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Falling home video revenue is decreasing jobs, film prod'n A regional economic group estimates that dollar DVD rentals from Redbox and others has cost the entertainment industry $1 billion and that the "ripple effect" will cost hundreds of millions more. The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. study said the nationwide declines in home video revenue will cause an additional $500 million in losses as more than 9,000 related job cuts wipe out almost $400 million in wages, primarily in Southern California. The dramatic assessment comes amid growing popularity among recession-wracked consumers of ultracheap disc rentals offered by Redbox and...

From Studio 6B at 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC brought Milton Berle, Jack Parr and Johnny Carson into the nation’s living rooms, then broadcast local news to New York City for decades. Last Thursday, it was a stage for a cable takeover as Comcast announced a plan to acquire NBC Universal. There, in Studio 6B, a town hall meeting for NBC employees opened with Jeff Zucker, the NBC Universal chief executive, introducing “our new friends from Philadelphia,” and closed with a formal welcome to the Comcast family by Ralph Roberts, the cable operator’s 89-year-old patriarch. Mr. Roberts received a standing ovation....

The New York Times on Friday said it probably will have to lay off newsroom employees, because it doesn't expect to get enough people to volunteer for buyouts. The paper in October announced plans to shed 100 jobs from its 1,250-person newsroom and said it hoped to achieve the reductions entirely through buyouts. Employees were told they had until Dec. 7 to decide whether to take the offer and that the paper would resort to layoffs if too few people volunteered. "We will not know until [Monday] how many Guild and excluded employees have opted to take buyouts, but it...

As she prepared her daughter for college, Anne Sweeney insisted that a television be among the dorm room accessories. “Mom, you don’t understand. I don’t need it,” her 19-year-old responded, saying she could watch whatever she wanted on her computer, at no charge. That flustered Ms. Sweeney, who happens to be the president of the Disney-ABC Television Group. “You’re going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall,” she told her daughter, according to comments she made at a Reuters event this week. “You have to have one.” But she does not, actually. For 60...

Acting Publisher Jonathan Slevin on Wednesday announced plans for a "new" Washington Times that will focus more narrowly on its core areas of coverage while operating with a deeply reduced work force. "We will focus on our strengths -- exclusives, in-depth reporting, politics, enterprise stories, geostrategic and national news, plus cultural reporting based on traditional values," Mr. Slevin said at a meeting of the newspaper's editorial and support staff who were warned to expect "significant staff reductions" within 60 days. All employees were handed letters advising them that at least 40 percent of the workforce will be laid off in...

The Miami Herald is cutting 24 jobs throughout the company and reducing the hours of workers involved in printing and delivering the paper, publisher David Landsberg announced in an email this morning. Seven people will lose their jobs in the Herald newsroom: an assigning editor, two copy editors, two designers, a photo editor, and a part-time librarian. El Nuevo Herald will lose one-and-a-half editing positions, according to Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal. The affected employed were notified this morning, Gyllenhaal wrote in a email to the staff. For a newsroom of 200 staffers, and a media company with about 900...

Here's what I expect for 2010. 1. Control over distribution will shift to consumers. Expect an increasing amount of control over how, when, and where you consume content. A decade after TiVo debuted its commercial-skipping abilities, more and more technological innovations are shifting control from the hands of companies over to consumers. You can watch, listen to or read pretty much anything you want, whenever you want, thanks to Hulu, iTunes, satellite radio, Video on demand and thousands of free web sites. The variety and flexibility of access is only going to become more diverse. In 2010, premium cable content...

Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Publishers will join a First Click Free programme that will prevent web surfers from having unrestricted access. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

USA Today editor John Hillkirk, who took over the job in April, informed staff today that there will be 26 jobs cut at the newspaper. Hillkirk, in an memo obtained by POLITICO, wrote that those laid off will “be notified today or as soon as possible.” In a second memo, staffers were informed that there will be a merger between USA Today's news operation and USA WEEKEND. The moves come on the same day that parent-company Gannett announced the institution of furloughs for 2010, just as they did this year. In addition to layoffs, Hillkirk explained in the memo how...

