News Corp’s HarperCollins And CBS’ Simon & Schuster In Merger Talks: WSJ

COMMENTS (2)

• I think that it is a very bad idea for the Redstones to consider selling Simon and Schuster to Murdoch now. He’s obviously pursuing market share before the other shoe drops in his legal woes. It’s a fine company and worth keeping indefinitely. Murdoch buys Simon and Schuster he buys Bob Woodward for instance. Wait a while and see what happens. In theory consolidation will be good for book publishing. In fact it will be bad for books and understanding through quality reading unencumbered by any political agenda except the pursuit of truth be it quality fiction or non-fiction.

  Comment by Joseph Wally — Wednesday November 21, 2012 @ 12:09am PST  Reply to this post

• Does nobody else see the obvious? WSJ reporting on the talks tips the negotiating advantage to Murdoch. (And did it happen without S. and S.’s – or Viacom’s – tacit understanding that it was going to happen exploiting something that S. and S. doesn’t own – the news of the business day? Did they have the full knowledge and consent of Viacom in other words? Indirectly, subtly, it exercises a textual and editorial impact of “60 Minutes” too if you look at his current P.R. interests. The merger would blunt any potential Murdoch-damning synergies between CBS News and S. and S.)

  Murdoch-owned property sweetens Murdoch-pursued deal through control of terms of the story as Milly Dowler perception and in the Wall Street Journal.

  Now you know that it’s true Rupee…can I get a biased ejaculatory Tweet?

  “Charles Foster Kanes Gone Wild!”

  When is a conflict-of-interest not a conflict-of-interest? When the tactical advantage of no global oversight through the ruthless implementation of power and ambition make acquiescence to conflict-of-interest a foregone conclusion of federal regulatory dysfunction which you then use to your advantage as the perquisites of conglomerate ownership globally not nationally, rendering further entrenchment of national media monopoly…a foregone conclusion…using global not national parameters as the means to accomplish this.

  Apparently I was under the mistaken impression that Murdoch didn’t like how Obama operates!

  Won’t improve the literary products in the slightest, book or E-book let alone advances, contracts, “earn-out,” distribution or availability except perhaps for the device crowd. I asked an employee whose back was toward me in a store three times if they had yogurt…nothing. I suddenly realized he had ear buds in while he was working, the politics of self-containment “the new normal.” Don’t put yourself in the position of having to ask questions, don’t put yourself in the position of having to answer them.

  There I go confusing Murdoch with yogurt that doesn’t have to answer questions. Ear buds. They come in many different forms these days legal Muzak and otherwise.

  Comment by Coffee, Tea, or Greg? — Wednesday November 21, 2012 @ 9:56am PST  Reply to this post