Apparently, you can get media satisfaction — as long as you are online as opposed to offline.

According to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group, consumers accrue more value from their online media usage than from their offline consumption.

The new research report — titled “Follow the Surplus: How U.S. Consumers Value Online Media” — calculated that the average U.S. online user got a “consumer surplus” of $970, compared to $900 from offline media.

BCG defines consumer surplus as “the value consumers themselves place on a media-related activity or product over and above what they pay for it.”

The report looked at seven categories — books, radio and music, U.S. newspapers and magazines, TV and movies, video games, international newspapers and magazines and user-generated content and social networks.

The largest chunk of online consumer satisfaction came from UGC and social, such as use of Facebook and Google’s YouTube, which makes sense since the actual cost is nearly zero — making any benefit essentially digital gravy.

Books were where the least consumer surplus was online. That’s not a surprise, said BCG senior partner John Rose, who coauthored the report, but it is likely to change soon with the increasing popularity and proliferation of a variety of devices.

That’s double from three years ago, with the average consumer now owning 2.9 devices, such as mobile smartphones and tablets. It will increase to 4.1 in three years, said the BCG report. Also up, of course, is the number of hours spent online, which — in turn — dramatically increases the value of online media consumption.

Advertisers still have not caught up with consumers, of course. “The value is from the consumers’ perspective and not the advertisers’ perspective yet,” said Rose, in an interview. “The business models are still not in place to support what consumers already know they want.”

Gender is not an issue, with men and women both consuming about 12 hours a week of online content. But men listen to more music, while women prefer social interaction more.

Another interesting result, read the report: “By a margin of some five to one, U.S. consumers are more excited about the Internet’s potential rewards than they are worried about the potential risks.”

In other words, they like online media, they really like it.

That’s why, said Rose, the medium and the business model will evenutally come together.

“Different people will say different things about when it will come together and not if it will come together,” said Rose. “Advertisers have always found ways to create value, even if they have not done it yet with online media.”

There are lots of other interesting findings and charts from BCG, some of which are embedded below (click to enlarge them and the whole report can be found and downloaded here).

A while back, the incomparable actor Samuel L. Jackson did an epic reading of the book “Go the F**k to Sleep.” Now, the “Django Unchained” movie star is taking on an even bigger task, with a dramatic take on Taylor Swift’s I-lost-another-boyfriend song, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” for a radio show.

Enjoy (it’s really enjoyable):

Image copyright This Geek

What’s the secret to podcasting’s success? It’s fun, with an air of spontaneity. It’s intimate. It’s engaging. Most importantly, it’s driven by passion. Our industry’s biggest luminaries — my business partner Scott Aukerman, Paul Scheer, Chris Hardwick, Marc Maron, Jesse Thorn, Kevin Smith and Adam Carolla — have created TV shows, appeared in films and continue to perform live shows. But no matter how busy they get, they still do their podcasts every week. Sometimes more than once a week — because they love it, and so do their listeners.

So where does that leave us for 2013? Here are my six predictions:

1. More Money
   The revenue trend is decidedly up, led by advertising dollars (70 percent of our revenue comes from advertising). Earwolf surpassed $1 million in revenue during 2012. That’s up from $190,000 in 2011 and $19,000 in 2010. We started with a $30,000 initial investment with no external funding. We’ve paid out $300,000 to our artists — something that makes us proud. We’ve created jobs. However, our pre-tax profit is only $80,000. Not exactly margins that have venture capitalists knocking down the door.

   With more networks and sponsors than ever, the net effect is higher pay for podcast hosts and more profitable networks. As the risk decreases for producers, the pay goes up for artists. More networks equals more competition for talent and downward pressure on costs due to operational scale.

2. More Advertising
   Marketing expert Seth Godin said it’s a bad idea to try and sell something to a stranger. He’s right. For a few years, I chased ad sales from conventional advertisers, but I realized that most people just weren’t ready. So I started focusing on providing better information and service to parties who were interested in sponsoring our shows. The results have been outstanding and get better with each passing month.

   The biggest problem with podcasting ad sales is that by and large, the hosts aren’t great at selling, executing ad reads or reporting to their customers. And no one who actually understands ad sales is using their expertise to tackle such a small, fragmented and immature market. There’s a lack of leadership across the industry.

   I’m working to change that in Q1 of 2013 by launching a low-fee ad marketplace connecting networks and independent podcasters to sponsors. The marketplace will be open to non-Earwolf podcasts. I’m aware that I could be destroying one of the unique benefits of joining Earwolf — making money through ad sales. While that’s scary, it’s not as scary as it would be to watch someone else do it to us.