Historically, young women and men who sought to thrive in publishing made their way to Manhattan. Once there, they were told, they would work in marginal jobs for indifferent bosses doing mundane tasks and then one day, if they did all of that without whimper or complaint, they would magically be granted access to a gilded community, the large heaving engine of books, magazines and newspapers. Beyond that, all it took to find a place to stand on a very crowded island, as E. B. White suggested, was a willingness to be lucky. Once inside that velvet rope, they would...

Oprah Winfrey's exit from daytime TV will mean more than just a studio scuffle for the time slot she mined for gold for TV stations. It also likely signals, many experts say, the beginning of an inexorable decline for the daytime syndicated talk show, which has occupied a central spot in mainstream culture ever since "The Phil Donahue Show" rolled out nationwide nearly 40 years ago. snip But many observers say that the all-encompassing cultural role of "Oprah" is unlikely to be duplicated by another talk show on broadcast TV, thanks to the changes that have shaken society and the...

General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt was here Wednesday working to accelerate negotiations to acquire Vivendi SA's minority stake in NBC Universal, according to people familiar with the matter. GE, which owns 80% of NBC Universal, is progressing in talks with the Paris-based media and telecommunications conglomerate, the people said, though it remains unclear whether Vivendi will sell its 20% stake. In recent weeks, GE has ironed out a deal to give U.S. cable company Comcast Corp. control over NBC Universal. The deal hinges on Vivendi's selling its stake to GE. View Full Image VIVENDI Bloomberg News Jeffrey...

The list of staffers downsized from Time Inc. yesterday grew by another 25 people, even though it appeared that CEO Ann Moore and Editor-in-Chief John Huey would wait until after Thanksgiving to begin this round of cuts. Fortune was the hardest-hit title. Including yesterday's layoffs, about 30 staffers have left the company rather than the expected 40, with about 22 from the edit side. Yesterday, three assistant managing editors were whacked: Eric Gellman, John Brodie and Brian Dumanie, who ran the recently shuttered Fortune Small Business. Two writers were also laid off, Suzanne Kapner and Telis Demos. Managing Editor Andy...

According to an informed source, the Washington Post will soon announce that it will close its news bureaus in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as part of a cost-saving measure. It's unclear just when the closings will take place; however, the source says that the Post will not be laying off correspondents in those bureaus, but rather will be bringing them back to the mother ship, the better to focus on the Post's core mission of reporting on Washington. More to come. UPDATE, 5:03 P.M.: Memo from management---though correspondents are spared the ax, three news aides will lose their...

Remember how big the November sweeps used to be? For viewers, the memory is becoming more distant. On the last Thursday of the still-big November TV period, virtually every network show took it on the chin. Similar ratings trends also took place earlier in the week. Big shows -- such as ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," CBS' "CSI," NBC's "The Office" and Fox' "Fringe" -- all sank lower versus their respective results of a week before. Some of this could be due to a NFL Network Thursday night game between the Miami Dolphins-Carolina Panthers. That network's Thursday games have been pulling in...

Oprah Winfrey is fleeing broadcast TV for cable. NBC, once arguably the biggest cultural tastemaker in the United States, is being shopped to Comcast, the country’s largest cable company. Have we reached a tipping point that suggests a remarkable decline in the fortunes of broadcast television in America? snip Analysts and executives agree that the economic model of broadcast — which relies more heavily on advertising than cable — is fractured. What they are wondering now is if it is irreparably broken. snip The business model of the big three networks — which became four when Fox began prime-time programming...

Multiple sources are reporting that several employees at washingtonpost.com are losing their jobs as part of the merger of the site with the main Washington Post newsroom. Several of dot-com's editorial staffers as well as some non-editorial workers are among those who've gotten the ax, according to the sources. City Desk is not printing names just yet. We've contacted several allegedly dismissed employees but have not yet received direct confirmation from them. When asked if the Web site has laid off employees, Washington Post spokesperson Kris Coratti responded with this statement: "As part of the work we’re doing to turn...

