Blog da disciplina de Mídias Globais. Aqui você encontrará o conteúdo necessário para a realização do curso. Em caso de dúvidas, entrar em contato com: lleo@puc-rio.br (Luiz Léo) e maripalm@puc-rio.br (Mariana Palmeira)
by Jose Pagliery @Jose_PaglieryNovember 9, 2016: 8:11 PM ET
Timeline: The rise and fall of Yahoo
Verizon might rescind its $4.8 billion offer to buy Yahoo, in part because of the damage resulting from the colossal hack of Yahoo customers, the technology company said Wednesday.
Yahoo(YHOO, Tech30) said there's "no assurance" that Verizon will actually go through with the deal, according to its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filing also revealed that it's "facing investigations by a number of federal, state, and foreign governmental officials and agencies" over the hack -- and these could result in "potential fines."
Verizon defended the deal in late October at a Wall Street Journal Digital Conference, arguing that it "absolutely" still makes sense.
Yahoo has since been hit with 23 consumer class action lawsuits over the hack, according to the company. Hackers were able to steal a list of customer names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birthdays, security questions and encoded versions of passwords.
Verizon(VZA) now "may seek to terminate the stock purchase agreement or renegotiate the terms of the sale" because of the "security incident," Yahoo warned investors in Wednesday's filing.
Yahoo stressed in its filing Wednesday that the hack is not having a "material adverse impact" on its business.
"We are confident in Yahoo's value and we continue to work towards integration with Verizon," a Yahoo spokesperson told CNNMoney.
The tech company's stock value didn't immediately shift on the news.
Yahoo blames a government for hacking into its computer network saying that its attacker was "a state-sponsored actor."
Yahoo has struggled under the leadership of Marissa Meyer. Under Mayer's direction, Yahoo has acquired dozens of startups -- and spent lavishly on hiring celebrity journalists. But its bets haven't paid off. One of its most notable assets, the social network Tumblr, has struggled for years to make a profit.
Verizon declined to comment.
CNNMoney (New York)First published November 9, 2016: 8:11 PM ET
The deal is believed to be the biggest so far in the world this year
US telecoms giant AT&T has announced that it will buy entertainment group Time Warner for nearly $86bn (£70bn).
The deal - one of the biggest this year - still needs approval from regulators.
If the takeover goes through, it would combine AT&T's distribution network with content from the Warner Brothers film studios and the cable TV channels HBO and CNN.
AT&T's chairman described it as "a perfect match" but critics say it concentrates too much media power.
'Complementary strengths'
The deal is likely to be closely scrutinised by US antitrust regulators. AT&T is already the third largest cable TV provider in the US.
Randall Stephenson, who is both chairman and CEO of AT&T, said he did not anticipate any regulatory obstacles, saying any concerns could be overcome if concessions were made.
"This is a perfect match of two companies with complementary strengths who can bring a fresh approach to how the media and communications industry works for customers, content creators, distributors and advertisers," he said.
Analysis: Joe Lynam, BBC correspondent
AT&T has the means by which millions of Americans consume their entertainment. It owns the platform - be that cable or broadband - which enables people to watch their favourite shows. But it does not - until now- own the shows or the "content" which households want to watch, be that Game of Thrones, CNN or live NBA basketball.
Buying Time Warner, which we should not confuse with Time Warner Cable, allows AT&T to become a full service media provider and one of the more important companies in the world.
It allows a newly-merged entity to steal a march on the likes of Verizon or Comcast in a very competitive US market.
But the deal may never happen. It could be deemed anti-competitive by regulators because AT&T already owns mobile phone, broadband and cable TV networks, and allowing it to control the shows as well might deprive consumers of choice.
An AT&T statement said that aim of the deal was to give customers "unmatched choice, quality, value and experiences that will define the future of media and communications" and the new company would "lead the next wave of innovation in converging media and communications industry".
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said if he is elected, he will block the deal.
