Gordon in the morning: Biting the hand

What might the world look like when the split of News Corporation's publishing and broadcasting businesses take place?

Perhaps it will be a world where The Sun doesn't spend all its time cheering on everything that happens on Sky.

It might actually look a bit like the kicking given to that awful Rihanna fashion thing over on Sky Living:

RIHANNA’S telly career has got off to a rocky start after ratings for her much-hyped new fashion series fell to just 79,000.

Thousands have turned off Styled To Rock — executively produced by the singer and featuring wannabe designers competing to create a festival outfit for her.

Fronted by Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts, it has bagged big name guests including Kanye West, Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry.

But three episodes in and it’s not rocking the ratings.

The Sky Living show started with an overnight viewing figure of just 95,000 — down on the channel’s usual audience of 153,000.

It fell to 79,000 for the second episode before perking up a bit to 110,000 for this week’s instalment on Tuesday.

That's deputy TV editor Leigh Holmwood, who doubles down the chutzpah by slapping an "exclusive" on the story.

There'll be praise for the licence fee next. Alright, maybe not that.

Beyond Oblivion lives up to its name

Fair enough, QTrax. You're no longer the least together of the high-profile music streaming services. There's a new kid in town, tripping over its own feet. Or rather, there isn't, as Beyond Oblivion has folded before launching.

It managed to burn through over fifty million quid, including some from News Corporation. But didn't stream a single track to a single consumer.

Kidron said in a statement to the Daily Telegraph: "Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial, reflecting the breadth of the rights required to create a true digital music one-stop."

Well, it certainly did the stopping bit.

News Corp finds potential buyer for MySpace pig-in-a-poke

It looks like Rupert Murdoch has found a shoulder to take most of the effort of shoring up MySpace: a shadowy investment group which may or may not include Bobby Kotick is apparently the only bidder left in the game. Mr Murdoch's All Things D reckons Kotick - who is not wearing his Activision CEO hat for this one - and his other investors will take on 80 per cent of the declining property for a figure much lower than the USD100million that News Corp were pretending it might be worth.

Apparently the deal could still "fall apart" at any moment - perhaps if the shadowy investors suddenly go "hang about - MySpace isn't the one with the Like button and Farmville at all, is it?"

MySpace: It's not only Murdoch's newspapers that makes stuff up

Obviously, as Rupert Murdoch attempts to drag whatever money he can out of the MySpace storm drain, there's going to be a certain level of positive thinking put on the pitch. But now that Techcrunch has seen how far the brave face is being put on, the mystery is why they don't go the whole hog and try and pretend to a hapless tourist/businessman that they're going to sell them Facebook:

After 2011 the pitch book turns to pure fiction. After losing $165 million this year, they expect to actually have $15 million in ebitda in fiscal 2012. How? Revenue will decrease to $84 million, but expenses will fall from $274 million this year to just $69 million. The company will then be profitable, says the pitch book.

That means about $205 million would need to be found in operating cost savings in the next 14 months. That means even more massive layoffs. And yet somehow News Corp. argues that revenue will only fall 23% in the next year. Costs will decrease 75%, and revenue will fall just 23%.

Believable? Nope. But at least on paper it makes MySpace profitable.

I'm sure they've got some solid evidence to back this up, though. Perhaps it's "a pal of Rupert Murdoch says". Or simply "a source".

MySpace up for sale from Wednesday, says corporate sibling

The Wall Street Journal's All Things D reckons that, given that nobody is showing much interest, the process of dumping MySpace into the marketplace will start midweek.

In any case, whoever buys Myspace needs a lot of patience, which seems to have run out at News Corp., where top execs take turns bashing it to shareholders.

That’s no surprise. After a laudable though glacial redesign as a music and entertainment hub last fall, traffic has declined 44 percent in a recent month from a year ago, to 37.7 million unique visitors in the U.S.

Worse still, the News Corp. unit that houses Myspace showed an operating loss of $156 million in the recent quarter, mostly related to a severe drop-off of advertising revenue at the site.

That plunge in fortunes will surely have an impact on the price buyers are willing to pay for the once iconic brand.

It's possible that the end result will be a partnership with NewsCorp - which is like having joint ownership of a hungry but unlovable dog which used to be a really cute puppy.

Or they'll just give the site to the first person to renew their Times digital subscription. Anything could happen.

MySpace continues to drain Murdoch's pockets

You could almost feel sorry for Rupert, as between the takeover referals, and the Sky Sexism, and the ruling on EU sports bundles, and The Daily being a pointless cash-drain, and everything.

Obviously, what with him being all Blofeldy, it's actually impossible to feel sympathy. But look: Here's more misery for him, as MySpace loses $275million in a quarter:

News Corp. COO Chase Carey told analysts,

"The new MySpace has been very well received by the market and we have some very encouraging metrics. But the plan to allow MySpace to reach its full potential may be best achieved under a new owner."

"Yeah, nice little runner this MySpace" he continued, walking round it and kicking the wheels. "You interested in buying it? We could do a deal. I mean, obviously there's a lot of interest, and with something like this it'll go quickly, so don't hang around. I'll throw in The Daily, too, sweeten the deal."