3. The Rich Will Get Richer
   Networks will grow stronger. There are almost 250,000 podcasts in the iTunes store. It’s increasingly difficult to identify what’s good. Earwolf produces 10 of the top 75 shows in comedy, but it’s hard for others to break through that wall. As it gets easier to start a podcast, listeners will trust the networks more. Perhaps equally important, so will the editors of major aggregators who can’t listen to tens of thousands of shows before deciding what to feature.

   Currently successful independent shows will become more valuable to the networks. Anyone who’s launched a show in the past year knows that the overnight sensations no longer exist. Being early mattered. It’s no longer early. For plenty of new shows, it’s too late to get big fast.

4. New Shows & Innovation
   There’s good news for the independents or the shows that don’t yet exist — there are still too few great podcasts. We need more; maybe you’ll give them to us. Creative innovation is still in the early stages. Just because the networks will get stronger doesn’t mean they are the only game in town, and their weak spot is the up-and-comer, the subversive.
5. The Audience Will Continue to Rule
   Our listeners are the key to our success. Their loyalty and engagement put other media consumers to shame.

   The tech world is gaga over “mobile this, mobile that.” Podcasts are inherently mobile. You listen wherever you are — at home, in the car, on the train, at work, while exercising. Try consuming video that way. It’s impossible. I don’t care how short the videos are. On top of that, the shorter the content, the less engaged and loyal the consumers can be. The less their attention is worth to sponsors.

   The cost of producing audio is two percent of the cost of producing video. But you say, “audio can’t go viral like video.” Great! Let’s build our audiences slowly but with integrity. I’d rather have 10,000 real followers on Twitter than 100,000 transients and bots. Podcast listeners are sticky. And sticky is hard to come by in the 2013 world of media.

   Still, growth is slowing. There are more episodes than ever and not as many new listeners to keep up. In 2012, Earwolf went from 1.8 million downloads a month to 4.6 million a month, but I expect download growth in 2013 to disappoint.

6. Ventures Beyond Podcasting
   Podcasters who are able to extend into other media will win in the long run. Anyone willing to listen to an 80-minute audio file sight unseen will also watch your movie. Or TV show. Or Web series. Or read your book. The reverse doesn’t hold true. Try taking a million subscribers from your YouTube channel where you post two-minute videos and ask them to listen to your 80-minute podcast or watch your 90-minute movie. It’s very difficult. Podcast listeners are willing to mobilize to other content mediums. In a sense, they are platform-agnostic. That is extremely valuable.

At Earwolf, we’ve started a TV development and production entity because of this shift. We’ve sold our first script and are signing a first-look deal with a cable network. So while podcasts are important as standalone content, opportunities to expand into other mediums will continue to grow.

Things That Won’t Happen in 2013

• Podcasts replacing radio in car dashboards (it’ll take longer to win that battle than most think)
• Anheuser-Busch as a sponsor (while advertising gets easier and easier, the current structure makes the support of the biggest buyers difficult)
• Disney buying Earwolf (podcasting’s perceived value to established media companies won’t take that kind of leap in one year, and we aren’t selling anyway!)

2012 has been a great year for podcasters and their listeners. Forward strides will continue in 2013, albeit with a few roadblocks along the way. I can’t wait to see what happens.

Jeff Ullrich is the CEO and co-founder of the Earwolf podcasting network. Earwolf has produced 26 — mostly comedy — programs, which are downloaded 45 million times a year. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

When I was your age, we made social networks out of hardtack and radio tubes. “Faves” cost a nickel, our friends had polio, and we LIKED it.

–Merlin Mann, via Twitter

The idea that we have to pay them to put their music on our radio stations is absurd …

– CBS CEO Les Moonves

Shares of Pandora plummeted more than 19 percent in early morning trading Friday, falling to $10.15. And that precipitous decline more than erased the 15 percent gain the company’s stock had managed to win over the past three months. Clearly, investors are terrified at Pandora’s prospects in the face of a formidable competitor like Apple — a company whose mobile devices are responsible for a lot of Pandora usage.

“Apple is currently the largest music retailer in the world and the move is likely being made to unseat rapidly growing streaming competitors like Pandora and Spotify,” Bank of America-Merrill Lynch analyst Nat Schindler said in a note to clients this morning. “Apple’s large device installed base makes it a more serious threat than other current or potential competitors. Pandora we believe gets 40-50 percent of its total usage currently from iOS devices.”

Such services create virtual “stations” that play music similar to a song or artist of the user’s choosing, either on Web browsers or smartphone apps. Like traditional radio, they are typically free for users, but incorporate advertisements.

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The search giant is shutting down Google TV Ads, its attempt to create an online marketplace for traditional TV spots. The idea was Google could make ad buying more efficient and Googley, but buyers, programmers and distributors never embraced the notion.

