Archive for: news corp

News Corp Strategy with Rupert Murdoch on Paid Content Online, Google, BBC and More.

Great interview with Rupert Murdoch on the paid content, BBC, YouTube and more.

News Corp Hired One Of The Worlds Best Hackers!

It has been reported by Reuters that one of the worlds top hackers was hired by a News Corp subsidiary, Harper Collins, to hack into the security system of a rival satellite television source.

News Corp, the media conglomerate that’s parent to a number of New and Old Media properties including the Wall Street Journal, MySpace and Fox News Channel, may be subject to a stunning billion dollar civil judgement against them soon, based on the testimony of a hacker described by the Dish Network’s attorney Chad Hagan as one of the “two best hackers in the world.” (Mashable)

The hacker in question is Christopher Tarnovsky. Tarnovsky says that he was paid in cash (the first payment was $20k), and payment was hidden inside electronic devices mailed from a Canadian location.

The $900 million dollar suit against Tarnovsky and NDS is expected to last another two or three weeks.

Yahoo Acquisition: News Corp Out and AOL Still Open

It has been a busy day in the race for Yahoo. Rupert Murdoch has officially stated that News Corp is going to fight Microsoft for Yahoo, and on the flip side the Time Warner Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes has said that Time Warner is open for a deal on AOL.

Talking to investors at the annual Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch said that “We’re not going to get into a fight with Microsoft, which has a lot more money than us.” Murdoch also gave support to Google as FIM’s ad provider: “We’re very happy to be in the Google camp. They sell our search advertising and pay us well for it.”

Bewkes however acknowledged weakness in the AOL business and told the Bear Stearns media conference Tuesday that Time Warner was open to combining AOL with another company “whatever configuration makes it the strongest and the most valuable.” This being said, AOL booked $5.2 billion in revenue in 2007 with AOL properties receiving 112 million visitors a month.

So as the race heats up, who is actually putting in formal bids for Yahoo and will there be a merger, takeover, or nothing?? Only time will tell.

Myspace To Open Music Portal in Joint Venture

We have learnt that News Corp is trying to put together a joint venture for Myspace. The joint venture will run in a similar way to the current News Corp video product with NBC Universal. The joint venture will allow the major record labels to sign up to the service and receive a nice equity share in return for their content on the site. The full details have yet to be released, but im guessing the music will be DRM free with some sort of ad support. It is also still unknown if the service will be run as a portal from the myspace header bar or will actually run within the user profiles individually.

Myspace currently has over 7 million bands on their site and it should be hard to leverage this into huge profits, but they are still yet to come up with a plan on how to achieve this. With that amount of music and ability to go straight to market, they should really be challengers to Amazon, Rhapsody and iTunes.

paidContent report that no major labels are yet to sign, but the theory is that once one sign the rest will follow. I think Myspace are getting this whole situation wrong. They shouldnt just limit themselves to major labels, because they are in decline. Myspace should work on creating a tool in the admin of artist profiles which allows them to create a widget on their own individual sites. Thus, it will then have a tie in with a credit card company and the music will be directly delivered to your inbox. This solution also cuts out the problem of Paypal, but doesnt eliminate the issue of which currency to use on the system (because $US is in heavy decline).  However, im very interested to see what system they adopt.

Murdoch’s Salary At $24.3 Million; Raised For Parity With Chernin

The latest SEC filing by News Corp has disclosed salaries of top execs in the company: Rupert Murdoch received compensation valued at $24.3 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, and had $8.1 million in salary last year, an increase of $3.6 million. The company’s compensation committee said it gave Murdoch the increase “for purposes of pay parity” between him and his COO Peter Chernin, and said it was warranted by News Corp.’s continued growth under Murdoch’s leadership and his record of creating value, reports AP. Chernin received compensation valued at $27.4 million, with a base salary of $8.1 million, a bonus payment of $10.4 million.

Via paidContent.org