We weren’t expecting huge surprises during Yahoo’s earnings conference call, but CEO Jerry Yang was spectacularly vague about the Internet company’s plans vis-a-vis Microsoft or any other potential tie-ups — with Google, Time Warner’s AOL or News Corp — that Yahoo has been working on.

At the very start of the call, Yang essentially said “Don’t go there” to analysts and investors, reminding them about the purpose of the call.

“I’d like to remind you that today’s call is about our Q1 results, so please direct your questions to the quarter if possible,” Yang said.

When he touched on Microsoft — referring to it as three months of “uncertainty” — it was to reiterate the same line: “Our board and management are committed to choosing a path to maximize shareholder value.”

At the same time, Yang was bent on convincing analysts and investors that, despite an unchanged revenue forecast for the year, Yahoo deserves a higher price than the $43 billion cash-and-stock deal that Microsoft has offered. Is that because Yahoo piggybacked on gains from a stake in China’s Alibaba.com to a higher quarterly profit? Or because Yang said Yahoo’s “strategies and investments are beginning to pay off”?

Not that analysts or investors were convinced. Most continue to believe that Yahoo’s earnings are unlikely to put pressure on Microsoft on raise its bid.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, meanwhile, said before the earnings, “I wish Yahoo all the success with its results, but it doesn’t affect the value of Yahoo to Microsoft.”

So where does that leave Yahoo now? Wednesday might offer some clues, when Yahoo’s two-week test on outsourcing search advertising to Google ends. Or it may not. Yahoo chairman Sue Decker already swatted hopes on the call, saying it’s “premature” to speculate on what sort of deal the two might strike.

Photo: Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang (Reuters)

News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch dominated headlines again on Tuesday as not one, but at least three news items rippled across the media world.

As shareholders of rival paper The New York Times assemble on Tuesday morning for its annual meeting held at the company’s glittering new headquarters near Times Square, Murdoch took steps to accelerate the remaking of the Wall Street Journal in his image. WSJ is set to announce today the resignation of its managing editor Marcus Brauchli, who is leaving 11 months into the job and just a few months following the closing of Murdoch’s $5 billion purchase of Dow Jones. Murdoch appointee and publisher Robert Thomson will take over the top editorial spot in the interim, according to news reports. 

Meanwhile, News Corp deal makers across town appear poised to reach a deal to relieve real estate magnate and Tribune Chief Sam Zell of his Newsday newspaper for about $580 million to create a joint venture to combine Murdoch’s New York Post and other assets with Tribune’s paper. The Newsday deal is expected to cut about $50 million in annual losses at the Post. 

Then, quietly, Murdoch left the door open to a possible joint bid with Microsoft to buy Yahoo during a question and answer session at an event in which he was honored. Brauchli, the New York Times reported, attended the same event in Washington DC.

(Time.com) (WSJ) (NYT) (Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman may be conspiring to eliminate CBS Chief Les Moonves. (New York Post )
• Bambi’s getting company. Disney launches a new nature film label, Disneynature. (Reuters)
• MySpace snubs Fox for NBC News in new political site. (Hollywood Reporter)

(Photo: Reuters)

UPDATE - Bloomberg told a press conference on Monday that he is not entering the newspaper business, saying:

“I am not a newspaper person.“

Could New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg someday become New York Times Publisher Michael Bloomberg? (pictured on left, with Pope Benedict)

While it’s not a new idea, most media outlets — present company included — are all abuzz over the idea, and it has been reported that aides are whispering to Bloomberg he should merge Bloomberg LP, the financial news organization he created, with the Times.

The new smolderings come as the paper’s parent company feels pressure from dissident shareholders to spark advertising sales and dump assets to bolster its share price.

The press excitement is partly fed by the wrestlemania-ish notion of a Bloomberg-run media empire tackling Rupert Murdoch’s media kingdom. Murdoch himself has made no secret about giving the Times a run for its audience with the beefed up political news now appearing in his Wall Street Journal.

The idea of Bloomberg-as-rescuer has been bandied about before, the Washington Post points out, by the likes of Jim Cramer, Michael Wolff, and others.

But with the clock ticking on Bloomberg’s political career — his mayoral stint ends next year, although he could still seek higher office — the New York Daily News notes that it remains unclear where he will “devote his managerial prowess and $11.5 billion fortune.”

For the record, the Times tells us the company’s controlling Ochs-Sulzberger clan still believes in its current capital structure as the best way to keep the paper independent and full of editorial integrity.