Murdoch's team looks at watch as MySpace relaunches

The big MySpace relaunch - which we think was probably the fourth or fifth time they've announced that they're now a music and entertainment site - has been more or less undermined by deep sighs from News Corp:

Chase Carey, News Corp's president, said the company was clear that MySpace "is a problem" after quarterly losses in its digital and other activities widened by $30m to $156m (£97m).

MySpace, now well overtaken by Facebook in popularity, has been relaunched as a music and entertainment network, but Carey – deputising for an absent Rupert Murdoch on a results conference call – said that "traffic numbers are still not going in the right direction". He warned that the site's performance was something "we judge in quarters, not in years".

Most observers seem pretty agreed that the current relaunch is MySpace's last throw of the dice; it can't be helping them that their family is stood at the side of the craps table yelling "you don't know what you're doing, we'll be out in the car waiting to drive you home in five minutes."

The real problem is for this MySpace to work, it's going to need to be fed with content by bands and other creative people. But if you were looking for a home for your content, and to build a relationship with fans, why would you throw your lot in with a social networking site whose owners can't even think of anything positive to say about it to investors?

News Corp screws musicians as Imeem debts dumped

Rupert Murdoch is fond of lecturing on morality - The Sun, John Gaunt, Fox News, it's all about telling people about what they believe to be right. And wrong.

How about deliberately cutting lose thousands of musicians from their payments? Where does that sit on the morality wheel? Because that's what the News Corp MySpace takeover of Imeem, as Hypebot reports:

MySpace only bought some of imeem's assets and assumed none of its mounting debts. Included in those unpaid debts were money owed to the 110,000 artists who used imeem owned SnoCap to sell there music on the web on a number of sites including imeem and MySpace itself.

Classy - not just dumping people who thought they'd made a few dollars through Imeem, but people who'd used MySpace official sales platform to sell songs, only for MySpace to diddle them out the money they'd earned.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Murdoch buys iLike

Sometime while Location Location Location was on, it was confirmed that MySpace had struck a deal to buy iLike.

Now, ultimately this makes iLike part of Rupert Murdoch's empire - which is interesting in itself, because while Rupert believes that newspapers online will have to charge or fade away, another part of his empire is investing heavily in a property which doesn't have charging its users as part of its business plan. Not much clarity of vision as to the future of the web over at News Corp, is there?

What's equally interesting: this is MySpace that has bought iLike. Not MySpace Music - you'd cautiously suggest this as a sign that the team in charge at MySpace are starting to think their current music spin-off isn't working.

What's also equally interesting is that iLike is strongest not on MySpace, but on Facebook. It'll be interesting to see how thrilled Facebook will be with one of their more popular apps falling into the hands of their rivals.

MySpace remains Murdoch's space

More grim news for the major labels. When MySpace Music launched, the labels gambled against taking a big cash payment upfront, settling instead for an equity share. They believed that News Corp would swiftly spin-off the service through a share deal, and suddenly the equity slice would be worth massive money.

Trouble is, News Corp has thunk again, and is thinking that the messy business of trying to sell MySpace Music as something distinct from MySpace is too much effort and, with a billion tracks already streamed from the service, there doesn't seem to be much point in flogging off a goose when they don't need any help getting it to lay golden eggs.

Sure, labels still have their equity stake - but if they were expecting to be able to cash it in for massive sums, they're going to be disappointed.

Someone else who won't be too thrilled: Facebook, who are currently trying to cook up a Facebook Music service. It seems unlikely the labels will be keen to play the same, cheap hand a second time; not while their fingers are still burning. Music on Facebook is going to cost the company a big wedge.

Universal pulls NIN remix site

Plans for a Nine Inch Nails fan remix site have had to be pulled, as Universal records had a legal panic that it might torpedo their case against Google, as Trent Reznor wearily explains:

My former record company and current owner of all these master files, Universal, is currently involved in a lawsuit with other media titans Google (YouTube) and News Corp (MySpace). Universal is contending that these sites do not have what is referred to as "safe harbor" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and therefore are in copyright violation because users have uploaded music and video content that is owned by Universal. Universal feels that if they host our remix site, they will be opening themselves up to the accusation that they are sponsoring the same technical violation of copyright they are suing these companies for. Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn't own - a "mash-up", a sample, whatever - and upload it to the site, there is no safe harbor under the DMCA (according to Universal) and they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing. This behavior may get hauled out in court and impact their lawsuit. Because of this they no longer will host our remix site, and are insisting that Nine Inch Nails host it. In exchange for this they will continue to let me upload my Universal masters and make them available to fans, BUT shift the liability of hosting them to me. Part of the arrangement is having user licenses that the fans sign (not unlike those on MySpace or You Tube) saying they will not use unauthorized materials. If they WERE to do such a thing, everybody sues everybody and the world abruptly ends.

While I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution, it is consistent with what they have done in the past. So... we are challenged at the last second to find a way of bringing this idea to life without getting splashed by the urine as these media companies piss all over each other’s feet. We have a cool and innovative site ready to launch but we're currently scratching our heads as to how to proceed.

So, rather than embrace the chance to try and do something new, Universal have been forced to cling to the legally unworkable belief that the hosts are responsible for the use made of their site in the hope of getting a few quid out of Google. It's all a bit pathetic.