The Morning Fix: Nikki Finke does a deal; Netflix thinks of life after the DVD; Twitter is Perez Hilton’s 911!
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After the coffee. Before watching that stack of pilots on your desk.
Nikki has a new boss! Hollywood Blogger Nikki Finke, whose Deadline Hollywood Daily is a must-read for industry news and snark, has sold her site to Mail.com Media Corp., a digital media company that also owns HollywoodLife.com and OnCars.com. Finke plans to boost her staff, adding a New York reporter to the mix and said she’ll continue to retain complete editorial freedom. While Finke is famous for providing lots of dirt on deals, she left out how much Mail.com was paying for her site We asked her the value via email and she cracked that it was worth ‘the GNP of a small country.’
Life after the DVD. Netflix boss Reed Hastings tells The Wall Street Journal that the DVD business is in sharp decline, but he has a digital plan for the future. The big challenge? Getting Hollywood to play ball. His big fear? Being the next AOL.
More cuts at MySpace. News Corp.’s social networking site MySpace, which already slashed 30% of its staff in the U.S., is going to eliminate almost 70% of its international staff, which translates to about 300 positions. MySpace has long trailed Facebook abroad. Lot of other doings at Fox Interactive Media, including, a possible name change for the unit. Paid Content and Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital.
Hush, hush. Everyone knows Apple is very secretive about everything ranging from its product launches to the health of Steve Jobs. But they even go as far as to spread false information within the company just to try to catch employees who leak, says The New York Times.
Gloomy upfront. The endless rain in New York is putting an even bigger damper on the upfront. MediaWeek says prices could be down by as much as 20% as budgets are starting to trickle in.
In today’s Los Angeles Times: Ed McMahon has died at 86. More on Sony’s balk of ‘Moneyball.’ Perez Hilton makes Twitter his 911.
-- Joe Flint
