Peter Chernin was one of the individuals responsible for the early days of Hulu, and now it seems, if the sources are correct, that he has returned with a bid for the service. Chernin left Hulu back in 2009 to start The Chernin Group, which has holdings in a number of companies, including the popular online music streaming service Pandora.

His bid is said to be approximately $500 million, but neither his people, Disney, or News Corp. would comment on the rumor. Word has it that Disney and News Corp. have reached out to multiple potential buyers, but the two sources who provided this information do not know if any other bids have been placed for Hulu. All of this comes as methods for monetizing the service and taking it in a solid direction have been pondered.

Per past sources, News Corp. was leaning towards a model for Hulu that involved subscriptions as the primary way of monetizing the service, using something like the currently-implemented Hulu Plus service. Disney had different ideas, however, leaning more towards an advertisement-based model that would depend on advertisements, something the service also utilizes. For a long while, the two companies were unsure of whether they would sell the service, but if the sources are correct, it would seem they are close to making a decision.

[via Reuters]

Mr. Kilar’s blog post originally went out as an email to the Hulu team, and in it he states that Andy Forssell will be taking his place as the acting CEO of Hulu at the end of this month when Kilar steps down. The current CEO then goes on to praise Forssell, who is currently a “critical” senior executive for the company.

Says Kilar: “You know Andy well; he’s been a critical senior executive and has been here from the start of this great adventure. Andy exemplifies the Hulu culture and has been central to Hulu’s journey, helping to grow this company from 2 content partners and no revenue to over 450 content partners and approximately $700 million revenue in 2012.”

He then goes on to state that Forssell has “strong support” from the Hulu board, having built relationships with many of its members. The decision is not final, however, and won’t be until News Corp. and Disney, the primary owners of the company, decide the direction they will take Hulu in, after which point they’ll decide if Forssell remains as the permanent chief executive.

[via Hulu]

News Corp’s Amplify tablet will come bundled with a lot of education apps. There will be Google apps for Education, educational music, video games, online textbooks, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, a graphic calculator, and a search engine that can find millions of hours worth of lessons and homework. There will also be access to videos from Khan Academy, as well as CK-12 textbooks. There will be lesson planners for teachers, principals, and parents, as well as tools to help them monitor their students’ performance.

The tablet is fully-equipped to provide a great education for students. Joel Klein, head of News Corp’s Amplify brand, stated, “The last thing we need is another pile of used laptops at the back of the classroom. This time is different. This is a fully integrated teaching and learning solution.” Klein states that if News Corp didn’t design a tablet that “really facilitates and changes teaching and learning, then we’ll be where we’ve been in the past.”

This new tablet could be a game-changer for education, and it could completely modify the way we homeschool children. But how much will this tablet really cost you? For the Wi-Fi only version, the tablet is $299, however you’ll have to pay a $99 annual subscription fee to Amplify for two years. It’s essentially a two year contract. To buy the 4G tablet, it’ll cost you $349 and a $179 annual fee for two years. The subscription includes all of Amplify’s educational materials, tech support via live chat, phone and e-mail, and professional development for teachers. While innovative, this tablet does have a pretty hefty price tag.

[via Fast Company]

“From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily” Rupert Murdoch, chairman, News Corp

Initially, The Daily was available as a free resource to encourage users to work the digital newspaper into their lives; a paywall was erected a few months later, while versions of the app slowly followed on for iPhone, select Android tablets through a deal with Verizon, and Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Although stories were available online for the purposes of sharing, their links were not publicly broadcast as a matter of course. Instead, they played second-fiddle to articles consumed via the app, existing online as ways for non-subscribers to read recommended content.

Most importantly, however, cash from actual subscribers proved in short supply. As a result, founding Editor-in-Chief of The Daily Jesse Angelo will take the helm of The New York Post, while “technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.” It’s unclear how many of the roughly 120 current employees will not find new work amid the restructuring.

Apparently Hulu’s CEO woes are brought on by the buyout of one of its investors, Providence Equity Partners. That buyout is expected to close sometime next month, and when it does, Variety says that “any Hulu executive with a significant number of vested shares” will be able to cash out. Hulu CEO Jason Kilar obviously has a lot of shares, and stands to make as much as $100 million in the event that the Providence deal closes successfully. That significant sum has Hulu worried he may take his $100 million and resign from the company.

