April 11, 2008

Microsoft Minus Murdoch

Microsoft Deal For Yahoo's A Go, Katie's Going, Rapping BET & MTV, Digital Transition is Just Fine and other news

NEWS BRIEFING FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2008

A museum dedicated to news. Who'd a thunk it? Good day.

All seems right with the world. The Microsoft-Yahoo deal looks like it’s a go, sans Rupert Murdoch, says The Wall St Journal, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. A meeting of Yahoo’s board will be held today to mull the takeover bid, the paper notes. In addition the board will discuss a plan for Time Warner to fold AOL into Yahoo in return for a 20% stake in Yahoo. Murdoch’s plan is to combine to combine Murdoch’s MySpace, Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo, The Journal says. [WSJ]

A report, The Rap on Rap: A Content Analysis of BET and MTV’s Daytime Music Video Programming, released yesterday contends the channels broadcast inappropriate content in the middle of the day. The study says there were "1,647 instances of offensive/adult content in 27.5 hours of programming analyzed during the December 2007 period, for an average if 59.9 instances an hour or nearly one instance every minute." The data were worse during March, The Washington Times says. The Parents Television Council commissioned the report. Another group, Enough is Enough, stages a weekly weekend protest outside the DC home of BET chief Debra Lee. [WT]

Gee, the FCC is getting serious about the digital transition. It fined Sears, Wal-Mart, K- Mart $1 million a piece, while Best Buy, Circuit City and others got nabbed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their crime? Selling TV sets that lacked labels informing consumers that the sets might not work after Feb 2009. There were also fines to other companies for selling sets that lacked the V chip, The Hollywood Reporter says. [THR] 

Briefly Noted
Another blurring of television and the Internet. MySpace signed a deal aimed at Britain’s TVs, The NY Times reports. [NYT]

NY lawmakers are making it more economical to film movies and TV shows in the Empire State, The Hollywood Reporter says. [THR]

Viewers of Lifetime’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (Sun, 9pm) should break out the Kleenex and be ready for a heaping dose of male bashing, The Hollywood Reporter says. [THR] 

LATE STORIES
We'd like to say "Poor Katie," but at $15 million/year that's not quite correct. Still, it can't be much fun to have your job security bandied about in the papers. [NYT] 

Richard Sandomir in The NY Times found ESPN's Masters par-3 coverage Wednesday "warm and adorable." [NYT]

AmericanLife TV is donating proceeds from DVD sales of its George and Nick Clooney doc A Journey to Darfur to the International Rescue Committee. To date, the network has donated $7,182. The documentary details the Clooneys’ 2006 trip to the embattled region in Africa where some 200,000 people have lost their lives during the past four years and an estimated 2 million more have fled to settlements for the displaced.   

It normally takes the business press a bit of time to pick up cable trade pieces, but BusinessWeek has a good inside look at how Disney is marketing the Jonas Brothers. [BW]

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