Here are some of the day’s stories about the media industry:

Recession sends Americans to the Internet (Reuters)
S. John Tilak writes: “More than two-thirds of American adults — or 88 percent of U.S. Internet users — went online for help with recession-induced personal economic issues and to gather information on national economic problems, a study released on Wednesday said.”

BBC and Government Fall Out Over Financing Plan (NYT)
“The BBC and Britain’s Labour government, which has a history of support for the “Beeb,” have fallen out over a government plan to share some of the broadcaster’s £3.6 billion in public funding with its commercial television rivals,” writes Eric Pfanner.

USA Today introduces Newsdeck site for top headlines (Editors Weblogs)
“To give visitors another way to view the news, USA Today has introduced a site it calls Newsdeck that compiles the top headlines in an easy-to-read format. Users can scroll through stories in eight categories, including News, Money and Sports, with the ability to switch back and forth between the latest news and the most popular articles.,” writes Liz Webber.

Bing’s First Month A Bust (Business Insider)
Dan Frommer writes: “Microsoft’s U.S. search market share was 8.4% in June, up from 8.0% in May, according to comScore. It would have been a disaster if Bing didn’t grow at all with all that advertising and free promotion vianews coverage, so at least it’s up a little.”

In other news:

• If you want readers to buy news, what exactly will you sell? The case for a free/paid hybrid (CJR)
• Cost cuts bear fruit for Gannett (FT)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

Microsoft takes on Google as Office moves to Web (Reuters)
Jim Finkle reports: “Microsoft will offer for free to consumers Web-based versions of its Office suite of programs, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a note-taking program. Microsoft will also host one Internet business version of Office at its own data centers, charging companies a yet-to- be-announced fee.”

Six in 10 companies plan to skip Windows 7 (Reuters)
“Many of the more than 1,000 companies that responded to a survey by ScriptLogic Corp say they have economized by cutting back on software updates and lack the resources to deploy Microsoft’s latest offering.”

MySpace to Take Entertainment Tack (WSJ)
“In a brief interview, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said MySpace needs to be refocused ‘as an entertainment portal.’ Mr. Murdoch described his vision for MySpace as a place where ‘people are looking for common interests,’” writes Julia Angwin.

15-Year Old Analyst Trashes TV, Newspapers, Radio, And…Twitter (Business Insider)
“A 15 year-old working in Morgan Stanley’s London office has written what may be the firm’s most popular research report in years,” writes Henry Blodget. “In it, he explains that none of his friends read newspapers and few watch TV. He also, interestingly, says none of them use Twitter, because no one reads the tweets texting costs money.”

McGraw-Hill trying to sell BusinessWeek (Reuters)
Jui Chakravorty Das and Robert MacMillan report: “McGraw-Hill Cos Inc is trying to sell BusinessWeek magazine, a source told Reuters on Monday, at a time when media advertising sales are slumping and would-be buyers for newspapers and magazines are scarce. McGraw hired boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc to manage the sale, said the source, who was familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.”

In other news:

• At $6.5 Billion, Facebook is Now Worth More than CBS (Mashable)
  
• Magna Forecast: Ad Recession to Drag On (E&P)
  

Taking a break from flogging the latest tired media business model, Morgan Stanley published a short report on Friday entitled, “How Teenagers Consume Media” by 15-year-old summer intern Matthew Robson that offers a frank discussion of what young digital media consumers are up to.  The FT has highlighted it on its front page, perhaps as an antidote to wall-to-wall coverage of the annual Sun Valley media moguls conference in recent days.

The most memorable moment in the report is its discussion of the irrelevancy of Twitter to teenagers:

Facebook is popular as one can interact with friends on a wide scale.
On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.

Many of the issues higlighted in the 4-page report are obvious: Teenagers are consuming more media, but not prepared to pay for it. They resent intrusive advertising, while print media and radio are largely irrelevant to them. These observations may be nothing new to anyone who bothers to ask kids what they are up to.

As with previous generations, the answers aren’t always what adults hope they are doing. But they have sobering implications for complacent media investors.

