In This Update:
• Microsoft Buys Start-Up With Ties to Executive
• PBS to Shorten Time Commitments for Sponsorships
• Dolans Explore Splitting Cablevision
• Moonves: ‘Early Signs’ Of Improving Ad Market; No Impact From ABC-Hulu
• From MIT Blackjack Team to Amazon Acquisition: The Lexcycle Story
• CBS Expanding Original Web Video for New Personal Finance Site
• Swedish Internet Traffic Still Down Almost 50%
• Hulu Gets International Content (But Not Distribution, Yet)
• Heard: Amazon Demands 70 Percent of Kindle Newspaper Revenues
• Study: Web-To-TV In 24 Million U.S. Homes By 2013
• Analyst: Google Will Be Worth $200 Billion In A Year
• Warner Music Halting Venture Capital Investments
• OpenTable Files Terms For IPO; Looking To Raise Almost $40 Million
• Report: U.S. Hedge Funds Face Regulatory Tsunami

Sponsored by:
McCarter & English, LLP
The law firm of new media. Major offices in New York, Boston, Newark, Stamford, and other cities. Advising new media companies from start-up to exit. Venture capital, IP protections and disputes, employment matters, outsourcing, joint ventures, acquisitions, to name just a few. Contact

Microsoft Buys Start-Up With Ties to Executive
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Microsoft Corp. agreed to acquire a videogame start-up co-founded and partly owned by Don Mattrick, the executive who runs Microsoft’s videogame business. The Redmond, Wash., company said the purchase of BigPark Inc., a Vancouver-based company that is staffed by veterans from Electronic Arts Inc., will give Microsoft control of a new game that BigPark is developing exclusively for the company’s Xbox 360 game console. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Source>

PBS to Shorten Time Commitments for Sponsorships
NEW YORK TIMES
COMPANIES will soon be able to sponsor some PBS programs for as little as one week at a time, rather than a full year. Feeling the pinch of marketing budgets, public television stations are being forced to be more creative when they approach corporate underwriters. This week the Sponsorship Group for Public Television, a sales organization for the Boston station WGBH and other producers, said it would encourage companies to underwrite children’s shows like “Arthur” and “Clifford” for as little as a single week or as many as 10 weeks this summer.
Source>

Dolans Explore Splitting Cablevision
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Cablevision Systems Corp. set off a wave of speculation about its future after it said it was considering spinning off its Madison Square Garden unit. Investors tried to determine whether the move might set up the sale of the company’s core cable business to a larger operator, a move many investors and analysts have seen as the likely endgame for the company’s controlling Dolan family. Cablevision’s announcement about the possible spinoff got more attention than the company’s strong quarterly results reported Thursday. “The dream here is that the Dolan family will consolidate their interest into Madison Square Garden, putting Cablevision into play,” said Craig Moffett, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Source>

Moonves: ‘Early Signs’ Of Improving Ad Market; No Impact From ABC-Hulu
PAIDCONTENT
Add CBS CEO Leslie Moonves to the growing of media execs seeing signs of hope as the second quarter of 2009 hits the midpoint. Moonves told analysts on the company’s Q1 earnings call that CBS is “seeing early signs of improvement in the advertising market place both locally and nationally. You have heard these themes from other major media companies and we are seeing it as well.” One sign: “In each of the last several weeks, we have seen sales pacing improve. It is premature to call it a full recovery, but the trends are encouraging particularly as we look to the back half of the year.”
Source>

From MIT Blackjack Team to Amazon Acquisition: The Lexcycle Story
XCONOMY
Neelan Choksi says he has an “addictive personality.” That might explain why he carefully orders an orange juice at the espresso bar, while I jack up my caffeine intake with another 12-ounce latte. We’re sitting at the Espresso Vivace in South Lake Union on a quintessentially rainy Seattle afternoon in early May. Choksi’s company, Lexcycle, has just been bought by Amazon, and he’s in town doing some house-hunting. Lexcycle (pronounced like the word “lexical”) makes the e-book reader application Stanza for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and desktop. The three-man startup is based in Austin, TX, and Portland, OR. Interestingly, Choksi says that just a year ago, he barely knew anything about the e-book industry. Let’s just say the man has gotten up to speed fast. How did he do it? It turns out Choksi has always been a remarkably fast learner, and the twists and turns of his career to date are already enough to fill a how-to book on entrepreneurship.
Source>

CBS Expanding Original Web Video for New Personal Finance Site
BEET.TV
SAN FRANCISCO — Launched last month, online personal finance destination CBSMoneyWatch.com is fast increasing its video in by creating original programming and integrating more financial-related content from the CBS News and its affiliate stations, network executives say. CBS is currently building a set and studio for MoneyWatch at its 28th Street offices in New York and site’s Jill Schlesinger, editor-at-large, will start producing daily segments, said Stephen Howard-Sarin, VP CBS Interactive Business Network, during an interview with Beet.TV at the CBS Interactive headquarters in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Source>

