Liberty\'s Spinoff of Starz Was Firmly Denied Only a Month Ago

By AMY CHOZICK

“There are no plans on Starz at this time other than to grow it.” That's what the chairman of Liberty Media, John Malone, told a New York Times reporter last month at the Sun Valley, Idaho, media conference.

On Wednesday, Liberty said it would spin Starz, the pay-TV network, into a separate company. The spinoff will make it easier for another company to absorb Starz, which seeks to compete with HBO and Showtime for lucrative subscription fees.

Mr. Malone repeatedly denied Liberty was considering a spinoff when asked about it in the bar of the Sun Valley resort July 11.

In a statement, Greg Maffei, the president and chief executive of Liberty, said spinning off Starz would “provide better transparency on the Starz operating business; optimize the Starz capital structure; permit us to better pursue our strategic objectives.”

In theory, a channel like Starz makes a valuable proposition for media companie s who want to compete in the pay-TV space. But lately, the channel has struggled to create the kind of hit shows that generate attention and increase subscriptions.

Starz, which is run by Chris Albrecht, the former wunderkind of HBO who oversaw that channel during its salad days of “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” is best known for its shows “Boss” and “Magic City.” It recently canceled the blood-and-skin series “Spartacus,”  which was approved before Mr. Albrecht took over and was said to not fit his creative sensibilities.

Starz had 20.7 million subscribers at the end of its second quarter. Its second-quarter revenue was $403 million, virtually flat from the same period in 2011.

Lots of names have been floated as potential Starz buyers, though no clear suitor has emerged. Media bankers have said they see the channel as fitting into the portfolio of companies as varied as News Corporation, which unli ke CBS Corporation and Showtime, doesn't own a pay-TV channel; and Netflix, which is investing heavily in the types of original programs Starz makes.

Amy Chozick is The Times's corporate media reporter. Follow @amychozick on Twitter.

Times Said to Reach Preliminary Deal to Sell About.com

By WILLIAM BRINK

The New York Times is in the process of selling the online resource guide About.com, according to an executive familiar with the negotiations.

The company has a letter of intent to sell the About Group to Answers.com, a question-and-answers site, for $270 million, the person said. It's unclear when the deal will close because financing has not yet been secured. The sale was first reported on the Web site All Things D.

Last month, The Times took a $194.7 million write down of About.com. The company purchased the Web site in 2005 for just over $400 million. In its latest earnings news release, The New York Times company said that About Group's revenues declined 8.7 percent to $25.4 million, largely because of a drop in display and cost per click advertising.

The prospective sale of About.com follows a string of sales that The New York Times Company has been making. The company sold its stakes in the Fenway Sports G roup, owner of the Boston Red Sox. It took a major write down last year on its Regional Media Group before selling the newspaper group to Halifax Media Holdings in January for $143 million.

The Best Time to Buy and Sell College Textbooks

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

It's that time of year again, when students across the country get ready to spend serious money on college textbooks. But to get the best deals - on both buying books for the upcoming semester and selling your old texts - it may be worth paying closer attention to when you shop and sell.

A recent analysis by Extrabux, a cash-rebate Web site, found that the best time for students to buy and sell textbooks was from Aug. 20 to Aug. 26, as well as Jan. 7 through Jan. 13. And the worst time to do it was from Nov. 19 to 25th and April 9 through the 15 (which seems to coincide with spring break).

The reason is simple. It all traces back to the basics of supply and demand. The best time to buy textbooks, the analysis found, is when demand is high. “We found that the prices of many products sold online will decrease as the number of shoppers looking for those products increases,” said Jeff Nobbs, co-founder of Extrabu x. “Online retailers/sellers want their prices to be as low as possible when there are the most consumers in the market looking for their products.”

He said the site looked at historical search trends for textbooks as well as price data through camelcamelcamel.com, which tracks price fluctuations from Amazon.com retailers.

The site also found that the best time to sell is when demand is high and supply is low.  “This means that students will get the most money for their books if they sell them when there are a lot more people buying rather than selling textbooks,” he said. In fact, students can get up to 20 percent more by selling during the right months, namely July, August and January. (The site discovered the pattern by analyzing when people search to buy and sell books through Google Trends, and then juxtaposing that with average textbook buyback prices throughout the year from BookScouter.com.)