The economy may have rallied in the third quarter, but the newspaper industry did not, as total advertising revenues -- including print and online -- tumbled 28%, from roughly $10.1 billion in the third quarter of 2008 to about $6.4 billion this year. The third-quarter loss is on par with first and second-quarter declines of 28.3% and 29%, respectively. As in previous quarters, losses were spread evenly across all the main newspaper advertising categories -- including national, down 29.8%, retail, down 24%, and classifieds, down 37.9%. National advertising in particular reached a discouraging milestone in the third quarter, with total...

"Most Americans probably already know pretty much what's happened by the time they get home at night, with radio and the Internet and iPods," says retired TV newsman Roger Mudd. "So at 6:30 p.m., they don't want to sit in front of television for a half hour and have someone tell them what they already know."

The biggest magazines in the Time Inc. empire — People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money — should find out today how many volunteers have stepped forward to accept buyout packages. Time Inc. is said to be looking to slash more than 500 jobs from its ranks, with the bulk of the layoffs to happen next week before the process is wrapped up by year-end. While not all titles outlined how many volunteers they need, sources said that Time Inc.'s biggest magazines could eliminate as many as 90 editorial positions. Fortune is expected to see the deepest cuts at about...

Last month we heard that the AP might need to make hundreds of layoffs before the end of the year. Some of those layoffs, we hear, could be coming today. A tipster tells us that the word amongst AP union members is that today could be the day for "70 or 80" layoffs. The rumors say that the layoffs will be spread across the company nationally. Although—ominously—we hear that New York staffers have been summoned to an "important meeting" this afternoon. We'll update if we learn more. In the meantime, if you have more details, email us. UPDATE: Another reporter...

Atlanta's gay community has lost its Southern Voice. The city's gay and lesbian weekly has shut its doors after 21 years. Southern Voice, along with David Atlanta, a publication about gay men's nightlife in Atlanta, closed after a long-time financial battle to stay afloat. Southern's owner, Washington, D.C.-based Window Media LLC, shuttered the weekly newspaper and a handful of other gay publications nationwide over the weekend, the newspaper's editor, Laura Douglas Brown, confirmed to the AJC on Monday. Employees arrived at the newspaper's offices off of Briarcliff Road early Monday to find the door locked and a sign posted on...

Washington gay and lesbian newspaper The Washington Blade has ceased publication and is closing Monday, along with its parent company, Atlanta-based Window/Unite Media LLC. Window/Unite published five gay and lesbian publications, including Southern Voice, South Florida Blade, The 411 Magazine and David Atlanta. All will stop publishing, and three of the company's offices will close. The news, first reported by Washington City Paper’s sister paper Creative Loafing Atlanta, was confirmed by a Washington Blade employee. The publication has also stated the news on its Twitter feed: “Washington Blade, like all Window Media publications, is closing today. Thank you for your...

After losing its ratings lead and falling to last in primetime, the once-dominant CNN stands to lose the last piece of top-shelf value still attached to its business side: premium pricing. Time Warner-owned CNN, while getting beaten handily in the ratings race and having fallen to fourth place in rankings, still commands higher ad rates than rivals -- in some cases double those of Fox News and MSNBC. But perhaps not for long. While advertisers have been willing to shell out more for CNN's venerable brand, broad audience reach and less-opinionated programming, media buyers said the network's ratings slide is...

When, in late September, rumors surfaced that Comcast was trying to buy NBC Universal from General Electric, Wall Street reacted with dismay. Grandiose attempts to combine media production and distribution — programming and plumbing — are nothing new in the entertainment business, but they almost always end in disappointment. Witness AOL Time Warner. So what in the world could be prompting the Comcast chief executive, Brian Roberts, to start down this accursed path? I fear that I’m to blame. A few months ago, while stalking the aisles of my local Best Buy, I gave in to techno-temptation. I bought a...