"It's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," he said on Saturday, before the deal was confirmed.
Image copyrightHELEN SLOAN/HBOImage captionRevenue from HBO, which shows Game of Thrones, contributes about 18% of Time Warner's total revenue
AT&T will pay $107.50 for each Time Warner share, in a combination of cash and stock, worth $85.4bn overall, according to a statement.
AT&T said it expected the deal to be completed by the end of 2017.
Other media company shares, including Discovery, AMC, Netflix and CBS, recently rose as investors speculated that a deal could spark a fresh wave of takeovers and mergers among media and technology companies.
AT&T, which has a market value of about $238bn, has already made moves to turn itself into a media powerhouse, buying satellite TV provider DirecTV last year for $48.5bn.
Time Warner chief executive Jeff Bewkes has, however, resisted selling in the past. The company rejected an $80bn offer from Twenty-First Century Fox Inc in 2014.
The deal gives AT&T access to a major producer of content as it seeks to diversify away from its core telecoms business. Rival Verizon is currently in negotiations to buy Yahoo and has already bought AOL, owner of Huffington Post.
Some analysts, however, question whether AT&T needs to mount a complete takeover of Time Warner.
Acordo terá maior dificuldade de aprovação, sob lupa de reguladores da concorrência
por Bloomberg News
/ Atualizado
WASHINGTON - A aquisição do grupo de mídia Time Warner pela empresa de telecomunicações AT&T reflete a bem-sucedida compra da NBCUniversal pela Comcast. O novo negócio, porém, deve enfrentar uma rota de maior turbulência em Washington, já que os candidatos à presidência dos Estados Unidos declararam suspeitar de megafusões.
Enquanto o acordo Comcast-NBC obteve aprovação das autoridades reguladoras em 2011 com condições para proteger a concorrência, a AT&T enfrenta agora um cenário em que um grande volume de fusões envolvendo empresas altamente lucrativas desafia os guardiões da concorrência, além da futura nova presidência a poucos meses de assumir o cargo.
— É um negócio muito grande em uma seleção de mercados que já estão muito concentrados e, por isso, levantam sérias preocupações a respeito de abusos contra o consumidor — disse Chris Sagers, professor de Direito e especialista em regulação antitruste da Cleveland State University. — Com certeza, a fusão será avaliada com lupa.
O presidente da AT&T Randall Stephenson, após a compra da DirecTV no ano passado, está transformando a empresa de telecomunicações com sede em Dallas numa gigante do setor de mídia. Comprar a Time Warner garantiria à companhia — que já está entre as maiores dos EUA em TV por assinatura, telefonia celular e serviços de banda larga — programação premium em entretenimento, incluindo os canais HBO, e a rede Cartoon para oferecer a seus milhões de assinantes.
Embora o acordo reúna companhias de produção e distribuição, ao invés de dois competidores diretos, a operação terá problemas com a regulação antitruste, destaca John Bergmayer, do grupo de defesa do consumidor Public Knowledge. A AT&T poderia dificultar o acesso a conteúdos da Time Warner a seus concorrentes com o objetivo de atrair o consumidor para suas plataformas, enquanto a DirecTV — adquirida pela telecom em 2015 — poderia se negar a exibir conteúdo de competidores.
— Se você é um distribuidor de vídeo sob demanda e tem conteúdo próprio, busca a melhor produção. Mas, se você o detém, tenderá a favorecer o seu conteúdo em oposição ao dos concorrentes porque garante custo menor e maior ganho com publicidade — disse Bergmayer.
O Departamento de Justiça dos EUA e a Comissão Federal de Comunicação (FCC, na sigla em inglês) demonstraram preocupações semelhantes quando a Comcast anunciou a compra da NBC. As autoridades declararam que o acordo dava à companhia de TV a cabo um incentivo para prejudicar concorrentes negando a eles acesso ao conteúdo da NBC ou mesmo elevando o preço das licenças para exibição desses programas. Ainda que os rivais da Comcast se recusassem a pagar pela programação ou concordassem em arcar com as taxas mais altas, a companhia seria beneficiada pelo enfraquecimento de seus competidores, segundo o governo. O aumento no valor das licenças levaria ainda o consumidor a se manter com a Comcast ou a migrar para companhia.
