Bob Pittman
Who: Once a high-flying media mogul—he was one of the founders of MTV and later served as the No. 3 at AOL Time Warner—these days Pittman spends his time investing in Internet start-ups as the founder of the Pilot Group.
Happy Birthday
Sienna Miller turns 28 today. Denzel Washington is turning 55. John Legend is 31. Gayle King turns 55. Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers is turning 36. Judge Alvin Hellerstein is 76. Media tycoon Phil Anschutz is 70. Former AOL exec turned new media investor Bob Pittman is turning 56. Artist Robert Storr is 60. South…
• Rupert Murdoch and John Malone are "interested" in a deal with NBC Universal, but have yet to pick up the phone and do anything about it. [THR]
• Condé Nast cut sales staff at W and Vanity Fair today and proved that no one is safe by dismissing the wife of a Newhouse family member. Some good news: magazines are…
Splits at the NYO and MySpace; Viacom's New Channel
• Chris DeWolfe is out as the CEO of News Corp.-owned MySpace. [CNN]
• More on Peter Kaplan's split from Jared Kushner's Observer, and the rumor Kaplan is now heading to Condé Nast Traveler. [NYT, WWD, DHD]
• ABC has renewed 12 series, including Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate…
CNN's Ratings Plunge, Obama on Leno
• Further evidence CNN's Jon Klein should start polishing his resume: The network continues to trail Fox News, MSNBC, and Headline News. [Portfolio]
• Obama's performance on The Tonight Show will keep people talking for awhile (and not in a good way, clearly), but the ratings were huge. [Time, THR]
• The April issue…
The Diminishing Returns of Populist Outrage
Everyone's mad about banks spending bailout money! It's outrageous that anyone would take taxpayers cash and then actually use it. These whiffs of populism are like nitrous — a brief thrill that accomplishes nothing.
Happy Birthday
Author/humorist David Sedaris turns 52 today. Jared Leto is 37. CNN's Candy Crowley is 60. AOL chief Randy Falco is 55. Senator Evan Bayh is 53. America's Most Wanted's John Walsh is 63. Chris Daughtry is 29. And record producer (and possible murderer) Phil Spector celebrates his 68th today. Weekend birthdays after…
Did A Friend Swindle Daily Candy's Founder?
No one will shed tears for Dany Levy. The Daily Candy founder made close to $25 million, by our calculations, on the sale of her email shopping newsletter to Comcast. But former AOL honcho Bob Pittman's Pilot Group took the lion's share of the $125 million windfall, after paying Levy and her family investors just $3.5…
DailyCandy deal sweet for Pittman, bitter for employees
Selling DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million, Bob Pittman earned a 36x return on his 2003 $3.5 million acquisition of the company. Pretty sweet. But investors who bought into the company during its last funding round in 2006, and any employees who joined the the email newsletter for women since then, didn't do…
DailyCandy sold to Comcast for $125 million
In selling DailyCandy to Comcast for $125 million, Bob Pittman has notched a 36x return on the email newsletter he bought in 2003 for $3.5 million. We had heard that Comcast was trying to get it for $75 million, marking sharp dealmanship by Pittman to get the higher price. The long-rumored deal has done much to…
The Rehabilitation Of Bob Pittman
It is one of the wonders of America, that business celebrities like junk-bond salesman Michael Milken can be disgraced and then redeemed, often within the span of a decade. Tarnished former media mogul and social climber, Bob Pittman, has secured the first big payday of his new career as an internet investor: his …
Comcast Enters the Lipstick Advice Market
DailyCandy, the girly e-newsletter founded by Dany Levy and acquired by Bob Pittman's Pilot Group for $3 million in 2003, has changed hands: Henry Blodget's Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Comcast has picked up the company for $125 million. [SAI]
DailyCandy is for sale, but Comcast might need more than $75 million
Former AOL boss Bob Pittman's Pilot Group Ventures is rumored to have sold its popular email list DailyCandy to Comcast for $75 million. We're not so sure. DailyCandy is for sale — we hear Pittman's lieutenants have acted like absentee landlords during site's redesign — but that if sold, "it would be for much much…
Daily Candy Sold?
Did Bob Pittman sell Dany Levy's email newsletter, Daily Candy, to cable giant Comcast for $75 million? That's the rumor. [Gawker]
Daily Candy To Comcast For $75 Million?
We heard last week that Daily Candy, the email newsletter for lady shopaholics, was about to be sold. Now digital PR man Adam Isserlis is floating the name of the rumored acquirer: Comcast, one of the two consumer-unfriendliest companies in America! The rumored price is $75 million, a bit below the $100 million+…
Disney acquires San Francisco green-living site IdealBite
The House of Mouse has swallowed San Francisco-based tips-for-living-green site IdealBite for $15 million. Heather Stephenson and Jennifer Boulden founded the site in 2005 and later took funding from former AOL exec Bob Pittman, who's also known for backing email lists Daily Candy and Thrillist. Expect more…
DailyCandy backer overheard in sale talks with Yahoo
Will one-time AOL exec Bob Pittman sell email newsletter DailyCandy to Yahoo? That's what DailyCandy execs are said to have discussed over dinner last week at the Village Restaurant in New York. Ben Lerer, publisher of Thrillist, another online publication backed by Pittman, told us he's heard no talk of a sale.…
Madison Avenue's revenge: New ad boss is AOL's seventh since 2001
When new AOL ad boss Lynda Clarizio replaced Curt Viebranz, his head was the sixth to roll at AOL since 2001. Viebranz followed Myer Berlow, Robert Friedman, Robert Sherman, Lisa Brown and Michael Kelly. Three lasted less than a year. None of them succeeded, according to Bits, because AOL's reputation on Madison…
Bob Pittman
A high-flying media mogul—he was one of the founders of MTV and later served as the No. 3 at AOL Time Warner—he's currently the CEO of Clear Channel Communications.
VCs sink big money into spammy Facebook games
The first gold-rush miners to make any money during the 1840s were the ones who stopped digging and started selling shovels, according to Timesman Brad Stone. Today a similar operation from Mark Pincus, Tribe.net founder and early Facebook investor, announced $10 million in funding from Union Square Ventures, Peter…
