The “Grand Canyon” Facing the New Media Industry

On November 29, 2009

The “Grand Canyon” Facing the New Media Industry

While I was gazing at the Grand Canyon from its south rim last week, it occurred to me that the yawning gap in the earth in front of me was the perfect metaphor for how much the media business has changed over the course of my career. There simply is nothing much left of the world as we knew it in the early seventies, when I relocated across the country to San Francisco to help launch a new magazine. Then, we used a combination of three main revenue sources -- advertising, subscription, and newsstand sales -- to offset the cost of printing and distributing our product. One of our main business concerns was the pending elimination by the Nixon administration...


On November 29, 2009

Comic Book Downloads Drive eBook Market in Japan

Comic books have long been a big deal in Japanese publishing, and in recent years the ability to download comics to cellphones has driven sales upward, especially by readers who like to access their comics while riding the country's commute trains. eBook Japan, the industry leader in the island nation, lists some 26,000 comics among its 33,000 titles that can be downloaded via the company's free app. Users can store up to 50 eBooks for free at the site's "trunk room," which is also where they can download titles to their cellphones. For a fee, they can store additional titles there. The site also offers a similar kind of pre-paid gift card that have been such a boon for iTunes...


On November 29, 2009

Churchill Family Blasts Scientology Ads Featuring Wartime Leader

Two grandsons of Winston Churchill have complained that the Church of Scientology is wrongly using images of Britain's World War 2 leader to promote itself in ads. Scientology has upped its advertising activity this year, with a set of web ads and a bunch of spots on CNN. The ads are vague and noncommittal about what, exactly, Scientology stands for.


On November 29, 2009

Recovery Seen Across a Range of Advertising Media

The first real signs of recovery have been seen in advertising media, according to a range of companies across TV, web and publishing. BNET noted that a recovery in advertisng may be under way on Nov. 17 as revenues at agency holding companies ticked up, at least sequentially.


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