AOL CEO: We still like TMZ and TMZ still likes us
AOL Chief Tim Armstrong has done several interviews with the press to mark the first 100 days in the role. In most of the articles he explains his focus on advertising primarily built around AOL’s collection of premium content brands.
No brand is more premium right now, in advertising terms, than TMZ.com, the Hollywood gossip website AOL jointly owns with Telepictures. Both AOL and Telepictures are units of Time Warner Inc.
TMZ is currently one of the hottest properties on the Web, especially after it was the first to break news of Michael Jackson’s death. In the Web advertising world it caused a bit of a stir by deciding to handle its own advertising sales rather than use the girth of AOL’s team.
Armstrong said he is not too concerned with TMZ’s strategy as such. He said he supports TMZ doing whatever is best for TMZ to make it even more successful.
In general, TMZ has become a fairly major brand. When brands get that big, having sole representation in the market potentially makes sense. For us, job No . 1 is for all our properties to be successful. I think we would be very enthusiastic for TMZ to have the most successful outcome. We’re not sensitive about what TMZ wants to do for the ad sales.
What is less clear, though, is TMZ’s future ownership. It might become wholly owned by AOL, which is currently building up it content sites with recent acquisitions such as MMAFighting.com and Patch Media. This is all Armstrong would say for now:
As we separate from Time Warner, TMZ is one of the areas that needs to be discussed.
TMZ got the scoop, will it see the money?
Time Warner-owned celebrity news website TMZ may have been first in reporting the death of Michael Jackson, but is all the buzz around the site going to turn into cash?
It’s a question the LA Times asks in this article, pointing out that the Jackson scoop — the biggest in TMZ’s history — comes at a time when the TMZ’s tactics and “tabloid sensibilities” have angered publicists and government officials, made other journalists reluctant to cite TMZ, and even caused advertisers to shy away from putting their messages on the site.
In a piece last Friday, The New York Times’ Brian Stelter pointed out that even though TMZ looks good because it beat all rivals with the Jackson news, the “Jackson family said the time of death was 5:26 p.m. Eastern, several minutes after TMZ’s report, leading some to wonder whether the Web site looked accurate only in hindsight.”
TMZ editor-in-chief Harvey Levin told the Times their report was 100 percent accurate. He also said the site pays “tip fees” that lead to stories, but did not say whether they paid any sources for the Jackson news.
As the LA Times story by Scott Collins and Meg James says, one of the reasons why the site makes people — especially other reporters — uncomfortable is “a sense that TMZ is flouting not so much the law as journalistic ethics. Rivals have consistently accused Levin and company of paying for information.”
So despite the site’s record of getting big celebrity news and the claims that TMZ’s scoop represents the triumph of new media over old, it’s not immediately clear that Time Warner will begin to make a ton of money off this asset. TMZ is a joint venture between AOL and Telepictures.
Keep an eye on:
I loved TMZ untill last night. I feel they need not partake in destroying M.J.’s children.They are inocent and greiving.
Could Google buy Twitter? Ask Arrington, then ask Swisher
******We sprinkled updates into this blog. We’re highlighting them like this.******Thanks to TechCrunch, U.S. tech reporters are about to spend another weekend working instead of playing. UPDATE: Or maybe Kara Swisher at All Things D will save them!******Two sources told proprietor Michael Arrington that Google “is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter.” He wrote:***
We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.
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Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.
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Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game.
******Later, he updated his entry to say that another source told him talks are at an early stage and could amount to a deal to build a Google real-time search engine. Who knows how this one will shake out. Web operations like Twitter can’t get popular without people starting to fit puzzle pieces together to see which company ought to buy them. That might be why The San Francisco Business Times picked up Wired and Industry Standard founder John Battelle’s blog entry that Twitter would go to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for $750 million. Turns out it was an April Fool’s joke.******Then Swisher at All Things D said this:***
Twitter has to (and will) get a lot more than $250M.Robert:I see your story on this topic at http://www.reuters.com/article/technolog yNews/idUSTRE5322A220090403How come you didn’t cross-link to this blog entry? I think that would have been useful to readers who may want to join the discussion on that topic here.
