Media Companies

Dow Jones & Co. said Wednesday that its first-quarter profit climbed 58% from a year ago, while Media General Inc. said its profit was up 15.1%. Both media companies cited improved earnings from their newspapers. Dow Jones said its results reflected higher advertising volume at the Wall Street Journal, lower interest expense and improvement at its community newspapers and its electronic financial information service, Telerate Inc. The New York-based company earned $28.

Providence Equity Partners is selling its stake in online video service Hulu for about $200 million, according to people familiar with the situation. The move is expected to give at least two of Hulu's media company owners — News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. — a greater ownership stake in the rapidly growing online service. It also would make it easier for the partners to achieve a common strategy for the asset without having a restive investor in the mix. The 5-year-old service has more than 2 million paid subscribers to its Hulu Plus offering and about 38 million visitors a month to its free site, which offers catch-up episodes of such popular shows as "Glee," "Revenge" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Coming off one of their worst years ever, media companies are not expecting any quick relief from the 1991 advertising decline that has battered the nation's biggest newspapers and television stations. "1991 was the toughest year we have had since we went public," Gannett Co.'s chief financial officer, Douglas McCorkindale, said last week. Now the nation's largest newspaper company, Gannett sold stock to the public in 1967.

DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.announced plans to build a studio in Shanghai in what the Glendale company billed as a landmark agreement with two state-owned Chinese media companies. The creator of the "Shrek" movies said Friday that it was forming Oriental DreamWorks, a joint venture with China Media Capital and Shanghai Media Group, in concert with Shanghai Alliance Investment - an investment arm of the Shanghai municipal government - to establish a family entertainment company in China.

Media companies Gannett Co., Knight Ridder Inc. and Media General Inc. reported earnings decreases for the second quarter because of declining advertising sales. The newspaper publishing industry has been hurt by fewer national and help-wanted advertisements as companies pare spending amid a slowing U.S. economy. Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, said profit fell 12% to $233.5 million, or 88 cents a share, as ad sales slowed at USA Today and the company's 22 television stations.

Kolcraft Enterprises Inc. of Chicago is recalling about 115,000 LiteSport strollers that can suddenly collapse and hurt babies, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced. Locking mechanisms on either side of the stroller can break, causing the stroller to collapse. The company has received 22 reports of injuries to children, including cuts, scrapes and bruises to children's faces and limbs. Consumers reported the mechanism breaking on 124 strollers; in 31 cases, the stroller collapsed.

Coming off one of their worst years ever, media companies are not expecting any quick relief from the 1991 advertising decline that has battered the nation's biggest newspapers and television stations. "1991 was the toughest year we have had since we went public," Gannett Co.'s chief financial officer, Douglas McCorkindale, said last week. Now the nation's largest newspaper company, Gannett sold stock to the public in 1967.

Many Internet media companies have already warned of a weak fourth quarter due to soft online advertising spending, but analysts said more gloom could be on the way with their upcoming quarterly reports. "A combination of 'dot-com' meltdowns, tumbling markets and economic slowdown conspired to make [the] fourth quarter exceedingly difficult for Internet media," said Paul Noglows, JP Morgan analyst in a research note.

Today, April 1, is census day. Once every 10 years, the federal government counts the nation's population to come up with "a portrait of America." The results are crucial to local governments, schools and agencies -- which rely on federal dollars -- and also media companies that target ethnic audiences. The 2000 census was a milestone. It revealed that Latinos made up a larger percentage of the population than people had previously thought. The number of Latinos had soared nearly 60% from 1990 to 2000 -- to more than 35 million people, or 13% of the total U.S. population.

Wall Street is turning back flips about the looming 1980s-style takeover battle over Paramount Communications Inc. The protag onists are Paramount's Martin S. Davis, who played the 1980s take over game with abandon, and is now the target; Davis' proposed friendly merger partner, Sumner M. Redstone's Viacom, the creator of MTV, and the hostile bidder, QVC Network, Barry Diller's cable home-shopping network, backed by cable mogul John C. Malone, head of Tele-Communications Inc.

In the online series "Wolfpack of Reseda," a nerdy character's life is transformed when he believes that he has been bitten by a werewolf in a San Fernando Valley park. 20th Century Fox, which released the series this week, is trying to transform itself too, as traditional media companies seek to tame the threat posed by another predator — the Internet. "Wolfpack of Reseda" is the first made-for-the-Web series from Fox Digital Entertainment, a small division of the 76-year-old West Los Angeles movie studio.

