Media Unspun will suspend publication Dec. 13, a week from Friday. That's right: Our luck runs out on Friday the 13th.

Our team, which produced Media Grok for the Industry Standard, regrouped as Media Unspun back in January. We launched a subscription- and advertising-supported email newsletter about the technology business during an economic slowdown that is having a particularly violent effect on the publishing, technology, and advertising industries. Despite the high quality of the newsletter, as evidenced by the feedback we receive every day, we can't fight a hurricane.

We would like to continue publishing, of course. If you are an angel investor, a potential benefactor, or a representative of a company interested in sponsoring Media Unspun, I urge you to contact us soon. Maybe you can help, and if you can, this is no time to be shy.

Bookkeeping notes: All subscription and advertising insertion orders received after Nov. 1 will not be processed. We either tore up the checks or initiated credit card refunds. And we are talking to several publishers about having them fulfill the balance of active subscriptions; I'll report back to you when I have something to report.

If you have any questions or comments you'd like to relay privately, please write me at guterman@vineyard.com. If you're more interested in being part of a public discussion, our subscribers-only Weblog is at http://www.mediaunspun.com/weblog.html .

Thank you all for your support. We were able to last as long as we did despite this economic climate because of you.

JG

Did you have a busy day on Tuesday? Not as busy as Disney: It reorganized its board of directors, announced an SEC probe, and restated its quarterly results. Only one of those things is good. Hang on for a little longer, and we'll try to make you care which one.

First, those results. Disney will now make $47 million less in net income than it claimed a month ago. The company blamed its new animated movie "Treasure Planet," which cost $140 million to produce, a lot even by Disney standards, and took in $12 million to $17 million (estimates varied) over the big Thanksgiving weekend. Disney cartoons usually make more like $30 million to $40 million in their first week, said CBS MarketWatch.

Still, it was the No. 4 movie at the box office this weekend. Is it really single-handedly responsible for those lower Disney earnings? And was it really that cataclysmically bad? Reviews were mostly negatived, with the Guardian saying it was "like watching Robert Louis Stevenson being sodomised by Michael Eisner in front of a class of 10-year-olds."

Quick change of subject, please. The good news -- "overshadowed" by "Treasure Planet" bashing, said the Financial Times -- is that Disney will be giving its board a much-needed overhaul. The board was too close to chairman and chief executive Michael Eisner, lacked independent voices, and was too passive, said critics. Eisner will have less involvement and influence, including two meetings a year without him and other executives. But the New York Times said Eisner still wins because one of his harshest board critics, Stanley Gold, will no longer be considered an "independent" member due to his business ties to Disney, and he'll be bumped from several committees.

It's that "independent" member thing that the SEC has issues with, saying Disney should have admitted earlier than August that four of its directors had relatives on Disney's (or an affiliate's) payrolls. The New York Post, perhaps the only outlet to lead with the probe, even named names, positions, and salaries. Meow.

Too bad, said the L.A. Times, because Disney's doing well otherwise. "The Santa Clause 2" is doing OK in theaters, the Anaheim Angels won the World Series, ABC's ratings aren't as lousy as they used to be. The New York Times was more pessimistic, saying ABC "is expected to take years to turn around completely," timid travelers are hurting attendance at Disney theme parks, and Disney had to "cancel a weeklong cruise so that it could disinfect its Disney Magic ship after hundreds of people reported flulike symptoms after a trip in the Caribbean." Like when we read reviews of "Treasure Planet," we're left wondering just how many thumbs down this situation gets. -Jen Muehlbauer

Disney Restates Earnings Amid SEC Probe (AP)
http://tinyurl.com/37r4

Disney Cuts Profit After Movie Flop (Reuters)
http://tinyurl.com/37r5

Film flop Prompts Disney Restatement (Financial Times)
http://tinyurl.com/37r6
(Paid subscription required.)

Disney Abandons Hope for 'Treasure Planet'
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney4dec04001437,0,4240140.story

Disney Revises Profit Down On Flop of 'Treasure Planet'
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038955133425613513,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

Disney Wverstates Q4, '02 Profits (CBS Marketwatch)
http://tinyurl.com/37r7

SEC Probes Mouse
http://www.nypost.com/business/63577.htm

Board Shuffle Within Disney Seems Likely to Aid Eisner
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/04/business/media/04DISN.html

The Space Between Us
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,852686,00.html

Bless us, world, for we have sinned, went America Online's much-publicized confession yesterday. But investors didn't grant absolution, sending the stock down 14%. Neither did the media. Reporters stomped all over AOL's shiny new business plan and its hopes for reinvention. The message to AOL was clear: The media won't forgive the company's sin of hubris, but can AOL last long enough for the media to forget?

