Categories: News Corp.

Netflix, Studios discuss a new DVD deal

Posted by: Ron Grover on September 30

Sometimes in Hollywood, misery loves company. And, while three film studios are locked in a legal tussle with video vending machine operator RedBox and its $1 rentals, another company that’s…

WSJ’s Josh Prager Departs; Questions News Corp. Stewardship Of Paper On His Way Out The Door

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 03

The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Prager is leaving the paper, and he just sent out an email informing colleagues of his decision. Prager is likely best known for his Journal…

Peter Chernin and Rupert Murdoch’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 23

Nikki Finke, L.A. Times and my BusinessWeek colleague Ron Grover are reporting that News Corp President, and longtime Rupert Murdoch #2, Peter Chernin is out. This has already been a…

News Corp Posts First Quarterly Loss In Three Years; 14 Laid Off At Wall Street Journal, And The Relative Performance of The WSJ and the New York Times

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 05

A grand coincidence? Well, yeah, actually. Judging from the dynamics for virtually any comparable major media outlet (and especially one that gets the bulk of its revenues from print), you…

Dinner With Rupert Murdoch Biographer Michael Wolff, Mach 2: Does The New York Times Co. = Dow Jones?

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 03

(Part 2 of excerpts from a dinner discussion I had on Nov. 20 with Rupert Murdoch biographer/Vanity Fair columnist/Fine on Media pal Michael Wolff. If you haven’t seen Part 1,…

Michael Wolff’s Calm, Reasoned Analysis Of MySpace, And The “Cretins” That Flock To It

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 01

Part of writing my latest column required interviewing Michael Wolff, a friend and the author of the new Rupert Murdoch bio “The Man Who Owns The News.” After some negotiation,…

Michael Wolff’s New Rupert Murdoch Bio, And The Meeting In Which Murdoch Checkmated Dow Jones

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 28

My column in the new issue of BusinessWeek is about Michael Wolff’s new book, “The Man Who Owns The News,” which is a sort of biography of Rupert Murdoch and…

Gerard Baker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, And Differing Notions Of A Partisan Press

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 12

(This post originally misspelled Baker’s first name.) There is a great deal of stuff flying around the Web and being forwarded to me that point out some of the more…

Wall Street Journal Lays Off More Online Staffers; Gawker Media Slashes Staff Too

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 03

(UPDATE 10/7, 7:15 PM: I am told that the Journal has cut at least a few additional editorial staffers besides the ones listed below. Not getting much data beyond that…

A Thought For Time Warner Regarding AOL: Keep The Access Business And Sell Everything Else

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 06

There is now a case to be made for Time Warner to hold onto AOL’s dial-up subscriber business and sell the troubled online unit’s advertising and content businesses. As they…

Weird Newspaper Story Of The Day, Part One: Wall Street Journal Cuts Service To Some Rural Subscribers

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 06

A reader who lives in Wyoming, around 30 miles away from the nearest decent-sized town, recently sent me the following email about his Wall Street Journal subscription: >>> i got…

The One Thing You Need To Know About Cablevision Buying Newsday

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 12

Here is the one thing you need to know about the Cablevision deal for Newsday. This publicly traded company was up against two moguls, who each owned a nearby newspaper….

Story/Software Tension Sighted In Potential Deal For Yahoo!

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 11

An unnamed source is buried deep in the big Wall Street Journal piece today, the one detailing some backroom manuevers in the whole Google/News Corp/AOL/Microsoft group-grope-cum-competition for Yahoo. Said source…

Who Rupert Murdoch Had On Speed Dial

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 10

Many stories are told by many random objects on display at the Newseum—which I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours at yesterday, in advance of its official opening…

In Which I Disagree With Rupert Murdoch, And Raise A Slightly-Related Question

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 03

Media regulation in the US has been wacky lately. And, for some reason, no matter how battered newspapers are, how déclassé they are for the younger set and the investor…

Murdoch And WSJ.com: “Variable Pricing” Is The New “Free?”

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 24

A colleague and I had caught wind earlier this week that News Corp. would not make the Wall Street Journal online free, after all, and while we heard that the…

Regarding A Free Wall Street Journal Online

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 03

Paid Content’s Joseph Weisenthal beats me (by a lot) to blogging thoughtfully about Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang’s number-crunching regarding what might happen should News Corp. ditch WSJ.com’s subscription model…

The Rich Zannino Scorecard

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 06

Took over as CEO of Dow Jones: Feb, 2006. Date of Departure from Dow Jones: upon the completion of the News Corp. acqusition of Dow Jones. (Read: soon.) Financial Results,…

The Continuing Saga Of Anyone Being Able To Do Video On The Web

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 05

Andy Plesser from beet.tv came by late last week to film a quick segment bouncing off my media predictions for 2008. And it looks a little bit like this, at…

Web 2.0: More Effluvia From Rupert Murdoch And Chris DeWolfe’s Joint Appearance On Oct 17

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 19

Rupert Murdoch on Facebook: “Pretty cool …[but] it’s like a utility. We [meaning MySpace] are more [about] media. We connect different cultures, different interests, all over the world.”…

Web 2.0 Conference: Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe, In Which Chris Talks About His New Contract And Rupert Finds The Notion Of Killing The New York Times “Nice”

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 17

Quick takes on a meandering post-supper discussion: —Chris DeWolfe is re-upping for a couple more years at MySpace, he told attendees tonight. His initial two-year deal signed at the time…

Rupert Murdoch: Self-Described ‘Billionaire Tyrant’

Posted by: Jon Fine on September 27

I’ve been looking online for this forever, and big thanks to Jack Shafer and Slate for finally putting it up. Launch this Slate video and scroll ahead to 4:15, to…

WSJ’s Robert Frank Nears Prime Job, Evades Murdoch’s Wrath?