Google sank five years into the project, and eventually boasted that it could reach 42 million households, including agreements with distributors like Verizon and DirecTV. That’s close to half of the pay TV universe, but it’s hard to find evidence that the program really got traction.

Google TV Ads did last much longer than Google’s efforts to leap from digital into newspaper and radio ads. Those programs were shuttered in 2009, and in the case of the radio program, Google took the rare step of actually laying people off. That won’t happen this time around, Google says.

If you want to put a positive — and plausible — spin on it, you could argue that Google doesn’t need to spend any more time trying to break into traditional media, because it’s doing a bang-up job with digital. No need to chase dollars in the old media you don’t own if they’re flowing into the new world you dominate.

Now that has been sold, too. Radio chain Townsquare Media has picked up the MOG Music Network, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction.

No comment from MOG or Townsquare, but I’m told Townsquare, which owns radio stations in 51 markets, paid around $10 million for the ad net.

The ad network used MOG’s own site as a base, and then repped hundreds of small music sites as well. ComScore says the network has 30 million unique visitors worldwide and 14 million in the U.S.

Traffic was up more than 450 percent in the last year, presumably because of Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” campaign, which pushed lots of new visitors to the streaming service.

This deal makes sense from the outside. In addition to its radio properties, Townsquare also owns a network of music Web sites, most of which support its stations. But it has been trying to build that business out for a while.

Two years ago it hired Bill Wilson, a digital media veteran who had most recently been at AOL. Wilson then hired several of his old AOL co-workers and put them to work building out new sites.

It’s also good news for MOG’s investors, who put around $30 million into the music company. The deal won’t make them whole, but combined with the $14 million-plus they got for the streaming music service, it gets them pretty close.

Warner Music Group says streaming services contributed 25 percent of the digital revenue that its “recorded music” group saw last quarter. That works out to be about $54 million, or about 8 percent of Warner’s total revenue for the period.

What’s more encouraging for Warner — and, presumably, the rest of the big labels — is that streaming revenue is growing quickly, but doesn’t seem to be cutting into traditional digital sales from outlets like iTunes.*

Just as encouraging: Warner says that after you net out the effect of currency fluctuations, the increase in digital sales was bigger than the decrease in physical sales. That’s the goal the industry has been aiming for since the late 1990s.

*Warner defines “streaming” revenue as money it gets from subscription services like Spotify and Rhapsody, along with Web radio revenue from the likes of Pandora, Sirius and Clear Channel. It doesn’t include the new cloud/locker services from Apple and Amazon. [UPDATE: That number does include YouTube, though, which is a significant income source for some corners of the business.]

Now they’re going to be a lot more confused. In a way that’s good for Spotify and a problem for Pandora.

Spotify, which lets people listen to music for free, on demand, has finally launched its own Web radio service, which more or less mirrors Pandora’s core radio service. That is, this is a “real” Web radio service, that comes with advertising, unlike iterations Spotify has released in the past.

I saw Spotify’s offering via a very quick demo yesterday. If you’re a Pandora fan, it looks pretty compelling, though you’re much better off checking it out for yourself, as long as you have an iPad or iPhone — an Android version is in the works.

But here’s the key takeaway: Spotify now has an option that lets people use the service for free, on mobile devices. Up until now, the only way to get Spotify on the go was to pay $10 or more per month, while Pandora’s key selling point was free mobility.

So Spotify now has a chance to expose many more people to its product, in the hopes of eventually converting some of them to paid subscribers.

And Pandora, which has consistently argued that it hasn’t seen any impact from Spotify’s U.S. launch last summer, may no longer be able to say that. Because if you like Pandora, you may very well like Spotify just as much.

A few notes:

• Like Pandora and every other Web radio offering (including Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio and the newly popular Songza), Spotify’s radio service is “DMCA compliant,” which means that Spotify doesn’t need permission from music owners in order to roll it out. That means you’ll be able to hear the Beatles and other streaming music service holdouts. [UPDATE: Spotify does have the ability to play music it hasn't licensed, but hasn't introduced it yet. So no Beatles for you, for now.]
• But that also means the service comes with restrictions, like a limited ability to choose songs and skip past songs you don’t want to hear. And just like Pandora, the free service won’t work outside the U.S., because of licensing issues.
• Because Spotify also has a paid music service, it can integrate the two in interesting ways for subscribers. For instance, paying subscribers can fast-forward through songs. They can also access auto-generated playlists of songs they’ve heard on the radio service, and pick and choose songs from there.
• One other difference between the two services: Pandora programs music based on a complex algorithm based on songs’ musical “DNA.” Which means that if you tell Pandora you like the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” it will find other songs that feature “rock & roll roots,” “a subtle use of vocal harmony,” “acoustic rhythm piano,” etc. But Spotify says it is relying on the “social graph,” so it will find music that people who like the Ronettes also like. You may notice this, or not.
• Web radio is free for Spotify’s users, but not for Spotify: It will have to pay music owners a set price for every song it streams, and that gets expensive. And those costs keep going up the more people use it. Which is why Pandora has yet to earn a profit.
• Spotify says it will be able to defray its costs through the advertising business it has already established. But as Pandora has shown, selling mobile advertising for music services is a challenge.

