A Guide to the Media Industry - Media Decoder Blog

June 29, 2012, 3:29 pm

Q. and A. With Martin Bandier, Big Music Publisher Who Just Got Bigger

Michael Falco for The New York TimesMartin Bandier, the chief executive of Sony/ATV, which is set to acquire EMI Publishing.

The biggest winner in Sony’s $2.2 billion purchase of EMI Music Publishing, which closed on Friday after getting approval from the Federal Trade Commission, is Martin N. Bandier, the chairman of Sony’s current publishing arm, Sony/ATV. The deal reunites Mr. Bandier — a veteran of music publishing and one of the music industry’s great characters — with the EMI catalog, which he ran for 17 years before going to Sony/ATV in 2007.

The financial structure behind the deal is complex; among other things, it requires that EMI Publishing remain a separate company. But it will effectively give Mr. Bandier control over EMI’s 1.3 million songs, including “Over the Rainbow,” the Motown catalog and a strong collection of contemporary hits by people like Amy Winehouse and Kanye West. Sony/ATV’s catalog is smaller but contains rights to most Beatles songs, one of the industry’s great prizes. On Friday morning, shortly after the F.T.C.’s approval was announced, Mr. Bandier, 70, spoke about his plans for EMI, Sony’s regulatory strategy, and why the deal was important enough for him to get to the office early today. What follows are excerpts from that conversation.

How does it feel to close this deal and finally be reunited with EMI?

It feels fantastic. During the process of getting regulatory approval, you almost lose sight of the fact that the reason to buy this is that these are the greatest songs in the world. I forgot that for a few months, and I kept on saying, “Why are we doing this?” No one wants to have to testify before the Federal Trade Commission. They’re a nice bunch of people, but this is not what I signed up to do. At the end of the day, the music is so incredible, and when you combine it with the music and the people we have here, you’re looking at the greatest publishing company that ever existed. To be in charge of that, and to have the responsibility for growing, is exciting. I normally don’t get in here until about 9:30. I was here at 8:30 today. It’s shocking how many people are here at that hour.

Earlier

Sony Deal for EMI Publishing Passes Final Hurdle

The $2.2 billion deal will give Sony control over a huge catalog — from “Over the Rainbow” to songs by Amy Winehouse.

The F.T.C. cleared the deal without any conditions, even after you offered concessions to get the deal done in Europe. Did it go more easily here than you expected?

I think the F.T.C. recognized that the number of copyrights one has has nothing to do with the quality of the songs, and that combining the great songs of one company with the great songs of another company does not give anyone an economic advantage. The big issue is, can a new start-up digital company be impeded? Would the size of Sony/ATV and EMI impede that? The answer is that a new digital company would have to come to Sony and would have to come to EMI, because we’re both must-haves. When you put them together, it doesn’t mean that the companies wouldn’t still be incredible and be must-haves on their own. Read more…

June 29, 2012, 3:29 pm

Savannah Guthrie Named Co-Host of ‘Today’

By BRIAN STELTER

Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on the "Today" show on Friday, after Ms. Guthrie was named the replacement for Ann Curry as co-host.

Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersMatt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show on Friday, after Ms. Guthrie was named the replacement for Ann Curry as co-host.

Ending the week by beginning a new era at the “Today” show, NBC said Friday that Savannah Guthrie had been named a co-host of the top-rated morning news program.

The announcement came one day after Ann Curry tearfully left the show, having accepted the network’s offer to become a roving correspondent. Ms. Guthrie began negotiations with NBC for the co-host role earlier this week, and those negotiations apparently wrapped up by Friday morning.

There was no mention of Ms. Guthrie’s promotion when she sat next to Matt Lauer on Friday morning’s show. But at lunchtime, the network made it official with a press release that said her appointment was effective immediately.

Because the Fourth of July makes the week of July 2 a holiday week, “the new ‘Today’ anchor team of Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and Natalie Morales officially debuts Monday, July 9,” the network said

Ms. Guthrie has worked for NBC since 2007, initially as a correspondent and legal analyst. In a statement, Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said, “In just a few short years Savannah has become a standout member of the news division as well as the ultimate team player.”

Jim Bell, the executive producer of “Today,” said Ms. Guthrie stood out as soon as she joined the news division.

“She has a one-of-a-kind combination of sharp wit and approachability, and our viewers value her journalistic skills and legal background just as much as her humor and charm,” Mr. Bell’s statement said. “She can effortlessly go from interviewing the Secretary of State to jumping Olympic-sized hurdles on the Plaza. I’m thrilled to welcome Savannah as our newest co-anchor, and along with Matt, Al and Natalie, we’ve got the best morning team in the business.”