Para resolver essas questões, a Comcast aceitou uma série de condições para o fechamento do negócio, que devem ser cumpridas pelo prazo de sete anos com o objetivo de garantir que distribuidores rivais de TV paga teriam acesso ao conteúdo da NBC. A Comcast também foi proibida de preterir a produção de concorrentes. Agora, a AT&T pode enfrentar um controle ainda mais rígido, segundo advogados e analistas. — Não dá para olhar para esta fusão e acreditar que ela é um gol de placa — comentou Rich Greenfiel, analista do BTIG em Nova York. — A AT&T está prestes a comprar uma das maiores empresas de conteúdo do mundo. Como ficar super otimista sobre a aprovação do acordo ?
A AT&T e a Time Warner declararam no sábado que ao combinar suas operações poderão competir com companhias de TV a cabo aliando serviços de banda larga e vídeo. Se as companhias conseguirem convencer os reguladores de que esse é o caso, podem melhorar as chances de aprovação da fusão com condições, avalia Amanda Wait, advogada da área de concorrência no escritório Hunton & Williams LLP, em Washington.
Ainda assim, a AT&T passará por criterioso escrutínio, afirmam legisladores e advogados.
— Será uma guerra de muitas frentes — disse Amanda.
A Time Warner tem licença de radiodifusão para operar um canal de televisão em Atlanta, o que daria à FCC poder para revisar o acordo num prazo que não seria cumprido antes das eleições presidenciais no país, em 8 de novembro. As duas companhias poderiam vender o canal, o WPCH, para evitar a varredura da comissão, ponderou Andrew Jay Schwartzman, da faculdade de Direito da Georgetown University, em Washington.
— A cartada decisiva para o negócio está nas mãos da FCC — destacou Roger Entner, analista da Recon Analytics. — É difícil prever o que as autoridades vão fazer. Estão inciando o processo do zero.
HILLARY E TRUMP VEEM NEGÓCIO COM RESTRIÇÕES
Hillary Clinton, candidata democrata à presidência dos EUA, vem ganhando força nas pesquisas com a aproximação das eleições e tem posição crítica em relação a megafusões. Seu oponente, Donald Trump, rompeu com a tradição republicana no sábado ao declarar que impediria a aquisição da Time Warner, explicando que acordos como esse resultam em concentração de poder nas mãos de poucas companhias. Ele também sugeriu que seria favorável à cisão de Comcast e NBC. Os comentários de Trump fazem parte de uma crítica ao papel da mídia no que ele qualifica como eleições “fraudadas”, não representando a posição do candidato quanto a fusões em geral.
Enquanto a posição de crescente suspeita por parte dos democratas de que o movimento de consolidação de empresas poderia elevar o risco ao acordo, uma gestão Hillary Clinton provavelmente aprovaria a fusão de AT&T e Time Warner, em parte porque as agências aprovaram aquisições similares e que não resultavam em redução do número de concorrentes no mercado, declarou Paul Gallant, analista da Cowen and Co, por meio de nota:
— Os precedentes históricos são favoráveis e, numa primeira análise, não há diferença na comparação com outros acordos que foram aprovados. Em seu programa político, os democratas se comprometem pela primeira vez desde 1998 em tornar mais rígida a regulação antitruste, enquanto Hillary tradicionalmente destaca que é preciso revigorar essa regulação. A candidata democrata, que elogiou recentes limites à fusão de duas operadoras de saúde, vem defendendo o cumprimento rigoroso de leis antitruste para impedir “poder econômico excessivo e danoso”. Ela também prometeu mais recursos e pessoal às agências de regulação da concorrência.
