav, who approached Winfrey with the idea for an Oprah-inspired network in 2007 and subsequently okayed pumping nearly $200 million into it, says he isn’t worried by the lower-than-expected ratings. “It’s going to take time,” Zaslav insists. “There is no cable channel that launches from nowhere to immediate success.”

Zaslav has pushed for more involvement from Oprah. He persuaded Winfrey to double her on-air time in 2009, before the launch. With Winfrey in charge, “Oprah’s now at the center of OWN,” Zaslav beams. “This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”

Winfrey may be one of the media industry’s best brand managers, but can she rise to the role of a programming executive? On Aug. 1, after spending her first full week focused on the channel, she told fans that while she wasn’t “frazzled” by OWN’s performance, managing it turned out to be one of her biggest challenges. “It’s ten times harder than doing my daily show,” she said in a Facebook note. “Doing that show felt like breathing every day. Now I’m in so many meetings I sometimes have to step out and catch a breath.”

Part of Winfrey’s new strategy is ­integrating OWN’s staff in L.A. with Harpo’s staff in Chicago. “One team, one heart,” goes the mantra. Harpo presidents Sheri Salata and Erik Logan were tapped as OWN presidents in July and will lead both teams. Instead of chasing ratings, Salata and Logan plan to focus their attention on brand-consistent programming and hope better ratings will follow. “We feel very bullish that we will deliver on the commitments that we have in the marketplace,” says Logan.

Zaslav, too, maintains that advertisers—OWN launched with about ten blue-chip ad clients that had signed multiyear deals—have been incredibly supportive. Of them, Target, Kellogg’s and Procter & Gamble declined to comment. A General Motors representative says GM remains committed to OWN.

Some close OWN watchers warn that advertisers’ support has just about reached its limit. Derek Baine, a senior analyst at media research firm SNL Kagan, says OWN’s ratings have sometimes been lower than the ratings for the Discovery Health channel, which preceded OWN on the same channel number. “If we get to the end of the year and ratings are still terrible, then it’s a big problem. Advertisers will pull back on their commitments.”

That means Winfrey has to work fast to ensure OWN’s new programming—scheduled to launch Oct. 10—catches on. After all, even with her $2.7 billion net worth Oprah can’t subsidize a cable network indefinitely. OWN executives are placing most of their hopes on a daily talk show, The Rosie Show, hosted by comedienne Rosie O’Donnell, and a rehash of the Oprah show, called Oprah’s Lifeclass. The latter will use select clips from the 4,561 Oprah episodes, along with new footage of Winfrey sharing personal revelations and life lessons. “At my core I’m a teacher, masquerading as a talk show host. And now I’ll have a nightly class on OWN,” Winfrey said on Facebook.

In January a second show hosted by Winfrey, Oprah’s Next Chapter, will follow her around the world as she ­interviews high-profile subjects.

“All it takes is a couple of big hits,” says Syracuse University’s Thompson. “The really important question is, can Oprah still do a hit show?”

It’s a bet that Winfrey, with Zaslav’s backing, is willing to make. With the cable property valued as high as $1 billion, it’s no small risk. “We’re making a lot of progress,” says Zaslav. “Watch out for us over the next two to three years. We’re going to make a big splash, and we’re going to have a big impact.”

Originally published in the October 10, 2011 issue of FORBES.

[themediadish-blog]

(Reuters) - The auction of online video site Hulu has been slowed by recent developments which could derail it completely, according to sources familiar with the process.

Among the issues are conflicts over complicated digital rights, a wide bid-ask gap, and Yahoo being sidelined as a potential buyer by its own issues. Moreover, NBC Universal's hiring of Morgan Stanley banker Stuart Epstein, who was involved in the sale process for the bank, as its chief financial officer complicates a potential deal.

And then there is the lack of commitment to sell by Hulu's owners -- News Corp, Walt Disney Co, Comcast Corp's NBC Universal and Providence Equity Partners.

News Corp Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey even acknowledged during the company's third-quarter earnings call last month that a Hulu sale might not happen.

A new round of bids are due next week and price will be in a key issue in whether the auction moves forward, according to a source close to the situation.

Other sources with knowledge of the talks said an unusually wide gap has developed in recent weeks between the price bidders are offering and what the Hulu owners are willing to accept. Hulu's owners are becoming more steadfast about the price and feel enough strategic alternatives are available to reject low-ball offers, sources said.

Bids have ranged from as low as $500 million to as much as $2 billion. The most serious suitors include Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, DirecTV Group Inc and DISH Network Corp.