Why is Spotify rolling out Web radio now?

If you’re a Spotify bull, you can tell yourself that this was always on the product road map, and they just got around to it now. If you’re a bear, you can argue that it’s having a hard time moving its user numbers — at last report, 10 million active users, and three million paid subscribers — up, and that it needs to find new users if it’s going to make good on sky-high investor expectations. Could be both.

The deal revamps the way Clear Channel Media & Entertainment calculates the royalties it pays to play music distributed by Big Machine Label Group, the company behind some of the biggest stars in country music, including Taylor Swift, Rascal Flatts and Tim McGraw.

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While former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson fades from the tech scene — besides getting jacked from the top job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, he’s also just come off two tech boards he had served on — the investigation over his hiring and how a fake computer science degree got into the company’s regulatory filings continues.

While the quick-fire controversy burned Thompson, as well as now former Yahoo director Patti Hart, the special committee of independent board members is still at work trying to figure out how such a mess was made in the first place.

And, more importantly, who knew what when and told whom.

At the time the committee was announced, Yahoo said it would “conduct a thorough review of CEO Scott Thompson’s academic credentials, as well as the facts and circumstances related to the review and disclosure of those credentials in connection with Thompson’s appointment as CEO.”

The special committee is chaired by Yahoo’s new Chairman Fred Amoroso and includes John Hayes and Thomas McInerney, two independent directors who joined the board in April.

Yahoo also hired independent counsel Terry Bird of the law firm Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks and Licenberg in Los Angeles to handle the inquiry.

The company also noted at the time that “the special committee and the entire Board appreciate the urgency of the situation and the special committee will therefore conduct the review in an independent, thorough and expeditious manner. The Board intends to make the appropriate disclosures to shareholders promptly upon completion of the review.”

Gripped by urgency myself, I have grown weary waiting by the phone for some official answers, which sources said will not be forthcoming for some time.

But since I am the most curious of cats — uh-oh! — I started dialing around on my own to find out what’s what.

And, according to sources — especially since Thompson has settled with Yahoo and will not get severance due to the academic falsehood — the big focus is now centering on if the company’s staff screwed up the background check of his academic credentials, thus allowing it to get into its official filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and also on Yahoo’s corporate Web site.

When Thompson was hired from eBay, where he was president of its PayPal payments division, the online commerce company had the correct bio information in its SEC filings, although not on its Web site or in its PR materials.

The question is: Did someone from Yahoo simply rely on Web bios and not check eBay filings and did anyone ever re-check Thompson’s college records? (Note: It took me 15 minutes flat to find out he did not have such a degree at Stonehill College in the Boston area.)

If lazy checking was the case, it spells rank incompetence on the part of staffers, as well as Hart, who headed the search after Yahoo fired its previous CEO Carol Bartz last fall.

A much more troubling line of inquiry taking place is aimed at the possibility that someone at Yahoo did discover the discrepancy in Thompson’s resume and either did not report it up the chain of command or did and it was either lost or ignored or, well, worse.

While this certainly ain’t Watergate, such a situation would be very hard for Yahoo to explain away as easily to shareholders, especially potentially litigious ones. As it is always said, the coverup can often be more damaging than the crime itself.

And, if it is determined by the special committee that certain employees knew of Thompson’s resume inaccuracy, it will most certainly result in dismissals of Yahoo employees.

The focus on the committee — which truly cannot sweep this under the rug, if it occurred in this much more serious scenario — is most obviously the legal department of Yahoo, which is responsible for making certain filings are accurate.

Also under scrutiny is the quickness of the hiring of Thompson.

Among the questions is how much vetting was done and whether adequate questions about him were asked among a variety of possible sources.

When he was picked in January, Thompson was a dark-horse candidate for many, including some Yahoo board members.

In fact, he was not on the initial headhunting lists prepared by outside talent search firm Heidrick & Struggles.

That’s because Heidrick had placed Thompson at eBay in mid-2000 and could not then recommend him to Yahoo. As it turned out, Thompson took it upon himself to cold email Yahoo board member and Intuit CEO Brad Smith about the job, who then passed Thompson’s interest to Hart.

Heidrick had no involvement in the checking of Thompson, although he later blamed the firm in a public meeting with Yahoo employees for putting the error in his bio in the first place from when he was hired at eBay. Heidrick quickly called the accusation “verifiably not true” in a memo to its own employees.

