Harvard Business School - Working Knowledge Podcast

Reactions from Fear and Loathing –> A much better business with Rupert M in charge. The corporate strategy professor presenting this will be running a Harvard grad course - effective strategies for media companies in the brave new world.

The Dow Jones offer is an over 65% premium on current prices - $60 per share.

Challenges for Online and Print:

• Loss of classified advertising
• Developing online news sites that compete with TV and can generate revenue
• How to compete with free newspapers

Read the BusinessWeek - If Dow Jones says No Here

Dow Jones Board meets on deal (Wall Street Journal)

I wonder if the journo writing the article above had lingering thoughts while drafting as to personal career impact if the deal did go ahead - News Corps approach is very different to Dow Jones, so life as he/she/they know it would no longer exist. You can tell a lot I think from the recruitment sections of each website. Dow - Main theme - Diversity News Corp - Hard work, Dedicated…

Its all there and evident really isn’t it? A lot of Rainbows and Lollipops at DJ, which aren’t so evident at News Corp - Won’t be an easy switch!

From Dow Jones Careers section of website:
Dow Jones & Company prides itself in being an Equal Opportunity Employer. You might picture Dow Jones as the traditional business leader that our name implies, but assuming is always a mistake, and you would be missing a key ingredient of our success. We have created a prime environment for innovation and diversity. These are not just words to us, but actions that make us the best at what we do. We value and respect the hard work and dedication of our employees day in and day out — regardless of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religious, creed, sex, physical or mental disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, age, or marital status. We reaffirm this commitment each year, through our Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action policy.

We also are proud of the fact that we offer a competitive benefits package when compared to any Fortune 500 corporation. Our full-time benefits include health and dental programs, work/family programs, and a very competitive 401K plan.

If you seek the challenge of working for an industry leader in an environment based upon innovation and diversity, please click on the button below for a list of our current job opportunities.

From News Corp Careers section of website:
News Corporation’s global operations encompass the fields of filmed entertainment, newspapers, pay and free-to-air television, cable network programming, book publishing, magazines, consumer marketing and next generation media properties.

A career at a News Corporation company means being part of a local team committed to entertaining and enlightening hundreds of millions of consumers across the world every day. For over half a century, News Corporation has built its success on the hard work and talents of its many employees worldwide.

We are always looking for bright, energetic and dedicated team members who thrive in a dynamic and warm working environment.

Newswatching
Dow Jones and News Corp - 926 News Articles
war- 739 News Articles
Paris Hilton - 17 News Articles
Climate Change - 224 News Articles
Diet - 228 News Articles

How strange is it that I open the paper this morning after yesterdays post and the first article I see in Dom Post Infotech is
Hobby leads to career for tech blogger

Todays Read

Wash post reveals 10 Web Principles - Editor and Publisher (July 05)

Facebook traffic soars - MediaWeek (July 06)

Todays Watch

Web2.0 Explained on You Tube (from Stuart)

Todays Listen

Radio NZ - Media Watch - 8 July

Columbia Journalism Review: Profile - Web only special - “Bending to Power - How Rupert Murdoch built his empire and how he is using it”

I was doing some surfing on economics of attention and came across a great site/blog. Read/WriteWeb, then had a pleasant surprise to learn the editor of this site, with contributors from all over the world including Silicon Valley experts, is from Wellington, NZ.

I recall reading about this guy in the Herald earlier in the year. Yes - Something else that is nice, to earn enough $$ to pay your mortgage from blog advertising before you get out of bed.

An excerpt from ReadWriteWeb on the economics of attention:

“The news that used to last a day now lasts just a few hours, simply because we need to pay attention to the new news. So it is becoming increasingly difficult to juggle all the news sources and keep on top of things. Which brings us to the law of information, stated first by Herbert Simon: the rapid growth of information causes scarcity of attention.” Read more - The Attention Economy: An Overview

Still on attention, Google and Facebook dominating in 2007. Read the HY 2007 Web Technology Report on RWW here

Will this FaceBook growth continue, the next big tech IPO?

Read “Facebook opens it pages as a way to fuel growth” - Wall St Journal

Google Finance - Fairfax (ASX) and now Yahoo Finance
Google Finance - Macquarie Media Group

I think I prefer the Google Portfolo watch capabilities. I think I will set up a portfolio to watch the global media stocks, there is some pretty awesome charting functionality.
Media Stock Directory - The Rogue Investor

Watch the industry - Hollywood Reporter - Showbiz 50 Index

Read solid first half for media stocks here - Hollywood Reporter
Read Media stocks disappoint - Mergers fail to lift media stocks here - CNN Money

Fairfax has come out as a key player and mover following the Australian media ownership law changes. Fairfax bought Rural Press a few months ago and the most recent acquisition is a further diversification, joining Macquarie Media breaking up Southern Cross Media. This brings Fairfax into Radio and TV - Southern Cross Media owns major radio stations in the main centers and the TV production arm  co produces an ex personal favourite of mine - Big Brother.

Macquarie Media, who owns 87 radio stations currently in Australia, gets various channel ten and seven affiliated tv stations across Australia. Macquarie Media is the sister company of Macquarie Communications Infrastructure Group. Macquarie Media shareholders will vote on the debt funded scheme at an October meeting, offering $17.41 per share to southern cross shareholders, almost 6% up on yesterdays market close price.

It is when the purchase is completed that MM will onsell FFX the assets ($480 million and nine regional radio licences FFX has through Rural Press). SMH reported GSJBWere 14x estimated earnings 07/08.

“We’re going to see a fairly rapid expansion in the capacity to distribute content,” Mr Kirk said, in particular video, internet TV and a variety of mobile phone offerings. The latest deal would give Fairfax a position in digital entertainment and video, “which will be very valuable in the future”. - David Kirk - FFXSome in the market have questioned if FFX paid too much, and the expansion has received mixed sentiments in the market - although a strategic fit has been acknowledged. One thing analysts agree on is that this will make FFX virtually takeover proof.

Some in the market have questioned if FFX paid too much, and the expansion has received mixed sentiments in the market - although a strategic fit has been acknowledged. One thing analysts agree on is that this will make FFX virtually takeover proof.Following this, it was reported today in The Australian (although not officially released) that FFX Media may bid for one of the Australian Government’s two new broadcasting licences.

In an internal Fairfax memo obtained by The Australian, David Kirk has singled out the Channel B licence - which is earmarked for mobile television and other video content distribution such as online video streaming - as the central targets for Fairfax’s future growth. “In this world, unique video content will be particularly valuable,” - David Kirk - FFX

But the media industry thinks its a “smokescreen”for the Channel A licence. FFX have expressed that they are not interested in free to air channels, the Govt has stated that free to airs cannot bid for Channel A. The interest in channel A may be because this channel will be requiring content for broadcast, FFX may use this for recently acquired Southern Cross content e.g. The “MyTalk product”.

Although FFX will not take possession of the new assets till Q1 next year, despite the southern cross deal occurring in October. An FFX spokesman said in response to questions on the delay, “We’re happy taxpayers, but sometimes the wheels of government turn slowly.”

Content is King.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can’t answer that classic conundrum? Then, how about this: Which comes first, the news event or the social psychology? - Interview with Bob Prechter (Classic excerpts and how they apply today) - from the Elliot Wave International.

What is the Elliot Wave Theory - Late 1920’s?

Over the years, you’ve extended your stock market studies to the economy, popular culture and social trends. On Wall Street, it is common for observers to consider the market’s performance to be a by-product of politics in Washington or the latest global crisis, with such phenomena cited as causal explanations for market behavior. According to you, the correct temporal relationship is the other way around. The market precedes social change, because the market is a “coincident register of mass emotion.” Is there really a foundation for making such sweeping observations?

Bob Prechter: Yes. Exactly. Almost everyone believes that social actions cause changes in social psychology. If that is true, then events must be so perfectly determined that they create the Elliott wave patterns we see in the markets. For people to claim that the latest idea from the White House or the latest law passed by Congress or the latest statistic on the trade deficit or earnings or war or natural disaster has any effect on the market’s pattern, that such things are determinants of stock prices in any way, is suggesting a far more radical view of the harmony of the universe than I am. In other words, to argue that events cause the state of social psychology is to argue that events are patterned, which is determinism. In that case, free will is invalid, in which case no one could make money from the Wave Principle, which we have shown can be done.

On the other hand, if social psychology guides the tenor of social actions, then it is only mass psychology, which is apparently a process governed by the unconscious mind, that need be patterned to produce structure in markets. Its patterns underlie social behavior, and behavior ultimately produces results in the form of social action that are viewed as important events.

So given moods, or wave counts as you call them, always produce the same events or similar junctures in the count?

Bob Prechter: No. Social events are manifestations of a patterned social mood, but the moods may be manifest in countless ways. Social actions are an outlet for the patterns of mass psychology, expressing it in diverse ways that give rise to the myriad events of human history.

You don’t consider fundamentals?

Bob Prechter: On the contrary, socionomists, as I call us, are the only ones who do so properly. The patterns of social psychology that occur naturally are the fundamentals of the market. They are what cause what most people think are the fundamentals.

On Wall Street, analysts contemplate the ramifications of events in Washington, Tokyo and all points in between as much as the people who make their livings there. Then they proceed to build a market opinion from an initial observation about a political or social event that they see happening. They say, “The Democrats are going to win, and the president is going to do such-and-such, and that’s going to cause stock prices to….”

Bob Prechter: Right. And they have about as much success predicting markets as economists have predicting the economy.

Isn’t it possible that there is no pattern – that the five-wave subdivisions in the market since 1932 are an accident?

Bob Prechter: That’s the typical response from Wall Street observers: “Another coincidence.” When patterns of this tremendous size continue to work out time after time, it becomes a matter of faith to continue to believe that the Wave Principle is not reflective of stock market behavior.

It’s an elegant idea, but in the workaday world of Wall Street, the average broker or economist or reporter is going to say, “Ellio-huh? The Fed just raised interest rates.”

Bob Prechter: And what do they say when the market goes up despite a rise in rates?

They don’t talk about it.

Bob Prechter: Right. They find a different event they perceive as positive and say the market went up today because of that. It’s easier than saying it’s because a given wave pattern may or may not be in effect. A rise in rates is a matter of fact. That’s something a broker can sell, an economist can speculate upon, a reporter can write about and an investor can grasp, all without doing any research.

The logic may be compelling, but the implications that flow from this idea demand an enormous re-ordering of one’s mindset.

Bob Prechter: Yes, and accepting it as depicting reality is a bigger step. I am confident that people will take this step, though. I may present a radical theory of social causality, but it is the only one that makes sense.

The Wave Principle presents a profound truth: sometimes the dynamics of social psychology are impelling the mass mood toward optimism, and sometimes toward pessimism, regardless of all news. Events do not shape the market: it’s the forces behind the market that shape events. Events are results, and when you know what they result from, that is, social mood trends, you can often predict the general tenor of such behaviors. If one knows the species of a tree, he can predict what kind of fruit it will bear. Events are the fruits of a bull or bear market in social mood.