Gannett's television unit shows strength
Gannett Co. reported a drop of less than 1 percent in second-quarter sales as declining print advertising held back growth for the USA Today publisher, which is increasingly focused on the television industry. Even as licensing fees for its TV stations gained 62 percent from a year earlier, print ads continue to slump, falling 5.3 percent to $562.5 million. Excluding some items, earnings were 58 cents a share, in line with the average analyst estimate. CEO Gracia Martore is shifting the company's core business to television to help overcome the decline in newspapers. The McLean, Va.-based publisher agreed to buy Belo Corp. for about $1.5 billion on June 13, almost doubling the TV stations it owns to 43.
Hasbro games show 19 percent sales gain
Hasbro, the world's second-largest toymaker, is showing signs that its games business just may thrive in an iPad world. Sales of games such as Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering rose 19 percent to $255.4 million in the second quarter, Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro said. That was the unit's third straight sales gain and reverses a 7.6 percent drop in the same period a year earlier. Hasbro has remade classic products, such as turning Twister into Twister Dance and incorporating pop music into the game, to lure a younger set. After years of playing catch-up to Zynga and others in the market for games played on Apple's bestselling tablet, Hasbro two weeks ago acquired a stake in Backflip Studios, maker of titles such as "DragonVale" and "Paper Toss."
Activist director leaves Yahoo board
Yahoo Inc. agreed to buy back $1.16 billion of shares held by Third Point LLC and said activist Daniel Loeb, who runs the fund, is leaving the board along with other directors added last year to end a proxy fight. Yahoo will repurchase 40 million shares at $29.11 apiece, leaving Third Point with about 20 million shares, or less than a 2 percent stake, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said. Loeb became a director in May 2012 in a board shake-up tied to the ouster of former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson. Third Point had been locked in a dispute with Yahoo management, faulting Thompson for cutting jobs before he articulated a turnaround strategy and for failing to accept a $44 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp.
Former exec named new head of Time Inc.
Time Warner said it had chosen Joseph Ripp, a former senior executive at the company, as the head of Time Inc., installing a new leader at its magazine division ahead of its spinoff into a separate company. Ripp's appointment comes at a challenging time for Time Inc., the nation's largest magazine publisher with titles like Time, People, Sports Illustrated and InStyle. Time Warner said in March it would separate its print titles into a new company, allowing its main business to focus on the more-lucrative television and film assets. Ripp worked at Time Warner for nearly 20 years before leaving in 2004.
PC makers' job cuts surge 365 percent
Job cuts driven by Americans' shifts toward tablets and cloud computing could only be the beginning of overhauls in the nation's tech sector. A semiannual report by Chicago-based global workforce firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that during the second quarter the nation's companies that manufacture PCs and other desktop computers announced 16,404 cuts — a 365 percent increase from the first quarter.
from news services