Sources said that meant that the firm had a resume that Thompson had submitted to it that also contained the error.

But the central mystery of how that mistake appeared on his bio will likely remain just that without further explanation from Thompson.

In a radio interview in 2009, he did not correct a specific question about the twin degrees he appeared to have held and seemed to even agree with the show’s host, Moira Gunn, about them.

Later, she told me in a video interview that Thompson had clearly indicated to her in the prep for that interview that he indeed had a computer science degree.

Still, it is still not clear — and may never be — who put the faux computer science credential on his resume in the first place.

So, with all apologies to Winston Churchill: It might remain a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

ESPN has reengineered its streaming radio app to offer improved sound quality, push alerts for when a favorite program is going live and content-caching for listening to podcasts without an Internet connection.

It’s also launching the app for the first time on iPad. The app is already available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry; the updated version will hit Android in June, and a Windows phone app will be available this summer.

If you vaguely recall ESPN having just updated its radio app, you would be correct: The company retooled it less than 18 months ago to include new search and personalization features, as AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka reported here.

Marc Horine, ESPN’s vice president of digital and print media, says that with the newest version, the network is trying to refocus on what’s most important with a radio app — the listening experience. Files have been compressed for faster streaming and downloading, and the sound quality has been enhanced, Horine says. And the app includes DVR — which allows users to skip ads, by the way, though I doubt ESPN would encourage that — and the ability to download full podcasts for listening offline.

Most of the content on the app is commentary, though there are some live play-by-play game options, and there’s a SportsCenter update available every 20 minutes (for the really, really rabid sports fans). To lure listeners to the app, ESPN has mixed up its app offerings to include original, app-only programming with stuff that’s already broadcast on terrestrial radio, like “BS Report with Bill Simmons,” “Pardon the Interruption” and “Fantasy Focus.”

At $4.99, the new ESPN Radio costs two dollars more to download than the old version, and runs in-app ads as well as commercials throughout the podcasts.

Horine says the mobile radio app has been downloaded more than 740,000 times since it first launched two-and-a-half years ago. That’s actually a pretty small percentage of the 24 million weekly radio listeners ESPN claims across all platforms.

And the majority of listeners — 90 percent, Horine says — listen to radio while at work Monday through Friday. But now, with the ability to stop and start radio podcasts on your desktop and pick up right where you left off on the mobile app, ESPN envisions mobile will become a growing fraction of those listeners.

(Full disclosure: I worked as a non-Disney employee for ESPN from 2003 to 2006. I was not involved with network’s radio programming.)

One of Yahoo’s biggest long-term investors, Capital Research and Management, which owns more than 10 percent of the company in two different funds, is leaning toward voting for the slate proposed by activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point, in the wake of the controversy around the botched bio of its new CEO Scott Thompson.

“Having a CEO with that hanging over his head is really a problem going forward,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “It’s hard to pretend this is not a problem.”

While sources said Yahoo’s longtime institutional investor — which currently holds large stakes via its Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors funds — is not likely to go public with their voting choice until close to the annual meeting, which will take place sometime this summer.

But its fund managers have told key Yahoo board members of their grave concerns over the situation.

Ironically, in the last proxy fight showdown with Carl Icahn, Capital removed its support of Yahoo’s slate too and was an important influence to many major changes at the company.

Such a move is problematic for Thompson, since the rejection of another big shareholder at its upcoming annual meeting will keep the unusual issue and right in the middle of a noisy proxy fight.

A special committee of the Yahoo board is investigating the situation — in which a fake computer science degree somehow got on the resume of the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit and later into official Yahoo regulatory filings.

The problem was uncovered last week — unfortunately for the Silicon Valley Internet giant — by Loeb, who has been banging away on Yahoo since.

A trio of independent Yahoo directors is looking into the mess, with a focus on how that happened, whether anyone at Yahoo knew of the inaccurate bio and how it got there in the first place.

Also of great concern, is how Thompson could have not seen the error in the many years it was on the Web site of eBay and also how he approved a bio that had the inaccuracy in it when he was hired by Yahoo in January.

Worse still, in a 2009 interview, he clearly did not say he did not have such a degree in with a radio show host when directly asked about it.

“It’s a little hard believe an executive of this level would have missed such a thing, when he had so many opportunities to fix it,” said one source. “And, if he did overlook it that many times, that’s a problem too.”

In fact, according to a report earlier today by Business Insider that I also confirmed, Thompson told employees today in two separate meetings that he did miss the error since it was placed there — inexplicably — in 2004. In the meeting, he blamed a low-level headhunting staffer who added it incorrectly, an error that then proliferated.