June 29, 2012, 2:30 pm

Disney Media Unit to Distribute Oscar Telecast Abroad Through 2020

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES—The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shored up the future of the Oscars with another long-term agreement: This one, announced by the Academy on Friday, extends through 2020 a deal under which Walt Disney’s media unit distributes the Academy Awards telecast abroad.

Last year, Disney’s ABC television network agreed to continue broadcasting the Oscars in the United States through 2020. Together, the deals secure an arrangement that has brought the academy well over $80 million in annual revenue from the awards telecast.

The new agreement comes as Tom Sherak, president of the academy for the last three years, is about to end his tenure. Mr. Sherak is stepping down because he has reached the limit of his term on the group’s board of governors, which is expected to name a new president in the coming weeks.

June 29, 2012, 2:25 pm

Even if News Corp. Divides, the Murdochs’ Control Is Undiluted

By AMY CHOZICK

Wall Street has cheered Rupert Murdoch’s decision to separate News Corporation’s underperforming newspapers from its lucrative entertainment assets.

But not all investors are happy.

When the company confirmed in a news release on Thursday that it would move forward with the split, it also said that the separate publishing company would maintain two classes of stock. That dual-class share structure will allow Mr. Murdoch and his family to maintain nearly 40 percent voting control in both companies.

Anna Sheehan, director of corporate governance at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, the country’s largest teacher retirement fund, took note of the dual-class shares in a statement: “Our initial assessment of the decision to split News Corp. into two companies makes strategic and financial sense. However, we continue to have concerns about the governance of the company.”

“Calstrs, as a long-term shareholder, will continue to push for governance changes at News Corp.,” she said. “We believe the decision to split the company provides a new opportunity to address shareholders’ governance concerns.’

Simon Greer, president and chief executive of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a charitable organization and institutional investor that owns 3,686 shares of News Corporation’s Class B voting shares said that until the dual-class stock structure was resolved “this week’s decision is window dressing to protect the family’s interests.”

News Corporation declined to comment. Read more…

June 29, 2012, 9:38 am

The Breakfast Meeting: Rush to Report Health Care Ruling, and ‘As the Anchor Turns’

By NOAM COHEN

The Breakfast Meeting

What’s making news in media.

On the day of a historic Supreme Court ruling on the health care law, two cable news outlets — CNN and Fox News Channel — briefly made themselves the story, Brian Stelter writes. In trying to synthesize a complicated ruling, both reported that the court had struck down the law’s individual mandate, when in fact, in a 5-to-4 vote, the court had upheld the mandate as a tax; at CNN, the mistake lingered for six minutes.

In the succinct words of Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review: Who was first? Who cares? He notes with deep incredulity that a representative of Bloomberg News wrote to the media blogger Jim Romenesko to set the record straight: “You reference an e-mail that notes that the AP first reported the decision – by our records, Bloomberg moved the story first at 10:07:31; the AP moved the story at 10:07:55. I’ve attached screen shots of both headlines with timestamps for your reference.” Bloomberg gets the gold, by 24 seconds.

Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, offered a spirited defense of his newspaper holdings in the immediate aftermath of his company’s decision to spin them off into a separate publishing company, Amy Chozick reports. In a memo to his staff announcing the move, Mr. Murdoch wrote that “our publishing businesses are greatly undervalued by the skeptics.” And Chase Carey, the company’s chief operating officer, added in an interview that putting the newspapers in a separate company would give them “the impetus to grow and fulfill their potential.”

In an interview with CNBC, Mr. Murdoch said he might change The Wall Street Journal’s name to the abbreviated WSJ.

Thursday was a day of pathos at the “Today” show — or lately, “As The Anchor Turns,” Alessandra Stanley writes. Ann Curry offered a tearful farewell that was “gallant and also embarrassingly maudlin and grandiose and that pretty much summed up why she got the hook after just one year in the host chair next to Matt Lauer.” Friday morning, the woman expected to succeed Ms. Curry – Savannah Guthrie – was in the co-host chair.

Unlike Google and Facebook, which are having a hard time advertising to users on mobile devices, Twitter on most days is generating the majority of its revenue from mobile ads, its executives say, rather than from ads on Twitter.com, The Wall Street Journal reported. Twitter just seems better suited to mobile users – the company can easily convert any tweet into an ad, The Journal writes, the format of ads on Twitter’s mobile and desktop sites is the same, and advertisers pay the same rate no matter the platform.

