Morning Media Newsfeed: Freedom Shutters <em>LA Register</em>

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Layoffs Hit Freedom Communications as It Ceases Publication of LA Register (LA Times)
Layoffs hit the Orange County Register on Tuesday after owner Freedom Communications ceased publication of its Los Angeles daily five months after it debuted. TheWrap A spokesperson for the LA Register said that 29 newsroom positions have been eliminated as a result of the paper’s shutdown. An unspecified number of employees will be transferred to the Orange County Register. WSJ / CMO Today The owner of Freedom Communications Inc., Aaron Kushner, who turned heads last year when he announced he was launching the daily newspaper, admitted Tuesday that the move was a failure. “As strong a newspaper as our team produced, our business model is a virtuous circle,” Kushner said in a statement. “If the support is not at a level that matches our investment, we have to adapt and make adjustments as we’ve done today.” HuffPost / AP Freedom said it will focus on markets in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It owns the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which it bought in November for more than $27 million. NYT The LA Register ceased publication with its Monday issue. Monday evening, Kushner sent a memo to his employees announcing the news. An article about the shutdown ran on the newspaper’s front page.

ISIS Releases New Video of Captured Journalist John Cantlie (HuffPost)
The militant Islamic State group has released another propaganda video purportedly featuring captured British journalist John Cantlie. The video, which again shows Cantlie speaking in front of a camera in an orange jumpsuit, was released just after the U.S. and five Arab nations launched airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria Monday night. WSJ In the video, he warns citizens from the nations supporting U.S.-led military operations in Iraq and Syria that the foray will become a quagmire like Vietnam. The video is part of the slick and aggressive propaganda campaign that ISIS has rolled out to attract recruits and sway global opinion concerning the puritanical Islamist state it is trying to carve from swaths of Iraq and Syria. New York Daily News The footage shows Cantlie, held hostage by ISIS for 22 months, reading from a script provided by his captors while seated behind a desk for the latest in the terrorist group’s “lecture series.” “Senior U.S. politicians seemed content to call the Islamic State nasty names: awful, vile, a cancer, an insult to our values,” he said. “But such petty insults don’t really do much harm to the most powerful jihadist movement seen in recent history.” The Guardian In a previous video posted by the group, the freelance photographer — who has been a prisoner of ISIS for 22 months — made clear that he was making the films under duress. His references to U.K. military aid to Kurdish forces and French and Danish support for military action suggest that the video was made in recent days. Other aspects of the film, such as his stubble and the state of the orange jumpsuit in which he is dressed, suggest that it may have been made at the same time as the last video in which he was featured.

SiriusXM Suffers Crushing Loss in High-Stakes Courtroom Battle (THR / Hollywood, Esq.)
A California federal judge has delivered a legal earthquake in the music industry by declaring Flo & Eddie of The Turtles the victors in a lawsuit against SiriusXM over the public performance of pre-1972 sound recordings. The plaintiffs are seeking $100 million in damages, but the money is hardly the only consequence of a ruling on Monday that could eventually disrupt the operations of the satellite radio giant as well as other services like Pandora. WSJ / Law Blog The case centered on the question of whether an ambiguously worded state law created royalty obligations for satellite and Internet radio companies that play music made before 1972. While federal copyright law covers post-1972 recordings, Congress left it up to states to set their own copyright rules for music released before then. NYT But The Turtles, whose hits were made well before that date, argued that when SiriusXM played its songs without seeking a license or paying the group royalties, it infringed on its copyright protections under state laws. The group filed class-action suits in California, Florida and New York. After the Turtles filed the suits, the major record companies followed with similar cases against both SiriusXM and Pandora Media, and industry groups have begun lobbying Congress over extending royalty laws to pre-1972 recordings. Reuters The ruling could potentially make it more expensive for satellite-radio broadcasters and Internet radio companies such as Pandora Media to feature classic songs on their playlists. In the ruling, judge Philip Gutierrez did not grant summary judgment on the claim that SiriusXM copied the songs improperly to create libraries, databases and voice transitions, saying many facts about the allegation are still in dispute.

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Fox News Contributor Lands on Terrorism Watch List (TVNewser)
Fox News contributor and senior writer for The Weekly Standard Stephen Hayes tweeted Tuesday afternoon about finding out he’s on the Department of Homeland Security’s terrorism watch list. Mediaite Hayes has not yet been able to find out why he is on the watch list, but suspects it’s because of a one-way flight he took to Turkey earlier this year. HuffPost The Department of Homeland Security is known for being somewhat overzealous with its terrorist watch list — Nelson Mandela was infamously on the list as late as 2008, for instance. Hundreds of thousands of people are routinely placed on the list, often for very minimal reasons.

OurTime Partners With HuffPost, AOL (FishbowlDC)
In addition to partnering with Vice, OurTime — a non-profit organization that drives Americans to vote — will join The Huffington Post and AOL in its effort to register 250,000 young voters before the midterms. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media OurTime’s voter registration widget will be embedded on The Huffington Post’s politics vertical, as well as on AOL. Capital New York OurTime, which seeks to engage millennials, previously partnered with The Huffington Post in advance of the 2012 elections. The organization has also worked with media companies like Yahoo!, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) and Tumblr in the past, according to its website.