Sarah Palin's new book "Going Rogue" is set for release on Nov. 17 and with that will likely come a media blitz of epic proportions. However, based on the cover of the Nov. 23 issue of Newsweek, someone felt a response was warranted. The wizards of smart at Newsweek took an image from a shoot of Palin that originally appeared in Runner's World magazine for the cover and splashed the headlines, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?" and "She's Bad News for the GOP - and For Everybody Else, Too." ...more (with bare-legged Palin cover)...

Layoffs are not over at The Associated Press. AP CEO Tom Curley addressed staffers Thursday at a company-wide Town Hall forum, saying: "I know you all would like me to sound the all clear. I cannot do that." While many employees have been shown the door, there will yet be cuts in order to slash 10% from the payroll as planned. Curley and other executives discussed a number of iniatives aimed at bringing AP into the digital future. Included in the plans: * They want to create landing pages, curating news and linking to other users to drive traffic to...

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham informed staff today that about a dozen positions would be eliminated due to the "economic climate in publishing." Meacham, in a memo obtained by POLITICO, noted that the magazine has taken a different direction this year, and despite the layoffs claimed that it "continues to appear promising in terms of building and retaining an engaged audience that we hope will be attractive to advertisers." Full memo from Meacham after the jump. To the Staff From Jon Meacham This has been a tough day for the magazine. Because the economic climate in publishing has become ever more...

Things seem to be going from bad to worse at the Washington Times. And the continued operation of the newspaper, which is owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, seems to be in serious doubt. There's already been plenty of speculation that the paper might fold or go online-only. Sources at the Times said they fear major changes and that the Moon family feud that's driving the paper's turmoil could lead to the Times shutting down in the coming months -- with some suggesting that Preston Moon, the reverend's son who serves as chairman of News World Communications, the...

Much of the talk in the sports media world last fall centered on whether an effective competitor would step up to compete with ESPN. ESPN had just outbid Fox by $100 million to secure the rights to college football’s Bowl Championship Series through 2014, thanks mainly to its dual revenue stream that has cable and satellite operators making a monthly payment of more than $4 per subscriber for the channel. At the time, some sports league executives were fearful that ESPN would become a de facto monopoly that eventually would wind up driving the cost of sports rights down. If...

The Star Tribune is cutting another 100 jobs companywide to further shave costs after bankruptcy. The company's operating committee announced the cuts this morning, saying that the "cracking of our historical economic model and the current Great Recession have forced us to move quickly to make meaningful and difficult adjustments over the next few months." About 30 of the cuts will come from the newsroom and editorial staff -- about a 10 percent reduction -- Star Tribune Editor Nancy Barnes said. The company said most of the cuts would be completed by the end of the year, but that the...

The state of New Hampshire last week agreed to guarantee 75 percent of a $250,000 loan from an Upper Valley bank to the new owner of the Eagle Times, an unusual deal because it involves a daily newspaper and the government it covers. The Executive Council on Wednesday unanimously approved without debate the “working capital loan guarantee,” which would be administered by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority. Under the deal, the BFA and the state would be liable to pay up to $187,500 to Connecticut River Bank if Eagle Printing & Publishing LLC defaulted on the $250,000 line of...

2:15 PM UPDATE: I've learned that 100 people are being laid off across "several divisions" of the A&E Television Networks yesterday and today "as a direct result of the merger". It will make those employees feel so much better that management tells me it's "no one in a decision making role." A&E Television Networks in August acquired Lifetime Entertainment, and everything is now owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group, Hearst and NBC Universal. Big Media = Big Mergers = Big Mistakes.

The historic campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., has offered instruction in journalism for well over a century — but probably never quite like this. On Friday, the twice-yearly Washington and Lee Journalism Ethics Institute will hear from its latest keynote speaker: Jayson Blair, the former New York Times reporter who triggered the greatest scandal in the newspaper's history. "Getting Jayson Blair obviously was a departure," says Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee. Indeed. The keynote address is typically reserved for people like Lowell Bergman or Toni Locy, journalists who withstood...