O senador Tim Kaine, que concorre ao cargo de vice-presidente ao lado de Hillary, declarou no programa “Meet the Press”, da NBC, que partilhava da preocupação e dos questionamentos levantados pelo senador Al Franken, democrata de Minnesota, mas que precisava entender melhor o caso. Franken, que integra o Comitê do Judiciário no Senado americano, declarou por meio de comunicado no sábado que fusões monumentais de mídia “podem resultar em maiores custos, menor opção de escolha e até menos serviços para o consumidor”.
Ainda que a Comcast tenha obtido aprovação para comprar a NBC, autoridades antitruste do Departamento de Justiça deixaram claro que estavam prontos para reavaliar sua posição quanto aos danos causados à competição por fusões quando, quatro anos depois, se opuseram a proposta de aquisição da Time Warner feita pela Comcast. O Departamento de Justiça se concentrou no fato de que as operações de TV a cabo das duas companhias não tinham sobreposição, mas enxergaram potencial de causar danos para rivais no segmento de vídeo sob demanda porque o grupo que resultaria da fusão teria o controle de grande parte do mercado de serviços de internet de alta velocidade.
Netflix stock climbed above $100 per share on Monday, to its highest levels since May — fueled by a rumor circulating on Wall Street that Disney might possibly be interested in acquiring the video-streaming leader.
Netflix stock closed up 4.1% Monday, to $102.63 per share, on higher-than-usual volume. On Tuesday, Netflix shares climbed as high as $104.44 in early trading, before settling down to below the opening price of $103.50.
Rumors that the Mouse House or possibly Apple might be interested in snapping up Netflix — which currently has a market cap exceeding $44 billion — were alluded to in a research note by Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Will Power. Regarding “recent M&A rumors,” Power wrote, “whether Disney, Apple or someone else, Netflix could become a target.”
Netflix investors have been concerned about the company’s slowing growth in the U.S., as it undertakes a shift to move all subscribers to the $9.99-per-month standard tier. The stock, which has a notoriously volatile history, is trading well off its $133.27 per share 52-week high.
Speculation that Disney might be looking to make a major deal for Netflix comes after the media conglomerate was said to be looking at buying Twitter, according to a Bloomberg report. Disney also has demonstrated a keen interest in the streaming-video market: In August, it announced the purchase of a 33% stake in Major League Baseball’s BAM Tech unit for $1 billion.
The first issue for Disney would be trying to justify the massive purchase price: Netflix trades at a whopping price-earnings ratio of around 320, and any deal would have a negative impact on Disney’s balance sheet and earnings. Disney also would face other potential hurdles if it actually moved to buy Netflix, including regulatory scrutiny and the fact that rival studios would be even more reluctant to play ball with a Disney-owned Netflix.
SÃO PAULO Para o PT e parte da esquerda, a mídia é um dos responsáveis pela
queda de Dilma Rousseff. No discurso petista, os principais meios de comunicação se
uniram às elites conservadoras para derrubar um governo que vinha fazendo reformas
de caráter popular. Tais proposições me parecem frágeis, mas o que pretendo hoje é discutir outra coisa: o
poder da imprensa de modificar a realidade. O que subjaz à narrativa petista, afinal, é a
ideia de que o governo ia razoavelmente bem, mas que essa percepção foi bloqueada por
vontade da mídia. Não há dúvida de que os meios de comunicação exercem algum tipo de influência. Caso
contrário, não valeriam de nada, não seriam procurados por quem tem algo a dizer nem
por anunciantes. A questão relevante aqui é se conseguem ir além de refletir o mundo
real, moldando até certo ponto as percepções do público, e se tornam capazes de criar
realidades ao belprazer de seus controladores. Um autor caro à esquerda, Karl Marx, pensava que não. Num texto de 1842 para o
"Rheinische Zeitung", afirmou que a imprensa livre é tão responsável por alterar as
condições do mundo "quanto o telescópio do astrônomo é responsável pela incessante
moção do Universo". Para sustentar o contrário é preciso supor que as pessoas não passam de fantoches que
fazem tudo o que a mídia lhe ordena. Ora, o que os estudos mais modernos sugerem é
que somos seres bastante influenciáveis, por fatores às vezes tão improváveis quanto a
música que toca ao fundo. O poder dessas interferências, porém, está longe de absoluto.