Swedish Internet Traffic Still Down Almost 50%
ZEROPAID
It’s been a little over two months now since Sweden passed legislation allowing copyright holders to petition courts to force ISPs to turn over the personal information of suspected file-sharers via an IP address. Immediately after the law took effect on April 1st Internet traffic plunged from almost 200Gbps to 110Gbps. One Swedish ISP voiced his displeasure with the drop and I’m sure he’s not alone. “Half the Internet is gone,” said Jon Karlung, chief executive of Banhof. “If this pattern keeps up, it means the extensive broadband network we’ve built will lose its significance.”
Source>

Hulu Gets International Content (But Not Distribution, Yet)
NEWTEEVEE
UK shows from Endemol and Digital Rights Group as well as Bollywood films from Saavn are coming to Hulu, according to reports and press releases today. Many would-be Hulu watchers are hoping on international deals of a different sort, ones that would enable Hulu content to be available outside the U.S. The company says that’s on its way, but in the meantime, Hulu is cracking down on people who use workarounds to watch internationally, something some of our readers are blaming on Jackson’s story earlier this week. Hulu’s Andy Forssell told the Financial Times the company is “laying the groundwork” for local launches in six to eight of the leading global broadcast markets.
Source>

Heard: Amazon Demands 70 Percent of Kindle Newspaper Revenues
PULSE2
During a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing on the future of newspapers, James Moroney, CEO of the Dallas Morning News, said that Amazon demands 70% of subscription revenue from news papers. Here is his comment: “The Kindle, which I think is a marvelous device, the best deal Amazon will give the Dallas Morning News-and we’ve negotiated this up to the last two weeks-they want 70 percent of the subscriptions revenue. I get 30 percent, they get 70 percent. On top of that they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device. Now is that a business model that is going to work for newspapers?”
Source>

Study: Web-To-TV In 24 Million U.S. Homes By 2013
MEDIABUYER PLANNER
The number of U.S. broadband households accessing web-to-TV content will leap to 24 million and generate $2.9 billion in revenue from streaming services by 2013, according to a new report by tech research firm In-Stat. Already, nearly 30% of those in the 25-34 demo use game consoles to view streaming video from the internet, but soon, web-enabled TVs and set-top boxes will begin to take the place of game consoles as the main vehicle for accessing web video content, according to the report.
Source>

Analyst: Google Will Be Worth $200 Billion In A Year
PAIDCONTENT
Forget about the fact that Google’s revenue-per-click dropped 7 percent in the first quarter of this year. That’s all going to change, says Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay. In a report, he says the company’s revenue per click will rocket back and be growing at a 15-percent clip by the beginning of 2010. Part of that turnaround will be thanks to a rebound in the economy starting in the fourth quarter of this year, he says, But also, Google’s search advertising is sold in a real-time auction, which means it should recover before display advertising, which is typically sold by salespeople who negotiate ad contracts four to six weeks before the ads are placed on a publisher’s site.
Source>

Warner Music Halting Venture Capital Investments
DIGITALMEDIAWIRE
New York – Major label Warner Music Group has shelved plans for any future venture capital investments in the digital space, after it has to write off $33 million against investments in streaming music services Lala and imeem, PaidContent reported, citing CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s comments to analysts on a conference call. “We do not intend to make more digital venture capital investments. The intention was to (invest in) young companies pursuing innovative business models. Some of these digital venture capital investments have not met expectations. It makes sense to recognize the very different valuations these companies are receiving in the current economic environment,” said Bronfman.
Source>

OpenTable Files Terms For IPO; Looking To Raise Almost $40 Million
PAIDCONTENT
OpenTable, the restaurant-reservation site, set the terms for its IPO in an SEC filing today. OpenTable is looking to sell about three million shares (or some 15 percent of the company) for a range of between $12 and $14 a share, which values the company at about $260 million. The company’s management says it owns about half of the shares that would be sold in the public offering. After management’s portion of the funds raised are deducted and legal and banking fees are subtracted, the company says it would net about $16 million in cash, which it will use to fund operations.
Source>

Report: U.S. Hedge Funds Face Regulatory Tsunami
NEW YORK TIMES
The biggest regulatory changes since the 1930s are bearing down on the U.S. securities and investment industry, and many firms are ill-prepared, according to a new study by research firm TowerGroup. From derivatives and hedge funds to capital standards and short selling, the range of issues “encompasses almost every line of business and every functional area,” TowerGroup senior research director Dushyant Shahrawat told Reuters. Business models will adapt or perish in the new order, which regulators aim to make more transparent, accountable and globally consistent, according to the report released on Thursday.
Source>

Tags: ABC, Amazon, Boston, Broadband, Cablevision, Dish, EMC, Google, Hulu, IAB, Intel, iPhone, IPO, Kindle, Local, Marvel, Microsoft, Music, New York, New York Times, Newspapers, NYT, Orange, Reuters, San Francisco, Seattle, SEC, Set-top Boxes, TV, UK, Venture, Venture Capital, Video, Warner Music, Web Video, WSJ, XBox 360