A hard look at the news, media, and the people who are talking about them. Today's Stories in News and Media Blog...
A hard look at the news, media, and the people who are talking about them. Today's Stories in News and Media Blog...
You can read the official announcement, in the form of a news article on one of Cox’s own newspapers, right here.
Meanwhile, over at Crooks and Liars, swiftboater Jerome Corsi takes one in the balls. Maybe Cox News would be interested in selling him.
I believe this will be the new wave for U.S. and British media companies. Having already saturated the U.S. market with advertising and media garbage, it’s time to work on the rest of the world, to export American shallowness abroad. The Internet will undoubtedly play a part in that since News Corp also owns MySpace.
Murdoch’s plan is to build six regional TV stations in India. After fully saturating India with shallow TV media targeted toward the Indian culture, I’m sure Murdoch will continue to expand into other parts of the world. And so will other media empires. Ted Turner and Time-Warner can’t be far behind.
Google’s market share has increased again. According to CNET, the search giant is up to 77.4% of the search ad market.
Yahoo!s share dropped by 2% to 17.8%. The Google-Yahoo! agreement that allows some of Google’s ads to be displayed on Yahoo! SERPs will give Google more than 90% of the search ad market. That has triggered some antitrust concerns with the Department of Justice and others.
Google has achieved the monolithic distinction of being among the companies that can’t wake up in the morning without crossing the line of evil business mogul. Microsoft crossed that line years ago. Now it’s Google’s turn, and from the looks of things, Yahoo! will never make it. We may soon see a search environment where Yahoo! is no longer a player and with Google dominating both the search and the search advertising industries it is possible that a forced breakup to protect consumers may be inevitable. But we’re a few years from that yet.
Nevertheless, the AP backed down and the conversation continues. The Media Bloggers Association is in the process of developing an e-course for bloggers on media law and will be offering liability insurance to bloggers in case its members are sued for some reason - you know, like copyright infringement or libel. Personally, I think the greater threat is libel, but copyright infringement is an issue because there are media outlets like the Associate Press and Time Warner that seem to think they own all rights to their own content. In other words, they don’t understand Fair Use.
In essence, its an issue of bullying. Once a large media company gets to a certain size and has a certain amount of political, legal, and financial clout, they start to bullying smaller companies, sending threatening letters, and trying hard to “protect their turf.” I know because I’ve had this happen to me before.
I support this action from the Media Bloggers Association:
Up until now, we have been quietly going about revamping the MBA with the centerpiece of those efforts being the first-ever media liability insurance product for bloggers. We will also offer an online training course on media law for bloggers; MBA applicants will have to answer questions about that course in order to be approved for membership and get access to the insurance program which will entitle them to a significant discount on the annual premium.
Where can I sign up?
The atmosphere is thick with anticipation of the upcoming talks between company giants Microsoft and Yahoo. Reportedly, if Yahoo does not start talks this weekend, Microsoft could launch a hostile bid.
Microsoft stated that they will not raise their bid of $31 a share. They don’t feel that right now, after preliminary tests, that Yahoo is worth more than $46 billion. Yahoo stated that the proposed bid underestimates the potential value of the company.
Microsoft also stated that if talks do not take place or if an agreement cannot be reached, Microsoft will start looking elsewhere for future endeavours. Microsoft is looking to vastly improve their position in the online advertising market, especially in the highly lucrative aspect of search advertising, which Google dominates.
TM Media Group Inc. has reached an agreement with President and Director, Matt Harmon to sell its entertainment assets for $5000 and 20 million shares of the company’s stock.
The agreement also requires Mr. Harmon to create a new corporation for all of TM Media’s entertainment assests to be transferred where shareholders will receive a 5% distribution of the shares (issued and outstanding).
As a result of the agreement, Mr. Harmon has resigned effective immediately from the Board of Directors and no longer serves as an officer of TM Media. Brian Larsen, CFO, has been appointed President. Roger Gary has been appointed to the Board of Directors.
TM Media is now seeking a new acquistion in the resource sector.
The battle of the corporate giants wages on. Yahoo! is strong, but they need backing power. A merger with the right company could increase profits and share value.
Microsoft approached Yahoo! earlier this year with a $42,000,000,000 offer to purchase and take over the company. Yahoo! feels they are worth more based on the latest reports.
Google has been in negotiations with Yahoo! to purchase all its search advertising for a broader search-ad outsourcing arrangement. This may cause regulatory problems though.
Time Warner AOL has recently entered negotiations with Yahoo! to purchase a 20% stake in the company. Yahoo! has not confirmed anything with AOL as of yet.
Which company has the best chance? Click the link below to find out more.
You know it’s really sad how things have changed over the years so much. This country was founded on great principles. It was founded by people who were passionate about freedom and equality. Whether people want to agree or not, it was also founded on religious principles.
In the early days of America, landowners took turns holding public office. They did it to serve the public. When their turn was over, someone else stepped up to serve. They did it for the right reasons.
There were no “career politicians”. That wasn’t a profession. It was real public service. Now we have senators who serve for 30+ years who aren’t qualified to do much of anything else. If not for the connections they make, they likely would be asking someone if they wanted fries with that.