Fortune and Sports Illustrated will be the hardest hit magazines in the mass layoffs that just began at Time Inc. About 40 people will be laid off from Fortune, with Managing Editor Andy Serwer looking to cut roughly 24 from the 80-strong edit staff, insiders said. Although he didn't reveal numbers, in an e-mail to staffers yesterday Serwer asked for volunteers by Nov. 18. Fortune had already said that starting next year it will go from 25 issues to 18. SI will be making similar reductions, a source said. Time Inc. is expected to eventually cut just over 500 jobs....

Newspaper publishers are running out of costs to cut, and they need to show some real ad-revenue gains soon. Executives from major publishing chains have clung to a slight moderation in their ad revenue's year-over-year rate of decline from quarter to quarter this year as a sign of improvement. But that probably has more to do with the mathematics of easing comparisons to last year's economic decline than it does with any actual improvements in this year's ad performance. The reality is that newspapers are suffering severe declines in ad revenue this year on top of the double-digit percentage declines...

The guillotine has begun its descent at Time Inc. Sources at the publishing company (which is part of the same conglomerate as DailyFinance parent AOL) say executives have asked for an emergency meeting with representatives of the Newspaper Guild to discuss job eliminations. A Time Inc. spokeswoman declined to comment, but John Shostrom, chairman of the company's Guild unit, said the meeting will take place "soon." He said it was Time Inc. that called the meeting. "They act, and we react," said Shostrom. "The Guild doesn't lay people off. We just fight back when they make proposals to lay people...

With the noise level rising over consumers possibly paying a fee for TV shows online, now comes a report that iTunes is considering an all-you-can eat $30-a-month TV service. A new subscription service would turn iTunes into a pseudo cable and satellite TV operator -- a company that charges monthly fees for traditional TV/cable networks. The difference is that iTunes service would be sans advertising. Shows would not be distributed via linear networks -- but, as iTunes does now, by program. The story was first reported in AllThingsD.com. Apple's iTunes Stores is the original digital video Internet service, launching with...

The Tribune Newspapers will cease operations on Dec. 31, the parent company Freedom Communications said Monday. Read the company's news release (PDF) Freedom officials made the announcement to Tribune employees Monday morning, citing the economic recession and changes in the newspaper industry that have cause many publications to close and others to file for bankruptcy protection. Freedom, which itself is operating under Chapter 11 reorganization, had been attempting to sell the Tribune, but no acceptable offers have come forward, said Interim Chief Executive Burl Osborne. “We have received a number of inquiries, but none at a level we would remotely...

CBS4 I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock went undercover with other I-Team member to find suspect medical clinics operating in South Florida one step ahead of the law. The grainy, shaky undercover video tape shot by the CBS4 I-Team shows dozens of...........

snip It is not only the demise of big-name papers that should raise concern; the rapid decline of the newspaper industry is playing out quietly, with small, reasonably responsible dailies in cities and rural regions across the country disappearing without widespread notice. Dozens of daily and weekly newspapers have closed this year. Cities that once enjoyed the fruits of newspaper competition (Denver, Seattle) are starving. "Surviving" publications -- and many have filed for bankruptcy -- are cutting reporting staffs to the bone (this month, the New York Times said it would cut 100 more newsroom jobs). International bureaus, statehouse bureaus...

Signaling that worse times are ahead for magazines, Time Inc. is expected to announce next week that it will cut $100 million from costs, including another big round of layoffs. The timing is coordinated with parent company Time Warner’s third-quarter earnings announcement, sources said, scheduled for Wednesday morning. Time Inc., the publisher of titles like Time, Fortune, and People, has already cut costs dramatically: a year ago, it announced it was dismissing 6 percent of its work force, or about 600 people. That was apparently not enough to make up for revenue declines. The $100 million in costs is expected...

