Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, is leaving the company in the fall to start a new venture with Barry Diller’s media and Internet company, IAC.
NBC has named Jeff Gaspin, chief operating officer of Universal Television Group, as chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment.
New Venture Hopes To Make Newspapers Money Online
Three veteran media executives have partnered to launch a company with the goal of helping struggling U.S. news papers and other traditional media make money online by charging readers for content.
Journalism Online says it " will quickly facilitate the ability of newspaper, a magazine and online publishers to realize revenue from the digital distribution of the original journalism they produce."
Google May Get Into Venture Capital
Google’s current market cap is a little over $151 billion, and so long as Jerry Yang’s not involved, that means the search giant can buy just about anything it wants. But there’s word that Google may take a more subtle approach to growth by creating a venture capital unit.
OSS Venture Capital & M&A
Many of you may have heard that Matthew Aslett is over at The 451 Group now.
Web 2.0 Expo: Venture Capital 2.0
A popular and very funny session today was the session entitled “Venture Capital 2.0: Bright Future or Broken Forever?”. This session was moderated by Mike Arrington of Techcrunch who is a former VC himself and current angel investor. It appeared like it could be boring listen to a bunch of venture capitalists talk, but Arrington did a very nice job spicing it up with well-timed insults and jokes.
A Citizen Media Venture
Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post is working on a “citizen media” venture with NewAssignment.net (which I wrote about in an earlier post), has an interesting perspective on the future of newspapers in a recent post.
Brightcove And Medialink Online Video Venture
Medialink, a producer and distributor of short form video and audio has announced it will use Brightcove Internet TV to distribute video content to its clients on the Web. The content produced by Medialink will contain source disclosure and contact details for users to learn more about products and services featured in the video clips.
Venture Firm Heavily Finances Heavy.com
Heavy.com an online video site catering to males 18-34 has closed a $20 million financing round from Polaris Venture Partners. This is the second round of funding from Polaris, which forked over $10 million to the company in early 2006. The funding will be used to broaden Heavy’s network globally and create new brands.
VON: Venture Capital And Leadership
Money. Startups need it, investors have it, and venture capital firms can bring them together. Though the prospect of composing a business plan and getting it in front of a VC might seem daunting, it could be well worth the effort.
$5.5m for Podcast Venture
Podcasting as a viable business venture takes another mainstream step with news that PodTech Network has received $5.5 million in venture capital funding from Venrock Associates, US Venture Partners, and Silicon Valley angel investors.