Posted by: Jon Fine on September 17

WSJ leaning towards selecting an outstanding lead dog for its for-the-richies upcoming monthly magazine Pursuits: Rich-person specialist (and Wealth Report blogger) Robert Frank, who just penned the sharp and enormously…

Tabloid Vets Spotted At The Journal

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 02

This week’s column partially hinges on this notion: Murdoch’s patience for money-losing newspapers is based on his love for newspapering as things were, but not on serious investment in the…

Rupert Murdoch: This Is Your “Legacy” Speaking

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 01

I say in my just-out column that “legacy” is what columnists start yammering on about about when they have no other hammer to hold over their target’s head that might…

News Corp/Dow Jones: All Over But The Signing. And The Shouting. Oy, The Shouting.

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 31

Since there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth everywhere, let me say this outright: Rupert Murdoch buying Dow Jones is the best possible available scenario. Unlike Dean Starkman,…

The Dow Jones Deal And The Market’s Confidence In It Happening

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 25

Yeoman (and –woman) work is being done over at the Wall Street Journal in documenting the Bancroft-ian angst over selling Dow Jones to News Corp. for $60 a share. Ditto…

Dow Jones Bidding War Heats Up! Wait … Maybe Not.

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 20

It must be killing those searching for a Dow Jones alternative to Murdoch that ‘Net entrepreneur Brad Greenspan is one of the only options out there. From his letter to…

Ordinarily I Wouldn’t Believe This Either, But I’m Looking At It Right Now.

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 20

Spotted at 1:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, Friday, July 20: A rainbow, directly over News Corp’s Manhattan headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. This, I can see from my…

What Happens To Dow Jones’ Stock Price If The Bancrofts Nix The News Corp Deal?

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 18

It falls from its current lofty peak, sure, but to where? Do we assume that the company’s $36 stock price—the level it was at before Murdoch’s bid was made public—already…

More Groundless Journalistic Handwringing Over Murdoch And Dow Jones

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 10

The more CJR’s Dean Starkman fulminates and tut-tuts about the prospect of a Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, the more I become convinced the deal will actually go through. But never…

Say What You Will About Rupert Murdoch …

Posted by: Jon Fine on June 28

… I mean, as we’ve seen, there’s a lot to say about him. But he is the only guy within the same zip code of CEO pay-grade…

Yahoo-MySpace: Good. God.

Posted by: Jon Fine on June 20

Multiple reports out there revealing (very) early stage discussions between Yahoo and MySpace over a partnership that would value the latter at $10 billion. That’s “$10 billion or more.” I’m…

Murdoch, Burkle, the Bancrofts, and … David Geffen?

Posted by: Jon Fine on June 05

Regarding Rupert Murdoch’s meeting with Dow Jones’ Bancroft family yesterday, ably recounted here by my colleague Ron Grover: What is playing out is a very old and familiar ritual that’s…

Additional Evidence Anyone Can Do Video On The Web

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 25

In the below mediabistro.com video, I express bafflement at Michael Wolff’s insistence that the New York Times Co. is dangerously close to being “in play,” and attempt to make him…

Nowadays Anyone Can Do Video On The Web! (Who Knew?)

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 22

Experiment time: Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff (with whom I semiregularly spar about things media on CNBC) and I are playing around with videos for mediabistro.com in which we pontificate…

Paul Steiger Did What?

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 08

The long run in journalism for Norman Pearlstine, a former top editor of the Wall Street Journal, is marred by one nasty late-career blot: he turned over Time reporter Matt…

News Corp’s Peter Chernin On Newspapers Circa Right Now

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 27

Earlier this week, the Milken Institute sponsored a media conference (there is one every week—scratch that, there is more than one every week. And there is more than one in…

The Web Video Scorecard As Of Right Now

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 12

So: On March 22 NBC Universal and News Corp leapfrog (make that try to leapfrog) YouTube by announcing a complex partnership for a video Web site and syndication service. CBS…

NewTube: Biggest Launch of a Non-Existent Product Since The iPhone

Posted by: Jon Fine on March 22

Oh, the ways we can peel today’s news apart. For starters, I was convinced when I wrote this a few months back that none of this could even get this…

Rupert Murdoch: Neither Shy Not Retiring

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 08

I suppose it’s a sign of severe geekhood if you walk away from a lengthy interview with Rupert Murdoch thinking about how funny he is. Anyway, he spoke today at…

O.J. Simpson, And The Difference Between The Book Biz And The TV Biz

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 21

News Corp. made a number of stunning miscalculations in the handling of O.J. Simpson’s sort-of-confessional If I Did It, and chief among them is that it forgot the difference between…