Cablevision bet big on synergy (and ignored the CW about the newspaper industry) when it bought Newsday from Tribune Co. last summer for $650 million. Today, less than eight months later, it concedes that it has written off $402 million of that investment (a significantly worse investment than Stephen Marbury of Cablevision’s Knicks).
Whether the [...]
Monthly Archives: February 2009
Cablevision Still Bullish on Newsday Synergies, Despite Huge Write-Offs
February 27, 2009 – 12:30 am
Sears Launches ServiceLive.com, a Leads Site
February 24, 2009 – 10:37 pm
Sears will try to leverage its identity with home improvement and repair with ServiceLive, a new leads provider for service pros that is being pitted against ServiceMagic, Angie’s List, DoneRight and others. The tagline for the service, which begins a marketing campaign next week, is “Your price. Your time. Your way.”
Its basic concept [...]
Entrepreneur Watch:Cazoodle Crawls Vertical Listings
February 24, 2009 – 4:44 am
Cazoodle, a new listings-based service, has launched from the incubator at The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (yes, Marc Andreeson’s former territory). The site currently crawls for apartment listings and shopping. Additional vertical categories such as events are anticipated, notes Professor Kevin Chang, who is supervising seven graduate students on the project. “We have the [...]
AOL Adds Classifieds; Partners with Oodle
February 23, 2009 – 9:51 pm
AOL Local has teamed with Oodle to launch AOL Classifieds in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, AOL is launching a U.K. classifieds site at the end of the week. Oodle aggregates listings from more than 250 partner sites (including MySpace, Facebook and WalMart).
The timing might be especially useful for used person-to-person goods, as people [...]
ESPN to Launch Local Chicago Website
February 23, 2009 – 8:08 pm
ESPN, which is 80 percent owned by Disney, and 20 percent owned by Hearst, has been a leader in verticalizing its brand and content, with dozens of properties covering everything from the core network to ESPN Desportes to the retail stores. Websites and online radio have played prominently in the vertical mix.
Now The Wall [...]
Local.com Revamps Site; Profitability Expected by E.O.Y.
February 20, 2009 – 11:47 pm
Local.com has made its first substantive changes to the site in over a year. CEO Heath Clarke says the changes make it easier to find all the varied content on the local portal. It will also make it easier for the site to add more data to profiles and incorporate user generated content, such as [...]
Los Angeles Times Debuts ‘Mapping LA’
February 20, 2009 – 12:12 am
The Los Angeles Times today debuted “Mapping LA,” an online effort to map 87 distinctive neighborhoods in the sprawling Southland. For the paper, the designation of neighborhoods goes beyond civic duties. Not only does it intend to base news stories around them, but hyperlocal marketing, advertising and blogging efforts as well.
The initial cut of Mapping [...]
