From the category archives:
Last Friday, CKX-TV in Brandon, Manitoba (population 51,000) signed off after the 6PM newscast. Dark, for good. CTVGlobemedia, who owned the station, stated that a deal to sell it to Bluepoint Investments for $1 Cdn. had collapsed when Bluepoint walked away from the deal. CKX-TV had been on the air since 1955, and was the [...]
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MediaNet officially announced their new API Platform yesterday. You can see the release here. The team has been working on this platform for a number of months, and it’s great to see it in the market. In addition to Intertech, Mog, iLike there are some large portals not mentioned in the release, who are launching products [...]
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There’s a palpable change in the air this month. A year after Lehman’s collapse, it feels like the market forces have finally pushed Play, taking us out of our prolonged Pause. The steady stream of acquisitions (Disney/Marvel, Adobe/Omniture) as companies seek to broaden their businesses, the Dow and NASDAQ at highs not seen since last October, [...]
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iLike’s sale to MySpace, announced earlier this week merits comments on a couple of points. First, it’s fire sale time. At roughly $20 million, this represents a new low for music-based valuations. In halcyon days, we had seen the prices climb. From Real’s $36 million acquisition of Listen.com in 2003, to Yahoo’s 2004 $160 million [...]
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Two long-established brands recently took the tack of dropping the nouns from their names: Pizza Hut and RadioShack – which are now known as The Hut and The Shack. Here’s why one find success through the name change and derivative market opportunities, and one won’t. By morphing from Pizza Hut to The Hut, the new [...]
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Seems like it’s a summer of recollections of 1969. The Apollo 11 moon landing, Woodstock’s 40th Anniversary next week, and today, in between the two, Londoners celebrated the 40th anniversary of the iconic Abbey Road album cover shot. A moment in time, contemplated by so many music fans, recalled countless times during repeated listenings. While [...]
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From leaks last evening, it is sounding like the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal is done, as I’d suggested in an earlier post. Combined, the Yahoo and Microsoft search business will command 30% market share of search – a credible number 2. There is still, what I would term, a lack of clarity around core product focus [...]
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Was this Microsoft’s bing strategy all along: Hire Yahoo Search braintrust Rebrand Live Search Focus on algorithms, presentation tweaks and tools. Throw the Kitchen Sink at it. Somewhere between 50 and 100 million into a scorched earth launch and marketing strategy to see if it moves the market share the needle. Try and buy users through [...]
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Look for some upcoming noise about the “official” launch of the new MediaNet Open API and Widget models for music purchases. There are existing affiliate models available, to websites, portals and blogs, but they kick the purchaser to an external environment, rather than integrating the purchase experience inside the page and maintaining the customer relationship. [...]
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