The Morning Fix: Comcast and Time Warner team up; Would Viacom want MySpace; Simon Cowell’s new BFF; how much did Nikki Finke get?
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After the coffee. Before berating your assistant.
The Anti-Hulu? Time Warner and Comcast announced they are teaming up on ‘TV Everywhere,’ an initiative designed to make consumers show they subscribe to pay services such as cable an satellite before they can access TV content on the web. Analysis of the issues from The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
Is there space at Viacom for MySpace? Breakingviews.com makes the case that despite all the problems at the social networking site MySpace, it would still be a good fit for Viacom, which lost out on owning the site to News Corp. MySpace, Rob Cox and Yoree Koh say, is a better fit with MTV than any assets that Rupert Murdoch owns. Maybe, but we’re not going to hold our breath for that deal.
Simon Cowell’s new BFF. The Financial Times (subscription required) reports that ‘American Idol’ host Simon Cowell is forming a new production company with Sir Philip Green, the king of British retail. Green is even advising Cowell on his negotiations for a new ‘Idol’ deal with Fox.
More layoffs at MTV. Broadcasting & Cable reports that Viacom’s MTV laid off 75 staffers, mostly in programming. The move comes just a week after content guru Brian Graden left the company and less than a year after over 800 staffers were canned at Viacom’s cable networks worldwide.
Google the vampire. Les Hinton, News Corp.’s top gun at Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, says newspapers screwed up by giving away content (duh). That, he added, ‘fed Google’s lust for newspaper blood.’ Hinton was speaking at a PricewaterhouseCoopers conference. The Hollywood Reporter.
How much did Finke get? Nikki Finke’s sale of her juicy website Deadline Hollywood Daily to Mail.com Media Group was easily topic one in Hollywood yesterday. The price tags quoted on the deal were all over the map from $14 million to a couple of million (either one sounds good to us). Well Nikki loves to dish dirt there was no ‘toldja’ on this one. Here’s some selected reading on the deal from The Los Angeles Times and TheWrap.
In today’s Los Angeles Times: Inside Kevin Pollak’s online interview show; MSNBC, your place for news except on weekends.
-- Joe Flint