Time Inc. is bracing for another round of cutbacks. Sources say the layoffs will be most severe in the division that includes Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Time and Money, and will be carried out before the Thanksgiving break. Since many of the old-line titles at Time Inc. are covered by union contracts with the Newspaper Guild, the company will likely have to offer voluntary buyout options as part of the downsizing. Time is running out if it hopes to complete the layoffs and write off the costs in the fourth quarter. Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., personally took over supervision...

[This speech was given on October 24, 2009, at the Birthplace of Economic Theory conference in Salamanca, Spain.]"The web and digital media are to the establishment what the printers were to the scribes." Standup comedian Louis C.K. has a routine called "everything's amazing, nobody's happy." The gag has people on an airplane, sitting on comfy chairs and flying through clouds. They are complaining that the wireless connection is too slow.There is truth here. Capitalism has made everything amazing, and yet everyone these days seems to hate capitalism.Let's leave aside the problem that it takes economic understanding to see cause and...

Jayson Blair, who was at the center of a major journalism scandal as a New York Times reporter in 2003, will be the featured speaker at Washington and Lee University’s 48th Journalism Ethics Institute on Friday, Nov. 6. The title of Blair’s talk is “Lessons Learned.” The public is invited to the presentation at 5:30 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons. Blair resigned from the Times after an investigation found that he had plagiarized and fabricated major portions of stories that he had written during four years with the Times. Some of the stories that he covered in this manner...

No surprise that Americans are dropping their newspaper subscriptions, as a new batch of numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed yesterday. But before you file this under “death of newspapers”, do ponder this for a second: Declining circulation might not be the worst news in the world. Tough times have forced many papers to rethink their circulation strategies. An obvious conclusion: Much of the money publishers were spending to print and deliver dead trees has gone to waste. New strategy: Print fewer copies, and charge more for the ones you do sell. That’s a tactic, not a strategy,...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,024,269 -- 0.61% USA TODAY -- 1,900,116 -- (-17.15%) THE NEW YORK TIMES -- 927,851 -- (-7.28%) LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 657,467 -- (-11.05%) THE WASHINGTON POST -- 582,844 -- (-6.40%) DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) -- 544,167 -- (-13.98%) NEW YORK POST -- 508,042 -- (-18.77%) CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 465,892 -- (-9.72%) HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 384,419 -- (-14.24%) THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER -- 361,480 -- N/A NEWSDAY -- 357,124 -- (-5.40%) THE DENVER POST -- 340,949 -- N/A THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 316,874 -- (-12.30%) STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS -- 304,543 -- (-5.53%) CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 275,641...

The latest FAS-FAX for the six months ending Sept. 30 is here in a matter of moments and some numbers are already trickling out. We already know about the massive 17% drop at USA Today and now there's this: Compared to the same six-month period ending September 2008, daily (Monday-Friday) circulation at The New York Times is down 7.2% to 927,851. Sunday fell 2.6% to 1,400,302. Los Angeles Times reported daily is off 11% to 657,467 and 6.7% on Sunday to 983,702. The San Francisco Chronicle lost more than a quarter of its daily circ, down 25.8% to 251,782. Sunday...

Local TV teeters as staff, anchors are axed As a top anchor in Los Angeles, John Beard worked during the heyday of local TV news -- covering earthquakes, riots and the occasional celebrity on the loose. Beard was a familiar presence on L.A. TV screens for 30 years, via lead anchor roles on KNBC and then KTTV. But three decades after arriving on the West Coast from Buffalo, Beard is back where he started, anchoring a morning newscast in that small western New York community. Beard had a great run in the nation's No. 2 market -- but his exit...

Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather urged American news consumers Thursday to take action to address the declining state of the journalism industry. More than 750 Austinites, including students, professors and journalists, attended the fifth annual Mary Alice Davis Distinguished Lecture in the Union Ballroom to hear Rather reflect on his more than 60 years as a journalist, including 24 years with CBS Evening News as an anchor and managing editor. “When we speak of the future of journalism, let us fully understand that quality journalism of integrity is currently in decline and in peril,” Rather said. He cited corporatization,...