Archive by Month
May 31, 2007
David Hiller's extraordinary memo to staff on changes at the Times, first reported by Kevin Roderick at LAO this morning,...
The family that controls 64 percent of Dow Jones' voting power said it would meet with Rupert Murdoch about his...
Hey, if Kobe leaves, this may be our next best bet. The happy couple haven't even arrived in town, but...
Economy barely moving: First-quarter economic growth was a measly 0.6 percent, way down from the government's original estimate of 1.3...
May 30, 2007
Welcome to the United Football League, the brainchild of stock underwriting maverick Bill Hambrecht and Google senior executive Tim Armstrong....
That's the Irvine-based distributor of flat-screen TVs, and founder William Wang has quite a story to tell. Of course, there's...
The widely followed stock index - generally a better measurement of Wall Street performance than the Dow - reached an...
Never mind his strident views on illegal immigrants that he masquarade as real news. We all know about that. What...
Ever wonder how those OC subprimers could amass so many mortgages from so many unsuspecting borrowers? The answer that's laid...
More summertime fun: Remember when the airlines gave you all kinds of extra goodies if they bumped you from a...
May 29, 2007
So much for economic Armageddon. The federal government's weekly survey shows that the average gallon of self-serve regular in L.A....
Jim Cramer asks an obvious question in this week's New York magazine. The question: Why does everybody hate me? There...
Good luck. Since the government does not track any aspect of the foreclosure process, several private firms are left to...
Well, you need to be a first-year associate at one of the big law firms in town. In just the...
NBC shakeup: No announcement yet on Kevin Reilly’s firing, but it’s getting close. As reported by Nikki Finke over the...
May 25, 2007
The Business Journal is out with its annual list of L.A.'s richest. It's all the usual suspects, although the interesting...
It's not a big surprise after this week's blowup with Elizabeth Hasselbeck. "We had hoped Rosie would be with us...
The word from Nikki Finke is that the network's enteretainment head, Kevin Reilly, is out. The desired replacement appears to...
When is a kickback an illegal kickback? That is the question behind a lawsuit filed by federal regulators against L.A.-based...
RVCA, the edgy, artists-driven, very un-OC apparel company that happens to be based in Costa Mesa, is opening its very...
Remember Julie Roehm? She's the Wal-Mart marketing executive who was fired for, among other things, supposedly having an affair with...
Holiday gas prices: Everyone is in an uproar over what it takes to fill their tanks these days, so guess...
May 24, 2007
Was it because the two finalists didn't capture the attention of viewers or could this be the beginning or audience...
Editor Jim O'Shea said that the vast majority involves voluntary departures and that "we will replace a significant number of...
He's posted two additional emails to LAT staff this afteroon, and as with last night's missive about being kicked off...
The former Disney CEO no doubt envisioned a much simpler life as an investor, producer and occasional talk show host....
He's Matthew J. Hart, currently president and COO, and he'll replace longtime CEO Stephen Bollenbach early next year. Bollenbach's departure...
Gasoline finger-pointing: Where to begin? NY Sen. Charles Schumer says it's probably time to break up the oil companies, which...
May 23, 2007
And the long-time LAT columnist is not too happy about it. He sent off an email this afternoon in which...
The buyer is Cabi West, the local subsidiary of major Mexican real estate developer GISCA, and it covers a 33-property...
It'll cost you - $1.3 million for a 30-second spot for tonight's finale, according to Ad Age, the same as...
So why did it take Amgen almost two weeks to disclose that it had received a subpoena from the NY...
U.S. airlines will be able to operate 23 daily roundtrip flights between the United States and China by 2012, up...
Could there be any possible explanation for why road crews had to do landscape work this morning on the median...
Market mystery: Here's why people go nuts trying to figure out what to do with their stocks. This morning's WSJ...
May 22, 2007
Believe it or not, that's what media planners and advertisers are saying, based on the good buzz of several new...
If you hold gaming stocks, this is the day to come to pappa. Kirk Kerkorian's interest in the MGM-owned Bellagio...
With global climate change becoming such a big deal - just the future of the world is all - is...
Talk about your wacky marketing ideas. BusinessWeek has just struck a deal to have some of its magazine columns appear...
Summer vacation logjam: We knew it was going to be bad, but L.A. airport officials are warning of the busiest...
May 21, 2007
The rest of the country is catching up to what Californians have been facing for some time: crazy high pump...
We're talking homes in the $1 million-plus range, which these days is not that big a deal. L.A. area home...
The S&P 500 couldn't quite make its all-time closing high today, but it was close enough for MarketBeat's David Gaffen...
It's time once again to be reminded that the very rich - we're talking net worth of more than $10...
