Business Diary: 03/10/2009

Murdoch's internet genius questioned

Media types who pray at the altar to Rupert Murdoch might like to read a briefing note from Henry Blodget, Wall Street's most highly rated internet analyst. His view is that MySpace, for which Mr Murdoch paid $580m during his Damascene conversion to all things online, is now worth "next to nothing". That bodes well for Mr Murdoch's plan to start charging for online content at his newspaper titles.

If you can't get the little things right...

Still on the media mogul, his Wall Street Journal is often held up as an example of how it is possible to monetise newspapers' websites, assuming they're of sufficient quality. Unfortunate then, that the Journal can't even manage the basics, mis-spelling President Obama on its home page yesterday.

Fincham refuses to play ball

Peter Fincham is no fun. The ITV executive spent yesterday morning dodging queries about his interest in the top job at the broadcaster, or a similar opening at Channel Four for that matter. Irritated by the constant questions, he pointed out that he was hosting an event to launch new programmes for ITV, but the audience was not deterred.

Ryanair falls out with the Beeb

Poor old Ryanair. The Irish budget airline is under investigation by the BBC's Panorama and is cross that it hasn't had a right of reply. What really seems to angered the airline, however, is that when the BBC's researchers flew to Dublin to talk to the company, they took a BMI flight.

How firms can make birthdays happier

Want to make your staff happy in these financially difficult times? A survey from Kellogg's claims that two in five workers would rather automatically get their birthday as a day off than receive a pay rise.

Number of the day: 50%

The proportion of UK gas needs that will be imported by the National Grid this winter – the highest ever figure