June 29, 2012, 9:08 am

Sony Closes Its Acquisition of EMI Music Publishing

By BEN SISARIO

7:38 p.m. | Updated An investor group led by Sony closed its $2.2 billion acquisition of EMI Music Publishing on Friday, creating a giant force in music publishing, the unglamorous but lucrative side of the music business that deals with songwriting rights.

The deal will give Sony control over a catalog of more than two million songs, and a global market share of about 31 percent, nine points above that of Universal, its closest competitor, according to an estimate by the trade publication Music and Copyright.

Sony’s new catalog will include the 750,000 tracks — including 251 by the Beatles — that are controlled by Sony/ATV, the company’s joint venture with the estate of Michael Jackson. It will also include 1.3 million from EMI, with Motown hits, chestnuts like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and songs by contemporary stars like Norah Jones, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse.

An Interview

Martin Bandier, Big Music Publisher Who Just Got Bigger

The deal just completed between Sony and EMI Publishing reunites Mr. Bandier, the chairman of Sony’s current publishing arm, Sony/ATV, with the EMI catalog, which he ran until 2007.

The financial structure of the deal is complex, and while Sony will administer the EMI catalog through Sony/ATV, its deal with Jackson requires that EMI Publishing remain a separate company. Sony and the Jackson estate will have a 38 percent stake. The other investors are the sovereign wealth fund Mubadala of Abu Dhabi, Jynwel Capital of Hong Kong, Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners and the Hollywood mogul David Geffen.

The royalties and licensing fees from publishing rights are often seen as the most stable side of the music business, offsetting the more tumultuous fortunes of record companies. Sony’s music divisions, which have turned a modest profit, have also stood out in the larger corporation, whose electronics divisions have contributed to billions in losses.

“Music publishing, along with the rest of our entertainment companies, has been a bright spot in our business portfolio, and we expect that trend to continue with this important acquisition,” Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Sony’s deal was one of two reached by Citigroup in November, which took possession of EMI in early 2011 after the private equity firm Terra Firma defaulted on its debt.

In the parallel sale of EMI’s recorded-music division — which includes albums by the Beatles, the Beach Boys and hundreds of other acts — the Universal Music Group bid $1.9 billion. That deal is still under review in Europe and the United States.

Jason Szenes/European Pressphoto AgencySony’s catalog includes music from stars like Norah Jones.

While independent groups have opposed both EMI sales, saying that they would result in too much market concentration, the publishing deal was seen as an easier sell to regulators, given Sony’s minority investment and the more fragmented nature of the publishing market.

Sony’s deal will also reunite Martin N. Bandier, the chairman of Sony/ATV, with the EMI publishing catalog, which he built over 17 years until he left the company for Sony in 2007. While Sony/ATV and EMI will be separate entities, Mr. Bandier made it clear in an interview that he intended to run them as one collection of songs.

“At end of the day we are going to be one homogeneous company with one person — myself — running it,” Mr. Bandier said.

June 28, 2012, 4:27 pm

Digital Notes: Another Jolt to U.S. Case Against Megaupload

By BEN SISARIO

A New Zealand judge has dealt yet another setback to the United States in its case against the file-sharing site Megaupload, and this time it’s a big one: the search warrants used to carry out a raid on the service were found to be illegal.

Digital Notes

Daily updates on the business of digital music.

Helen Winkelmann, the chief judge of the High Court in Auckland, ruled on Thursday that the warrants used in the January raid were overly broad and did not adequately explain the laws that Megaupload and its employees were accused of breaking. The United States Department of Justice has accused Megaupload of being a criminal enterprise causing $500 million in damages to copyright holders like record companies, movie studios and software makers.

It is not clear what effect the ruling will have on the case against Megaupload and its founder, Kim Dotcom, and whether it will result in having large amounts of evidence excluded.

In another part of her decision, Judge Winkelmann ordered that a court-appointed authority sort through seized user data to make sure that only information relevant to the case is copied and sent to United States prosecutors, while anything irrelevant — like files owned by users themselves — be returned to the company. Read more…

June 28, 2012, 4:09 pm

Village Roadshow, Supplier of Movies to Warner Brothers, Gets New Financing

By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — Village Roadshow Entertainment, one of the primary suppliers of movies to Warner Brothers, on Thursday said it had raised $380 million in new capital — a modest deal as Hollywood money goes, but one that has important implications.

