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Now We’ll Get to See Even More of the Naked Cowboy
The scourge of Times Square is getting his own reality-TV show. Meanwhile, a Cadwalader partner sues over the mold in his Hamptons house, and the ‘Times’ thinks we care too much about people’s personal lives (can’t imagine why), and more, in our daily roundup of industry news.
Posted 08/21/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Rent Stabilization Not As Stable As Before
Plus, Skadden's role in the failed Microsoft-Yahoo talks, what Perez Hilton is doing in James Frey's new novel, and the rest of today's industry gossip.
Posted 05/06/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Murdoch Won't Go Any Higher on ‘Newsday’ Bid
Also, Microsoft gives up on Yahoo, Berkshire Hathaway's profits tank briefly, and Buzz Bissinger apologizes to Will Leitch, all in our daily industry roundup.
Posted 05/05/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Buyouts Not Enough? ‘Times’ Newsroom Braces for Clearance
Also, the rest of today's media, finance, law and real-estate news.
Posted 04/25/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Dan Rather Back in Court and Feeling ‘Pretty Good’
Also news about Yahoo, JPMorgan, the Sulzbergers, and Citigroup in our daily industry roundup.
Posted 04/23/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Lehman Liquidates Three Funds to the Tune of $1 Billion
What's going on with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and the News. Corp — as well as the Willets Point Stadium, 'Us Weekly,' and Wall Street. Read our daily roundup.
Posted 04/10/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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‘Esquire’ Feels That Heath Ledger’s Final Days Haven’t Been Examined Tastelessly Enough
MEDIA • Esquire reports on how Heath Ledger spent his last days... except the story is not exactly true. Or, um, tasteful. [Vulture] • Let the deluge begin! Media companies line up to bid for Weather Channel, which is up for auction. [DealBook/NYT] • Wal-Mart appears to be irritated by Meredith Corporation's creative tactic of selling its magazines, which include Better Homes and Garden and Ladies' Home Journal, at the Dollar Tree store. [Folio]
Posted 03/06/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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The Gray Lady Lets Jim Impoco Come Crawling Back
MEDIA • Fired Portfolio editor Jim Impoco makes his comeback at The New York Times Magazine, where he'll be a consulting editor. [NYO] • NBC puts its traditional glitzy advertising on the back burner. That's really too bad for the girl who was hoping to be assigned to keep tabs on John Krasinski during the day of the presentations. [NYP] • Nielsen CEO David Calhoun charts a new course for his media-measuring company. [Fortune]
Posted 02/20/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Yahoo! Rupert Cooks Up Another Diabolical Plan
In last week's earnings call, Rupert Murdoch was asked about the talks he'd had with Yahoo about combining it with MySpace, a News Corp. property. "I think that day has passed," he said, "but you never know." Indeed! Today, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is reporting that its parent company, along with a private-equity group, is in talks to combine MySpace and other News Corp. properties with Yahoo. This new round of discussions, the Journal tells us, are aimed at "helping Yahoo fend off Microsoft Corp's unsolicited" $44.6 billion offer to buy the company. Under the deal being discussed, News Corp. would get a 20 percent stake in Yahoo, but, more importantly, "they’d be the largest single stockholder and effectively in control of the combined Yahoo/FIM entity and their nearly 150 billion monthly page views (which would be second only to Google)," according to TechCrunch. Which basically means, we think, that Murdoch would own at least a 65 percent stake in, like, our brains. News Corp. Enters Yahoo Fray [WSJ]
Posted 02/13/08 in Daily Intel : White Men With Money
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Meet Microsoft's ‘Gatekeeper of Funding’
FINANCE • Now that Yahoo rejected Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid, it's up to Microsoft's self-described "gatekeeper of funding" Christopher P. Liddell to plot the company's next chess move. [DealBook/NYT] • Fearful that 90 percent of TheStreet.com's franchise revolves around Jim Cramer, today the finance-driven Website launched Mainstreet.com, which will revolve around celebrities and personal finance. You think Britney's psychological drama is intense? Wait until you hear about her bond portfolio. [NYP] • France's rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel might have had an accomplice. How did police find out? By sifting through 2,000 pages of instant-message traffic. Bet that was a gr8 time. [NYT]
Posted 02/11/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Jeff Bewkes Starts Cleaning House at Time Warner
MEDIA • At least 75 Time Warner layoffs are expected to be announced today. The layoffs are among CEO Jeff Bewkes's first public tasks since taking the helm of the company from Dick Parsons last month. Earlier today, Time Warner announced a 41 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings. [MSNBC & AdAge] • Maybe some of those Time Warner folks can hang their hats over at Condé Nast. The Observer evaluates Portfolio's recent spending spree, during which it recruited top talent from The New Yorker, the Post, and the Times. [NYO] • (Product)Red, the love child of Bono, iPod, and the Gap, has raised more than $22 million for fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. But considering the big advertising bucks spent during the Super Bowl and elsewhere, some are arguing that it's not enough. [NYT]
Posted 02/06/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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Why Should Microsoft Try for First Place When It Can Buy Second?
