NEWS CORP SETS ASIDE $155 MILLION FOR HACKING SETTLEMENTS

News International, the unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp that oversees his British news operations, has reportedly added £80 million ($124 million) to the kitty it had set up to settle invasion-of-privacy lawsuits arising from telephone hacking conducted by reporters and private investigators working for the now-defunct tabloid News of the World. The legal fund [...]

PLANS TO BRING CANCELED SOAPS TO THE WEB HIT A SNAG

Plans to bring the canceled ABC soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live to the Internet remain in limbo as the producers struggle to find enough financial backers who believe that such a scheme can produce a profit, according to Peter Kafka, the All Things D online columnist for the Wall Street [...]

HULU OWNERS DROP PLANS TO SELL THEIR VIDEO SITE

Unable to find a buyer willing to pay anything close to their asking price, the owners of the TV video site Hulu have announced their “decision to terminate the Hulu sale process.” The bickering owners — News Corp, which contributes mostly Fox TV shows to the website; Disney, which contributes mostly ABC shows; Comcast, which [...]

TBS PLANS TO BOLSTER CONAN’S SHOW WITH STRONGER PROGRAMS

Despite Conan O’Brien’s plummeting ratings, TBS plans to invest heavily in new programming to air before and after his 11:00 p.m. show, the Wall Street Journal reported today (Thursday). The newspaper reported today (Thursday) that O’Brien’s ratings have tumbled about 60 percent since his premiere last September (to 958,000 viewers from 2.4 million) and that [...]

FALLING PORN SALES HURTING CABLE, SATELLITE

Noting that pornographic movies represent “one of TV providers’ most profitable segments,” the Wall Street Journal today (Tuesday) attributed the downturn in video-on-demand and pay-per-view revenue by such providers as DirecTV and Time Warner Cable to a significant drop in the number of viewers watching pornography on their TV sets — and a greater number [...]

SONY SAYS DESPITE LOSSES IT WON’T ABANDON TV MANUFACTURING

Despite losing money in its television manufacturing business for the past seven years, Sony has dismissed speculation that it is considering abandoning the business. In an interview with today’s (Tuesday) Wall Street Journal, Executive Deputy President Kazuo Hirai commented. “We all know it’s a challenging business, but that doesn’t equate to ‘We should be out [...]

BRITAIN EXPANDS HACKER PROBE

Suggesting that it may now have evidence that reporters and/or their accomplices working for the now shuttered U.K. tabloid News of the World may have hacked into computers or engaged in other forms of illegal eavesdropping, Scotland Yard is reportedly expanding the scope of its original investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported today (Monday) that [...]

INTERNAL COMMITTEE SCORES WALL ST. JOURNAL‘S MURDOCH INTERVIEW

A committee set up by the Wall Street Journal charged with ensuring its editorial integrity following the acquisition of the newspaper by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has criticized the Journal‘s reporters and editors for the way they handled a recent exclusive interview with Murdoch during which he said that company executives had handled the telephone-hacking [...]

DURING SCANDAL, THE SON RISES

The assured and astute performance of James Murdoch in fielding questions from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons on Tuesday may have lifted his chances of running the media conglomerate when his father Rupert steps down, analysts observed today (Wednesday). The younger Murdoch, deputy COO of News Corp, repeatedly took [...]

WALL STREET JOURNAL DEFENDS PARENT IN SCANDAL

In an extraordinary defense of the Murdoch media empire, the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal editorialized today (Monday): “Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than [...]

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