On newspapers:

No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV. The only newspapers that are read are tabloids and freesheets (Metro, London Lite…) mainly because of cost…

On radio:

Most teenagers nowadays are not regular listeners to radio. They may occasionally tune in, but they do not try to listen to a program specifically… With online sites streaming music for free they do not bother, as services such as last.fm do this advert free, and users can choose the songs they want instead of listening to what the radio presenter/DJ chooses.

On (yellow pages) directories:

Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists… (and) because… they can get the information for free on the internet, simply by typing it into Google

On digital devices:

Teeage texting champion wins award in New York City

What is Hot?
•Anything with a touch screen is desirable.
•Mobile phones with large capacities for music.
•Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)
•Really big tellies

What Is Not?
•Anything with wires
•Phones with black and white screens
•Clunky ‘brick’ phones
•Devices with less than ten-hour battery life

Elsewhere in the Twitter media echo chamber, The New York Times highlights “Web Site Story,” a video by CollegeHumor.com that dramatizes what might happen if the classic 1950s musical West Side Story had taken place in the era of Facebook and Twitter.

Reuters has an analysis of what Twitter cannot teach the media business.

(Credits: Morgan Stanley Research; Photo: Reuters/Eric Thayer)

So how’s the market for sports and concert tickets holding up, given the economic turmoil that has dominated the public imagination since last year? Better than you’d think, according to Mike Janes, the founder and CEO of FanSnap, a live-event ticket search engine that launched in March.

“People’s appetite for the shared experience of a game or show hasn’t changed. Their bank accounts may have changed, but not the desire,” Janes said.

The difficult economy has had the effect of bringing many ticket prices down, he said, meaning there are plenty of bargains out there. While there will always be insatiable demand for big-name performers or games (Springsteen; Yankees vs. Red Sox) keeping those ticket prices high, Janes said tix for your average major league baseball game can be had for below face value in some cases, as folks looking to resell tickets flood the market with supply. It’s a bit too early to see about NFL games, he said.

FanSnap, whose main investor is VC and private equity firm General Catalyst Partners, runs in a similar way Kayak does flight searches. Since there is so much variability in ticket prices (unlike in airline tickets) FanSnap’s search engine turns up seats within mere feet of each other — displayed on a nifty interactive map — but with very different asking prices.  (Janes said the site aims to “make it really hard to overpay for tickets.”)

FanSnap has deals in place with dozens of vendors and re-sellers, including big names like StubHub and RazorGator, and is working to bring others into the fold.

News about the media industry:

Netflix looks to future but still going strong with DVD rentals (USA Today)
“Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings doesn’t think his 58 distribution centers are in immediate danger of becoming obsolete, but he knows that day will come. He believes DVD rentals have four to nine years to keep growing, despite inroads in Internet delivery of movies to set-top TV boxes and other video-on-demand options,” writes Jefferson Graham.

Is the bell tolling for Clear Channel? (San Antonio Express-News)
David Hendricks writes: “Analysts believe Clear Channel, now with about $22 billion in total debts, will have trouble making scheduled payments later this year. The company, already down to about 800 stations from its peak of about 1,200 stations, either will have to start selling stations itself or go into bankruptcy, where lenders will put stations up for sale.”

Foes No More, Ad Agencies Unite With Internet Firms (NYT)
Eric Pfanner writes: “With consumers spending more and more time online, analysts say Internet companies and ad agencies have no choice but to work together to develop ways to make money from digital media.”

In other news:

• U.S. gov’t to release $4 bln soon for broadband (Reuters)
• Politico’s Washington Coup (Vanity Fair)
• Average Twitter user has 126 followers, and only 20% of users go via website (Guardian)
• First Came Gizmodo, Then Engadget. Now, GDGT (NYT)

As the world mourned his death, Michael Jackson gave new life to all kinds of media - online, broadcast, print tabloids and broadsheets as the public appeared to lap up the extravagant reflections on the singer’s highs and lows.

T-shirts were sold and TV specials were planned giving a sense of drama reminiscent to the death of Diana Princess of Wales.

In newspapers like the New York Times, Jackson, 50, took over much of the Friday front page. Forget the political uproar in Iran, which has dominated headlines in recent days or the adulturous governor of South Carolina, or even the demise of Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett.

