Former Fox Sports Interactive exec Brian Grey has left venture firm Polaris Venture Partners to take on the CEO post at sports content site Bleacher Report. Grey starts in July and be based out of the company’s San Francisco offices. Bleacher Report partners with CBSSports.com and produces co-branded online local…

MySpace is finally winding down News Corp (NYSE: NWS). social media incubator Slingshot Labs after a slow death. Valleywag, which broke the story, says that MySpace parent News Corp. decided shut off the lights for good after Chris DeWolfe exited as CEO in April ‘09. While MySpace didn’t have a…

More change in News Corp.‘s digital division, though this one is a more logical than others: Jeremy Philips, once the star digital M&A guy and promoted to his current position four years ago by Rupert Murdoch himself, is leaving the company for entrepreneurial ventures. Now that News Corp has pulled…

MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) CEO Judy McGrath says the Viacom unit’s organic growth is “great,” despite its continued signs of weakness as detailed last week in parent company Viacom’s Q4 earnings. The company was hit by the soft ad market as well as lower sales of Rock Band bundles. In…

MySpace has begun rolling out 30-second audio ads, as the News Corp (NYSE: NWS). site continues its shift from a general social network to an entertainment showcase. The ads are being powered by CBS-backed TargetSpot. A rep for TargetSpot told paidContent that MySpace Music will place the audio ads alongside…

News Corp earnings were up across the board, as the company swung to a profit of $254 million ($0.10) in Q4, reversing $6.4 billion loss. The company said this reflected double-digit growth at its “majority business segments.” Even the newspaper/information segment was up, gaining 29.5 percent over last year’s period.…

		EPS*	Rev. vs Q408	Net Inc. vs Q408
News Corp.	Release		10.3%	97%

* vs. Analysts' Estimates: Beat Met Missed

The social gaming phenomenon may be commonly associated with Facebook - but MySpace seems keen to get its own slice of this growing pie. Asked at the Midem music conference in Cannes whether the site may consider a move in the area, MySpace CEO Owen van Natta, also former COO…

News Corp.‘s divestment on the digital side continues in earnest: first Photobucket, then Rotten Tomatoes. Now paidContent has learned that News Corp (NYSE: NWS). has offloaded its lesser-known Digital Publishing Group to VantagePoint Venture Partners, with Fox retaining a stake in the venture. The group develops and manages content management…

News Corp.‘s digital unit is continuing on its non-core asset sale plan: first Photobucket to Ontela, and now comes the sale of popular movie reviews site Rotten Tomatoes, to Flixster. As was the structure with the sale of Photobucket, News Corp (NYSE: NWS) unit IGN Entertainment, which owned RT, will…

Nada Stirratt is leaving her post as EVP, Digital Advertising for MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) to take on the role of chief revenue officer at MySpace, MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka reports. Her hiring comes about two months after Jeff Berman exited MySpace as sales and marketing head, after the company hired…

So the ghost of Fox Interactive Media is finally buried, and now emerges the winner, ready to take on the world…or whatever. News Corp (NYSE: NWS). Digital Media (NDM) is the new name of News Corp.‘s digital media group headed by Jon Miller, and the group will oversee MySpace, IGN…

Fox’s IGN Entertainment has acquired What They Play, a gaming info site geared toward bridging the gap between parents and their game-playing kids. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founded in 2007 by former Ziff Davis execs Ira Becker and John Davison, the site offers in-depth reviews of games that expand…

Fox Sports International has unveiled a premium subscription video service showing every game from the UEFA Champions’ League soccer tournament, the world’s most glamorous and lucrative club competition. The preliminary rounds of the league gets underway Wednesday, and prices range from $9.95 for a single match to $99.95 for the…

MySpace could acquire once white-hot music service iLike today—and, then again, it might not. TechCrunch had a just-about-done deal yesterday for $20 million and a source told us it would be higher than that but Kara Swisher reports that the offer which she pegs at $13.5 million in cash now…

A little more detail about an item we reported on during the News Corp (NYSE: NWS). earnings call: the rocky relationship with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) over the Kindle. Once again, Rupert Murdoch was openly critical of the way the Kindle separates media outlets from their customers by controlling the financial…

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) took $680 million in impairment and other operating charges in the quarter ending June 30, primarily related to its digital holdings in Fox Interactive Media. Roughly $180 million of that was due to the Q4 layoffs of 700-plus employees, with the bulk going to cover “excess…

No deep thoughts needed to figure out what happened here: Photobucket co-founders Alex Welch and Darren Crystal are leaving Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) following the end of their two-year earnout. The News Corp unit bought the photo-sharing site in July 2007 for $250 million in cash plus performance-related payments…

FoxSports.com, which just moved out of the Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) umbrella and came under the TV side of Fox Sports and Fox Sports Chairman David Hill, has made an interesting first move: It has tied up with OpenSports, the fantasy sports and social network founded last year by…

Social net ad spending is expected to rebound next year, says eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson, expanding her previously released projections released in May that forecast a 3 percent drop to $1.1 billion in ‘09. The earlier figures are entirely unchanged and pinned the blame on MySpace’s struggles, which have…