Despite the worries, sources say Hulu isn’t searching for a new CEO just yet. Apparently Hulu board members have been talking to Kilar about his future with the company first, but so far those talks have been “without resolution.” This Providence buyout could bring more problems aside from having to search for a new CEO, however, as the memo also signals an incoming change in Hulu’s licensing agreements. It may not be long before News Corp. and Disney pare back their next-day offerings in an attempt to bring more visitors to their own websites, for instance.

Also a possibility is the end of exclusive content on Hulu. It’s suggested that these upcoming changes – or at least the possibility of them – might help convince Kilar to exit the company, but at the moment, all we have is this memo and Variety’s sources to go on. We won’t know what sweeping changes this Providence buyout brings with it until the purchase is officially on the books, but if these rumors are true, get ready for a pretty big shakeup at Hulu’s offices.

Roku is known for its range of eponymous set-top boxes, which provide a straightforward way to supply internet-based media to a regular TV. Originally focused on Netflix, Roku expanded its platform with various other “channels” for other providers, adding in games and more. Next up – on the public roadmap, anyway – is the Roku Streaming Stick, which will provide a more discrete way of accessing Roku services.

“The streaming stick is Roku’s first step in expanding its platform from streaming players to Smart TVs and other devices connected to the TV” the company said today in a statement [pdf link]. “With the News Corporation and Sky strategic relationships, we are poised to further grow our leadership position and to become the TV distribution platform of the future.”

While the financial backing will undoubtedly help Roku keep its R&D labs running for a while longer, it’s the unspecified business agreements that could have the biggest impact. Exactly what has been promised as part of the new deal hasn’t been revealed, but with News Corp. running Fox, Sky Sports, National Geographic, and dozens of other TV services, not to mention film studios and digital content, it might mean a fresh flush of channels for Roku users.

Meanwhile, News Corp.’s chief digital officer Jon Miller will join the Roku board of directors as a side-effect of the deal.

It sounds as if the website was a place to hire pirates and hackers. According to Gibling, NDS funded the expansion of his website and later had him distribute pay-TV codes from its rival. The distributed codes allowed consumers to access ITV Digital programming without paying. NDS admits to hiring Gibling, but claims, he was merely a consultant used to inform on hackers.

ITV Digital went bankrupt in 2002 citing piracy of its smartcards as a major reason for its failure. ITV’s former CTO, Simon Dore, claims that piracy was the “killer blow” for the company. Gibling maintains that the codes offered on the Thoic site originated from NDS. Gibling says that the website was his in name only, that it truly belonged to NDS.

Gibling said, “Everything that was in the closed area of Thoic was totally accessed by any of the NDS representatives.” He continued, “It was NDS. It was their baby and it started to become more their baby as they fashioned it to their own design.”

[via BBC]

That case prompted the giant company to close down News of the World, a tabloid that had been in print for 168 years. The scandal crept over to another News Corp tabloid, Sun, with another investigation that led to four employees being arrested on bribery charges. Now, it’s another publication, another scandal, and another criminal charge. According to the allegations, a Times reporter broke into an unauthorized person’s e-mail account and used private information from that account to run a story.

That’s what we in the real world call illegal. No further details were spilled on whose e-mail address was compromised and what the story related to. However, it was revealed that this scandal came to light because someone within the Times knew about it and told an independent ethics committee. The Time is a 227-year-old publication, one of the longest-running in the world. To become wrapped up in this company-wide series of scandals is crazy.

[via Bloomberg]

“Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery” Murdoch fumed, before illustrating his complaint with Google by searching for movie Mission Impossible. “Wow, several sites offering free links” he concluded, “I rest my case.”

Murdoch’s SOPA-supporting tirade was derailed somewhat by fellow tweeters commenting on his stance, and complaining about theater prices. “Agree about cinema prices which out [sic] of our control” Murdoch conceded, “but even more offensive are prices for popcorn and sodas.”

