News, features and resources for media and publishing professionals.
Contents:
Analyst Ups Kindle Sales Forecast to 380,000 Bloomberg reports that a Citigroup analyst is doubling the projection of the number of Kindles Amazon.com may sell this year. The number has increased from 190,000 to 380,000. The analyst also says, "Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world."
The company may sell 380,000 Kindles in 2008, up from its earlier projection of 190,000, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney wrote yesterday in a research report. Apple Inc. sold 380,000 iPod music players in 2002, the first year they were sold, according to Mahaney. He recommends buying the stock.
"Kindle is becoming the iPod of the book world," Mahaney wrote. "Kindle could be one of the top `gadget' gifts this holiday season."
Amazon.com, which began as an online bookseller, introduced the paperback-sized Kindle in November and has increased the number of books, magazines and newspapers offered by two-thirds. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos wants to compete with Apple by offering media services, including movie and music downloads, and reduce its reliance on sales of books, CDs and DVDs.
"Kindle's apparent success highlights the very significant and consistent innovation focus that Amazon has maintained over the past five years and helps hedge the company against the digitization of media products," Mahaney wrote in the note.
Companies in Germany and France are plotting Kindle killers but Amazon.com can probably can remain the ebook device leader unless Steve Jobs and Apple are also plotting a Kindle killer. Estimates for 2010 make the Kindle a $1 billion business for Amazon.com reports Silicon Alley Insider.
NBC's decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC's technological wall - by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters' Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.
In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.
As the first Summer Games of the broadband age commenced in China, old network habits have never seemed so archaic - or so irrelevant.
"The Olympics to me is a benchmark for how fast we've gone with technology," Brad Adgate, the senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, a media buying firm in New York, said. "Thirty months ago, no one was talking about YouTube. Now, it's a verb."
U.S. residents can get information on foreign sites like BBC News and CBC.ca although the videos are blocked for U.S. viewers. Bloggersblog.com has a list of blogs and Twitters that are covering the games - some of them are doing it live. NBC's own coverage is online at NBCOlympics.com. It's not all delayed like the Opening Ceremony either as NBC is said to be planning 2,200 hours of stread live coverage.
Delays may not bother everyone as the time zone difference makes many of the live events at occur at times when many U.S. residents are sleeping.
Tina Brown to Launch The Daily Beast Tina Brown is planning to launch a new website will be dubbed The Daily Beast reports Gawker. That name comes from the tabloid in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop. The site will be backed by Barry Diller of IAC.
Tina Brown has worked in the US for more than two decades, since taking the helm of Vanity Fair in 1984; and she's now attempting to reinvent herself for the internet. But Lady Evans, as the 55-year-old former magazine editor is also entitled to call herself, remains at heart a Brit of an earlier generation, pickled in ink and arch wit. Her forthcoming news site, backed by old patron Barry Diller of IAC, is to be dubbed The Daily Beast, after the shameless tabloid of Evelyn Waugh's 1938 novel Scoop. The Digg kiddies will be so confused.
Daily Intelsays Brown's website will be a "new take on an aggregator Website." However, it won't compete with site like the Huffington Post because it apparently won't take an ideological stance.
Under the agreement, Yahoo Movies will feature THR content on its site, and THR will promote Yahoo Movies trailer content and data in its digital and print editions, and on THR.com.
The brands also will present Yahoo's new "Purple Filmstrip Award" program, a monthly honor given to a film studio with the most successful movie title on Yahoo Movies as measured by a combination of the most trailer streams and best user reviews.
Yahoo, in association with THR, presented the first Purple Filmstrip Award to Warner Bros. on Wednesday for "The Dark Knight."
"We are thrilled to be working with Yahoo Movies to further move the THR brand into the digital space and extend our content to new readers," THR publisher Eric Mika said.
"With Yahoo's consumer reach and our leadership position in covering the business of entertainment on a global scale, this deal solidifies our symbiotic relationship and allows us to take advantage of an evolving model where media outlets can broaden and deepen their engagement with audiences," he added.
Yahoo has cut similar content deals with other media partners for its other destination channels such as Yahoo Food and Yahoo Sports. You can see the Purple Filmstrip Award winners here. The Dark Knight won the award for July.
Comcat Buys DailyCandy Silicon Alley Insider reports that Comcast has acquired DailyCandy for $125 million. DailyCandy is a popular email newsletter publisher covering fashion, food and entertainment in major U.S. cities.
As previously reported, Comcast (CMCSA) was indeed interested in buying DailyCandy. But they ended up paying much more than the $75 million we head about earlier this month -- the cable company is paying Bob Pittman's Pilot Group Ventures $125 million for newsletter business, a source close to the sale tells us.
We hear that Viacom was also interested in the property, which has been off and on the blocks for the last few years, and had been considering paying $120 million. We also hear the company dropped out of the bidding process, run by Web 2.0 bankers Montgomery & Co., in June. In a congratulatory letter to the DailyCandy staff, Pittman says that the company is on track to hit $25 million in revenue this year and EBITDA of "well over" $10 million:
The WSJ's story on the deal says DailyCandy had 2.5 million readers. Comcast seems to be becoming somewhat more of a content company as they develop. Caroline McCarthy at CNET's The Social notes that Comcast also recently acquired Movies.com and Plaxo, a social aggregator. Bizjournals.com says Comcast's interactive division is "responsible for developing and operating Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication" - so they are definitely into content building but nothing on cable rival Time Warner's scale - at least not yet.