Roadshow, a producer and financier of movie franchises like “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Matrix,” secured a $1 billion line of credit in 2010. But the company has been largely unable to tap that money because of its recapitalization needs. So the $380 million is a life preserver of a sort for Roadshow, which in turn affects its studio partner.

Roadshow of late has been delivering as few as two movies a year to Warner, and the new money will lift that total to six to eight movies annually. The majority of the financing announced Thursday came from the investment firm Trinity Opportunities Limited in partnership with Shikumen Capital Management of Hong Kong.

Placing a half dozen or so movie bets a year gives Roadshow room to fail: if any one picture in the portfolio flops, the others can prevent a washout. Last year was rough on Roadshow because its two films essentially canceled each other out: “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” hit big, but “Happy Feet Two” flopped badly.

The next step for Roadshow is to extend its expiring partnership agreement with Warner; the companies hope to do that in the next few months.

June 28, 2012, 4:02 pm

Political Cartoon Taking Aim at Pipeline Company Is Pulled

By IAN AUSTEN

The parody video

OTTAWA — Like many political cartoonists, Dan Murphy at The Province, a tabloid daily in Vancouver, British Columbia, supplements his traditional drawings with online animations.

But an online parody of a pipeline company’s television commercial drew an unusual amount of attention in Canada after the decision of the newspaper to remove it, according to Mr. Murphy, because of pressure from Enbridge, the pipeline company.

Enbridge is currently running a advertising campaign to promote a controversial pipeline proposal to move oil from Alberta’s oil sands to ports in British Columbia for shipment to Asia.

After an existing Enbridge pipeline in Alberta developed a leak, Mr. Murphy took an Enbridge commercial that features bucolic watercolor animations of life after the new pipeline and interrupted it with repeated splatters of animated oil. During the parody video, an off-camera voice, a spoof of an Enbridge executive reviewing the commercial, can be heard saying, “It’s O.K., we’ll clean this up; we’ll be as good as new” as an animated hand squeegees away the oil. Read more…

June 28, 2012, 1:43 pm

Let the Memes Begin …

By THE EDITORS

Gary He's take on CNN's wrong call on the Supreme Court ruling on the health care law.

Photoillustration by Gary He, @garyheGary He‘s take on CNN’s initial wrong call on the Supreme Court ruling on the health care law.

For more on the initially incorrect reports by CNN and Fox News about the Supreme Court ruling on health care law, there is a post by Brian Stelter on the Politics live-blog of the decision.

June 28, 2012, 1:10 pm

In a Morning Media Blitz, Murdoch Defends His Newspaper Assets

By AMY CHOZICK

Rupert Murdoch went on a rare publicity blitz on Thursday to defend News Corporation’s decision to split the company’s newspapers from its entertainment assets.

In a string of interviews and conference calls, Mr. Murdoch, the company’s chairman and chief executive, offered a full-throated defense of the newspaper business in an attempt to silence critics who have said the spinoff reflects a judgment that newspapers have become a liability to the reputation and balance sheets of News Corporation.

“Dow Jones is a very viable company and The Wall Street Journal is a very viable newspaper,” Mr. Murdoch said in a phone interview with The New York Times. When asked about his newspapers’ employees feeling vulnerable in a newly formed, smaller company, Mr. Murdoch said, “I think in time they’ll feel differently.”

With its lucrative cable channels like FX and Fox News, the company was able to provide a financial safety net to The Journal and other papers — a situation that would be eliminated in the new publishing company. As for the idea that newspapers rely on those money-making ventures, Mr. Murdoch said those employees “shouldn’t feel like they’ve got a crutch.”

Chase Carey, News Corporation’s chief operating officer, who was also on the phone, pointed out that CBS fared fine after the spinoff from Viacom, and that it had also been considered “the orphan.”

A Low-Key Transition for ‘Today’ Hosts

By BRIAN STELTER

11:54 p.m. | Updated On Friday morning, Savannah Guthrie is scheduled to be sitting beside Matt Lauer on the “Today” show — and once again, NBC’s ability to pull off talent transitions will be put to the test.

Ms. Guthrie is expected to succeed Ann Curry on “Today,” a hugely popular but now highly vulnerable morning show that is a profit center for NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast.

Ms. Curry tearfully announced her forced exit from the “Today” co-host chair on Thursday morning, ending one phase of the network’s plan to reinvigorate the show and beginning another phase that involves Ms. Guthrie and possibly other changes to the cast.