Google didn’t comment on the cost of cinema snacks, but did counter Murdoch’s argument about its attitude toward illegal content. “This is just nonsense” a spokesperson for the search giant said. “Last year we took down 5 million infringing web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads … Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the Internet.”

[via Telegraph]

Having spent over half a billion dollars on MySpace, News Corp. finally sold the social networking site in June last year for a mere $39m. Even that was something of a coup, with average bidding tipped at just $20m to $30m.

This week at CES, MySpace announced a deal with Panasonic to create MySpace TV, a socially-enabled networking system that allows viewers to communicate with friends and strangers about their shared watching experience. An accompanying Myspace Companion App makes suggestions based on your viewing profile. Supporting smartphones, tablets, laptops and the TV screen, MySpace TV even managed to coax Justin Timberlake on-stage to talk up its innovation.

Whether MySpace TV will be enough to turn around the network’s failing fortunes – and user numbers – compared to Facebook and Google+ remains to be seen. However it looks like Murdoch has written the whole experience off as a costly lesson as to how the internet can bite back.

The proposed deal was worth £8bn and the cessation of talks for purchase concluded a year of negotiations. The fall through of the deal comes in the wake of the high-profile iPhone hacking revelation that journalists at News Corp. paper News of the World were hacking into iPhones to get information for stories.

News of the World was shut down after it was discovered that journalists there had hacked into a phone belonging to a teen that was murdered. News Corp. COO Chase Carey noted it had become clear the purchase would not happen in the current climate. Murdoch’s company will have to pay BSkyB a fee of about £38.5m for backing out of the deal.

[via Guardian]

“We will charge for it but we haven’t started yet,” Miller said on a panel at the event, “we have our beginning moment of truth next week when we start to ask people to get out their wallets.” Subscriptions will be priced at $39.99 per year – or 14 cents per day – and use Apple’s new subscription system for the App Store.

It’s basically as straightforward as a daily feed of articles pulled out by headline and a brief sample, complete with the thumbnail of the issue’s cover. Baio argues that linking to public articles is legal, and that since The Daily app only offers the current day’s issue, not previous versions, this is in fact a useful way to access content subscribers have already paid for.

Whether News Corp feels the same way, mind, remains to be seen. One commenter suggests that point 8(k) in The Daily terms of service, which deals with derivative works, will be the sticking point:

“You agree that, while using the Services, you shall not:] modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any part of the Services, whether in whole or in part, or create any derivative works from any part of the Services, or encourage, assist or authorize any other person to do so.”

Meanwhile, it seems Apple is doing all it can to keep News Corp on-board and happy. The Daily’s team confirmed that ”Apple is continuing to help us … see how interesting and great a product we can make on this device.”

News Corp plans on also releasing the same content free for sharing online: readers will be able to send access to an individual article via Facebook, Twitter or other methods, but The Daily as a whole will not be accessible via the site, only through the app. So far News Corp has spent $30m setting up The Daily, and expects to spend $500,000 per week running the project.

According to CEO Rupert Murdoch, since there’s “no paper, no multi-million dollar processes, no trucks, we’re passing on those savings to the reader.” As well as app versions there will be web-friendly versions of articles that can be easily shared via email, Twitter, Facebook and other routes; it’ll also be possible to save issues for later reading.

The app can pull in Twitter feeds, to fit into the articles, and be updated dynamically through the day should breaking content arrive; an integrated browser can show webpages without throwing readers out of the app, and you can choose which are your favorite sports teams and see custom results from them. There’s also a games and apps section, with reviews and app showcases that links directly into the App Store. News Corp has also employed some professional voiceover artists to read out key articles.

The Daily is available for download from the App Store for the iPad here. Subscriptions will be priced at $0.99 per week or $39.99 for a year’s worth of content; the first two weeks will be free, thanks to a Verizon promotion. News Corp promises versions of the app for other tablets in the future.

However, issues in getting that API up to scratch has seen The Daily’s launch delayed; originally it was expected to arrive before the 2010 holidays, but that failed to materialise. A subsequent launch earlier this month was also scrapped. Meanwhile, Apple is also reportedly cracking down on workaround subscription methods employed by some publishers, with newspapers no longer allowed to offer inclusive iPad access to content as part of a paper subscription.