Yahoo Inc had been viewed as one of the most enthusiastic likely bidders, but that was before its leadership imploded last week with the firing of CEO Carol Bartz. The company is likely to be too preoccupied with its own issues to digest a multibillion dollar deal. Moreover, Hulu's owners would be reluctant to sell to a company undergoing an internal upheaval.

As with any sale, the situation is fluid and there remains a chance Google or another party could swoop in with a rich offer. Reports have suggested Google was planning an offer, but company insiders are uncertain Hulu's media owners would sanction a sale to the search engine giant -- at least not without caveats such as blocking piracy searches, for example.

After intense initial interest due to Hulu's huge and growing popularity, the sale has stalled as bidders questioned what they would get for their money.

One senior media executive said the nature of Hulu's content deals is key to whether a deal happens or not.

"I guess the brand and technology are worth something, but probably not for that asking price because digital companies could develop a site on their own," the executive said, who asked not to be identified speaking about a partner company.

CBS Corp boss Les Moonves openly questioned Hulu's value during an interview at a Paley Media Center event on Thursday.

"What are they getting and how long are they getting it?" asked Moonves, whose company is not a Hulu owner or content provider. "Are they buying two years of programs for $2 billion? I don't know. I shouldn't say more, I'll get in trouble."

The issue of rights, particularly on newer platforms such as the Web and mobile, are both unclear and complicated, adding to the potential deal's complexity.

BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield said a recent decision by NBC Universal to offer programs for free via an iPhone and iPad app without requiring a cable subscription effectively undermines the value of the rights Hulu's owners are trying to sell. The move also potentially conflicts with News Corp unit Fox TV's strategy of allowing Hulu users to access only the latest TV shows if they are a pay-TV subscriber.

"It gets more challenging to push through the Hulu sale, given what NBC just did," said Greenfield.

Comcast agreed, as part of the regulatory restrictions attached to its takeover of NBCU, that NBCU would abstain from key management decisions at Hulu.

If the sale falls apart, it will mark the second time its owners have fashioned a full or partial exit strategy that has failed. After nearly six months of planning, the owners ditched an initial public offering last December to raise up to $300 million. Such an IPO would have valued the company at about $2 billion.

But the decision to ditch the IPO in favor of a sale prompted industry observers to wonder whether media companies should risk handing over their future online to digital rivals such as Google and Amazon. Greenfield has described the plan to sell Hulu as a mistake of "epic proportions."

"Hulu appears to be the perfect weapon for networks and content creators to embrace so they can grow revenues and profits, even if the current multichannel ecosystem becomes unglued over the next decade," said Greenfield in his client-targeted blog.

[themediadish-blog]

With reports that Google’s Groupon competitor Google Offers has gotten off to a slow start, the company has announced another acquisition in the Daily Deals space, snapping up German deal site DailyDeal.

The Berlin-based deals website was founded in September 2009 by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, with reported sales of 252,000 vouchers in the first three months of 2011. The company has already expanded outside of Germany to Austria and Switzerland, with the Austrian website already surpassing Groupon in the country – according to Fabian Heilemann.

The company has announced plans to expand to a wider European audience, with Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg the next possible markets. As a result, the company expects to record around €40 million in 2011 alone.

Currently, Google’s own Daily Deals service is only available to North American customers, launching in a number of states across the U.S. According to a report by deal aggregator Yipit, in the first three months of operation the performance of Google Offers has declined in New York, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon – with total revenue dropping 23 percent in August from July despite a 22 percent increase in the number of daily deals advertised on its website.

The DailyDeal acquisition signals Google’s intention to expand its operations to Europe, buying a company that already has an established presence and is said to be outperforming Groupon and LivingSocial in a number of countries.

The company’s founders released the following statement on the DailyDeal website:

When DailyDeal what founded in Berlin back in December 2009, there was just two of us. Since then, we have seen tremendous growth, as people throughout USA, Austria and Switzerland have used DailyDeal to find local deals on their favorite restaurants, travel destinations, entertainment venues and retail outlets. Our team has grown too, and with it, our vision for daily deal.

We see great opportunity to better connect businesses with consumers on a much larger scale, and we have found a team that shares our vision. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google!

What began as a two-person startup less than two years ago has transformed into a trusted platform to connect businesses with consumers. By combining our expertise with the Offers team at Google, we hope to expand our Efforts To provide even greater deals to consumers.

DailyDeal – The Team

Google recently bought Daily Deals aggregator The Dealmap, a service that may have formed the basis of Google Shihui, a web portal designed to collate and showcase the huge number of deals advertised by the large number of Daily Deals sites in China.

The terms of the deal are unknown at the time of writing.