Remember Strom Thurmond? During the confirmation hearings on Clarence Thomas, he actually said to Thomas, “I can’t hear you, please speak into the machine.” Machine? It was a microphone. This is a guy who was expected to vote on Star Wars and things that were Internet Related along with other highly technical issues.
These guys get into office and basically serve for life if possible. It isn’t about public service. It’s about money and power. Now their sons and daughters get into office as if we had a monarchy and they were entitled to it because of who their parents were.
Now it comes down to who has the most money to spend gets elected. It doesn’t matter if they are qualified or not. The public goes out and votes for the candidate they are most familiar with which means the one that ran the most commercials on tv.
It’s become a popularity contest. The media has made it a “race”. People vote for who the media says is winning because people inherently want to be on the winning side. If the media says a specific candidate has no chance of being elected, many people don’t vote for them because they don’t want to “waste” their vote.
It’s not about being on the winning side. Your duty is to vote for who you believe would make the best public servant in that office. If you pick someone and you are the only person in the US who voted for them, you did not waste your vote. You exercized your duty as an American citizen and voted for who you thought was the best candidate.
We have a twofold problem now thanks to the FCC. The media has huge influence over who people vote for. Opinion shows like Hannity’s America and Lou Dobbs influence who people vote for. There are even people that listen to Bill O’Reilly although I cannot for the life of me understand why.
The FCC has now relaxed the rules about how many tv stations, newspapers, and radio stations can be owned by one corporation. That means these corporations can weild even more influence on who gets elected and who runs this country.
You may not be one of these people but I bet you know one. Someone who believes everything they hear or read in the news. You probably know someone that believes Rush Limbaugh is a political genius and should run for president himself. You may know someone that thinks Bill O’Reilly speaks for the average American.
That is what should scare you. Media influence over who gets elected is a serious problem. The fact that corporations with their own agendas are buying all of these news sources up so they can be the ones you listen to should scare everyone.
Soon, these corporations will be deciding who gets elected. All they have to do is have the people on their tv shows, radio programs, and newspapers say what they want them to say. Then millions of drones will listen, watch, and read and go to the polls to do what these corporations told them to do.
Many people will never believe they are one of these drones. They are so brainwashed that they don’t believe that Hannity, O’Reilly, Coombs, Dobbs, Limbaugh, and others can be told what to say. They believe these guys are sincere and honest and would never sway people one way or the other just to get paid.
Many will say they really make up their own minds, but they still follow the party line no matter what it is or if they truly believe it’s a good thing to do. They begin to believe in someone so much that even direct evidence that they committed a crime would not sway them into thinking of them as a bad person.
I just wish there was a way to get more people to think for themselves and quit following whatever one party or the other tells them to do. There are good democrats. There are good republicans. There are bad apples in each bunch.
But you have people who would never vote for a republican and people who would never vote for a democrat, even if the best person for the job is out there. Ignoring voting for the best person for the job in favor of voting for a party is pure ignorance and against the very duty you have as an American citizen to vote for the candidate you think would do the best job regardless of which party they affiliate themeselves with.
That brings up an issue for another post. The fact that we talk about these two parties instead of the many parties that should be involved in politics and elections.
This is an important issue and hasn’t gotten enough attention in my opinion. Here is what another blogger had to say about the new FCC cross-ownership rules.
The Recorder’s Opinion
Right now you are able to read your local newspapers, particularly the small-town papers, because of a newspaper-broadcast rule adopted in 1975 that bans ownership of a daily newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market. There are a few exceptions to this rule that were “grandfathered” in because they were in place when the rule was adopted.
On Tuesday, Dec. 18, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively changed this rule that has served to protect local news markets for over three decades. In effect, the FCC will now allow the national and international conglomerates to buy or absorb many of the smaller news businesses that cannot afford to compete. In spite of warnings by a bipartisan group of 25 senators on both sides of the aisle that they would fight such a ruling, the FCC voted in a 3-to-2 party-line vote to eliminate the ban on what is known as the “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” rules.
Does that mean anything to the general public? We think it does. How would you like to receive only the information or news that just a few multi-million-dollar corporations felt like sharing with the public? Or, to take it only one small step further, would we like to join the countries that are “fed” just exactly what the government and the wealthy few want you to have?
Ironically, the FCC justified their decision by claiming that the Internet has made it easier to get information so the old ruling just wasn’t up-to-date enough.
This is one issue where your voice should be heard. it goes to the basic principless that this country was founded on. Freedom of the Press relies on rules that make sure you have many different sources for your news. As these corporations take over more and more of your news sources, then those corporations merge and buy each other out, it is not far-fetched to see a time where all of your news comes from corporations who have their own agenda.
Here is an easy way to write your congressman and say what you think.
Maybe Barack Obama isn’t so bad. At least he takes a stand on things without dodging them the way Hillary Clinton does.
Just hours after FCC Chairman Kevin Martin rammed through a vote to remove a longstanding newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban–thereby ignoring the public will, undermining democratic diversity and bowing to the corrupting campaign contributions and high-powered lobbyists of the largest media companies, Barack Obama slammed the decision. “Today the FCC failed to further the important goal of promoting diversity in the media and instead chose to put big corporate interests ahead of the peoples’ interests,” he said in a statement.
Hillary will likely keep quiet on the issue to make sure she doesn’t make any of the media companies who might support her mad.
