A group of media companies is planning to build a digital locale where consumers can safely store their digital video content and access it anywhere in the world. The consortium of Hollywood studios, retailers, service providers, electronics makers and IT companies, called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, wants digital devices and Web sites to work together smoothly and wants "lockers" where consumers' digital video purchases would be stored for ready access, similar to email accounts. The consortium also wants new rules that allow consumers to copy content onto household devices and to burn their content to physical …

Worldwide economic turmoil and recession equals good news for CNBC, both in the U.S. and overseas. In the U.S., CNBC just had its best July figures for five years. Revenues for Europe, the Middle East and Africa are up 39% in 2008, compared to last year. Mick Buckley, CNBC chief for Europe and the Middle East, says there "is no sign of any slowdown." CNBC bucks the dismal trends in the media because it is international and targets affluent men. "This is not like previous global recessions where everyone stops spending. If a Western airline stops spending [on …

Triton Media Group has partnered with Internet radio expert Kurt Hanson to help terrestrial radio stations create customizable online radio stations. Slipstream Radio will allow online listeners to personalize their offline radio station, including pausing and skipping songs, eliminating artists from the play list and mixing multiple genres together. "The mission of Slipstream Radio is to offer broadcasters a product that's designed for Internet delivery, featuring the local station's air personalities and sponsored by the station's advertisers," Hanson says. Slipstream will be offered to broadcasters for a flat monthly fee or on a barter arrangement.

It's amazing so many image-conscious fashion folks are agreeing to let people follow them around 24/7 with cameras. But a TV or video presence is fast becoming a necessary part of fashion magazines' business model. "When a cable show like "Project Runway" can get 5 million viewers, magazines are clearly going to embrace TV as a powerful branding tool," says Elle publisher Carol Smith. Elleis launching "Stylista," a "Devil Wears Prada"-esque reality series that will make its debut Oct. 22 on the CW. Vogue and Glamour, however, prefer to put their programming online rather than on TV. …

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown says her new project, an aggregate news site called the "Daily Beast," will use more than 20 editors -- rather than Googlelike algorithms - to capture the daily zeitgeist. She says her goal is to "cut through all this static on Web, fake stuff and noise. It is the time for editors to reassert themselves, to curate in a more rigorous way. There is room for more meta-aggregation with a distinctive voice." Not everyone agrees. Notes one blog respondent: "There is always the notion from old-school editorial types that what the Web …

A securities class action against Bloomberg News is likely the next step in the Google-Tribune debacle, in which traders and automated programs dumped UAL stock based on true news that Bloomberg regurgitated from a 6-year-old Chicago Tribune article. The Trib's 2002 article said the carrier was seeking bankruptcy protection. But because of the Communications Decency Act, those seeking to recoup their losses from Bloomberg might be out of luck, according to David Post, a Temple University legal scholar. Post quotes a Section from the Act that says "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall …