via The Media Equation - For Media, a Sunset Is Followed Quickly by a Sunrise - NYT

For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.

via The $20m Actor…Who Needs ‘Em? | ZDONK

I like to think of it like this: Every time a studio green lights a movie for production, it’s like they’re investing in a company. Some companies are run by charismatic leaders who are proven winners ($20 million actors), but if that company’s agenda and business model (script) are weak, then it doesn’t matter who the CEO is. I have to imagine that every Fortune 500 company started out with a great concept, not some name brand face.

via Spotify CEO Confident For 2010 U.S. Launch

“Subscription doesn’t work on its own because that’s been proven for 10 years as well,” Ek continued. “But the combination of an ad pricing model and a subscription model does. So far, in terms of Spotify, we haven’t actually spent any money at all on marketing. But what we have done is that we have taken a lot of people in using the free service, they start using the free service and they find attractive options such as becoming a paid user because they wanted to have [the service] on their mobile phone or they wanted to have higher volume quality… and they’ve done so now at the scale where we can say that we’re the biggest subscription service in Europe.”  

It’s Diller-Day in terms of a quarterly IAC earnings. His creative collective with Ben Silverman (formerly of NBC and Reveille is “Electus” - cool ‘Digitas’ type newco name), updates from Dreamworks Animation, Hulu, Circle of 8 on Myspace, 3D TV penetration, TV Everywhere … and the trailer premiere of “The Green Zone” (Matt Damon’s more authentic Jason Bourne war-thriller film), will be interesting to see how it avoids the stop-loss effect of Gulf war films. AND we’re planning thetenspot.com launch in December - looking for user-generated logos - send to logos@newmedici.com!

via IAC Reports 3Q Profit But Ad Revenue Down | Huffington Post

Counting one-time events such as a large gain on a stock sale and the sale of Match’s European operations, IAC earned $21.7 million, or 16 cents per share, on $337 million in revenue. In the same period a year ago it lost $14.8 million, or 11 cents per share. IAC did not give a substantive update on its new media venture with former NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, other than to say it will be called “Electus.” The venture was announced in July and will let advertisers have a say in the development process for TV shows and Web videos.