A Different Deal Mania Grips TV; As companies like Tribune and Gannett buy up local television stations, the goal is not transformation, but leverage, using size to cut better deals with distributors and suppliers

July 7, 2013

A Different Deal Mania Grips TV

By DAVID CARR

Suddenly, being big is a big deal. Again. And we’re not just talking about the resurgence in the sales of pickup trucks. After years of small-bore shifting and tweaking by media companies in an effort to stay in front of consumers, big deals are back on the table. Using relatively cheap capital, companies in dire need of diversification away from wounded businesses like print are going shopping. Last Monday, the Tribune Company, fresh out of bankruptcy, spent $2.7 billion to buy 19 stations from Local TV Holdings. Several weeks earlier, the Gannett Company made its own bet on going bigger, buying the Belo Corporation, with its 20 television stations, for $1.5 billion. “It’s time to gobble or get gobbled,” a media analyst told The New York Times last Monday. Read more of this post

Mobile gaming taking China by storm

Mobile gaming taking China by storm

Staff Reporter

2013-07-08

Backed by huge numbers of mobile phone subscribers, the gaming industry in China has been growing by leaps and bounds to develop into a major industry. According to figures released on July 3 by Tencent, China’s largest internet company by value, the number of registered game software developers in the country topped 80,000 as of April, with the number of registered game applications exceeding 40,000. The number of games racking up over 100,000 yuan (US$16,300) in monthly revenue also jumped by 65% year-on-year. While a game created by Tencent called Plants vs Zombies, launched in May last year, accumulated over 80 million yuan (US$13 million) in revenue as of June this year. Read more of this post

How Netflix Is Shaking Up Hollywood; Streaming Site Becomes Aggressive Programming Buyer; Serialized Dramas Benefit

July 7, 2013, 8:47 p.m. ET

How Netflix Is Shaking Up Hollywood; Streaming Site Becomes Aggressive Programming Buyer; Serialized Dramas Benefit

AMOL SHARMA

When AMC Networks AMCX +1.27% canceled its TV crime drama “The Killing” last year after two seasons, the show’s creators made a push to get it back on the air, believing they could correct the missteps that had caused an ardent fan base to lose interest. They got some help from an unlikely source: Netflix Inc. NFLX +1.90% The show’s producer, Fox Television Studios, signed a deal with the streaming-video service that made a third season financially viable. The revenue from Netflix allowed the studio to charge AMC a lower license fee. In return, Netflix got exclusive streaming rights in the U.S. and Canada beginning three months after the season finale—shorter than the typical delay of as much as a year. It also got the rights to premiere the show in several foreign markets where its previous seasons had been a big hit for the company. Read more of this post

Modesty is a source of pride at Arm, the UK’s largest tech company by market cap, whose microprocessor designs are used in nearly all smartphones. Simon Segars joined Arm in 1991 when it was based in a Cambridgeshire barn

July 7, 2013 2:28 pm

Simon Segars, Arm Holdings chief

By Henry Mance

Whatever attracted Simon Segars to his new job, it can’t have been his windowless office. Even his prize decoration – a map of the Arm7 processor that he helped design, complete with “72,000 beautiful transistors” – lies unframed on a chair. “The least glamorous company in the FTSE,” he jokes. Modesty is a source of pride at Arm, the UK’s largest technology company by market capitalisation, whose microprocessor designs are used in nearly all smartphones. “It’s inbuilt in the culture. We’re not glitzy and flashy, and we’re not about to shout about our success from the rooftops,” says Mr Segars, who took over as chief executive of the Cambridge-based group last week. That ethos is one sign of continuity with his predecessor Warren East, whose belongings are still in boxes in the next-door office. Read more of this post

The CEO of IMAX on How It Became a Hollywood Powerhouse

The CEO of IMAX on How It Became a Hollywood Powerhouse

by Richard Gelfond

The Idea: The company experimented with business models to grow from its modest roots in nature documentaries into a major player in multiplexes around the world.

When I came to IMAX, in 1994, I had been an entrepreneur, a lawyer, and an investment banker. I didn’t know much about the movie business, but I recognized that the moviegoing experience IMAX offered had great potential if we could find the right way to grow.

A partner and I had acquired the company through a leveraged buyout, and we took it public a few months later. On paper the transaction was a success, and the company’s market cap grew rapidly. But at the time, most IMAX movies were nature documentaries shown in the theaters of science museums, and figuring out how to move into mainstream markets proved much more difficult than we’d expected. That was due in part to the technology constraints of the predigital era; it took years to find ways to make it easy and cost-effective to show IMAX movies in a large number of multiplexes. We also faced cultural challenges. The Hollywood movie industry is an interconnected system of studios, directors, and theaters that has evolved over 100 years, and it has a traditional way of doing things. As newcomers we spent years trying and failing to persuade the industry to adapt to our model. Even after we began adapting our strategy to fit the Hollywood way of doing business, it took a while to find a model that benefited us and our partners. Read more of this post

Israel’s Mobileye, whose collision-avoidance technology has been adopted in BMWs, says investors value it at $1.5 billion

Mobileye says investors value it at $1.5 billion

7:23pm EDT

(Reuters) – Mobileye N.V., whose collision-avoidance technology has been adopted in cars made by the likes of BMW AG (BMWG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and General Motors Co (GM.N: Quote, Profile,Research, Stock Buzz), said on Sunday it had raised money from five investors that valued its equity at $1.5 billion, highlighting the market potential for driver-assistance systems. Founded in 1999 by an Israeli businessman and a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mobileye sold its 1 millionth driver assistance system last year. It has said it expects to sell 2 million more in 2013. Read more of this post

As Software Takes Over, Network Gear Could Be in Jeopardy; Software-defined networking threatens hardware makers, including Cisco Systems, F5 Networks

SATURDAY, JULY 6, 2013

As Software Takes Over, Network Gear Could Be in Jeopardy

By TIERNAN RAY | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Software-defined networking threatens hardware makers, including Cisco Systems, F5 Networks, and Juniper Networks. VMware could be a winner. How Cisco is striking back.

ago, I asked a venture capitalist in computer networking if dedicated network gear would ever be replaced by software running on a standard computer. My hypothesis was that as general-purpose computers became more powerful, they could absorb functions that previously required specialized computer hardware, the way many functions can be performed on PCs today that once required mainframes. The venture capitalist assured me it would never happen, for a variety of reasons, even if it became technologically possible. Read more of this post

How Google Flu Trends Is Getting to the Bottom of Messy Data

How Google Flu Trends Is Getting to the Bottom of Messy Data

by Nicholas Diakopoulos  |  11:00 AM July 5, 2013

Churning through, tabulating, and modeling millions of search queries every day, Google Flu Trendscan measure, a full two weeks before the CDC, the incidence of influenza-like illnesses (ILI) across the U.S. Any official response to a flu pandemic, such as vaccine distribution and timing, could be greatly enhanced with such an early warning. And while not billed as an ersatz measure, Google Flu has had an uncannily high correlation with the CDC’s own slower, yet more assiduously produced estimate of ILIs. Read more of this post