[themediadish-blog]

For cloud-based digital music services like Spotify and Rhapsody, which stream millions of songs but have struggled to sign up large numbers of paying users, being friended by Facebook could prove to be a mixed blessing.

This week, according to numerous media and technology executives, Facebook will unveil a media platform that will allow people to easily share their favorite music, television shows and movies, effectively making the basic profile page a primary entertainment hub.

Facebook, which has more than 750 million users, has not revealed its plans, but the company is widely expected to announce the service at its F8 developers’ conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

By putting them in front of millions of users, Facebook’s new platform could introduce the music services to vast new audiences. “If it works the way it is supposed to, it would be the nirvana of interoperability,” said Ted Cohen, a consultant and former digital executive for a major label.

But the new plan will ratchet up the competitive pressure on these fledgling services, forcing them to offer more free music as enticements to new users.

According to the media and technology executives, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deals were private, Facebook has made agreements with a number of media companies to develop a way for a user’s profile page to display whatever entertainment he is consuming on those outside services. Links that appear on a widget or tab, or as part of a user’s news feed, would point a curious friend directly to the content.

Spotify and Rhapsody, along with their smaller competitors Rdio, MOG and the French company Deezer, are said to be among the 10 or so music services that will be part of the service at its introduction; Vevo, the music video site, is another. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment, and media executives cautioned that details of the plan could change.

Spotify is the largest of these services with more than 10 million users, according to its most recent reporting. The service began in Europe in 2008 and arrived in the United States in July, after protracted negotiations with the major record labels over its “freemium” structure, which lets people listen to music free, with advertising, or pay $5 or $10 a month for an ad-free version.

Rdio and MOG, which charge $5 and $10 a month for subscriptions, announced free versions last week in an effort to compete with Spotify. And Rhapsody, whose service costs $10 and $15 a month, has just introduced an array of social features centered on Facebook.

The companies declined to answer questions about Facebook’s media platform. And David Hyman, MOG’s founder and chief executive, said that the development of his company’s free tier far predated Spotify’s entry into the United States.

But Mr. Hyman said that the change was being made to reduce the “friction” a nonsubscriber experiences when following a link posted by a paying user. Instead of hearing the song, the nonsubscriber would reach a page asking to sign up with a credit card — an annoyance for many potential customers.

“In the Internet world, any minuscule piece of friction blows people’s minds,” he said.

MOG provides new users with a “gas tank” of free music — supported by advertising — that increases with that user’s social activity on the site, like sharing playlists or inviting friends. Rdio’s free music will come ad-free.

Neither company would say exactly how much free music would be made available.

“We don’t want to force you to look at or listen to ads that will distract you from enjoying music,” said Carter Adamson, Rdio’s chief operating officer, “and we don’t want you to spam your friends to get more free.”

But even free music requires royalty payments to record companies — typically some fraction of a cent per stream — and some investors and technology executives are concerned that Facebook’s platform may bring in large numbers of users who are willing to listen to some free music but are not being given much incentive to subscribe. That might make success more difficult for services that have less favorable deals with record companies.

David Pakman, a partner in the venture capital firm Venrock and a former chief executive of the digital service eMusic, also said that instead of giving smaller companies a boost, the mathematics of Facebook’s hundreds of millions of links might simply allow the largest service to dominate all the others.

“It favors the big over the small,” Mr. Pakman said. “It’s a good thing for all services in that it lets them all participate. But the small guys will lose network effects, and the big guys will gain it.”

Spotify has not updated its user numbers since arriving in the United States, but music executives say it quickly drew more than 100,000 customers to its paid service alone.

MOG and Rdio have not reported their numbers, but music executives say their tallies are well under 100,000.

Not all the services involved in the Facebook platform are going free. Rhapsody, which was founded 10 years ago and has 800,000 subscribers, is sticking to its monthly subscription rate, said Jon Irwin, the company’s president.

“Our belief is that the cost of the content cannot be fully offset by the advertising dollars you can generate,” Mr. Irwin said, “and that the subsequent conversion of somebody to a paying subscriber because they’ve been able to listen to content for free on a desktop is not at a level that supports the losses you’ll incur on the advertising side.”

Mr. Irwin also believes that Facebook will further intensify the competition among the cloud services, and that Spotify and his own company will have the advantage.

“It’s going to be hard for the players not at scale to survive,” he said. “You’re looking at a two-horse race.”

[themediadish-blog]

Myspace, the social-networking site whose fate has been hanging in the air for years, is going to stay in limbo a little longer.

Its new owners, Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake, have scrapped plans to ...

