Is Bloomberg chilling out? The news and financial data provider (and our competitor) looks like it’s trying to make life at the hard-driving news and information provider a little less crazy.

“Starting August 1, employees can request schedules better suited to their personal lives — including flexible hours, a shorter work week and working from home,” writes Reuters reporter Robert MacMillan, who obtained a copy of the plans. “The new work schedule system may be Bloomberg’s first public acknowledgment of the need to accommodate an employee’s personal life — and that the changes would help the business.”

It’s not clear whether there’s a connection, but the new policy comes as Bloomberg is getting ready to defend itself against a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charging discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers.

It’s an interesting cultural shift for Bloomberg, whose staffers work in what many people describe as a very intense workplace. And it raises a lot of questions. Will the move help Bloomberg with employee retention? Will the company actually get more out of staffers, because they will be presumably be happier in the workplace? Could it take away the edge, but in a bad way? Is it even realistic to think that Bloomberg can make such changes to its culture?

For the article, Bloomberg employees contacted by MacMillan declined to comment. We understand (do we ever!) , but our comments section on this blog never said you had to include your name along with your sharp observations. We’re eager to hear from you, Bloomberg folks.

Keep an eye on:

• A start-up led by former star Google engineers unveiled a new Web search service that aims to outdo the Internet search leader in size (Reuters)
• Yahoo director Robert Kotick’s resignation will take effect after the company’s annual meeting this week, where he will stand for reelection, to comply with a settlement with investor Carl Icahn (Reuters)
• Sirius Satellite Radio’s second-quarter adjusted quarterly loss narrowed as it increased subscribers to its pay radio service (Reuters)
• Publishing group Pearson Plc, owner of the Financial Times, posted stronger than expected results and an upbeat outlook in a display of resilience in an otherwise depressed media sector (Reuters)

We’re once again wondering who will blink first in Hollywood.

The Screen Actors Guild and the major firm and television studios are having another pow-wow today, and the subject is an ominous sounding “final offer” that management has presented to the union.

As we have seen, the talks so far haven’t gotten around the same sticky issues that prompted a strike this winter by the Writers Guild of America strike. So a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the studios doesn’t sound too promising if the entertainment biz is to avoid another strike.

But wait! SAG executive director and chief negotiator, Doug Allen, suggested on the eve of his union’s formal response that the door to further deal-making remained open. He had this to say in an interview with Reuters:

“I don’t know that those categorical statements are always to be taken at face value,” he told Reuters. “In fact, somebody from the WGA told me they got a total of 10 final offers from the AMPTP (during their talks). So we’ll see.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the studios may be looking at a slight change in strategy. It reports:

“The studios, fearing SAG leadership might drag negotiations on through the union’s elections in September, are considering adopting a more aggressive strategy. The producers have discussed the possibility of publicly asking SAG leadership to allow its members to vote on the current deal or declaring an impasse in the talks, which would allow them to implement parts of the current offer.”

Keep an eye on:

• In a CNBC television interview, Sumner Redstone says his daughter is no longer the company’s heir apparent and that she will leave the Viacom board as part of an agreement he had reached with her (NY Times)
• Financial news and data company Bloomberg LP is creating several new units as part of a reorganization that includes a shuffling of top management (Reuters)
• Interpublic Group, the advertising services company, named Matt Seiler as global chief executive of its Universal McCann media buying agency as part of a broader shake-up (Reuters)
• Yahoo will let customers, academics and even rivals build customized Web search services on top of its own technology, introducing a resale model into a major Internet market where it ranks a distant No. 2 to Google (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Here we go…

Two days before the iPhone’s launch, fans around Asia are queuing up to buy Apple’s latest offering. They don’t seem to care that it’s raining or freezing cold or if lining up early means missing work or school.

The July 11 launch will be the first chance, after all,  for Asian consumers to own an iPhone.