Ms. Guthrie has been a co-host of the 9 a.m. hour of “Today” for a year. As of Thursday evening, she had not signed a contract to become the co-host of the 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. hours, and NBC had not confirmed that she would be taking Ms. Curry’s position on the show. But those moves are seen as inevitable by people inside NBC, as evidenced by the fact that she was set to fill in for Ms. Curry on Friday.

Those people, who insisted on anonymity because they feared losing their jobs for discussing internal deliberations, said Thursday that the priority now was protecting Mr. Lauer and Ms. Guthrie from the wrath of Ms. Curry’s fans, thousands of whom posted angry comments online after her announcement.

For that reason, Ms. Guthrie’s promotion will be introduced relatively quietly, with little of the fanfare that accompanied Ms. Curry’s elevation to the role one year ago or Meredith Vieira’s arrival in 2006. The change probably will not be announced on the show until July 9, according to one of the people.

“They’re not going to do themselves any good if they blow it out,” said Frank J. Radice, a former NBC executive who ran the marketing campaign for Ms. Vieira, who succeeded Katie Couric at that time.

NBC made the most of that transition, complete with a theme song called “It’s a New Day Today” with a “Welcome Meredith” airplane banner that was flown around the island of Manhattan. But this time, given Ms. Curry’s sudden and awkward exit, he said the smartest thing would be “not to draw attention to a change in anchors but to let that change in anchors just happen.”

NBC seemed to do that on Thursday, scheduling only a few minutes at the end of the show for Ms. Curry’s announcement. “This is not as I ever expected to leave this couch,” Ms. Curry said, indicating to viewers that leaving was not entirely her choice.

Ms. Curry will become the “anchor at large” for “Today,” a roving correspondent role that was offered to her more than a month ago by executives in an effort to move her off the morning show, which is under recent ratings pressure from ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

That show beat “Today” for several weeks in April and May, but “Today” has won for the last four weeks, giving the show a dose of confidence ahead of the Summer Olympics, which NBC will televise in four weeks.

In the past, NBC, and in particular its news division, prided itself on seamless handoffs like Ms. Couric to Ms. Vieira and, a few years before that, from Tom Brokaw to Brian Williams as the “NBC Nightly News” anchor.

But Thursday seemed like a divorce more than anything else, and it brought to mind the entertainment division’s botched transition involving Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien in 2010, one that has left Mr. O’Brien bitter.

In that case, however, Mr. O’Brien left NBC and wound up with a new late-night show on the cable channel TBS. In this case, Ms. Curry is sticking with NBC and is picking seven staff members to work with her on news reports and special projects.

Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said in an internal memo on Thursday that “this was not a farewell from “Today“ for Ms. Curry. “Ann’s reporting will be showcased on ‘Today’ as well as all other NBC News broadcasts,” he wrote. “Outside of the confines of the studio, she’ll have more freedom for those pursuits.” His memo concluded with the words, “Simply put, she is the absolute best person for this job.”

June 28, 2012, 9:33 am

Larry King Takes His Star Power to Comic-Con

By BROOKS BARNES

Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Larry King Cardiac FoundationLarry King

The Hub TV Network may not have huge ratings, but it certainly has a sense of humor: Larry King will be one of the children’s cable channel’s star attractions this year at the pop culture convention known as Comic-Con.

Yes, that Larry King.

The retired CNN host will travel to San Diego on July 13 to interview Peter Cullen, who provides the voice for Optimus Prime on the Hub cartoon “Transformers Prime.” Mr. King has no overt connection to the Hub, or Comic-Con for that matter, but was both available and affordable; another choice for the gig, the “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton wanted $70,000.

Comic-Con, which will take place in San Diego from July 12 to 15, prides itself on quirky spectacle — a 78-year-old former talk show host and a cartoon called “My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic” sharing the same spotlight, for instance. (The “My Little Pony” panel, also organized by the Hub, will take place a few hours before the one for “Transformers Prime.”)

Discovery Communications and Hasbro introduced the Hub two years ago. The going has been tough, but the Hub is determined to use Comic-Con and its 100,000 or so attendees to boost its profile. The network plans to hold five panels dedicated to its shows and will present a live performance by the Aquabats, an oddball rock band that also appears in a Hub series called “The Aquabats! Super Show!”

The Hub will also take over a San Diego restaurant called the Broken Yolk Cafe, and the network’s marketers plan to bedazzle a San Diego Trolley system car with “My Little Pony” imagery.

