A New Jersey-based startup has launched an Internet search service that permits users free access to information that normally requires a paid subscription. Why would publications agree to this arrangement? Why do newspapers and reference periodicals give away content that subs are paying for? "If you want to be relevant, you have to show up," says Ash Nashed, cofounder of Congoo. He notes that content providers also benefit from user information and ad-revenue-generating page views. Congoo's challenge will be to get users to download its toolbar. Unlike most other search engines, the software installion is required before the service will …

So many issues confront the production of the proposed reality show about American Media that it may never get off the ground, let alone pitched to a network or TV syndicator.  The program--tentatively titled OnePark, for the address of AMI's Manhattan offices--has company CEO David Pecker worried.  "A major sticking point," writes Jeff Bercovici at WWD.com, "is ... Pecker's concern that the presence of candid cameras could further mar the company's already battered image.He is particularly concerned, say sources, that employees will be shown disparaging the company or engaging in suspect journalistic practices. To prevent that, Pecker is insisting …

Although Verizon's flegling television service, called Fios TV, is available in barely more than a million U.S. homes, it is badly in need of content. It will now have more, thanks to CBS. The two companies have agreed to a deal in which Verizon will pay the network for the right to deliver certain CBS shows to its customers. Reports the Journal: "CBS's strategy is to capitalize on the increasingly brutal competition between cable operators and telecommunications companies to deliver TV to people's homes. To compete with cable companies treading on their turf by offering phone service, Verizon and AT&T …

A San Francisco-based tech startup, AirPlay Network Inc., says it's about to launch a mobile-phone application that will enable games-addicted viewers of live TV to compete against others around the country, in real time.  The games will allow players to predict sports plays, winners of reality contests, and answers in game shows.  Controls will all be mobile-phone based.  "'We're creating a multiplayer experience and a social network synched with television,'" says AirPlay CEO Morgan Guenther, a former president at TiVo Inc. The idea, he said, is to transform TV from a passive pastime to an engaging, competitive experience.  Guenther contends …

Broadcasting & Cable reporter John Eggerton, in attendance at the Cable Television Public Affairs Association's forum in Washington, DC, reports that cable-TV executives seem confident of their ability to snag customers for phone service. Moreover, they say that, going forward, they will be more successful at stealing phone customers from telcos than telcos will be in their effort to steal cable customers for video. One cable exec even went to far as to suggest telcos simply can't compete in this arena because marketing isn't in their DNA. "Verizon spokeswoman Sharon Cohen-Hagar begged to differ. 'It think that's a really …

London's Independent newspaper had an opportunity for a brief interviewwith Bill Gates--in New York City, as it happens--in which itsreporter pressed the Microsoft chairman for his thoughts on where mediawas going.  He spoke about the migration of advertising to theInternet, and also the likelihood that print newspapers will manage tosurvive for at least another 50 years.  He also said that, eventually,all media would end up merging--on a tablet.  "In Gates' futureworld, paper becomes a thing of the past....  Instead we will carry anobject he calls the tablet, a slim …

What to do if you're an employee of a Knight Ridder newspaper that's been sold to the McClatchy Company and McClatchy has already announced that your paper is one of those it plans to dispose of? You might try joining with other employees to purchase your paper. That's exactly what's happening at a number of properties that will soon be on the market--again. "Union representatives from those papers on Monday released a statement that said workers had an 'unprecedented opportunity to have a direct voice' in [the] outcome of the sale by joining with buyout firm The Yucaipa Companies to …

Business Week Editor In Chief Stephen J. Adler recently had an opportunity to sit down with Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons to discuss a broad range of topics. Among them, of course, was the inability of the New York-based media congomerate to boost its long-lagging stock price. An excerpt: "Adler: Why is the market not happy with Time Warner? Parsons: It's less specific to Time Warner than it is to our sector. Markets cannot deal with uncertainty, and there is a lot of uncertainty around the future prospects for the Old Media businesses. How are they going to fare …

Among the observations that found their way to print following the recent nominations for this year's Ellie awards (the, uh, Oscars of the magazine industry, awarded by the American Society of Magazine Editors): 1) The New Yorker, a perennial big winner, got snubbed this year, and 2) Hachette Filipacchi's magazines, which seemnever to be nominated, were not nominated again in 2006. Women's Wear Daily's Jeff Bercovici, who covers the mag business, takes on the matter of Hachette.The company, which publishes 16 titles, hasn't received so much as a single nod in the last six years. How can that be? …

The International Music Feed (IMF), a collaboration between Universal Music and EchoStar Communications, looks to be a likely go, according to Broadcasting & Cable. The two companies, which have been in a legal dispute since 2001, will attempt to have their deal ready in time for the National Cable and Telecommunication's convention next month.  The old dispute centers on a failed $1.5 billion investment in EchoStar by Universal parent company Vivendi Universal, which gave Vivendi five channel slots on EchoStar's Dish satellite network. "Vivendi’s go-go days quickly ended and the company sold its stake back to EchoStar at a …