RTL has sold Five to Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell for £103.5m. Mr. Desmond has intimated that he will invest heavily in new programming and is already said to be in negotiations to buy Big Brother, currently homeless after being dropped by Channel 4.
Five's schedule will remain as is for a while as its contracts to broadcast shows such as CSI and Neighbours run their course. However, a shake-up in programming is now expected in 2011.
BBC.com has relaunched with new functionality, design and content, to build on global growth. The new site is designed to offer users better navigation, easy-to-share functionality and greater use of video.
Second-quarter revenue at Google exceeded expectations, rising 24% to US$5.1 billion, but rising operating costs led to its overall profit margin being lower than expected: pro-forma operating profit margin dipped to 39% (down from 41% in Q1). Staff headcount rose by 1,200 during the quarter, adding to costs.
For a company that has made a big business of indexing third-party websites, a substantial part of Google's display success hinges on its ability to milk YouTube and its other owned and operated properties such as Gmail and Google Finance.
Google, the internet search provider, has been accused of a lack of transparency by French antitrust regulators and given four months to explain the conditions of its ad service.
The International Herald Tribune is set to expand is education coverage this autumn by introducing a weekly higher education section. The new section will debut in September and feature profiles of innovative educators and news-in-brief digests.
The Guardian and Trinity Mirror's websites recorded big increases in traffic in May, while The Times' new registration-only websites have been hit by substantial drops, according to new sets of industry data from ABCe and Experian Hitwise.
France Telecom has revealed plans to invest up to €60m in a consortium looking to buy French daily newspaper Le Monde and its online offering.
AOL has offloaded Bebo to a US private investment firm for less than $10m.
The New York Times is building a public beta testing site where it will experiment with new ideas and applications before deciding whether they deserve to go live on NYTimes.com.