Children’s entertainment is a growing component of Comic-Con, which started in 1970 as a gathering of comic book nerds. So the Hub will have plenty of competition from Nickelodeon (staging four panels, among other activities), Cartoon Network (taking over a downtown children’s museum) and, of course, Disney.

June 28, 2012, 9:01 am

The Breakfast Meeting: ‘Wow the World as Two,’ and Romeo in Stubble

By NOAM COHEN

With a memo to the staff Thursday morning, Rupert Murdoch confirmed that News Corporation, the company he built from a single Australian newspaper, would split into two — as a publishing company and an entertainment company. In his memo he was seemingly ecstatic — “we will wow the world as two, as opposed to merely one.” Yet Mr. Murdoch was reluctant to make the move, Amy Chozick writes, and needed much persuasion. She writes about the logic that carried the day:

In effect, News Corporation had evolved into a successful entertainment company with a newspaper problem, several people close to the company have said. “The idea this was this integrated media company isn’t true,” said one of those people, who was briefed on News Corporation’s strategy but could not discuss its internal dynamics for attribution. “Everything else managed to do well, and the newspapers had become difficult and even toxic.”

According to the memo, Mr. Murdoch would be the chief executive and chairman of the media and entertainment business, with Chase Carey continuing “to partner with me on leading the media and entertainment business, by serving as president and C.O.O.” Mr. Murdoch will be chairman of the publishing business — no chief executive was named.

These are the final days of the Minitel, an online service in France that prefigured the Internet in the early 1980s, Scott Sayare writes. At its peak, there were nine million Minitel devices, with 25 million users, who, via a dial-up connection, could search a national phone registry, buy clothing and train tickets, make restaurant reservations, read newspapers or exchange electronic messages. (Some blame the devices for France’s slower adoption of the Internet in the mid-1990s.) Today, there are 400,000 left, which will be shut down on Saturday.

Janet Groth has published a memoir about her time at The New Yorker, Steven Kurutz writes, where she had “a bird’s-eye view of everything and a hot plate, which I brought.” Ms. Groth was the 18th-floor receptionist from 1957 to 1978 and never managed to move up within the magazine, despite her obvious talents, he writes.

While some women, including Lillian Ross and Pauline Kael, did thrive as writers at The New Yorker during Ms. Groth’s tenure, “I was less able to envision myself storming the citadel than people who were more confident,” she said.

Romeo with stubble and a tight white tank top; a ghostly woman floating in the center, her platinum hair flying in the air, to illustrate “Dracula” by Bram Stoker; a stark black background, a close-up of a red rose and an inscription that reads, “Bella & Edward’s favorite book” for “Wuthering Heights.” The success of series like “Twilight” (where Bella and Edward take sustenance from “Wuthering Heights”) and “The Hunger Games” has led publishers to think that with a little repackaging — provocative covers that reference the right cultural references — classic literature can be made attractive to young readers, Julie Bosman writes.

June 28, 2012, 8:21 am

Murdoch, Announcing News Corp. Split, Calls Newspapers ‘Viable’ and ‘Undervalued’

By AMY CHOZICK

11:39 a.m. | Updated Rupert Murdoch confirmed Thursday morning that News Corporation, his $54 billion media conglomerate, will proceed with a plan to divide the company in two — separating newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and The Times of London from the fast-growing entertainment unit.

In a news release, the company said the split would be completed within the next 12 months, with Mr. Murdoch serving as chairman of both companies and chief executive of the entertainment business. Chase Carey would remain chief operating officer of the entertainment group, which would include cable channels like FX and Fox News, the 20th Century Fox studio and Fox Broadcasting. In the coming months, the board of directors would decide the leader of the publishing business.

“News Corporation’s 60-year heritage of developing world-class brands has resulted in a large and unparalleled portfolio of diversified assets,” Mr. Murdoch said in a statement. “We recognize that over the years, News Corporation’s broad collection of assets have become increasingly complex.”

He added: “We determined that creating this new structure would simplify operations and greater align strategic priorities.”

News Corporation shareholders would receive one share of common stock in the new company for each same-class share they hold in the current company, the news release said. Both companies would maintain their controversial dual-class share stock structure, which enables the Murdoch family to control nearly 40 percent of the voting power.

The publishing company’s stock would be worth between 50 cents and $1.40 a share, according to Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research.

In a memo to staff, Mr. Murdoch cited the company’s Read more…