The Daily will use a new, push-subscription service being built into the Apple App Store, which allows new content to be automatically downloaded onto a user’s iPad or other iOS device when it is available. According to sources, it is issues with this system that has caused the delay; News Corp has been previewing The Daily, which is apparently ready for prime-time, over the past few weeks.

While Forbes is reporting that The Daily will launch on January 19th now, further details about the application are still hazy at this point. We do know that the app will function as a sort of repository for news articles from many different sources across the United States. It will also include some international content. There are also writers that were specifically hired to write for The Daily, who will publish original content.

What will be most notable about the app, though, is the push notification system that has been hinted at in the past. This is meant for a subscription plan, and not for notifications on the iPad. That means that iTunes will automatically bill customers, whether it be on a weekly or monthly schedule, depending on the individual user. If it comes to fruition, then there’s a possibility that magazines and other subscription-based periodicals could use the same system, and perhaps boost sales.

And finally, The Daily now has a “coming soon” website, with a new logo which you can see above.

[via Forbes]

“The Alesia concept – which is not so much about tablets, it’s more about bundling digital journalism subscriptions – is one that is very, very exciting. From the perspective of being able to bundle digital newspapers, if you will, or journalism on that basis to drive down cost for customers and drive up consumption, we think that’s a very exciting prospect and makes sense for customers.” Rupert Murdoch, CEO, News Corp

The Daily has apparently seen News Corp picking up high-profile talent in New York, with the music critic from the New Yorker, Viacom’s digital division head and former editors from the NYT and Post all believed to have been brought on board. Discussions with Apple over revenue sharing and distribution are also ongoing.

It remains to be seen what balance of original content creation and aggregation News Corp will settle on for Alesia. Despite speculation that Murdoch couldn’t find enough interesting partner agencies to include their content, the outspoken CEO said that, in fact, it was down to the fact that “independent publishers haven’t really made up their mind in terms of where they set their own digital products.”

The debate on whether or not the printed word is dying has been going on for awhile now. It picked up quite a bit when Apple (officially) unveiled the iPad. Would tablets, especially the one from Cupertino, ruin the printed word as we know it? Would newspapers fade away into the archaic past forever? Well, the newspapers are still here, but the digital revolution is definitely far from over. And, when you have publications like The New York Times announcing that upwards of 400,000 NYT iPad editions have been downloaded, it’s easy to see why anyone would want to get into the whole “digital” part of it.

That’s why Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that his News Corp. is going to launch a national, digital newspaper isn’t surprising at all. It would obviously be a direct competitor to all of those other news publications’ digital editions, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? However, Murdoch believes that his version will have an immediate upper-hand, when it comes to the market, its target, and its consumption. Instead of having a bunch of long-winded stories, as we’ve seen for ages in those other media avenues, Murdoch believes that having more “streamlined” and “short” stories is the way to go.

Apparently, Murdoch believes that having these shorter stories will draw a younger audience in of itself, and then adding them to digital platforms like your mobile phone, or tablet (the iPad), will only make them come rushing in to read the news even faster. In droves, even. To make it better, apparently this all-digital newspaper would bring more jobs to News Corp, by adding several dozen new reporters and editors.

As far as details go about the newspaper itself, those are still rare at this point. How the distribution will work is one of the biggest question marks, though we imagine that applications would probably be the easiest way. Distributing them through the appropriate market/store/world would just be the simplest method, at least if that’s how Murdoch and company want to keep their focus. Now, will we start seeing hardware specifically manufactured for this digital magazine? Anyone want to take a guess?

[via LA Times]

Rupert Murdoch is the man behind the publishing empire and he has made no bones about believing that readers online should be paying to read the stories published there. To this end, News Corp has announced today that it has purchased the Skiff LLC eReader platform from Hearst Corporation, the terms of the deal are undisclosed.

The platform is designed to deliver premium journalism to digital devices like tablets, smartphones, eReaders, and netbooks. At the same time, News Corp is also investing in Journalism Online LLC dedicated to helping newspapers, magazines, and online-only publishers collect revenue from their readers. Journalism Online’s Press+TM e-commerce platform lets the publisher set their own pricing and payment model for their content including a metered model where a certain amount of content is free before going to a paid model.