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Like the old maxim of killing two birds with one stone, sometimes a small change can fix several problems. Tuesday, GE’s NBC Universal unit said it would pay $925m for Oxygen Media, the woman-centric cable TV network. $925 may not be a small change but NBC is certainly hoping it will be one of the especially effective stones.

If the promise of the deal is realized, in one move the acquisition could both breathe new life into an occasionally faltering Oxygen, recharge NBC owned Internet property iVillage and fortify NBC’s mission-critical cable property portfolio.

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The video game Halo 3 earned $300m at the cash registers during its first week of release.  It earned more than $170m in its first day.  That easily trounced the all time best opening day box office returns for the movie industry (Spider-Man 3 earned $59.8m (source: Box Office Mojo)).  That makes Microsoft’s announcement today to spin off Halo’s creator, Bungie Studios, seem curious at first glance.  On a second look, it’s not actually that surprising.

Game Development is a little bit like movie production and venture capital.  For every hit, there are dozens of failures.  Companies spend extreme sums of time and money developing projects all the while knowing full well that many of the efforts will ultimately have to be supported by a few leaders in the portfolio.   Click to Read More

Friday, place-shifting TV technology company Sling Media announced a deal to stream NFL games to DirecTV customers. The move away from consumer hardware and software and into business to business services came as a surprise.  Even more surprising is Sling’s Monday evening announcement.  The company announced it will sell itself to DirecTV competitor Echostar (operating of Dish Network) for approximately $380m.

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Forget Web 2.0.  Think twice about Internet video? Is gaming the next big frontier for investors and entertainment media companies alike?  It’s sure starting to look that way; even for those late to the party.  From Venture Investors to Big Media, gaming seems hot all over.

The sector has been hot for a while but in the past few months the temperature continues to rise.  Retail sales of consoles and games are returning consistently impressive results well ahead of the holiday season.  More than 68m people played a console game in June worldwide.  According to a report released Tuesday from market research firm DFC Intelligence, the cumulative worldwide “interactive entertainment industry” is on track to grow about 9% per year to reach $47b by 2009 (from $33billion in 2006).  Other market data firms are similarly bullish: Gartner has predicted mobile gaming revenue will hit $9.6b by 2011.  IDC predicts Internet connected consoles will generate revenue upwards of $10b by 2011, up from $981 in 2007.

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With much of the drama largely over and the merger going ahead, a few days ago Dow Jones and News Corp filed preliminary documents outlining the merger of the two companies.  The filings, which are required under securities law, are extensive in length, “preliminary” in form and heavy on legalese, but they  provide an incredibly detailed window in to the events leading up to the merger announcement as well as the terms eventually agreed on. 

The documents show, behind the scenes the soap opera characterized in the board room barely scratched the surface of the true level of corporate intrigue. Click to Read More

IPTV company Joost quietly made their first acquisition earlier this week (at least quietly relatively the hype that usually surrounds them.)   Joost bought digital programming guide OnTheToob.com (and with it, its developer).   Terms were not disclosed but the likely cost was trivial.

OnTheToob developed RSS feeds and channel guide interfaces built around the Joost platform.  The company, which was not much more than a personal project, had been working with Joost since April.  As part of the deal, the creator of the technology will join Joost as an employee.

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In July, display advertising was a noted weak spot when Yahoo reported 2nd quarter earnings.  In an effort to provide an immediate boost,  Yahoo today acquired internet advertiser Blue Lithium for $300m in cash.

Blue Lithium, which was founded in 2004 and was preparing for an IPO,  is something of a blind-buy network.  They sell a publishers advertising inventory but do not disclose to advertisers precisely what sites the ads will run on.  Instead, they serve them “blind” based on various demographic and targeting criteria.  Many of the Blue Lithium publisher relationships are also not exclusive.

In July Blue Lithium ranked as the 5th largest online ad network according to ComScore. Click to Read More