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576579263962636624.html#ixzz1YPRnkhNj

[themediadish-blog]

Say goodbye to the Picasa and Blogger names: Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.

The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant’s social initiative.

Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.” Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though our sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May.

The move isn’t without precedent; Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. In 2007, Google acquired VOIP platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009.

Read More

[themediadish-blog]

Justin Bieber may be powerful enough to command his own set of servers at Twitter, but he’s no major force at the newsstand: Vanity Fair‘s February cover featuring the pop boy wonder is set to become one of the worst-selling issues since Graydon Carter became editor in 1992.

The issue has moved a mere 246,000 copies on the newsstand, narrowly surpassing a Harrison Ford cover that sold 243,000 newsstand copies in 1993. A Will Smith cover that accompanied the lukewarm critical reception of Wild, Wild West sold 202,701 single copies in July 1999, the worst in Carter’s 19-year reign.

Collectively, newsstand sales of Vanity Fair are down 5% for the first half of the year, averaging 342,000 per issue.

Bieber has performed poorly for other titles, as well. An April 2010 People cover featuring the teen star was its third worst-selling issue in 2010, down 25% from its 2010 average, while an October 2010 Teen Vogue cover performed 12% below its yearly average.

Magazine publishers need not worry that Bieber is symptomatic of a larger trend; teens are still reading magazines. Teen Vogue is still in print, after all.

[via WWD]

[themediadish-blog]

You know what isn’t cool? $35 million isn’t cool … So in a move that makes truth stranger than fiction, Justin Timberlake, who played Facebook president Sean Parker in a movie called The Social Network, has taken an ownership stake in a real life social network as part of News Corp.’s Myspace sale.

Outgoing Myspace CEO Mike Jones just tweeted congrats to Timberlake on the deal. My verdict? This is super weird, especially considering the guy who Timberlake played in the film gave a lengthy explanation of why the social network failed, in an interview last week.

According to the press release, Timberlake will play a “major role” in strategy and creative direction for the beleaguered social network. The release makes no mention of exactly how much of a stake the pop star will have.

“There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. Myspace has the potential to be that place,” Timberlake was quoted as saying. The new Myspace site will be unveiled at a press conference later this summer.

So is this Timberlake news an attempt by Specific Media to leverage the mother of all celebrity moments in order to begin the arduous process of reinvigorating the property? Well it’s definitely provided a distraction from the tales of doom and gloom surrounding the sale and layoffs.

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[brinkmedia-blog]

[themediadish-blog]

brinkmedia:

With candidates gearing up for the 2012 election, I thought it would be interesting to briefly look at how the government uses social media. I hate to beat a dead horse, but I can’t stop reiterating how unstoppable social media is becoming. Just look at the numbers! They don’t lie. Of course I...

[themediadish-blog]

LAST year, fans of “Mad Men” could buy versions of Barbie and Ken dressed in outfits inspired by the television series. This year, they will be able to dress that way themselves.

The Banana Republic unit of Gap Inc., which has teamed up previously with “Mad Men” for marketing promotions, is doing so again this summer with what will be their most extensive joint effort to date. The centerpiece of the new promotion is a collection of men’s and women’s fashions, to be sold in Banana Republic stores and online, based on how the characters on “Mad Men” look.

There will be 65 items in the so-called capsule collection, which are to carry co-branded labels bearing the logos of “Mad Men” and Banana Republic. The merchandise is to be priced the same as similar regular items sold in Banana Republic stores and on bananarepublic.com.

The clothing and accessories like suits, dresses, ties, sweaters, hats, skirts, coats and blouses are influenced by “Mad Men,” which takes place in the 1960s. But they are intended to reflect the sensibilities — and the fit requirements — of contemporary shoppers.

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[themediadish-blog]

This is when TMZ punches in and goes to work making a television show that is beamed out five nights a week to the rest of us, mining our culture’s need to know every single little thing about celebrities.

Syndicated by Fox Broadcasting for the past three years, TMZ the show is recorded in the newsroom of TMZ the Web site, situated on Sunset Boulevard a block from the Chateau Marmont. It is an aggressive purveyor of celebrity news that has been known to uncover (or pay for) scoops that open the kimono on the world of Hollywood.

But unlike Access Hollywood or Entertainment Tonight, TMZ lets viewers in on the joke. Five days a week, its reporters show up at work and the television lights come on above them and five cameras roam overhead as they discuss the “news” of the day. The newsroom is alive and buzzing about — well, let’s face it, nothing very important.

No one pretends that they are covering the war in Afghanistan or the federal debt ceiling. They are covering show business, with an emphasis on the “show.”