Elas alteram a proporção de pessoas que responde de um jeito ou de outro aos exercícios
propostos pelos pesquisadores, mas só raramente levam alguém a fazer aquilo que não
quer. Um bom marqueteiro até pode convencer alguns incautos de que titica de cachorro é
uma iguaria culinária. Mas dificilmente vai ficar rico vendendo isso. O conteúdo importa. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/helioschwartsman/2016/08/1807584-o-conteudo-importa.shtml
HONG KONG — For teenagers who like to sing along with Ariana Grande and Flo Rida, Musical.ly is a must-have. The app that lets users lip-sync and dance in their own music videos boasts 100 million users and partners with pop stars like Ms. Grande and Meghan Trainor.
It’s not easy to tell Musical.ly is Chinese — and that’s deliberate. To find success in America, its parent company has ignored China, its home market and a country with 700 million internet users.
The reason is simple, says Alex Zhu, co-founder of Shanghai-based Musical.ly: China’s internet is fundamentally different from the one used in much of the rest of the world.
“It’s still very difficult to get into China,” said Mr. Zhu, who studied civil engineering at Zhejiang University in the eastern city of Hangzhou. “It’s a closed environment, and you have to be quite different to compete in that market.”
Two decades after Beijing began walling off its homegrown internet from the rest of the planet, the digital world has split between China and everybody else. That has prevented American technology companies like Facebook and Uber, which recently agreed to sell its China operations, from independently being able to tap the Chinese market.
For China’s web companies, the divide may have even more significant implications.
It has penned in the country’s biggest and most innovative internet companies. Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have grown to be some of the world’s largest internet companies, but they rely almost entirely on domestic businesses. Their ventures abroad have been mostly desultory, and prognostications that they will challenge American giants internationally have not materialized.
Alex Zhu, co-founder of Musical.ly, in a meeting with staff members at the company’s offices in Shanghai.CreditGilles Sabrie for The New York Times
For Chinese web start-ups like Musical.ly, the internet split has also forced them to choose — either create something that caters to China’s digital population or focus on the rest of the globe.
In many ways, the split is like 19th century railroads in the United States, when rails of different sizes hindered a train’s ability to go from one place to another.
“The barrier to entering the U.S. or China market is becoming higher and higher,” said Kai-fu Lee, a venture investor from Taiwan and former head of Google China.
The difficulties that China’s internet companies face in expanding their success abroad are epitomized by WeChat, the messaging app owned by Tencent. In China, WeChat combines e-commerce and real-world services in ways that have Western companies playing catch-up. It has about 700 million users, most of whom are Chinese or use it to connect with people in China.
In 2012, armed with a cash stockpile of several hundred million dollars, the world soccer star Lionel Messi as a spokesman and local ads like Bollywood-inspired commercials in India, Tencent began a push that executives said would be its best chance of breaking out of China. The effort flopped.
Critics pointed to Tencent’s lack of distinctive marketing, a record of censorship and surveillance in China and its late arrival to foreign markets. Yet the biggest problem was that outside of China, WeChat was just not the same. Within China, WeChat can be used to do almost everything, like pay bills, hail a taxi, book a doctor’s appointment, share photos and chat. Yet its ability to do that is dependent on other Chinese internet services that are limited outside the country.
That leaves WeChat outside China as an app that people mostly use to chat and share photos — not that different from WhatsApp and Messenger, which are both owned by Facebook. Baidu and Alibaba have apps that similarly offer a range of capabilities, yet are less useful outside China.