Besides timing, you also need to know where to look for the best deals. In a previous Bucks post, we surveyed the different ways to reduce your costs - whether through finding free offerings online, using e-books or perusing the many Web sites that rent or sell used books, as well as sites that act as search engines and compare prices across several providers.

And in subsequent posts, we took an even closer look at comparison Web sites and some of our readers' favorite places to shop. (We also highlighted other options, including some sites created by recent graduates who were fed up with the book-buying process themselves. But it appears that some of them are now defunct).

Have you discovered new ways to reduce your textbook bill? Or have you found any new places to shop online?

The Breakfast Meeting: Obama on the News Media, and Madonna Speaks Out in Russia

By NOAM COHEN

Barack Obama has more than a spectator's interest in how the news media does its job, Amy Chozick notes as she describes the president's typical news diet. Press coverage helped propel him to the national stage when he was a state legislator, and three and a half years into his presidential term he sees news coverage as frustrating his ambitions to change the tone of political debate. His most persistent complaint is what he calls the news media's belief in a “false balance,” in which two opposing sides are given equal weight regardless of the facts. (A note of caution from Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism: “I think we've learned through history to beware of presidents playing press critic. They're not press critics - they're people trying to advance a political agenda.”)

• Still, Mr. Obama is a voracious consumer of news, reading newspapers and magazines on his iPad and in print a nd dipping into blogs and Twitter. He is inclined to communicate via small sit-downs with columnists or beat reporters specializing in economics or foreign policy, or to niche Web sites. The one group he tends to shun is political reporters, whose coverage he often considers frivolous, Ms. Chozick writes.

• The party planners for the Democratic National Convention next month in Charlotte, N.C., say they are concerned about their ability to book big musical acts for the event because of the timing of MTV's Video Music Awards, The Hollywood Reporter writes. The award show is set for Sept. 6, the Thursday when President Obama will deliver his acceptance speech at the convention, meaning many A-list acts will be tied up in Los Angeles. The network, The Reporter article says, will shift the show to 8-10 p.m. from its traditional 9-11 p.m. slot to avoid conflict with the convention's proceedings.

The federal judge who heard the Google-Oracle court case o ver copyright and patents on Tuesday ordered the companies to disclose the names of journalists, bloggers and other commentators who were on their payrolls, Reuters reports. The case, which was decided by a jury in San Francisco in Google's favor in May, hints “at the possibility of a hidden world of for-pay press coverage,” Reuters writes. The judge, William Alsup, said the information, which is due Aug. 17, “would be of use on appeal” and could “make clear whether any treatise, article, commentary or analysis on the issues posed by this case are possibly influenced by financial relationships to the parties or counsel.”

Madonna used her sold-out concert in Moscow to speak out for the three women from the feminist punk band Pussy Riot who on trial over an anti-Putin stunt they staged at the altar of a Russian Orthodox cathedral, David M. Herszenhorn writes. If convicted, the women could face seven years in prison. Madonna told the crowd: “I know there are many sides to every story, and I mean no disrespect to the church or the government. But I think that these three girls - Masha, Katya, Nadya - I think that they have done something courageous. I think they have paid the price for this act. And I pray for their freedom.”

An ambitious cultural and entertainment district planned for Shanghai in 2016 will have DreamWorks Animation SKG, the Hollywood studio behind hits like “Shrek” and “Kung Fu Panda,” working with a group of Chinese partners, David Barboza and Brooks Barnes write. The $3.1 billion project will also include Oriental DreamWorks, a new $350 million China-United States joint venture. Such projects offer American companies access to China's growing middle class, while strengthening China's media and cultural industries.

• On Wednesday, the director James Cameron, introduced his joint venture with Chinese partners in Tianjin to bring his 3-D technologies - used famously in his global hit “ Avatar” - to a high-technology industrial park there, Jonathan Landreth writes.

Wednesday Reading: American\'s Bag Delivery Lets You Skip the Carousel

By TARA SIEGEL BERNARD

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.