Smartphones

NEWS CORP. will sell 8 owned-and-operated FOX stations to private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners for $1.1 billion. The deal includes stations in a mix of large and mid-sized markets including Cleveland, Denver and Milwaukee. After the sale, News Corp. will be left with 27 O&O’s. Oak Hill recently bought nine other mid-sized stations Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK has been forced to change Beacon’s default behavior due to mounting criticism and user unrest. Previously a transaction would broadcast to a user’s network automatically if he did not choose to prevent it. Under Beacon 2.0 transactions will not be published until a user actually agrees to it. Ignored requests will greet a user Continue Reading →

YAHOO signed a deal that will allow users to legally upload videos containing SONY BMG music to Yahoo’s video-sharing site. Sony BMG will receive a cut of advertising revenue generated by videos, which can be placed in a Yahoo.com player or embedded on third-party sites. Sony BMG cut a similar deal with Google Video and Continue Reading →

The WGA went on strike this past Monday and everyone, from blogger to professional pundit, has been talking about which shows will continue to air, which will stop, when, how — some reports have even taken a shot at why. Sound bites and articles written to scare TV fans into abject despair are both useless Continue Reading →

NBC is in talks to acquire Quarterlife, the “TV-quality” series that debuts this Sunday on MySpace. The pending deal has been spurred by the Writers Guild strike and may bring the show to NBC as early as February. Quarterlife is currently scheduled to run for 36 eight-minute episodes online. Show creator Marshall Herskovitz recently expressed Continue Reading →

COMCAST announced the loss of 65,000 basic-cable subscribers in the third quarter, which follows a loss of 95,000 subscribers in the previous quarter. The company is also seeing severely reduced growth in high-speed Internet subscribers. Comcast blames the customer erosion on increased competition from satellite and telephone companies. THE NBA is in talks with Turner Continue Reading →

NOKIA has signed yet another deal that undermines carrier control over mobile media. News Corp., Sony Pictures, and CNN have signed agreements with the handset maker to distribute videos to Nokia phones. The handsets will ship with Video Center, a program which links directly to video content from the partnering distributors. Videos will include short Continue Reading →

APPLE ends the week in the iGutter. Yesterday, the company released an iPhone update targeting users that have installed third-party applications on the device, unlocked it, or otherwise hacked it in some way. The update has rendered some of the phones completely useless, turning them into iBricks. This, absurdly enough, seems to be the intended Continue Reading →

NBC UNIVERSAL plans to launch NBC Direct this November. The service allows consumers to download NBC shows for free, for one week immediately following broadcast. Downloaded shows will contain commercials that cannot be skipped, and will expire after one week. NBC U plans to offer paid, commercial-free downloads by mid-2008. ABC has struck a deal Continue Reading →

FOX has drawn much criticism over its decision to censor certain parts of this Sunday’s Emmy broadcast. The network “bleeped” Sally Field’s acceptance speech when she used the word “goddamn.” However, a 2004 ruling by the FCC specifically declared that “goddamn” was not indecent. Comedian Ray Romano received similar treatment, when the network dropped the Continue Reading →