Archives: May 2009

Irving Azoff And The “De-Monetization” Of The Music Industry

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 27, Categories: Bruce Springsteen, Irving Azoff, Live Nation, TicketMaster, TicketsNow

TicketMaster Entertainment CEO Irving Azoff, appearing at News Corp’s annual All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California, proved an interesting and free-speaking interviewee. Although, churlish as it may be, he...

John Malone's Worries About Local News And Local Media

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 27, Categories: Barry Diller, John Malone

(Liberty Media Chairman and overall media tough-guy John Malone just got offstage at this year’s All Things Digital conference. A question from the audience eprompted the following thoughts from Malone...

The Two Greatest Worst Car Ads Of All Time

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 21, Categories: Automotive Advertising, Jalopnik

Late last week Jalopnik pulled together its Ten Worst Car Ads of All Time. The unquestionably two most excellent-est of the lot—in a lovely bit of global symmetry, one comes...

Newspapers: Less Liked Than Airlines?

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 19, Categories: American Customer Satisfaction Index, Newspapers

I posted here on Friday about a shred of good news for newspaper companies. Consumers appear to be willing to pay for their papers—that is, the paper version of the...

Sighted: Faint Encouraging Glimmer For Newspapers

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 15, Categories: Belo, E. W. Scripps, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy, Media General, New York Times, Newspapers

People are still paying for the print newspaper. In fact, in almost all cases, people are paying more for the print newspaper: circulation revenues rose, if slightly, at almost all...

What David Geffen Sees In The New York Times

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 12, Categories: David Geffen, Harbinger Capital Partners, New York Times

(The following item was written by BusinessWeek's Los Angeles Bureau Chief Ron Grover. Thanks, Ron.) It’s the hottest topic on two coasts. Why in the world would David Geffen, perhaps...

First Arianna. Then Tina. Now MSNBC’s Carlos Watson

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 12, Categories: Arianna Huffington, Carlos Watson, Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Stimulist, Tina Brown

Arianna Huffington and her Post. Tina Brown and her Daily Beast. Add The Stimulist, which went live today, to the, ah, list of Web news and commentary sites founded by...

20% Down Is The New Up: The First Quarter's Tally

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 05, Categories: 20% Down Is The New Up, Belo, Gannett, McClatchy, Meredith, New York Times, Newsweek, Time Inc., Time Warner, Washington Post Co.

I’ve made the point (over and over again) that the dynamics of this ad environment, especially on the print side, have deteriorated to the extent that the old saying--flat is...