What Are They Thinking? NBC-U and The ‘Digital Dozen’ Seek Perpetual Youth

Consider them Ponce de Leon investments. Just as the Spanish explorer trawled Florida for the Fountain of Youth 500 years ago, NBC-Universal and its peers are now embarking on expensive voyages to seek a solution to aging and death, investing in and buying into the newest media. Their profound ...

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The Newsonomics of Yahoo’s New Livestand

With the launch of Livestand, we see the beginning of Aggregator Wars 2.0, to be fought on a tablet near you. Livestand pushes the question: How are we going to receive news and features via the tablet, through individual apps (paid or free) or through an aggregator? And how are publishers ...

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The Newsonomics of Reuters’ Americanization

Reuters — a household name in the U.K., where it was born 160 years ago — is now an emerging force in the U.S. That push is fueled by the 2008 Thomson Reuters merger, by the great disruption of the U.S. news business, by the launch of Reuters America (“Reuters America Claims New Territory: ...

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FT Declares Independence (from Apple) Day

It sounds like a dream come true: cut costs and maintain control of the business. The risk: What will the FT -- which won't be selling digital subscriptions through Apple's stores -- miss out on? What about the lead generation Apple's 200 million registered (with credit cards on file) users can ...

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The Number

Marketplace reporter Eve Troeh and Poynter's Kelly McBride do a good job of connecting the dots: the power of scarcity as a few big old media brands connect with new media leaked files to create huge impact.

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The Newsonomics of Tablet Ad Readiness

We can look at each of the major revolutions in digital news and commerce, and see how news companies responded. Search. Late. Paid search. Way too late. Video. Late. Social. Too late. Mobile. Largely too late. News companies have used old yardsticks to measure new technologies, and the ...

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The Newsonomics of Tablets, floor by floor

News and magazine publishers now see a second digital revenue line. It’s 70 percent of X (the retail price) multiplied by Y (volume of sales). As news companies reinvent not only products, but new business arrangements with the distributors of the day — from Google/Amazon/Yahoo to ...

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iPad and the New Five-Fingered Exercise

I think we'll see these companies go head-to-head for reader and subscriber dollars. As they do, I think they'll face a new five-fingered exercise. Raise one hand; five is the probably the maximum number of iPad news sites for which readers will pay.

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Nine Questions on the Tablet and the News Industry Future

The Apple model, in a sense, just sets a new cost-of-distribution. While web distribution has been free-plus, the cost of Apple distribution – if you charge for news products – is a predictable, and seemingly stable 30%. Just give me 30% off the top, says Steve Jobs. Ironically, that 30% is ...

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ABC’s Job Cut of 300: Throwing in the Towel on the Old Business Model

I've placed ABC among the Digital Dozen companies, those with more than 500 news staffers, those with the potential of creating bigger digital businesses given their global distribution power -- if they can restructure their costs in line with still-meager, but growing, digital revenues. ABC is ...

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