This week's Downtown News has an extraordinary update on the status of more than 170 downtown projects, from Chinatown to...
May 20, 2007
Immigration bill fading fast: At least in its current form. The same employers who worked on the compromise legislation that...
Even watchdog organizations can find themselves in the middle of some nasty goings-on. Jonathan Weil and Lynn Tuner, two respected...
May 18, 2007
Remember when he blew the whistle on a stolen Norman Rockwell painting from his own collection? Well, it's turning into...
It's the first step in what promises to be contentious negotiations with movie and TV producers this fall. Topping the...
April's jobless rate was unchanged from the previous month and above the 4.8 percent rate in April 2006. California's rate...
Please, no jokes. So what if Ron Burkle likes to hang with models and starlettes, and Maxim specializes in, well,...
To anyone with even the remotest awareness of L.A.'s fashion business, this might seem like veeeeery old news, but the...
Immigration deal: Lots of coverage about the Senate/White House compromise that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S....
May 17, 2007
It's trading at almost $65 a barrel, up more than $2 on the day, because traders are betting that gasoline...
Does Google violate copyright protection when it displays small versions of images in its search results? Perfect 10 Inc., the...
That's what dealmakers said in a survey by Mergermarket, an M&A research service. More than half of the respondents expect...
I'm losing track here. First there was Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo spending way too much time with a senior Citicorp...
Amazon raises the stakes: Lots of coverage this morning on the huge online retailer planning to sell songs for use...
May 16, 2007
With everybody hot and bothered about the record price of gasoline, it's time once again to put a little perspecitve...
C'mon, why not? If Reuters is being sold for $17 billion and Dow Jones is dangling for $5 billion, why...
Does David Geffen really need another $6 million? That's the chump change he's pocketing from the sale of a 12-room...
Soaring food prices: Yesterday's U.S. inflation numbers may have looked tame to Wall Street, but drill down to what's going...
May 15, 2007
Money magazine engages that topic in all kinds of ways and discovers that people, for the most part, say they...
The stock market was acting a little strange today, with the Dow jumping more than 100 points this morning and...
Yesterday was supposed to be the deadline for taking the buyout, but the paper still has a week to decide...
The days when white-collar prison sentences were a walk in the park - sometimes literally - are long gone, according...
Actually, April sales were way down, reaching a 12-year low throughout Southern California, according to DataQuick, which released the numbers...
Another big market day?: Heck, why not? April inflation numbers turned out to be tamer than expected, which means that...
May 14, 2007
The decision by Daimler-Benz to buy Chrysler is sure to rank up there as among the most disastrous business deals...
It's not enough to notice - in L.A., the average gallon of self-serve regular was $3.438 for the week ended...
The Chrysler giveaway: And we thought Bev Hills billionaire Kirk Kerkorian was low-balling in his $4.5 billion offer for the...
May 13, 2007
He's Nick Jones, founder of the members-only Soho House, and the big news is that he's taking over the quasi-legendary...
May 11, 2007
The burger chain has been a basket case for years, what with poor marketing, bad service and sluggish sales. That's...
After yesterday's 9 percent beating, the Thousand Oaks-based drug firm is down nearly 3 percent, to $55.64. Never mind that...
It hasn't been formally announced - a few out-of-touch wire services still say the series is merely "in trouble" -...
Catalina fire: This is likely to be a pretty significant economic event because of the area's strong tourism base. Three...
May 10, 2007
Ari Emanuel, founder of the Endeavor Agency and agent for Larry David, Michael Moore, Sacha Baron Cohen, etc., etc. (and...
Another one - this time from a panel of advisers to the FDA, which voted 15-2 in favor of prescribing...
At Time magazine's big NY shindig the other night celebrating the world's 100 "most influential" people, film mogul Harvey Weinstein...
The managing director of the Peninsula in Bev Hills makes it his business to learn a lot about his guests....
That's the general consensus of private economists surveyed by the WSJ. First quarter's very sluggish 1.3 percent growth - weakest...
Weak April retail sales: Some economists had been afraid of this - perhaps a harbinger to a consumer spending slowdown...
May 09, 2007
CEO Dennis FitzSimons, who has become Sam Zell's go-to guy in making the case for the company going private, took...
Nikki Finke reports this afternoon that the cable channel's CEO is being told to quit or be fired. It seems...
"This is the final stretch, brothers and sisters," is the message from Greg Conger, president of the United Food and...
That's what former WSJ reporter Dean Starkman wants to know after hearing that Managing Editor Paul Steiger sat on the...
Not that Nancy Silverton needs yet more positive press, but NYT restaurant critic Frank Bruni spends some time at her...