Thompson also said he did not provide a resume to the company in his hiring process — say whaaaat, but true — although this still does not absolve him from the original error.

As to the interview: Thompson said he did not want to be rude and correct the host of TechNation, Moira Gunn, after she clearly asserted to him he had a computer science degree as part of a question on his qualifications. Others present at the meetings said he said he did not hear the question.

But, in an video interview with me yesterday, though, Gunn said she and Thompson discussed a computer science education in a way that left the clear impression that he had obtained one.

While Thompson’s excuse may beggar the imagination of some, it’s his story and he’s sticking to it. In all seriousness, his complete lack of willingness to take responsibility for the error — even if it was not his fault — itself is a little startling.

Because what’s not clear is how the bio was miraculously correct in eBay’s official filings and also if it is plausible that he never saw the mistake.

Numerous communications execs at Internet companies told me that it was unusual for a high-level exec not to pay close attention to information that went out about them, especially in legal filings. In addition, just as many execs are made to check and swear on their bios that go into such documents.

In fact, it was Thompson’s job to make sure the things written about him were correct at all times. As CEO, as a major Silicon Valley player pointed out, he is required by federal law to personally certify Yahoo’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Violations of these rules carry financial and also potential criminal penalties.

Sources said the board is worried about that credibility issue too and it puts Thompson in an ever-dicier position. Noticeably, the board has yet to make a public statement of support for him on the issue.

Also a major worry for the directors is the mostly negative response to the situation from Yahoo employees, who are deeply upset that Thompson’s error was not caught and that he might not be treated in the same way as anyone else who turned in a false resume, whether it was by accident or not.

A Yahoo spokeswoman told me last week that there was also support internally for Thompson, but in many dozens of interviews I have done with Yahoo employees and a continued monitoring of internal bulletin board, the tone is not in his favor by any means.

Like I said, it’s a dicey time to be Scott Thompson right now.

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• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
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• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

On March 25, 2009, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson — when he was then president of PayPal — appeared on the TechNation radio show to talk about the revival of the eBay payments unit.

At the end of the largely charming interview, Moira Gunn asked him a direct question about his college degrees, specifically noting they were in accounting and computer science.

“Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s PayPal,” said Gunn. “What are the most important things you learned?”

“Yeah,” begins Thompson, failing to correct her at all on the fact that he does not actually have a computer science degree — only one in accounting.

He then went even further, touting his early tech training at Stonehill College, near Boston, which did not offer a computer science degree at the time he went there, from 1975 to 1979.

“And that’s really the background that I have, and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way,” said Thompson.

In the most generous interpretation, it’s not quite clear whether Thompson was saying “Yeah” to her statement of his academic credentials, or if he was not actually listening.

But it’s a careless oversight on his part not to have corrected her about the degrees, which could also be said about a computer science degree being present on his bio for more than a half-dozen years at eBay and later at Yahoo without some notice by him.

Because while Thompson has had a long career as a tech exec, as well as a stint as a CIO, academically speaking, a computer science degree did not happen in his college days nor did he graduate as an engineer.

That became apparent earlier today, when Yahoo confirmed that it included inaccurate information about Thompson’s academic background on its Web site and in its regulatory filings.

The admission came after activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point correctly asserted that Thompson’s resume was overstated related to his education.

Yahoo called the inclusion of the computer science degree on his bio an “inadvertent error,” but gave no other explanation as yet. Tonight, the Yahoo board said it was reviewing the matter and would then make appropriate disclosures afterward.

While it is entirely possible that Thompson did not correctly grok what Gunn was saying, it seems pretty clear that he implied his college background was in tech and he was an engineer.

It is true that Thompson did take some computer science classes at Stonehill. And it is entirely possible that he thinks of himself as an engineer by work training and not by college degree.

I am awaiting comment from Yahoo PR, which has its hands full today (welcome to the circus, Amanda!).

Until then, here is the actual audio of that part of the interview and the pertinent part of the transcript, which began at the 26:33 time on the audio, to judge for yourself:

Gunn: Your bachelor’s degree is in accounting and computer science. Now, from both of those, I mean that’s, that’s pretty obvious that’s Paypal. What are the most important things you learned?

Thompson: Yeah. You know, I think and I, I mention this to young kids when I’m on campus, and my son who I was just talking about at Santa Clara, what I’m happiest about in my background is if you work in technology you’re trained to solve problems.

And that’s really it, you’re trained to pull apart very complex things and think about okay, how can I do this or how can I do that or how can I make it better?

And that’s really the background that I have and it started back in my college days, and I think that’s really the wonderful part of being an engineer is you think that way.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
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• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

So what is he doing running a radio and billboard company?