“I’ve told my professor I was going to go buy an iPhone, and he gave me permission,” said Hiroyuki Sano, a 24-year-old graduate student who early on Tuesday arrived in rainy Tokyo from Nagoya to be first in line. Sano, speaking to Reuters, and incidentally wearing a T-shirt with an Apple logo, described his professor as an equally big Apple fan. “He sent me off cheerfully.”

The United States has already been through this, when the iPhone first went on sale a year ago. As the New York Times recalls, “TV news coverage was relentless. Hard-core fans camped out to be the first in line. Bloggers referred to Apple’s new product as the ‘Jesus phone’.”

The paper adds, “This time, though, when the iPhone 3G goes on sale in AT&T and Apple stores, iPhone Mania will be considerably more muted. That’s partly because the mystery is gone, partly because the AT&T service costs more and partly because there aren’t many new features in what Apple is calling the iPhone 3G. ”

But let’s be clear: There’s still a boatload of interest in this phone and plenty of people will be talking about it this week, offering their two cents on what they like and dislike about the iPhone.

One big name, the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, is already weighing in, with a mixed review, knocking the battery life but applauding the phone’s introduction of third party software. 

“I’ve been testing the iPhone 3G for a couple of weeks, and have found that it mostly keeps its promises. In particular, I found that doing email and surfing the Internet typically was between three and five times as fast using AT&T’s 3G network as it was with the older AT&T network to which the first iPhone was limited.”

“Bottom line: If you’ve been waiting to buy an iPhone until it dropped in price, or ran on faster cell networks, you might want to take the plunge, if you can live with the higher service costs and the weaker battery life. The same goes for those with existing iPhones who love the device but crave faster cellular data speeds. But if you already own an iPhone, and can usually use Wi-Fi for data, you probably should hold off and get the free software upgrade before deciding whether it’s worth getting the new hardware.”

But is it worth a two-day wait in line, in the rain, wearing a silly T-shirt?

Keep an eye on: 

• Carl Icahn would have more support in his proxy battle against Yahoo if he pledged not to sell the company for less than $33 a share, said Legg Mason portfolio manager Bill Miller (Reuters) 
• WPP Group, the world’s second-largest advertising company, made a hostile 1.08 billion pound ($2.13 billion) bid for Britain’s Taylor Nelson Sofres, challenging its agreed merger with GfK Holdings AG (Reuters)
• A blind trust run by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is willing to pay between $4.5 billion and $5 billion to buy Merrill Lynch & Co’s 20 percent stake in financial news and data provider Bloomberg LP (NY Post)
• The smaller of Hollywood’s two performers unions ratified a new prime-time TV contract on Tuesday, undermining a last-ditch bid by the larger, more militant Screen Actors Guild to secure a richer deal (Reuters)
• NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker is looking to spin off or sell some of the company’s assets when he attends a media conference (NY Post)

(Photo: Reuters)

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 It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to the week for entertainment companies.

Right out of the box, Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente cut his rating on News Corp, Disney, CBS and Time Warner. Not one of them is now rated above “equal weight” by the broker.  And he stuck the whole entertainment sector with a negative rating.

What’s the deal, DiClemente? Well, he points out that television and film companies are barreling toward the same sort of problems that have created such headaches for the music business. Remember how the major music labels seemed so ill-prepared for that whole Internet thing?

“In reality, while there are many obvious differences between music/audio and movie/video media forms, the core properties of video distribution and consumption are not different enough from music content to continue to justify why movie/TV content will be spared fragmentation,” DiClemente wrote.

DiClemente tried to give the movie and TV business the benefit of doubt.

“In our research of the entertainment industry to date, we have been increasingly eager to study and learn the reasons why widespread digital distribution of films and TV shows is not likely to eventually cause massive disruption to traditional forms of entertainment delivery. We have been largely unsuccessful in building compelling logical arguments in support of the continued growth for the movie/ TV content owners
in a digital environment. To us, the dual concerns of 1) deteriorating economics to the content-owners of legal online distribution; and 2) rampant piracy concerns are together too significant to ignore.”