This makes sense since, as Gawker points out, millions of people who normally wouldn’t buy a newspaper will buy one today to get hold of Jackson headlines.

As the news trickled out on Thursday afternoon, fans scrambled to find out the truth.

“Pop King Dies and Leading News Sites Nearly Die Too,” was the subject in an email from Web traffic watcher Keynote Systems that described the strain Jackson put on news sites.

Within hours, Michael Jackson’s music sales shot up and he occupied the top 15 slots on Amazon.com’s best-seller album list including Thriller, his most famous album.

On Friday, blogs were buzzing about the mystery around the controversial megastar’s sudden death and websites displayed photo montages showing it all - the signature moonwalk dance and his infamous dangling of his baby son over a balcony and everything in between. Others debated the merits of learning the news on microblogging site Twitter.

But amid all the excitement, businessinsider.com had to put a damper on things by suggesting that we could bankrupt the government by wasting all our time on the Web rather than engaging in taxable activities.

Keep an Eye On:

• Apple ups stake in Imagination Tech (Reuters)
• Wired Editor Admits to Palgiarizin Wikipedia (Associated Press)

The battle to build the best Internet search engine gets plenty of press.

But with the economy in the doldrums, the Internet giants are also engaged in a heated race to improve their advertising offerings.

Yahoo and Google, the top two search sites in the US, are rolling out new features and services designed to grab a bigger slice of the advertising dollars that businesses spend to hawk their wares.

On Monday, Yahoo unveiled a self-serve display advertising service which allows companies to create their own online ads.

The service is aimed at small, local businesses that aren’t served by the Yahoo sales team and the account managers that cater to larger advertisers. According to Yahoo, businesses using the new self-serve ad product can choose from more than 800 display ad templates to run across the Yahoo network of Web sites, and opt to pay on a per click or a per impression basis.

Meanwhile, Google plans to begin testing a new type of ad unit to better showcase products in the sponsored links that appear alongside search results.

According to an email that Google sent out to advertisers, posted on blogoscoped.com, the ads will feature product pricing and a product image.

A Google spokesperson confirmed that the company plans to test a method of showing “richer” product information in ads for shopping-related search queries. The test will only be visible to a small number of US users.

Last month Google lifted restrictions on placing trademarked terms in marketing copy of the text-based ads that appear alongside its search results, a move Google said would improve the quality of its ads.

Why all the activity? Internet companies are being forced to work harder for their money,  with spending on web ads under pressure. Once unthinkable, total online ad spending in the US actually declined 5 percent year-over-year in the first quarter. That was the first drop in online advertising since 2002, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Location, Location, Location.

The World Wide Web has never had it, because there was no ordinary way for advertisers to know where someone was sitting as they surfed. That has made it impossible for the local hardware store to advertise to its neighborhood, or for national advertisers to target their ads geographically. It has also meant that cities did not have the means to warn residents surfing the web of a broken water main, an approaching storm, a forest fire, or a flash flood.  That may be about to change.

Feeva, a Silicon Valley start-up, has invented a way for advertisers to pay for “geo-demographic” placement. In effect, that means advertisers can choose their own zip or postal code — just as they do for mailers.

“What you get in your mail is all based on zip code,” said Miten Sampat, Feeva’s chief architect. “Zip code defines your income level, whether you have kids, how urban your environment is. But you can’t do this on the web, because geography is tough to guess.”

Feeva is teaming up with with Internet service providers — such as phone and cable companies– to detect the zip code of any computer surfing the web. Others who have tried to pinpoint computers, such as Phorm, have stumbled over privacy issues and Feeva is determined not to make the same mistakes.

“It’s not about what you are doing. We track no activity. It’s about what type of consumer you are,” Sampat said.  “All we do is say ‘This user is making a request for a web site. We know his or her demography with a high level of accuracy.’” The demographic information is sent nearly instantly to companies that place ads on web sites, and they can serve appropriate ads — or government notices.

