Rupert Murdoch finds himself in a familiar predicament as he considers a bid for The Los Angeles Times: awaiting rule changes from the government, Amy Chozick reports. Mr. Murdoch has increased his lobbying efforts to revise a media ownership rule that prevents companies from owning both television stations and newspapers in the same local market (News Corporation owns KTTV and KCOP in the Los Angeles area). Mr. Murdoch has given mixed signals about his interest in The Los Angeles Times, which the Tribune Company plans to sell. The resignation last week of the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, could further slow the process. Mr. Genachowski had proposed allowing a rule change to allow a single company to own both a TV station and newspaper in a top-20 market provided the station was not in the top four in audience size.
“Steve Harvey,” a daytime talk show featuring the comedian and sitcom star that debuted in September, has been the surprise hit of daytime TV, Brian Stelter writes. The show has averaged a rating of 0.9 among women ages 25 to 54 and posted a 1.0 rating in February, enough to tie Katie Couric’s syndicated talk show for the first time. The ratings have cemented Mr. Harvey as one of America’s foremost entertainers and drawn comparisons to Oprah, whom Mr. Harvey will interview this April.
NBC’s plan to replace Jay Leno with Jimmy Fallon as host of the “Tonight” show could risk the top spot in the ratings Mr. Leno has enjoyed for the last two decades, one of the few areas the network dominates, Bill Carter writes. Mr. Fallon will almost certainly start the job for a lower salary than Mr. Leno because there is much less profit to go around in late-night television than there once was. He also faces an increasingly fragmented television audience that is leaving late-night shows for diverse options like “The Daily Show” and Cartoon Network or eschewing live television for DVR or the Internet.
Ads are increasingly appropriating social media patois, Stuart Elliott writes. Commercials for brands including Toyota, Snickers Peanut Butter Squared candy and the cosmetics retailer Sephora all crib from the social media lexicon. Such commercials now include mainstream consumers, not just youthful ones, and exemplify a tactic known as borrowed interest by which brands seek to associate themselves with pervasive elements of popular culture.
The government prosecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking secret information to WikiLeaks is a public prosecution in name only, David Carr reports in The Media Equation. Basic information has been withheld throughout the lengthy pretrial hearings, and when the court agreed last month to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents requested by reporters under the Freedom of Information Act the documents contained redactions that were almost comical. The issue makes it hard going for reporters and fits a pattern of what reporters and lawyers say is a sometimes capricious withholding of information by the government.
Buzzmedia, a Los Angeles-based company that runs a handful of pop culture and music blogs, has decided that second-best is a viable way to gain Internet advertising, Ben Sisario writes. Even though Buzzmedia offerings like Stereogum and Brooklyn Vegan trail Pitchfork in audience and engagement Buzzmedia draws 41 million people a month, according to comScore, more than some of its main competitors like Gawker Media and Mashable. On Monday the company will rename itself SpinMedia, after Spin Magazine, which it bought last year, another move to attract readers.
Two movies opened with $30 million or more in ticket sales for the first time this year, giving studios hope that a dismal stretch might be behind them, Brooks Barnes reports. An animated caveman comedy, “The Croods,” and a thriller, “Olympus Has Fallen,” both broke the $30 million mark over the weekend, but movie ticket sales are still showing a 13 percent decline from the same period a year ago.
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