Not exactly what you want to read if you’re an media industry executive — or shareholder — first thing after a long holiday weekend.

Keep an eye on: 

• Microsoft Corp on Monday said it would be willing to reopen talks to buy all or part of Yahoo Inc, but only if a new Yahoo board is elected, a major boost for investor Carl Icahn’s board slate (Reuters)
• Merrill Lynch & Co. is moving closer to selling its stake in Bloomberg LP as it tries to raise cash to make up for $6 billion in coming write-downs (Wall Street Journal)
• NBC Universal and private equity firms Bain Capital and Blackstone Group agreed to buy The Weather Channel from Landmark Communications (Reuters)
• “Hancock,” a film about a petulant, perpetually drunken superhero, proved to be review-proof as well as bulletproof this weekend, overwhelming competitors and giving star Will Smith his fifth top-selling film on a Fourth of July weekend (LA Times)

(Picture: Reuters)

When we heard that Merrill Lynch wasn’t ruling out a sale of its stake in newswire and financial information service Bloomberg LP, we had to wonder who would want it. More to the point, we had to wonder who wouldn’t. As our story explained, Bloomberg probably (though we can’t say for sure) is a lucrative enterprise that any investor would want to profit from.

As it turns out, wanting something is fine, but just because you want something doesn’t mean you’re going to get it. Here’s the problem: at an estimated $6 billion, Merrill’s Bloomberg stake is way too expensive for most media companies. Not only that, the companies who could afford it — private equity and sovereign wealth funds — are unlikely to raise the cash to take a shot at it. The reason? They like the control that money brings, and with Bloomberg that’s not going to happen.

I spent some time with a high-level (and of course anonymous) source who knows how things work at Bloomberg, and here’s what that source had to say about it:

We’re talking about taking a minority position in a privately held country company that is completely controlled by the mayor of New York City who gets to do whatever he wants. You have less say than you would have if you were the owner of 10 shares of General Motors.

If Merrill wants to sell, the easiest deal is to call Mike and come to a deal, my guess is, he’d do the deal.

Well, Bloomberg did say he wasn’t interested in newspapers.

What would a combined InBev/Anheuser-Busch do with advertising? It’s one of the questions already being tossed around in the wake of InBev’s $46 billion bid for the brewer of Bud and Bud Light.

One obvious problem for Anheuser-Busch, which spends about $475 million each year on advertising, is that their marketing focuses heavily on the idea of being an All-American beer and company.

That may not play so well when you’re owned by a company based in Belgium, we reported.

As Ted Parrack, chief strategic officer of Colangelo, a Connecticut-based marketing agency, told us: “How do Americans think about beer? Guys make beer. Corporations don’t make beer. Something called InBev makes Budweiser? And there’s nobody named Busch around? What?”

The Wall Street Journal brought up Anheuser-Busch’s big sports marketing efforts, writing that they could be cut back.

One area that is potentially vulnerable is sports marketing. Anheuser, one of the largest sports marketers in the world, spent about $300 million last year for sports sponsorships, up 11% from the year earlier, according to IEG, a Chicago-based research unit of WPP Group that tracks sponsorships.

Anheuser is affiliated with dozens of sports, from baseball to equestrian competitions. It sponsors sports leagues big and small, including Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and Major League Lacrosse, and even the U.S. polo team. This summer, the company is one of the official beers of the Beijing Olympic Games.

But we think the best headline about the deal goes to The Nashua Telegraph, which splashed “This Bud’s for vous” across its business pages. The New Hampshire paper talked to Nashua resident Rob Masek.

“(He) envisions the Belgian takeover of an American beer having the same affect as when German auto manufacturer bought out the U.S.-based Chrysler. People stopped buying Chrysler cars because of the perception it was a weaker product, he said.