That means that as three people in different zip codes surf any site — such as Yahoo, the New York Times, Google, or the one you are on now  — they will see different ads, based on their location. A surfer in a heavily student zip code might see an ad for cheap student travel, or for work as a tutor. A surfer living in a zip code with many young parents and homeowners might go to the same site and see ads for mortgages, or a local toy store. A person in a prosperous zip code with an older population surfing the same site might see ads for ocean cruises.

In an emergency, cities or other governments will be able to send warnings to their on-line residents.  As soon as someone refreshes their browser on a site that accepts advertising the warning will pop up.

“Our data informs advertisers about where they should focus their efforts,” said Nitin Shaw, chief executive of Feeva. “They get a better return on their investment, better efficiency.”  Shaw says web sites will be able to charge more for ads, at the same time that advertisers will get a far better deal because their ads are more likely to hit home. Feeva will get a small slice of the advertising revenue, as will the Internet service provider.

Shah expects the service to go live in 2010. For now, his company is still negotiating contracts with the many different kind of comanies, from Internet providers to ad servers.

(Updated with more quotes)

If you're losing the game, time to change the playing field. Yahoo is counting on exactly that.

Ari Balogh, Yahoo's chief technology officer and product development czar, would be among the first to admit that Google reigns supreme in the search space.

"Search the way we know it, with 10 blue links, Google has clearly won that game. Saying anything other than that is just not stating the fact," he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

But Balogh says that doesn't mean Yahoo is giving up. Inviting comparisons to the automobile industry, now infamous for bankruptcy, ballooning debt and clunky design, Balogh says innovation in search is only just beginning, and it's too early to declare a winner yet. Ford and its Model T was once the pre-eminent mass-consumer vehicle, but today the once mighty Detroit giant -- the only one of the surviving Big Three that doesn't appear to be flirting with corporate failure -- has to fend off the likes of Toyota and Hyundai.

What's important to understand though is this really is like the auto industry in 1910....At that time, in 1915 or 1920, it sure looked like it was going to be Ford.

Because of the rapid innovation that's going on, because if you look at that search page, it is an anachronism. When has advertising ever been so ugly in the last 10, 15 years? When has the onus of sorting through a pile of stuff, that much of a pile of stuff, ever fallen on people to do themselves?

There is a long way to go.

So what will the next generation of search tools look like? Balogh says:

There will always be a search kind of like the 10 blue links, but how important that's going to be in the 3.0, 4.0 versions of where the Web's going really remains to be seen.

I believe search is going to be far richer. Search is going to be about getting that relevance in that intent flow -- whatever it is you're trying to do. And there's a whole other round or two to go in the search game and that's where we intend on playing.

Where else is Yahoo lacking? In social networking, Balogh says. But Yahoo is now ramping up both its look and its usability, focusing on helping users connect with news, with other people, and otherwise get things done.

That will entail remodeling its front page continuously, launching new features from fantasy sport applications to programs that aid movie selections, and making them useable on both the cellphone and the computer. The first features will be trotted out in the summer, Balogh says.

"We're going for the long play here."

Too bad the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t charge for its information or make money off its website — they could have made a pile of cash on the swine flu scare. (You know, if it wasn’t a government site.)

Web traffic measurement firm comScore says traffic soared at CDC.gov last month, as people visited the website amid concerns over the H1N1, or swine, flu.

In April, CDC.gov saw a 142 percent increase in traffic, or 5.7 million visitors, making it the top audience gainer among websites, comScore said. “When news of the swine flu pandemic erupted, many Americans turned to the Internet as their primary source of information for how to keep themselves and their families safe,” said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president at comScore Media Metrix.

Social networks also continued their tear last month, growing 12 percent to nearly 140 million visitors. That’s about three-quarters of the U.S. online population, comScore says, so chances are someone you know is either is Twittering, Facebook-ing or on MySpace. Twitter jumped 83 percent to 17 million visitors, while Facebook grew 10 percent in April from the previous month to reach 67.5 million visitors. MySpace had 71 million visitors.

Keep an eye on:

• Will The Boston Globe’s biggest union balk at the New York Times Co offer? (The Boston Phoenix)
• Web entrepreneurs may no longer need venture capital dollars (The New York Times Bits blog)
• MGM scrambles to restructure its $3.7 billion debt pile (Financial Times)

Photo: Reuters