Looking to capitalize on the burgeoning Asian market, Saban Capital Group and Lionsgate are partnering with a Hong Kong media company to create new pay TV channels and programming. The venture — Celestial Tiger Entertainment — will launch with six channels, including three owned by new partner Celestial Pictures, which boasts one of the largest Chinese movie channels, Celestial Movies, and a large library of Chinese action films. Saban Capital and Lionsgate, Hollywood's largest independent film studio, will contribute the three channels that they jointly own. The two companies began their collaboration nearly two years ago with the formation of Tiger Gate Entertainment.

As production on the comedy "21 and Over" was getting underway in Seattle this summer, the cast and filmmakers received surprising news from producer Ryan Kavanaugh. Although the movie is about a group of students out for a night of partying in a U.S. college town, additional scenes would have to be shot, and set, in China. Why? Kavanaugh's Relativity Media could grab significant new money by making "21 and Over" a Chinese co-production, said a person close to the movie who requested anonymity because the discussions were private.

Give Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg points for ambition. The company is rolling out a new version of its popular social network that seeks to be the hub of everything its users do online. If Zuckerberg's gambit succeeds, Facebook would attain an even more dominant position among social networks. It would also amass a storehouse of knowledge about its users large enough to rival Google's. The implications for users and media companies, however, are not so promising. Launched to help college students connect to one another, Facebook has evolved into a place where up to half a billion people gather each day, often for hours at a time, to share pictures, links and commentary.

Peter Chernin has kept Hollywood spellbound. The entertainment industry has been waiting to see whether the man who helped build Rupert Murdoch's sprawling film, TV and digital colossus can parlay one of the richest producer deals in history into his own vibrant media venture. Chernin is about to unspool his first high-profile projects since concluding his 20-year career at News Corp. in 2009. On Aug. 5, Chernin Entertainment's prequel to the languishing franchise "Planet of the Apes" opens in theaters.

The Chinese government is looking into buying a stake in Facebook Inc. ahead of the social network's widely expected initial public stock offering in 2012. The possible investment, which was reported by the website Business Insider, would land the communist government a "huge chunk" of shares in the Palo Alto-based company. Citing an unnamed source "at a fund that buys stock from former Facebook employees," the website said China wants an investment "large enough 'to matter.' " A second unnamed source told the site that Citibank was looking to buy about $1.2 billion worth of Facebook shares for two wealth funds — one belonging to the Chinese government and another belonging to a group from the Middle East.

In the online series "Wolfpack of Reseda," a nerdy character's life is transformed when he believes that he has been bitten by a werewolf in a San Fernando Valley park. 20th Century Fox, which released the series this week, is trying to transform itself too, as traditional media companies seek to tame the threat posed by another predator — the Internet. "Wolfpack of Reseda" is the first made-for-the-Web series from Fox Digital Entertainment, a small division of the 76-year-old West Los Angeles movie studio.

Providence Equity Partners is selling its stake in online video service Hulu for about $200 million, according to people familiar with the situation. The move is expected to give at least two of Hulu's media company owners — News Corp. and Walt Disney Co. — a greater ownership stake in the rapidly growing online service. It also would make it easier for the partners to achieve a common strategy for the asset without having a restive investor in the mix. The 5-year-old service has more than 2 million paid subscribers to its Hulu Plus offering and about 38 million visitors a month to its free site, which offers catch-up episodes of such popular shows as "Glee," "Revenge" and "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.

Univision Communications Inc. has installed veteran television executive Randy Falco as its new chief executive, with the task of capitalizing on the growth of the U.S. Latino population to steer the Spanish-language media company into the mainstream. Falco's promotion, unanimously approved by Univision's board Wednesday, comes in the wake of a tumultuous period for the nation's dominant Spanish-language media company. Univision for years was distracted by feuds with its primary programming partner, Mexico-based Grupo Televisa.

News Corp. can't get MySpace off the books fast enough. Losses at the struggling social network nearly erased the strong gains recorded by the media company's television group, which saw a 23% jump in revenue in the quarter ending March 31 thanks to advertising for the National Football League playoff games and Super Bowl broadcast. The business unit that includes MySpace reported an operating loss of $165 million because lower advertising and search revenues were only partly offset by lower expenses, the company said.