(New York Post)

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:

• USA Today publisher Gannett posted a drop in quarterly profit because of falling print advertising sales. (Reuters)
• Sumner Redstone’s Viacom will launch a premium TV and movie channel with Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, aiming a direct volley at Time Warner’s HBO as well as Redstone’s own Showtime networks owned by CBS. (Reuters)
• Deepak Nayar, behind such films as “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Bend it Like Beckham,” and Sandy Grushow, the former chairman of Fox Television Entertainment, are launching Filmaka (http://www.filmaka.com), a new kind of studio that uses the Web to cultivate the next great talents. (Reuters)
• MySpace promotes Jeff Berman to the new post of president of sales and marketing. His role as Fox Interactive Media’s social net’s ad sales came as part of a reorganization that decentralizes advertising. (PaidContent)

(Photo: Reuters)

News Corp jewel Fox Interactive Media (a.k.a the catchy “FIM”) made a late-night admission that its revenue might fall short of a $1 billion target for the current fiscal year.

The division that houses teen hangout MySpace is also revamping its advertising sales division to embrace a new technology that mines user profiles on the social network site to serve visitors more individually-tailored ads.

“We expect to be close to our target,” FIM said of its revenue for fiscal 2008. One company source said the timing of the new ad technology could be partly to blame for any shortfall.

This is not the first sign of trouble at the unit considered News Corp’s boldest play in the digital arena. As early as October, Rupert Murdoch downplayed expectations for MySpace revenue for fiscal 2008, while ad sales partner Google admitted in January that making money off of social networks (read: MySpace) was proving more difficult than even Larry Page and Sergey Brin could have anticipated.

Is that what made Yahoo so attractive?

(Reuters)

Keep an eye on:
* Microsoft and Yahoo senior executives met this week to discuss Microsoft’s proposal to acquire the Internet company but failed to resolve any of their differences. (WSJ)

* The dispute over the $20 billion leveraged buyout of U.S. radio operator Clear Channel will go to trial in New York as early as May 5. (Reuters)

* Mexico’s media giant Televisa starts production of its first Chinese language soap opera, as it looks to the Asian market for new business. (Reuters)

* HarperCollins is forming a new publishing group that will substitute profit-sharing with authors for cash advances and try to eliminate the costly practice of allowing booksellers to return unsold copies. (NYTimes)

(Photo of MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, via Reuters)

Rupert Murdoch made his name dominating global entertainment and media by paying big for what he calls the battering ram — exclusive rights to air sports programming in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Asia.

He’s now executing from the same playbook in Germany, Europe’s biggest television market, whose viewers are quite happy not paying for television unless it’s soccer.

Confirming a report in Der Spiegel, a source close the company tells us Murdoch’s News Corp aims to buy up to 23 percent of Germany’s biggest pay television provider Premiere AG to control a majority at the June 12 Premiere annual meeting. He previously held a 19.9 percent interest as of February and had stoked buyout speculation in January after an initial purchase of more than 14 percent in January.

The reason? Premiere stands a chance to land the rights to air Germany’s Bundesliga soccer games, up for auction this year. Murdoch’s deep pockets will come in handy to trounce rival bidders, experts say.

So critical are the rights to air the games to Premiere, the company scrapped its 2008 financial outlook after the auction, originally scheduled for late 2007, was delayed until early 2008.

Whatever it is that drives Rupert Murdoch’s offspring out of the businesses he owns may also bring them back.

Could Elisabeth Murdoch return to daddy’s fold? Sure, according to a glowing profile in the New York Times on Monday of Rupert Murdoch’s elder daughter from his second marriage.

Once ruled out as a possible heir to Murdoch’s News Corp global media empire after her 2000 departure from Murdoch-controlled BSkyB to strike out — quite successfully — on her own, she stirs speculation anew over a possible return … someday.

NYTimes: “Could I foresee a day going back to News Corp.?” she said. “Yes, I could. Do I know how, or when, or what shape that would take? No. I don’t really ever want to leave Shine. So I don’t know how it would happen one day, but it’s certainly not out of the cards.” 

Lachlan Murdoch, Murdoch’s elder son, also left his post as deputy chief operating officer of News Corp in 2005, and is also seeking out media investments.

Elisabeth explains why the apples never fall far from the tree: In growing up Murdoch, she said, “Media was never a choice. You either have it in your veins or you don’t have it in your veins. I couldn’t imagine why you would want to do anything else.”

Will James Murdoch, anointed the heir apparent after his return to News Corp last year to run its Asia and Europe operations, have competition?

(NYTimes)

Keep an eye on:  

• MySpace close to a deal with major record labels like Sony BMG and Warner over a digital music joint venture. (NYPost)
• CBS has nuked “Jericho,” the low-rated post-Armageddon drama that was briefly brought back from the dead by fan demand. (Hollywood Reporter/Reuters)
• The Wall Street Journal’s transition to more breaking news and shorter articles will continue in the coming weeks with a makeover of its Marketplace section. (NYTimes)
• Traditional media companies jumps on the vertical ad network bandwagon.(AP)