Grocery talks collapse: Lots of the usual hot air from both sides, so it's hard to know where the long-winded...
May 08, 2007
This post is actually about this afternoon's earnings results from the Mouse House. But before we get to that, here's...
Inaction is more like it. This morning's NYT story about how several top Journal editors were aware of Rupert Murdoch's...
Los Angeles magazine has posted my May piece on the ousted chairman and CEO of KB Home. Karatz, of course,...
Goodness knows how they made a connection, but when HBO head Chris Albrecht was arrested early Sunday morning for roughing...
Market opens lower: This could be the day when stocks take a breather after five straight up sessions. The Dow...
May 07, 2007
Shares of Santa Monica-based Activision took a 5 percent tumble today, despite the company holding video-game rights to "Spider-Man 3."...
Ho-hum, another all-time high - the fifth straight record close for the Dow and the 24th gain in 27 sessions....
I realize this is getting repetitious but, ahem, we've never spent this much at the pump - and it's likely...
Well, it's at least looking that way. Smith & Wollensky Restaurant Group has agreed to a revised $94.6 million buyout...
Michelle Leder from footnoted.org comes across a nifty back and forth between the SEC and Hot Topic about how the...
All right, so working on highways, bridges, mass transit systems and water and wastewater facilities is not likely to impress...
Spidey rules: To little surprise, "Spider-Man 3" set an all-time box office record in its opening weekend, with $148 million...
May 05, 2007
The deal-making bad boy in Oliver Stone's 1987 "Wall Street" is being revived in a sequel called "Money Never Sleeps,"...
It's the biggest box office opening ever in the U.S., taking in $59 million on Friday, according to Nikki Finke,...
May 04, 2007
This was the replacement ordinance passed by the L.A. City Council that requires LAX-area hotel operators to pay their workers...
It's Beverly Hills, about noon, at a crosswalk on Canon Drive (a half block south of Little Santa Monica). There's...
Media buyer John Rash goes through this week's top 10 shows for Ad Age (in the all-important 18-49 demographic, of...
That's as in very early reaction - a little after one in the morning, as shot by NY Mag for...
A federal judge in Manhattan has rejected claims that Marilyn Monroe's "right of publicity" had been violated when photos of...
The Newport Beach-based guru of bond trading made news a couple of weeks back with word that he was auctioning...
Microsoft-Yahoo merger?: The NY Post reports this morning that Microsoft has asked Yahoo to re-enter formal negotiations (Microsoft was turned...
May 03, 2007
Most cities would kill for an NBA Weekend, but Vegas is not most cities. MGM Mirage CEO Terry Lanni told...
Jim Cramer of CNBC and The Street.com fame is wrong about a lot of things, but he's probably onto something...
There's a small group of L.A. investment bankers whose careers have more or less moved in lockstep - from Drexel...
I'm a little late on this one, but data gatherer TNS is out with its annual survey of millionaires -...
L.A. billionaire Haim Saban gives Fortune a peek of how he does business in a profile that gets into his...
CBS slumps: First-quarter net income fell 5.9 percent, in part because of a 9 percent drop in operating income -...
May 02, 2007
After meeting this afternoon, the board issued a statement confirming that about 80 percent of the Bancroft family's voting power...
It's become the most frequently cited metric of a law firm's performance, but Bill Henderson, a law professor at Indiana...
That's how Dean Starkman glumly - and probably accurately - describes this morning's full WSJ coverage of Rupert Murdoch's buyout...
Battling for Dow Jones: Is the Bancroft family united in its opposition to Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion bid for Dow...
May 01, 2007
That's assuming there is a battle. Some members and trustees of the Bancroft family, Dow Jones' controlling shareholders, say they...
They should be back tomorrow. Light posting today....
The LAT has a "hey Martha" piece on p1 about those folks who twirl signs that advertise everything from Subway...
That's the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular in the L.A. area, according to the federal government's latest...
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
Forget plastics, the real action these days is arranging going-out-of-business sales.
More From Mark Lacter:
Without referencing its recent layoff, the Ventura County Star's editor says the suburban LA paper is now "more streamlined and, in many ways, much more efficient."
We stripped the Indians of their ponies, and now we're doing it to ourselves.
When the sun looks like that, there's a big fire somewhere regardless of whether we see or smell smoke.
After 22 years of loyalty, Baylor is unceremoniously shown the door.
Lee Abrams, Tribune Company's chief innovation officer, doesn’t seem too impressed with the Los Angeles Times. That’s the feeling I got when he appeared at the Los Angeles Press Club.
Seven or fifteen minutes from now I can definitively say I didn't hear the sound of sirens.
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