For its part, AOL has rubbed its eyes, blinked, and admitted that there's a world beyond its walls. In the meeting yesterday that reporters said dragged on for several hours, AOL revealed that its expansion into high-speed connection, the subject of media conjecture for weeks, will come from wooing broadband users of all denominations. For $14.95 a month, they can subscribe to AOL through the speedy services they already use. Still skeptical? AOL also says its future is in content, not advertising. Ah, content. For one thing, it's got a plan to offer tiered services. For another, it's finally going to draw on the AOL Time Warner company jewels, becoming the exclusive Web home for the online version of TW rags like "People" and "Entertainment Weekly." It'll also toss in for free such goodies as the CNN video news service that normally sells for $4.95. In other words, as TheStreet.com pointed out, AOL wants to become Yahoo.

Business Week found some merit for investors amid the rhetoric, but other outlets had the knives out. The Financial Times' Lex column pegged the presentation as "short on numbers, details, and surprises." The Globe and Mail dismissed it as mere "hopes and dreams," and columnist Mathew Ingram wagged that the much-ballyhooed "AOL Day" had deteriorated into "AOL-bashing day." The Wall Street Journal's Jesse Eisinger suspected that AOL is about to become the Betamax of the Internet, and posed this question: Why aren't AOL's 35 million subscribers more of a draw for advertisers? And the Journal's meeting coverage reaffirmed why we should never listen to analysts: AOL said its profit will fall 15% to 25% this year, on top of the expected decline of 26% for this year; number-crunchers, who clearly have learned nothing from the accounting scandals, had predicted a 12% drop.

Then again, AOL execs, frequently described as contrite, also seem to be invoking mantras of the past. Growth? It's on the way, according to AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, and in double-digit numbers -- next year, of course, a handy throwaway forecast not unlike the proverbial diet that starts tomorrow.

No one should be surprised at the mess, since the whole AOL Time Warner union was a mistake from the start, according to an article in Newsweek. The mag reports that AOL chairman Steve Case and Gerald Levin, then CEO of Time Warner, clashed mightily enough for Levin to consider walking out on the deal at the last minute. Levin didn't want to talk about it, with Newsweek quoting him as saying, "I'm yesterday's news." AOL isn't -- for now. But there's always tomorrow. - Deborah Asbrand

Swagger Gone, AOL Resorts to the Upsell
http://www.thestreet.com/tech/georgemannes/10056801.html

Lex: AOL (Financial Times)
http://tinyurl.com/37q8
(Paid subscription required.)

Ahead of the Tape: A House Divided
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,ahead_of_the_tape,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

America Online Issues Warning, But Forecasts Growth Recovery
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038922957282216153,00.html
(Paid subscription required.)

How It All Fell Apart for AOL Time Warner
http://www.msnbc.com/news/841749.asp

AOL Falls After Online Revenue Warning (Financial Times)
http://tinyurl.com/37q2

AOL Unveils Web Strategy Amid Outlook of Sales Slump
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aol4dec04,0,3710047.story

AOL Falls 14% On Ad Warning
http://www.nypost.com/business/63574.htm

Opening Salvos in ElcomSoft Trial
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,56703,00.html

Firms Fined for Not Keeping E-Mails (Reuters)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,72018,00.html

'Buy!' 'Sell!': A Day of Mixed Signals From High-Profile Stock Analysts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5679-2002Dec3.html

The Seven-Percent Solution: Another Way Wall Street Rigs the IPO Game
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074806

Vivendi to Buy Majority Stake in Cegetel (AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2002-12-03-vivendi-cegetel_x.htm

HP Cuts Sales Goals As Demand Lags (Bloomberg)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/98313_hp04.shtml

5 Firms To Pay for E-Mail Lapses
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5396-2002Dec3.html

America's Castoffs Are Border Boom
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-0212040347dec04,0,7799421.story

Old Navy Fleecing NY Cab Passengers
http://www.nypost.com/business/63613.htm

Office Party Horror Stories--and Some Happy Tales, Too
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/annie/0,15704,395649,00.html

Jackson Testifies Despite Painful Spider Bite
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=1848982

Liam 'hit police' - allegation
http://www.itv.com/news/Related882324.html

Copyedited by Jim Duffy (jimduffy86@yahoo.com).

Editor and publisher: Jimmy Guterman (guterman@vineyard.com).

Media Unspun is produced by The Vineyard Group Inc.
Copyright 2002 Media Unspun, Inc., and The Vineyard Group, Inc.