MediaBytes

THE WGA began its strike at midnight after Sunday’s 10-hour marathon negotiation broke down. Writers are expected to begin picketing at 9 AM this morning outside high-profile locations, including major studios on the West Coast and Rockefeller Center in New York. The Guild issued a memo telling its writers to spend at least 20 hours Continue Reading →

THE WRITERS GUILD negotiating committee has announced a unanimous recommendation to go on strike, perhaps as early as this Monday. The committee announced its decision Thursday night and drew an enthusiastic response from the meeting of 3,000 Guild members. The final decision is expected to be made at a meeting of the East and West Continue Reading →

THE WRITERS GUILD contract expired this morning and no new agreement has been signed. A strike could be ordered at anytime. Last night, in last-minute meetings, the companies and producers told the WGA to withdraw its demand for higher residuals from DVD sales. WGA negotiators rejected the order and halted the negotiations. The Guild has Continue Reading →

SHAWN GOLD has resigned as SVP of Marketing and Content Development at MYSPACE to form consulting firm SOCIAL APPROACH. In an interview with Shelly Palmer at Digital Hollywood in LA, Shawn confirmed a rumor that was posted to paidcontent.org last week and said the new company plans to “help brands take advantage of social media Continue Reading →

GOOGLE will announce plans for Google-powered phones within the next two weeks according to The Wall Street Journal. The company has been approaching handset makers and aims to bring the phones to market by mid-2008. Google will offer an open operating system that encourages developers to create innovative new applications for phones and aims to Continue Reading →

COMCAST announced the loss of 65,000 basic-cable subscribers in the third quarter, which follows a loss of 95,000 subscribers in the previous quarter. The company is also seeing severely reduced growth in high-speed Internet subscribers. Comcast blames the customer erosion on increased competition from satellite and telephone companies. THE NBA is in talks with Turner Continue Reading →

APPLE found its next commercial for the iPod Touch on YouTube. A lively spot was created by 18-year-old Nick Haley and uploaded to the video-sharing site, where it received a few thousand views. Apple employees saw the ad and had TBWA/Chiat/Day contact the young student. The agency collaborated with him to create a professional, broadcast-ready Continue Reading →

MICROSOFT will purchase 1.6% of FACEBOOK for $240 million, which places a $15 billion valuation on the three-year-old company. Microsoft will begin to sell banner ads for international versions of the site and split the revenue with Facebook. In related news, RIM launched Facebook software for Blackberries. BARRY DILLER told a group of conference attendees Continue Reading →

FACEBOOK is the focus of a heated bidding war between MICROSOFT and GOOGLE. The two companies are competing for less than 10% of the social networking site and a deal could be announced within the next 48 hours. Google is reportedly driving the price very high in an attempt to outbid Microsoft. The winning bidder Continue Reading →

NBC confirmed the pulling of all official NBC content from YouTube ahead of the Hulu launch. The company believes that pulling the content will help push more traffic to the forthcoming online video service. Hulu will host NBC videos and distribute them through Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and other video destinations. However, it does not currently Continue Reading →