Fall Television Season Opens With Strong Ratings (NYT)
In as big an affirmation as the television business might be able to offer that strong programming still can draw a real crowd, the 8 p.m. hour of television Monday night attracted about 50 million viewers on the four broadcast networks, with another 14 million or so watching football on ESPN. THR / The Live Feed The Big Bang Theory opened its seventh season in the temporary Monday time slot with an average 5.4 rating among adults 18-49 and more than 18 million viewers over the course of two episodes. CBS’ thriller dramedy Scorpion averaged a 3.2 rating in the key demo and 13.8 million viewers. That makes it the biggest series opener of the night. For NBC, The Voice, while a sizable hit (1.2 ratings points) from last fall’s premiere, still averaged a 3.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 12.9 million viewers against the increased competition. The other half of last year’s dynamic duo, The Blacklist, was the strongest drama of the night with a 3.4 rating in the key demo in live-plus-same-day returns and 12.5 million viewers. Deadline Hollywood Fox’s Gotham (3.2 in adults 18-49, 8 million viewers), did everything you would like to see from a rookie — it delivered solid ratings with no lead-in support, improved significantly the time period and showed some growth (0.1) at the half-hour mark. New ABC drama Forever (1.5) got a preview behind Dancing With The Stars (2.0) before moving into the “cursed” ABC Tuesday 10 p.m. slot.

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Ad Council Announces New President/CEO (AgencySpy)
Several months after the April announcement that Peggy Conlon would step down after 15 years as president/CEO of The Ad Council, the group has announced her successor: Lisa Sherman will assume the role starting Nov. 3. Adweek Sherman most recently was EVP and general manager of LogoTV, part of Viacom Media Networks. She joined Viacom in 2005 to help launch LogoTV, which describes itself as the “leading ad-supported entertainment network aimed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.” Under Sherman’s leadership, Logo nearly tripled the number of households carrying its digital channel, from 17 million to more than 52 million.

Andy Lack Leaving Bloomberg for New U.S. Government Media Agency (TVNewser)
Andy Lack, the chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group, is leaving the company and has been named the first CEO of the United States International Communications Agency, part of the federal government. Variety Lack has been chairman of Bloomberg Media Group for the past year, after joining the company in 2008 as CEO of its global media group. Before Bloomberg, Lack was chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, and president and COO of NBC. He was president of NBC News from 1993 to 2001.

Mashable Firms Up European Bureau (FishbowlNY)
The second largest city and country audience for Mashable after the U.S. is — somewhat logically — London and the U.K. Tuesday, the site formalized its imminent expansion plans into the British realm. When the London office opens next month, at the HMS helm will be editor Blathnaid Healy, deputy editor Tim Chester and advertising director Ben Maher. Poynter / MediaWire Chester is a former contributing editor for BuzzFeed U.K. and oversaw a Web relaunch at Rough Guides.

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NYT Launches Realtime Newsfeed ‘Watching’ (FishbowlNY)
The New York Times has launched a new breaking news feature on its homepage. “Watching” is a realtime news aggregator that includes tweets from Times staffers, videos, photos, Times headlines and more. It’s basically a multimedia news ticker, keeping readers up to date on the latest, biggest news. Watching is overseen by Times editors Marcus Mabry and Jennifer Preston.

60 Minutes Has Best Debut in 17 Years (TVNewser)
60 Minutes was the No. 2 show of the week, only behind Sunday Night Football on NBC. Sunday’s season debut drew 17.88 million viewers, its biggest premiere audience since 1997. Sunday’s show, which featured a Scott Pelley report from the frontlines of the battle to defeat ISIS and a Steve Kroft story about the growing concerns over an IRS scam, delivered its best premiere numbers since 2005 in the key demos: a 4.4/11 in adults 25-54 and a 3.5/10 in adults 18-49.

Only World News Tonight Sees Growth in Viewers, Demo for 2013-2014 Season (TVNewser)
While all three network newscasts can celebrate audience growth in the just-completed 2013-2014 season, only World News Tonight With David Muir has seen growth among both total viewers and the preferred news demo of adult 25-54 viewers. Compared to the 2012-2013 season, World News Tonight, which spent most of the season as World News With Diane Sawyer, grew 4 percent in viewers and 5 percent in the demo.

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Discovery, Liberty Global Complete Acquisition of U.K. Producer All3Media (THR)
Discovery Communications and Liberty Global said Tuesday that they have closed the $930 million joint acquisition of U.K. TV production firm All3Media following regulatory clearance. As widely expected, All3Media CEO Farah Ramzan Golant is stepping down.

BBC Sets Minimum Guarantee for Current Affairs Output (THR)
U.K. public broadcaster BBC will now be required to air a minimum of 40 hours of current affairs programming in peak time each year on its flagship channel BBC One. The decision was made by the BBC Trust, the broadcaster’s independent governing body, the first time it has introduced a condition to safeguard the volume of current affairs on BBC One.

Russia Moves to Extend Control of Media (NYT)
Russia’s Parliament passed a preliminary bill on Tuesday that would limit foreign ownership of Russian media outlets to 20 percent, targeting several prominent publications critical of the government and extending the Kremlin’s control over the nation’s independent news media.