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THE MEDIA BARON AND HIS SOFT SPOT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Tim Arango, Richard Perez-Pena]
Rupert Murdoch, as much old-fashioned press baron as 21st century multimedia mogul, faces a depressing reality: his lifelong fondness for newspapers has become a significant drag on the fortunes of his company, the News Corporation. In more vibrant economic times, investors and Wall Street analysts were more willing to look past Mr. Murdoch's attachment to newspapers — the newspaper segment is now the company's biggest single source of revenue, about 19 percent in the most recent quarter. But they find that a tougher chore these days, as other media struggle and newspapers suffer through their worst slump since the Depression.
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ANCHORS OBLIGE PUBLIC'S CRAVING FOR TWEETS
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
Twitter, which began in 2006, has 6 million users, a fivefold increase since last summer. The 140-character limit on each message initially seems silly, but forces a witty sort of brevity that seems well matched to today's sound-bite culture. While dwarfed by the likes of Facebook, which has become so mainstream it can hardly be viewed as edgy, the bare-bones Twitter has been generating considerable buzz lately. In an age when people expect behind-the-scenes dish, the site enables television types to explain what they're doing -- and flatter their fans by soliciting their opinions.
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SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE TELCOS' NEW BEST FRIEND
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Georgina Prodhan]
From the world's biggest phone maker, Nokia, to tiny Irish semiconductor start-up Movidia, delegates to the wireless industry's biggest annual gathering couldn't stop talking about Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. The majority of visits to such online communities are still made by people sitting at a computer telling their friends where they are and how they are feeling, exchanging opinions on their favorite movies and music or uploading videos. But the spontaneous and personal nature of much of that communication lends itself perfectly to the mobile phone.
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EXPLORING A 'DEEP WEB' THAT GOOGLE CAN'T GRASP
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Alex Wright]
One day last summer, Google's search engine trundled quietly past a milestone. It added the one trillionth address to the list of Web pages it knows about. But as impossibly big as that number may seem, it represents only a fraction of the entire Web. Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines. The challenges that the major search engines face in penetrating this so-called Deep Web go a long way toward explaining why they still can't provide satisfying answers to questions like "What's the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?" The answers are readily available — if only the search engines knew how to find them. Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web's hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many

COMPETITION PUSHES UP CONTENT COSTS FOR ESPN
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Peter Sanders, Matthew Futterman]
Walt Disney's ESPN has come to dominate the lucrative business of sports broadcasting by locking up deals with entities ranging from Major League Baseball to NASCAR. But renewing some of those deals won't come cheap. And with ad revenue down, that could put ESPN in a bind and have repercussions for its parent company. Since Disney acquired 80% of ESPN in 1995, the cable network has become one of the entertainment company's most valuable properties. ESPN is now the largest component of Disney's Cable Networks franchise, which delivered $4.1 billion in operating income in fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 27. That dwarfed the $655 million in operating income earned by the Broadcast Networks, which include ABC, and was 49% of Disney's total operating income. ESPN is already feeling the impact of the recession. Its advertising revenue is declining even as costs associated with many of its rights deals increase on schedule. For the fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 27, revenue at Disney's Cable Networks division grew only 2% and operating income fell 12% from a year earlier to $517 million.
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MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Everyone Loves Google, Until It's Too Big
Peter Chernin to leave Murdoch's News Corp
Publisher speculates about Amazon/Google e-book "duopoly"

TELEVISION
Nielsen: Americans still love their TV, embracing DVRs
FCC Extends Comment Deadline For 2007 Video Competition Report

GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Watchdog groups press Obama DOJ on Bush e-mails
The intensifying battle over Internet freedom
1,000 Points of Data

BROADBAND/INTERNET
Surprise: America is No. 1 in Broadband
Asia's High Fiber Diet
Stimulus Broadband Requirements Being Written for Locals
Dear USBBC: Let's Build a Bold National Broadband Strategy Together
Virginia Uses Self-Help Program for Rural Broadband
Rural Broadband: No Job Creation Machine
What the broadband stimulus package means to rural telcos
Telework ranks swell
Internet Penetration and Premium Entertainment Are Linked
Mobile Internet Necessity, Not Luxury
Half of all instruction will take place online within the next 10 years
It's the broadband, stupid
FCC Releases Revised Broadband Data Form