Masek can see people attending a NASCAR event questioning those who would dare drink a Belgian beer. ” ‘What are you doing? It’s un-American,’ ” Masek imagines the conversation going.

We’ll see how this one plays out. In the meantime, sit back. Have a cold one.

Keep an eye on:

• The head of Tribune Co’s publishing division and publisher of the Chicago Tribune is retiring, a week after the company’s new leaders said they would overhaul their newspapers to cut costs and try to attract more readers as they struggle with dismal advertising sales and falling circulation (Reuters)
• A controversial push by the Screen Actors Guild to defeat a recent accord negotiated by a rival union has touched off an open rebellion within Hollywood’s largest actors guild (Los Angeles Times)
• News and information company Bloomberg LP could be a hotly contested asset if a stake went on the block, although the most likely buyer was seen by some as founder and billionaire Michael Bloomberg himself (Reuters)
• News Corp’s MySpace plans to launch a global redesign next week in an attempt to widen its demographic and boost user engagement on the site (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

It looks like Norman Pearlstine couldn’t resist the glamorous life of journalism. After two years in the private equity business at the Blackstone Group Carlyle Group (D’oh!), Pearlstine is joining Bloomberg LP as “chief content officer,” where, as Bloomberg said in a press release, he will work with “Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler to seek growth opportunities for its
television, radio, magazine and online products and to make the most of the
existing Bloomberg News operations.”

Pearlstine used to be the editor-in-chief of Time Inc for 11 years, and before that spent 23 years at The Wall Street Journal. More details on his CV, directly from the release :

He was the paper’s top news executive for nine years, serving as Managing Editor and then Executive Editor. He previously worked as the founding editor and publisher of The Wall Street Journal/Europe, the first Managing Editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Tokyo bureau chief.

Pearlstine was founder of Smart Money magazine and worked as an Executive Editor of Forbes. He is the author of OFF THE RECORD: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources , published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007.

We don’t know what to make of this. Our immediate questions:

- Will he succeed Winkler, with whom he worked at the Journal?

- Will he put Bloomberg into M&A mode?

- Will he work on an effort to take Bloomberg LP public? (This idea has come up at least once before)

Pearlstine wasn’t available for comment, so we’ll just publish our questions here and invite comments, but Bloomberg’s top editorial executive, Matt Winkler, did  call. Here’s a bit of what we talked about:

Q: Why Pearlstine?

A: Nobody brings as much experience in so many different ways as Norm does… Our hope is that Norm can give us a lot more awareness and guidance on ways we can deliver [our news] well beyond the Bloomberg.

Q: When did you first meet him?

A: The meet-and-greet was probably in the halls of Dow Jones & Co when I arrived in 1980, and he was the national news editor at The Wall Street Journal. People would point him out to me as a really important person you ought to know, so maybe on the way to the men’s room I was able to introduce myself. (They started working closely together in 1982 when Pearlstine was planning the European edition of the WSJ and asked Winkler to go to London)

Q: What do you think of him?

A: I would say that everything that I know that’s worth anything in this business, the news business, I can attribute to Norm.

Q: Does his new job at Bloomberg mean that you will retire?

A: I would hope that I’m just getting started, actually.  The first 18 or so years went by really fast. I think the biggest opportunities are ahead of us. I can’t wait to go at them with Norm at my side.

Q: By the way, is there a hiring freeze at Bloomberg?

A: Not exactly. The management committee at Bloomberg… saw what was unfolding with the financial world — they could see what was coming last July — and said, ‘what we want to do for the coming year is effectively freeze the headcount.’ (This does not mean that they are not hiring as people leave, however) We’re determined to find and identify and bring to Bloomberg the most talented, skilled journalists we can.

(Reuters photo shows Pearlstine on the left in his role as president of the American Academy in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the middle and former U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Holbrooke on the right.)

(Disclaimer that you’ve probably read before: Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters are competitors in providing financial news and data.)