Robert Novak has announced his immediate retirement following the diagnosis of a brain tumor, a prognosis the Sun-Times' political columnist describes as "dire."
"The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak said.
The Evans-Novak column was first distributed by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate on May 15, 1963, with the New York Herald-Tribune, the flagship newspaper. When the Herald-Tribune folded in 1966, the Chicago Sun-Times became their home newspaper.
Playgirl Magazine Shutters Chalk another print magazine up to the weak economy and the gradual print-to-web transformation. Media Bistro is reporting that Playgirl is closing the print magazine to focus solely on the website.
Nicole Caldwell, Playgirl's editor-in-chief, just emailed confirmation that the magazine is indeed shuttering its print operation.
"Playgirl is going all-Web. The last print issue will be the Jan/Feb 2009 magazine, which comes out Nov. 18," Caldwell writes.
Playgirl magazine was marketed to heterosexual women but it had a large gay readership - possibly as large as 30% according to the Wikipedia entry. Dlisted, Gaysocialities.com and Gaywired have more details on the print magazine's closing.
JustJared.com has just learned that People magazine has drummed up the winning bid for the first pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins - Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. It is rumored that the winning bid is between $10 million and $15 million. The pictures will come up in a future People magazine issue (but not this week!). The money paid to Brad and Angelina has already been earmarked for charity.
If true that would be more than the $4 to $6 millionPeople paid earlier this year for rights to Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's baby photos. A magazine can see a jump in newsstand sales when a new celebrity baby is on the cover. People also bought rights to the first cover with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby Shiloh in 2006.
Known by the initials FSB, the magazine is axing 14 of its 17 editorial staffers, including its editor Dan Goodgame, a 20-year veteran of Time Inc.
FSB was run essentially as a custom-published magazine for small business holders of American Express cards, but because it had controlled (in other words, free) circulation of around 1 million, it was considered a lucrative add-on to the main magazine for ad-sales purposes.
Folio also writes that 14 of 17 positions at FSB have been cut. The Huffington Post reports that both Fortune and American Express have denied reports that American Express will now control FSB's editorial.
Meanwhile, the former website for FSB now redicts to CNNMoney.com's Small Business section.
Dilbert Gets Animated
After years of being posted in cubicles and distributed from coworker-to-coworker by email, Scott Adams' Dilbert is adding a daily animated version.
RingTales - the producers of The New Yorker Animated Cartoons and the creative team behind Dreamworks' Over the Hedge - have signed an exclusive deal with United Media, Dilbert's licensing and syndication company, to produce and distribute daily animated versions of the Dilbert comic strip. The deal includes yet-to-be produced strips and over 7,000 comics in the Dilbert library.
The daily Dilbert animated cartoons have their own YouTube channel. They can also be found on iTunes as a free, subscription podcast and they will soon be available via RSS feeds, widgets, mobile and numerous other websites.
"We are excited about the opportunity to bring Dilbert to fans in a whole new form," said RingTales CEO Jim Cox. "By delivering an animated Dilbert five times per week, RingTales and United Media are blazing a new media trail to the future of comics online." RingTales President, Michael Fry, adds "With the addition of Dilbert to our already popular New Yorker animations, we're poised to begin to replicate the habit-forming print comic experience in animation, anywhere people can watch or read comics in digital form."
Scott Adams is pleased with the animated. "The animations are terrific," remarked Scott Adams. "RingTales got everything right on these."
Desktop Keeley Hazell Widget a Success For British Tabloid Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun has resorted to using a girl disktop widget to help drive people back to its website. People that download the widget will see model Keeley Hazell strut across their screen to deliver headlines from The Sun. NMA.co.uk reports that the widget had 10,000 downloads in just four days.
The Sun has claimed its Page 3 girl desktop widget has had over 10,000 downloads just four days after soft launching.
The widget, which sees Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell strut across users' desktops updating them on news from the site, was created by Glue London.
Keeley can also be made to perform magic tricks and put virtual kisses or bullet holes on the computer screen.
The widget can be downloaded from The Sunhere. Obviously, most newspapers are not going to want a scantily clad girl delivering their news headlines but it is an interesting concept that could be used in other ways by different types of magazines and newspapers.
Bloomberg 
Tina Brown is planning to launch a new website will be dubbed The Daily Beast 
The Hollywood Reporter has 
Silicon Alley Insider 
Conservative Chicago Sun-Times political columnist Robert Novak is retiring following the diagnosis of a brain tumor. The Sun-Times 
Chalk another print magazine up to the weak economy and the gradual print-to-web transformation. Media Bistro is 
The JustJared.com blog is 
The New York Post 
Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid The Sun has resorted to using a girl disktop widget to help drive people back to its website. People that download the widget will see model Keeley Hazell strut across their screen to deliver headlines from The Sun. NMA.co.uk 
Fortune 
