The Breakfast Meeting
What’s making news in media.
The stars are aligning, perhaps, for the purchase of The Financial Times by Bloomberg L.P., the media company whose shares are 90 percent controlled by New York’s mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, Amy Chozick and Michael Barbaro write. The departure of two top executives at Pearson, the owner of The Financial Times, has made the sale of the newspaper seem a possibility. Bloomberg, which makes its money primarily from desktop terminals, would have to weigh the business advantages of going backward technologically to print; one advantage would be to gain a well-respected daily platform for Bloomberg content. (Thomson Reuters is also said to be likely to bid on the newspaper.)
- The mayor has been cagey on the subject. Asked by an editor at The Financial Times in London, where Mr. Bloomberg was visiting, if he would buy the paper, Mr. Bloomberg replied, “I buy it every day.”
The division of News Corporation into separate entertainment and publishing companies has led to a change in leadership at The Wall Street Journal, the flagship of the soon-to-be-created publishing company. The newspaper’s editor, Robert Thomson, will lead the publishing company, and his deputy, Gerard Baker, will succeed him at The Journal, an appointment that was christened by News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, in a widely shared video that left no doubt about Mr. Murdoch’s confidence in the appointment, David Carr writes in the Media Equation column. Mr. Baker’s background as a neoconservative columnist with little management experience has many on the staff — speaking anonymously — expressing worries about what direction he will lead the newspaper.
The life on the run of the software pioneer John McAfee has been an irresistible draw for news media outlets, Jeff Wise writes. Mr. McAfee, the creator of a defense to computer viruses and founder of the company that bears his name, had relocated to the jungles of Belize, and in recent days he is reported to be a “person of interest” in the death of a neighbor. Since then, he has taken flight to Guatemala, all the while dropping hints and granting interviews. In retrospect, Mr. Wise writes, his decision to let journalists from Vice magazine tag along may not have been so advisable.
As part of a sponsorship deal with Pepsi, the pop star Beyoncé will appear in a new TV ad — her fifth for the soft drink since 2002 — and her face will be on a limited-edition line of soda cans, Ben Sisario writes. But, under an unusual arrangement, PepsiCo has agreed to create a multimillion-dollar fund to support the singer’s chosen creative projects. For Pepsi, Mr. Sisario writes, “the goal is to enhance its reputation with consumers by acting as something of an artistic patron instead of simply paying for celebrity endorsements.”
This fall, NBC has pulled off a notable turnaround, from worst to first in the ratings, Bill Carter writes. Its strategy has been to rely heavily on its singing competition, “The Voice,” broadcasting more than 40 hours of the show this season, which has improved ratings of the programs airing near it. Senior executives at competing networks warned that NBC could be overplaying its hand; the current edition of “The Voice” ends Dec. 18.
John Silva, the inventor of the “Telecopter” in the 1950s while he was chief engineer of the Los Angeles TV station KTLA, died on Nov. 27, Paul Vitello writes. Mr. Silva was 92. From today’s vantage point, where TV station’s helicopters are vital to local news — whether for reporting on traffic jams, car chases or out-of-control fires — the invention seems inevitable. But Mr. Silva had to work around many hurdles to turn a helicopter into a mobile TV station — both to ensure that a signal could be sent out, and that the helicopter could safely travel with the extra equipment.
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