The same problem hurts start-ups in China. Those companies start out accustomed to using Chinese internet sites and apps to market and enhance their business. But going abroad means a different world of services to master, such as a solid understanding of Facebook and Google’s platforms and ads, not Baidu’s and Tencent’s.
By contrast, Musical.ly chose the opposite approach and linked itself to the most popular social networks in the United States. If someone records an impressively coordinated dance or flawlessly lip-synced song, the person can put it up not just on the app, but also add it to Instagram, send it on WhatsApp or post it to Facebook. That has helped Musical.ly grow naturally to Europe, South America and Southeast Asia, Mr. Zhu said.
“The thing about this young generation in the U.S. is, they’re creative,” said Mr. Zhu. “They’ll say, ‘Please follow me on Instagram or Snapchat.’ If your app can attract some people in an age group and make them super excited to share, you will probably grow.”
For Cheetah Mobile, a maker of smartphone utility apps based in Beijing whose users are mostly outside China, the solution was finding a steppingstone to the rest of the world. In early 2014, it opened an office in Taiwan, where use of Google and Facebook dominates. That helped it gain employees who intimately understood Facebook, YouTube and other major Western platforms that could be used for advertising.
“Taiwan served as a bridge for us across the Pacific to the United States,” said Charles Fan, Cheetah’s chief technology officer.
Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu have all opened American offices, but they have mostly turned to investments and acquisitions to gain footholds overseas. Over the last two years, Alibaba has invested in emerging markets, including two online commerce companies, Paytm and Snapdeal, in India. It also spent $1 billion to acquire Lazada, an e-commerce site popular in Southeast Asia.
Tencent has been more aggressive in Western markets. In June, it made itslargest overseas deal, paying $8.6 billion for Supercell, the Finnish company that created the popular mobile game Clash of Clans. Tencent also has a stake in the games company Activision Blizzard and bought one of the most played games in the world, League of Legends.
The Shanghai offices of Musical.ly, a Chinese start-up that chose to build its business abroad.CreditGilles Sabrie for The New York Times
Perhaps the greatest indication of Tencent’s overseas ambitions was a deal that never happened. In 2014, with its global WeChat campaign faltering, it was preparing to start negotiations to bid for WhatsApp when Facebook swooped in, according to a senior Tencent executive who asked for anonymity in discussing corporate strategy.
Tencent and Baidu declined to comment. An Alibaba spokeswoman referred to recent remarks by Alibaba’s president, J. Michael Evans, in which he pointed to acquisitions as a way the company was attracting new consumers in developing markets. He also said Alibaba was focused on attracting more foreign businesses to sell on its markets in China.
Mr. Lee said it might take a new technological jump for Chinese companies to get a chance at building a platform inside China and internationally. He said Chinese companies could prove competitive in emerging sectors like virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics.
“I think what might be surprising is, China will catch up rapidly,” he said. “Partly because of Chinese universities, partly because of returnees to China who form a portion of the top engineers in the world.”
Musical.ly is in many ways a product of the cultural exchange between the United States and China that Mr. Lee described. Mr. Zhu, 37, graduated from a Chinese university, but moved to the United States with the German software company SAP in 2010. He had the idea for the music app while riding the train from San Francisco to Mountain View, Calif., in a car full of high school students.
“Half were listening to music and the other half were using their phone to take photos and add emojis, and they were passing them around,” Mr. Zhu said. Then it hit him: combine the selfie and social media part with the music part and turn it into one product. In 2015, Mr. Zhu moved to Shanghai, where his co-founder has been based since Musical.ly’s 2013 inception.
Yet Musical.ly is unlikely to be the social network to link both sides of the Pacific. For the demographic the app is focusing on, it’s far better to be outside its home market, Mr. Zhu said.
“Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience,” he said. “If you look at China, the teenage culture doesn’t exist — the teens are super busy in school studying for tests, so they don’t have the time and luxury to play social media apps.”