It is a pleasure to watch, and a very guilty one at that. But it is also a daily indictment of our outsize fascination with celebrities. We are in on the joke, but we are implicated by it as well.

The Web site and the TV show are overseen by Harvey Levin, TMZ’s founder and overlord.

He runs the Web operation, and, for the purposes of the television show, presides over a newsroom of enthusiastic young reporters and producers. He bounces on his toes as he asks them what can be told that day about the famous and the infamous.

What is remarkable about the show is that it matters little what celebrities have done and not done. It’s hunting them down and sticking a camera in their face that makes for good television. This is a newsroom where the news is often beside the point.

Anyone who has worked in a newsroom will tell you that it is not an intrinsically interesting place. Phone calls. Fact-checking. Meetings. But TMZ makes it tough to look away. Accidentally land on TMZ while surfing though channels and you will, in spite of yourself, get sucked in by that throbbing bass line and the jumpy camera that sees all (and illuminates nothing). Stick around a bit you and you will get sucked in by the voiceover promising you tatty delights right after the break. Coming right up: Ed Begley Jr. at the airport.

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[themediadish-blog]

LOS ANGELES — One of the rewards of watching TV online is not having to sit through as many commercials. Now the networks are chipping away at that little luxury.

CBS shows twice as many ads per show on its website as it did last year. The CW network shows four times as many. Dozens of shows from major cable networks now carry as many ads online as they do on TV. More shows will follow soon.

The online audience is still small compared with television, but it's growing. Networks hope that by showing more ads, they can make about as much money per viewer online as they do on the tube.

It's a change from the early days of online video. When ABC started putting full episodes of its shows online in 2006, fans could zip through the hour-long dramas "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" in about 45 minutes. One short ad played a few times per show.

Limiting commercials kept people from going to unauthorized websites to watch pirated copies of shows. It also helped networks reach new audiences in college dorms and teenage bedrooms.

Now, as online audiences grow, networks see an opportunity to make more money. A recent episode of "Hawaii Five-O" carried six and a half minutes of ads online. That's less than the 16 minutes on TV but double what an hour-long show carried on CBS.com a year ago.

Online video has improved in recent years with faster Internet connections and better technology. The advances have led some people to give up on regular TV – and hefty cable bills that come with it – and watch only online.

The websites of ABC and NBC and some cable channels offer a range of recent episodes online, as does Hulu, a site owned by the parent companies of ABC, NBC and Fox.

Other networks offer live sports online. ESPN puts events on ESPN3.com for viewers who get Internet service through certain providers. And NBC put hundreds of hours of live competition online during the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. NBC agreed Tuesday to pay $4.4 billion for the rights to televise the Olympics through 2020.

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[themediadish-blog]

WNET in New York will take over the television operations of the New Jersey Network for five years under a deal announced on Monday by Gov. Chris Christie.

The plan, which would be carried out by a new WNET subsidiary, is part of a deal intended to get the State of New Jersey out of the public broadcasting business. If ratified by the Legislature, it will take effect on July 1.

As part of the deal, four state-owned radio licenses would be acquired outright by New York Public Radio, which operates WNYC and WQXR. The remaining five radio licenses would be bought by the Philadelphia public broadcaster WHYY.

At a press conference in Trenton, Governor Christie expressed support for continuing “robust New Jersey public broadcasting,” but added that “we need to have it in a way that is not continuing to cost the state taxpayers and can be perceived as truly independent from state government.”

Under the deal, WNET’s new subsidiary, New Jersey Public Media, will be contractually required to continue a weekday New Jersey-focused newscast on what will now be named NJTV, as well as live broadcasts of significant New Jersey State House events, election night coverage and a Sunday morning public affairs show.

After the announcement, several New Jersey legislators and critics of the takeover plan — including union representatives and community groups — announced hearings on the pending deal. In a statement, the Keep the NJ in NJN coalition questioned whether WNET would live up to its promise to continue local news programming, arguing that it had not done so when it took over WLIW-TV in Long Island in 2003.

In an interview, Neal Shapiro, the president and chief executive of WNET, said that new Long Island-focused programming was in the works and blamed the recession for some cutbacks.

NJTV will operate on a budget of roughly $8 million annually, less than half of its previous budget. WNET will take over NJN’s federal subsidy from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of about $2.2 million, in addition to about $2 million in income from renting space on its broadcast tower.

Despite public television’s financing challenges, Mr. Shapiro said he was confident the new entity would be able to raise an additional $3 million to $4 million each year from philanthropists, foundations and other supporters. He added that “the money we raise in New Jersey will stay in New Jersey.”

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