Welcome to the 14th episode of “The Mediatwits,” the weekly audio podcast from MediaShift. The co-hosts are MediaShift’s Mark Glaser and Rafat Ali, the founder of PaidContent. There’s a lot of news to cover in this podcast, including Apple’s earnings, Yahoo’s earnings, the possible sale of Hulu, and more. But the big deal this week is of course another heaping helping of “This Week in Rupert,” with a side of humble pie. Our U.K. correspondent Tristan Stewart-Robertson weighs in on the reactions across the pond to the Murdochs testifying at a Parliamentary hearing. Are we all reaching a saturation point with the scandal yet? Possibly. (Vote in the MediaShift poll about that, below.)
Plus, the New York Times reported its quarterly earnings, with some mixed news on the digital front: About.com was still hurting but digital revenues at its News Group were up 15.5 percent, and iPad app ad inventory is sold out until the end of the third quarter. Digital subscriptions hit 1 million, with 281,000 paid. What does it all mean? Rafat talks about the “novelty” of reading the print edition of the Times, while Mark continues to read it on all platforms without paying.
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Intro and outro music by 3 Feet Up; mid-podcast music by Autumn Eyes via Mevio’s Music Alley.
Here are some highlighted topics from the show:
Big news, hot news
0:20: Rafat sweats it out in New York
1:10: iPad revenues outstrip Mac for Apple
2:00: Yahoo losing relevance, if not popularity
3:10: The Hulu sweepstakes – who will buy them?
5:35: Rundown of topics on show
This Week in Rupert
06:30: Special guest Tristan Stewart-Robertson from the U.K.
08:00: Pie-throwing made the Internet feed freeze up
09:20: People sympathetic to Rupert as humble old guy
10:30: Tristan says we’ve hit saturation point on the scandal
15:25: How will scandal help the Guardian?
16:55: Cameron expands investigation to include broadcast, social media
NY Times’ digital subscriptions
18:20: Overview of NYT’s earnings report, mixed for digital
21:00: Not clear on who’s paying what for digital subscriptions
23:00: About.com trying to rebound
24:10: Rafat details consumption of NY Times: print, web, iPhone, iPad
25:45: Mark is more on iPad
28:00: How will Kindle tablet fit into consumption of news?
More Reading
The iPad Just Ate 11% Of The PC Market at Business Insider
Yahoo Earnings Call: Carol Bartz On Why U.S. Ad Sales Dropped at Forbes
Reports: Hulu acquisition talks hanging up on exclusivity at Digital Trends
Rupert Murdoch: How Twitter tracked the MPs’ questions – and the pie at Guardian
James Murdoch misled MPs about widespread phone hacking at Daily Mail
Who Knew Who in the Phone-Hacking Affair?–
phone-hacking at the Guardian
NYTCo Swings To Loss; Digital Rises Double Digits, About Continues To Fall at PaidContent
NY Times 2Q Earnings: Hitting Paydirt with the Paywall
NYT Ended Q2 With More Than 1 Million Digital Subs; 281,000 Paid at PaidContent
Amazon tablet shipping later this year according to new tattle at Engadget
Weekly Poll
Don’t forget to vote in our weekly poll, this time gauging your interest (or not) in the phone-hacking scandal:
Mark Glaser is executive editor of MediaShift and Idea Lab. He also writes the bi-weekly OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. He lives in San Francisco with his son Julian. You can follow him on Twitter @mediatwit.