With this morning’s announcement that it had made a $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo, Microsoft continues a multi-year streak of indicating that it will settle for buying second place instead of battling its way to first. Can’t beat Google at its own game? Here’s an idea: Why not buy the company that’s literally choking on Google’s exhaust? No wonder Bill Gates decided to step back from the day-to-day in 2006. When you’ve ruled the world for a decade-plus, it's little too much to constantly accept the silver medal.
Posted 02/01/08 in Daily Intel : White Men With Money
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Semel Out at Yahoo, Microsoft In?
FINANCE • Courtenay Semel's dad, Terry, is out at Yahoo. And Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for the company might just be déjà vu. [NYT, Deal Journal/WSJ] • Recession-has-already-started watch: The economy lost 17,000 jobs in January, the first time since the lovely tech-crash days of 2003 that total payrolls have shrunk. [Reuters via NYT] • One of the few lucky bankers with a bonus burning a hole in your pocket? Try London restaurant Vivat Bacchus' new "Bonus Tasting Menu" for a mere £1,000. [DealBook/NYT]
Posted 02/01/08 in Daily Intel : Company Town
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‘Times’ Puts ‘Journal’ in Pole Position
Many of you have probably already checked out the New York Times Website today (two-timers!). If you have, perhaps you've noticed the giant banner ad that is running directly below the Times logo and above all of the paper's editorial content. It's a big click-through sponsor message from Apple computer, touting the Leopard operating system over Microsoft's Windows Vista. As far as we can remember, it's the biggest and most obtrusive ad we've ever seen on the site. We're sure the Times charged heavily for the space. But we wonder: Was the charge also worth featuring writing from the Wall Street Journal higher and more prominently than anything from the Times itself? New York Times [Homepage]Posted 01/17/08 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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Redmond, Washington, Is Totally Edgy
You can argue all you want about whether Giuliani saved the city or destroyed it, whether Bloomberg is trying to protect it for the future or make it a playground for the rich, whether it's really right to be nostalgic for a time when crime rates were astronomical and infrastructure was decaying. But as Gotham Gazette's indispensable Eye Opener points out this morning, today's New York has just been called dull by MSN. That stings. The 'New' New York [MSN via Gotham Gazette]
Posted 07/03/07 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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The Wow Started Yesterday Afternoon, Apparently
You may have heard that yesterday was the dual launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft's snazzy new operating system, and the freshly updated Microsoft Office. And if you haven't heard about it already, you soon will. You're also going to learn that not since 1995 has Microsoft simultaneously launched a new Windows and a new Office. And that "The 'Wow' starts now." And that Vista is Easier, Safer, More Entertaining, and Better Connected. How do we know all of this? Because we attended Vista's launch party yesterday, held at MTV HQ in Times Square and a party for which we received more pre-event press materials and invitations than any event we've ever been to ever. And how was the party? It was: Easier to get frostbite: Attendees, registration in hand, were made to wait outside (wind chill: twenty degrees) for around 30 minutes. This included press. (How dare they!) All the shrimp in the world inside — and there was all the shrimp in the world inside — could not compensate for that discourtesy.
Posted 01/30/07 in Daily Intel : Party Lines
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‘Times’ Agrees With Microsoft: Zune Is Cool
The Times runs a long Bizday piece today on Microsoft's fancy new MP3 player called Zune. The breathless article tells us not only how super! duper! amazing! the device is but also just how gritty, dedicated, and, well, real the Microsoft operation to build it was. There are many pieces of evidence offered for this thesis — an executive who uses merely "J" as his first name; the "creatively fervid overcrowded office space" in which the team worked, where on "hot summer days" the engineers "had to decide between lights and air-conditioning" — but one is by far the most convincing. It's the accompanying photos, apparently shot by MSFT itself and credited to it. With engineers and marketing execs who seem quite so, well, punk rock, there's no way these guys didn't make the coolest MP3 player around. And wasn't it nice of the Times to gamely run the company-provided photos that prove the point? Microsoft Counting on a Twist to Make Zune Shine in Shadow of iPod [NYT]
Posted 11/13/06 in Daily Intel : In Other News
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