- Shockingly, the listed Getty Images is filing for bankruptcy in the US and will go private via a restructuring deal with Koch Equity Development. Koch and members of the Getty family (c47% shareholders) are reported to have committed to invest $533mn in new equity. The bankruptcy filing follows a failed $3.7bn merger with rival Shutterstock. The deal had been approved in the US. But a regulatory obstacle in the UK would have forced the enlarged company to sell Shutterstock’s editorial arm, which Getty’s board considered unacceptable. It said the company had spent more than $100mn on the abortive merger. (WSJ)
- The Telegraph‘s new owner, Axel Springer, is reportedly preparing to make significant job cuts that could result in 50-100 journalists being made redundant. (Guardian) The UK government is reportedly to publish the long-delayed result of probes into Abu Dhabi’s failed attempt to buy The Telegraph – a move which is said to risk upsetting the UAE government at a time of tension over financial irregularities in its ownership of premier league football club Manchester City. (Sky News) Background
- Fast-growing (and US-backed) UK-based podcaster Goalhanger has launched Goalhanger X, a “new model for building complete media ecosystems” around creators. The first creator-led media venture developed through the model is Always On, a new show from former Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, which will launch across short- and long-form video on YouTube and social platforms and feature Hyde’s writing on Substack. Background
- Google says 400 publications, including Axios, The Financial Times, and Texas Tribune are partnering with its News AI pilot program. “Through this licensing program, we pay participating news publications for the delivery and use of enhanced content to develop new A.I. features.” (Status)
- GlobalData CEO-founder Mike Danson said he is considering a breakup of the UK listed information provider launched in 2016. He said: “The market cap is less than £500mn at the moment. If somebody came along and they said, we’ll buy one unit for the Inflexion-type valuation, it would be fairly transformative.” (Times of London) Background
- The New York Times is part of an expansion of the SPUR coalition of publishers seeking to agree common standards for AI licensing deals. It is among more than 40 new SPUR (the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights coalition) members, also including The Atlantic, The Economist, ITV News and The Observer. (Press Gazette)
- The UK government is “minded to intervene” in Sky’s proposed acquisition of ITV, citing concerns around media plurality, especially in news.
- HBR change: “We went from a wide funnel to a focused one, from supplying information to strengthening judgement, from a direct to consumer only playbook to direct to consumer plus enterprise, from a subscription tier to a membership offering, and a destination play that differentiates from AI by focusing on what we uniquely have access to our customer base, our people, which many in our industry have been calling the humanity hedge.” Erika Heilman, SVP Harvard Business Review
- AI denialism: “We are in an incredibly profound moment of disruption and I’m afraid we’re seeing a lot of publishers that are not reacting to the age and to the moment the way some of us did not react at the moment in 1998. There’s denialism, there are people that just using AI thinking to cut corners and to amplify existing content and so on. But the level of disruption that we’re living is reflective of 1998 when we saw that the publishers that moved fastest and took advantage of it achieved great results.” Juan Senor, co-author, Innovation in Specialist Media World Report, at the FIPP Congress.
- The FIPP Global Media Congress 2027 will be held in Cape Town, October 19-21.
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