L.A. Times
Hulu aims to avoid summer viewership doldrums by obtaining exclusive U.S. rights to three programs unavailable on cable or satellite: two British comedy series, "Misfits" (to launch June 20) and "Whites,"(launching July 20), and the U.S. show "The Booth At The End," which will be available July 11.
New York Post
NBCUniversal is reportedly in talks to sell its video-game channel G4 to Ultimate Fighting Championship, the mixed-martial-arts fighting league, with a pay day that could be a nice $600 million, according to analysts cited in the New York Post. UFC has a contract with Spike TV set to expire this year.
Financial Post
For the first time, the Huffington Post had more visitors than the New York Times Web site did. HuffPo jumped to the top of the rankings in May with 35.6 million unique visitors compared to 33.6 for the Times, according to comScore. Part of the reason for this leap: the AOL news site now redirects to HuffPo.The Washington Post, L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal followed the Times in newspaper Web site rankings, with 19.9 million, 18.4 million, and 13.9 million unique visitors respectively in May.
Paid Content
Hearst just opened its App Lab -- no, not a competitor to Apple's App Store, but a a "think tank" for marketers and ad agencies who work with Hearst, notes Paid Content. The company plans on launching a dozen apps in the next six months, probably including non-editorial ones that could expand the company into becoming a "service provider," as Conde Nast's just-launched Idea Flight, an organizer app for in-person meetings, could for that glossy publisher.
Bloomberg
Analysts question whether Comcast's shelling out $4.38 billion for U.S. broadcasting rights for the next four Olympics games will really pay off for the company, which outbid its competitors for the rights by about $1 billion. NBC has famously lost much money on Olympics deals before, but benefited by certain "ancillary benefits," like parent company GE's being able to sell its products during commercials -- which Comcast can't do. However, Comcast can benefit from other "halo effects," like cross-promotion between the NBC broadcast channel and Comcast's cable systems, according to some analysts.
The Washington Post
The Washington Times, known for its conservative opinion pages, has named a new editor: Ed Kelly, formerly editor of The Oklahoman. Kelly was the 1995 National Press Foundation editor of the year for overseeing coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.
MIN Online
Dan Lagani, who has been Reader's Digest Association Media president since May 2010, was promoted to the new position of RDA president/North America. With the just-announced departure of divisional president Suzanne Grimes, Lagani will have under his bailiwick the RDA Lifestyle Communities responsibilities (which includes the magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray) Grimes previously handled.
Yahoo Finance/Reuters
Apple has now reversed magazine app requirements for iPad and iPhone deals that formerly received a cold shoulder from major content publishers. Apple no longer requires publishers to sell subscriptions to their content within the App Store, and will receive no part of the revenues for content purchased outside apps.
Adweek
"Magazine advertising looks increasingly quaint these days in the ever-more-flashy world of social, mobile, TV and cinema. But some print ads aren't just sitting there looking foolish," writes Adweek's Tim Nudd, who provides a look at 10 that do everything from inflate an actual airbag to allow the reader to tighten what looks like a real bra. Fun piece for today's (in New York, at least) dog-day afternoon.
Huffington Post
While there are more media outlets then ever, fewer are doing the local journalism necessary to keep institutions accountable to the public, according to a new report issued by the Federal Communications Commission. "A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little," the report says.