NBCUniversal is shutting down Television Without Pity and DailyCandy, affecting 67 employees. According to Kara Swisher of Re/code, it’s unclear whether staffers for either website will be offered new assignments or laid off.
Boycott the BBC, for Unity!
In your unified Friday media column: a strike at the BBC, Daily Candy's editor is out, Forbes debuts its "sponsored blog," and Jon Friedman has but one wish.
DailyCandy Sours on Most of Its Cities
DailyCandy is eliminating the special editions for seven of its twelve cities, according to an internal memo we've obtained, resulting in almost as many layoffs. NBC Universal, take heed: Even inside Comcast's profitable umbrella, no one is safe from cutbacks.
• ABC has offered George Stephanopoulos the job of Good Morning America co-host and "intensive negotiations" are now reportedly underway. [WP]
• More on how the deal to hand over control of NBC to Comcast came together; and more on how the deal will be viewed by regulators in Washington.
• Oprah won't be hosting her…
Barry Diller's Not-So-Exclusive 'Very Short List'
Very Short List has been a favorite bauble of Barry Diller since the IAC chief established it nearly three years ago, after failing to buy Daily Candy. He envisioned VSL as a smart, tidy newsletter. But it looks worrisomely distended.
Brüno, Bar & Barneys
• Photos of Sacha Baron Cohen (as Brüno) and Alessandra Ambrosio from the new issue of British Marie Claire are now online, if you're interested. Or, if you prefer, you can take a gander at a nude Bar Refaeli on the cover of Esquire. [Marie Claire, Esquire]
• After many months of hemming and hawing, it looks like…
Plunging Profits at Disney, Mort's Plan to Save Papers
• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington…
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…
Dany Levy Is Richer Than You Think
Daily Candy, the email newsletter for women who like to buy things, was improbably successful. Former journalist Dany Levy founded it in 2000; it quickly became profitable, and she sold a controlling stake in the business to the private investment firm Pilot Group in 2003 for $3.5 million. Pilot Group sold the…
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]
AMI, Sirius, and the NYT
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+…
Who's Buying Daily Candy?
Daily Candy, the email newsletter for women addicted to expensive handbags, has been on sale for more than two years. But word is that the highly profitable internet property-founded by Dany Levy but now controlled by former MTV and AOL boss Bob Pittman-is finally about to find a buyer. Details, anyone?
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.…
Bob Pittman Will Buy You Now
Taking up an austere few thousand square feet on Madison Avenue are the offices of the Pilot Group, a shadowy private investment firm run by Robert Pittman, the poor sap who took the fall for the AOL/Time-Warner merger. Of course, they're not really shadowy, just secretive and private and investy, and Bob Pittman is…
