Major media giants to form joint venture for digital future, says WSJ
By Ross Miller 
posted December 7th 2009 10:29PM
posted December 7th 2009 10:29PM
News Corp, Time Inc., Condé Nast Publications Inc., Hearst Corp., and Meredith Corp. If this Wall Street Journal report is to be believed here, these five major media firms are preparing to announce a new joint venture tomorrow to "prepare print publications for a new generation of electronic readers and other digital devices." Details are a bit sketchy here, and what makes it more interesting / confounding is that many of these companies already have or have showcased separate initiatives, such as Hearst's Skiff and tablet demos from both Time and Condé Nast. We'll be eager to find out if there are any devices the group rallies behind (or even produces itself), but one thing's for sure: good old Rupert Murdoch will have something fun to say on the matter.
My only question is will it come with a cardboard cut-out arm of my very own?
In other words, the 5 largest publishers will be banding together to keep their content off 3rd party devices like the Kindle and Nook, and exclusively available on their own devices, where they can charge more and keep the content locked down.
@itchyeyes
Yeah what a bunch of wankers trying to be innovative and keep there businesses afloat by creating a new revenue stream because they know their current one is end-dated. You're completely right.
@Federaly - do you work for Murdoch?
Probably a GOOD thing. I want digital magazines and newspapers sooner rather than later. I'm done with wasting all that paper. And I'd much rather have a standard that hardware manufacturers can support which works across multiple devices, rather than a world where Microsoft and Apple and Amazon all have their own DRM's for digital works that are incompatible with each other.
But hey, lets see how this pans out.
@Fanfoot
Actually, just about everyone, with the exception of Amazon, seems to be coalescing around epub.
Unless the plan is to pull their heads out of their asses and embrace the web model, then there is no plan to succeed. Look at the lessons of history. You cant fly some harebrained scheme against the tide of the web and expect it to be successful.
These guys will continue to get beat down until they file for chapter 11 like ziff davis did recently.
Good luck "old school" publishing giants. The rain forest will be better off without you....
I see that Rupert Murdoch, billionaire tyrant, has struck again.
In other words, they are making their own tablet, goodbye Apple tablet.
Most people do not have enough pixels available to properly read a digital publication. We need roughly 1280x1600 pixels per page before people will enjoy a digital publication similar to a magazine.
Why so big? A magazine page could easily fit into half of that, which is what we have now. These publishers just need to work on making their publications better for a computer screen...something Engadget failed to do by introducing Times New Roman font with their new layout.
i dont read their magazines when im sitting in a waiting room and they are right there...
...what makes them think im going to buy this kinda stuff from them?
@harbingerofdoom
You may not like eating at Wendy's but they still have the right to stay open and serve other customers...
So they are jumping over Apple? Seems like this is the first time someone will beat them in their own innovation.
Could it be all those rumors we believed to be about Apple were about heir own efforts?
Interesting.
As mentioned, I don't read that crap now, no way in hell I'm going to pay for it and a crippled tablet.too.
These fools are going to die a slow, stupefying, agonizing death, they're the new General Motors.
What we all need are about 3-4 single purpose tablets/e-readers and a smartphone, notebook, desktop and a netbook, yeah, that's the ticket.
People are still consuming contents, they are just doing it on a engadget/gizmodo format. It's not very commuter friendly. I believe there is a big market for the colored ebook.
It could work every well if you can subscript comic through them. Well I would even pay for manga subscription.
haha. there are almost as many tag as there are words in the article.
At least they are making an effort. The music industry just hired lawyers.
Anybody else see the irony of this being on the WSJ, a partly subscription based news journal? Do these companies really think that a propriety piece of hardware will make people more willing to pay for news content?