Previous New York Times star blogger and election predictor Nate Silver's new job at ESPN/ABC News will include a role in the Academy Awards. "How much of a Hollywood game-changer will this become?" asks Nikki Finke. Not much, she concludes, considering the "meh" accuracy of his past Oscar predictions."A lot of showbiz websites and blogs large and small, smart and smarmy, clued-in and clueless, depend on their Oscar prognostication to drive traffic and foot bills," Finke writes. "But unless Silver allows for the myriad [insider] variables that go into Academy Award noms and wins ... he won’t become more accurate."

Time Warner Inc. has chosen Joseph Ripp, a former exec with Time Inc. and AOL, to become CEO of its magazine division, Time Inc., in September,  several months before that unit's spinoff from the main company. Ripp, now the CEO of business marketing company OneSource Information Services, will replace Laura Lang. He will become "the third CEO of Time Inc since 2011," according to Reuters reporters.

Cable network QVC will add a social-commerce channel, toGather by QVC, on its Web site in September. Similar to Pinterest, users will "create collections of products on the channel that others on the site can then 'heart,'" writes Christopher Heine. "QVC personalities will be featured on the channel, where they will interact with shoppers."

In July of 1982, People magazine, with a cover image of a newborn Prince William, sold 2.6 million copies. Will the royal baby, due anytime, outdo him? U.S. magazines hope so.  “US Weekly, which has its European bureau chief and a bullpen of stringers at the ready, is one of only 10 press outlets allowed in a private area outside the hospital,” according to Ad Age. “There they will wait to snap pictures of Princess Kate holding the baby when she leaves the hospital. On its website, the magazine will stream live video from outside the hospital.” People magazine is …

In letters to two U.K. parliamentary committees, News CorpNWSA Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch expressed "regret" over his "choice of words" in secretly recorded comments he made playing down the significance of alleged wrongdoing at his U.K. newspapers and criticizing a police investigation. But Mr. Murdoch also defended his company's cooperation with the investigation and questioned whether the two-year-old probe into alleged bribery and phone-hacking has at times been excessive.

For more than a year, Google has been struggling to make more money on mobile ads -- a trend evident as the company reported second-quarter results that missed analysts’ expectations for revenue and profit. "Mobile ads do not command the premium that Web advertising does," writes Claire Cain Miller.  Google worked on the problem "by making the biggest-ever change to its AdWords advertising product" -- a program called enhanced campaigns, introduced in February, which "will be mandatory for all advertisers on Monday." The program "gives advertisers less choice about advertising on mobile devices by automatically including desktop, tablet and cellphone …

Writer Janko Roetggers introduces Americans to a new TV show recommendation site called Televisor. Viewers enter the name of a show, and the site recommends other shows they might like, with links to trailers, IMDB info, and where they might be streaming on Amazon, Netflix and Hulu. Televisor was started by a Canadian company called Sortable.

Amidst all the vast changes in the magazine industry, some things never change --  such as Vogue topping the September ad page count with what Charlotte Cowles terms "one of those phone-book-size issues that your poor postman has to abandon on your doorstep after futile attempts to stuff it into your mailbox."   Well, we're not sure what decade she's living in when it comes to phone books, but we know our postman won't be able to stuff Vogue's latest issue, with 665 ad pages and untold editorial ones, into our mail slot.  Sporting Jennifer Lawrence on the cover, its …

WPP’s audience buying company Xaxis has launched a programmatic RTB platform for digital out-of-home.  Called Xaxis Places, the marketplace is said to reach more than 100,000 out-of-home screens, with 1.4 billion monthly impressions available.  The new service is integrated with Xaxis’ Data Management Platform and WPP’s Spafax Networks, allowing ads in locales like taxis, hotels and malls to link their messaging with what ads consumers see on their computers, smartphones and tablets.

Massive cutback at a Canadian newspaper company: Quebecor Inc.'s  Sun Media Corp. is eliminating 360 jobs and closing 11 newspapers, including free urban daily 24 Hours in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. "The cuts come eight months after Sun Media eliminated 500 jobs and closed two production facilities in Ontario," writes Gerrit De Vynck.