The Clear Channel CEO explained his newest job choice to Kara Swisher last week at D: Dive Into Media. The takeaway: Clear Channel’s radio and billboard businesses are huge because people — both advertiser and users — like them. And they still have growth in them.

You can see the whole interview, which touches on everything from Facebook to Spotify to Tim Armstrong, here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120209/the-internet-hasnt-killed-the-radio-star-clear-channel-ceo-bob-pittmans-full-dive-into-media-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111228/viral-audio-a-year-in-tech-a-look-back-at-2011-and-forward-to-2012/ http://allthingsd.com/20111228/viral-audio-a-year-in-tech-a-look-back-at-2011-and-forward-to-2012/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:06:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=157537

I was on San Francisco’s public radio station today, talking about this past year in tech with “Forum” host Michael Krasny and fellow panelists, former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy and CNET’s Molly Wood.

2011 was a big year, as it turned out, with good and bad news for companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Netflix and others.

We also looked forward to 2012, which will include new online TV efforts and, of course, the much-anticipated Facebook IPO.

Here’s the chat:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111228/viral-audio-a-year-in-tech-a-look-back-at-2011-and-forward-to-2012/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111122/pandora-beats-the-street-which-yawns/ http://allthingsd.com/20111122/pandora-beats-the-street-which-yawns/#comments Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:43:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=146811 Pandora turned in revenue and earnings numbers that were in line with Wall Street’s expectations, and boosted its forecast for next year and the rest of 2011.

Investors are yawning, though, and perhaps even frowning a bit — they’ve knocked a few cents off the company’s share price in after-hours trading, and it’s now down 3 percent, to $11.50.

For the record: The streaming music/Web radio service generated $75 million and non-GAAP earnings of 2 cents, topping street estimates of $71 million and a one-cent loss. It bumped up revenue and earnings predictions for both the next quarter and all of 2012.

And while the initial earnings report doesn’t disclose the breakdown, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy says that mobile streams — Pandora is huge on the iPhone, and very big on Android — once again constituted about 70 percent of the music the company pumped out in the last quarter. Mobile ads made up about half the company’s ad revenue, he said.

So what about competition from new services like Spotify, which launched in the summer and got a huge boost from Facebook this fall, and Clear Channel’s “iheartradio” service? Nothing to see here, Kennedy said during his prepared remarks: “We have seen no impact on our growth trends from any of the activities of other digital music services.”

(Image from animal-space.net)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111122/pandora-beats-the-street-which-yawns/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111121/tunein-the-sequoia-funded-radio-app-with-more-usage-than-pandora-and-spotify/ http://allthingsd.com/20111121/tunein-the-sequoia-funded-radio-app-with-more-usage-than-pandora-and-spotify/#comments Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:00:16 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=146096 It’s getting harder to find a diamond in the rough among Internet start-ups. Investors hurry to hand out seed funding. No press release seems too small to get picked up by a blog or two. Baby companies even get coverage when they’re accepted to start-up accelerators.

But here’s a contender: TuneIn is a radio app that gets more usage on iPhone and Android than Pandora or Spotify, according to a recent study.

In fact, TuneIn told AllThingsD last week, in October it had 30 million active users listening to 58,000 different stations from all over the world, with 200 new streams, podcasts or on-demand channels added every day.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based TuneIn is not your average start-up. It was founded in 2002 in Dallas as RadioTime, and for years built an online directory for radio stations that was available through partnerships with makers of devices like the Logitech Squeezebox and Sonos.

Then an outside developer made a popular iPhone app called TuneIn that used the directory to help users stream and record radio on their phones.

RadioTime bought TuneIn last year, and renamed itself and its radio apps for nearly every phone, living room and car app platform. Some 150 of those platforms have TuneIn available now, many of them preinstalled.

TuneIn users can browse among stations and genres; they can also search for an artist or song to find stations that are currently playing it. Most of the apps are free, but on iOS, Android and BlackBerry, users can pay for a pro version that lets them record what they’re listening to.

Late last year, Sequoia Capital secretly invested $6 million in the company and moved it to California. In recent months, it helped find a replacement for the longtime CEO with gaming industry vet John Donham. Donham most recently co-founded Metaplace and sold it to Disney, where he ran technology and product operations for Disney Interactive Media Group.

Donham (pictured below) said in an interview last week that he was happily going about his business at Disney and about to blow off a call from Sequoia’s recruiter because he’d never heard of TuneIn, when he realized he already had the app installed on his phone. Then he looked at some of the glowing TuneIn app reviews from people listening to their hometown radio from halfway around the globe. And then he got a look at the usage stats.

“There’s nothing viral about TuneIn,” Donham recalled thinking. “How did it get to millions of people with no viral and no marketing?” He joined in August.

