I can’t promise this will be a new feature or anything, after all, I can only handle so much spice in my granola, but here’s a couple…wait for it…hot links.
- The Wall Street Journal is all over the rumored/upcoming/already-happened/to-be-announced-at-9am-pacific-time/only-a-rumor sale of Knight Ridder. Its report offers some new information: there’s a massive bonus coming to the folks at PCM, whose CEO, Bruce Sherman, has been the one making all the “SELL” noise around KR. The $300 million rolls in if PCM’s performance hits certain levels plotted out by Legg Mason, another piece of investment machinery that bought PCM in 2001. Some speculators see the Knight Ridder sale as the last stop on the move toward that $300 million payout.
[UPDATE: The Washington Post reports that PCM will hit its targets regardless of KR’s performance, and there are other factors at work in the push for the sale.] - One of the questions that always comes up in classes when we talk about the future of television advertising is how to work around the Tivo factor. Apparently, Tivo is working on contextual advertising — not to pop up during your show, which is nice, but to run alongside your searches when you type in whatever it is you’re looking for in the listings or your own database of shows.
[UPDATE: Today’s WSJ reports that Tivo is actually going to let you set up a profile so that the ads you see are a better match to your interests/shopping priorities.] - From the other end of the media spectrum, there’s a pretty good article on RSS in the University of Minnesota’s daily student newspaper – the Minnesota Daily. Always in play here is the idea that users/readers don’t really need to know what RSS is, or even that they’re using it. Make it Just Work, and people will Just Subscribe.
The Tivo story is also from the Wall Street Journal, but I got it from Om Malik. The KR story I picked up from PaidContent.org. The Minnesota Daily story made it to my Google News front page earlier this morning.
[tags]Knight Ridder, Tivo, RSS[/tags]