Of course, there’s a good reason that Spotify and Pandora get more love than TuneIn. They’re creating new music discovery experiences, rather than simply translating existing radio content for a new medium. And they are personalized and social.

(This weekend, while listening to a random pop station on TuneIn at the gym, I heard its local ads for a laser hair removal shop in Minnesota. It’s probably not going to be getting my business anytime soon.)

But while apps like Spotify and Pandora may be shiny and better-known, Donham said, radio is still the top way people find new music.

For now, TuneIn doesn’t add its own advertising, though that will probably come, Donham said. The company is starting a campaign this week with listener-funded stations — like its local KQED — to solicit donations from listeners directly within its apps. It will also soon add discovery and sharing features.

Update: This story was updated to reflect that Sequoia Capital’s investment came in 2010.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111121/tunein-the-sequoia-funded-radio-app-with-more-usage-than-pandora-and-spotify/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111114/hollywood-meets-silicon-valley-up-close-and-personal-youtube-ceo-salar-kamangar-comes-to-d-dive-into-media/ http://allthingsd.com/20111114/hollywood-meets-silicon-valley-up-close-and-personal-youtube-ceo-salar-kamangar-comes-to-d-dive-into-media/#comments Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:12:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=143664

Hollywood and Google have been circling each other for years, as each side tries to figure out what to make of the other. Now they’re finally starting to link up in a serious way, via YouTube’s new “channels” strategy.

Which means it’s a perfect time to hear from YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar. And if you’re at D: Dive into Media in January, that’s what you’ll be able to do, as one of the world’s most important Googlers joins us onstage.

Getting Kamangar out of Mountain View and into the public eye would be a big deal under any circumstances, because — while he keeps a very low profile — he has enormous clout: He’s one of Larry Page’s most trusted lieutenants, a position he has earned by joining the company as hire No. 9 in 1999, then helping to build the AdWords product that has generated a vast majority of Google’s revenue.

Kamangar has been formally running YouTube for the past year, but in reality he had been overseeing the world’s largest video site for some time. Kamangar is also in charge of Google’s broader video plans, including Google TV, which is now making a second stab at inserting itself into the world’s living rooms.

So there’s going to be plenty to talk about when Kamangar joins a lineup of media heavyweights Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, an hour south of Los Angeles. Previously announced speakers include Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull, and VEVO CEO Rio Caraeff.

We’ll announce more in the weeks to come. If you want to make sure you get a seat, you should sign up now.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111114/hollywood-meets-silicon-valley-up-close-and-personal-youtube-ceo-salar-kamangar-comes-to-d-dive-into-media/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111107/more-moguls-for-d-dive-into-media-clear-channel-legendary-pictures-and-vevo-join-the-cast/ http://allthingsd.com/20111107/more-moguls-for-d-dive-into-media-clear-channel-legendary-pictures-and-vevo-join-the-cast/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:00:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=141037 We’re about three months away from D: Dive Into Media, which means it’s time to show a bit more leg and tell you about more of the speakers we’ll have joining us onstage.

For our first-ever media conference, we’re trying to cast a wide net, so you’ll hear from movers and shakers from a range of companies. The common theme: All of them are making and distributing content during a time of unprecedented technological change. How do they adapt?

So far, we’ve announced that Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New York editor David Remnick, Warner Music chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr. and News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey will be joining us on Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Nigel, just south of Los Angeles.

Let’s add three more to that list:

Bob Pittman helped build MTV, then AOL. And after spending several years as a full-time investor in everything from Zynga to a high-end tequila, he’s running a media company once again — this time overseeing radio and billboard giant Clear Channel. Why would you want to run a radio company when everyone’s consumed with the likes of iTunes, Pandora and Spotify? Because it’s still a growth industry, Pittman argues. And the fact that it’s the industry that gave him his start, at age 15, makes the story even more interesting.

Thomas Tull is a relative newcomer to Hollywood, but he’s moving fast. After founding Legendary Pictures in 2004, he’s produced a string of hits, including “The Hangover,” “The Dark Knight” and “300.” And if you accuse him of making dude-centric movies that appeal to “fanboys,” he won’t flinch — they’re the ones who still come out to the theaters, if you know how to get them there. Last spring, his track record helped him secure an investment from Silicon Valley heavyweight Accel Partners, which gives you a hint about where Tull thinks all of this is going.

Joint ventures formed by big media companies are a tricky proposition, but Rio Caraeff seems to be making his work. Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos,” is co-owned by Universal Music Group and Sony Music, and helped in large part by Google’s YouTube. And as of last month it was the second-biggest video site on the Web — a title that used to be held by Hulu.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now: You can find registration information here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111107/more-moguls-for-d-dive-into-media-clear-channel-legendary-pictures-and-vevo-join-the-cast/feed/ 0