For initial round of funding includes an equity investment from Ambani’s Reliance Big Entertainment (RBE), debt funding from banks and funding from Disney (NYSE: DIS), the Mumbai-headquartered company said in a release. Dreamworks will now make five to six films a year and Disney will distribute the films the world over, while RBE will distribute the films in India.

Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group is among India’s major business houses with interests in telecom, financial services and entertainment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported in June last year that Anil Ambani was in talks with the celebrated director to provide him with enough cash to end Dreamworks’ relationship with erstwhile owner Paramount Pictures (a Viacom (NYSE: VIA) unit). In September, The Times of India reported that the two sides were signing a $1.5 billion deal that would make Anil Ambani the single largest shareholder in the prestigious Hollywood studio, with Spielberg and Dreamworks CEO Stacey Snider (who formerly headed Universal Studios) together holding an equal share.

This is the first time the company has made a public announcement of the relationship. The deal was announced after a meeting earlier today between Ambani, Snider and Spielberg.

In May last year, newspaper reports said RBE was funding production houses of actors George Clooney, Jim Carrey and Brad Pitt, among others, to the tune of between $500 million and $1 billion. 

In February, Disney and Dreamworks entered into a long-term distribution deal.

—June and July: Asked how the July numbers are trending, U.S. Community Publishing President Bob Dickey said that July’s ad numbers are trending along with June, with 24 percent declines, excluding Newsquest. It fell 29 percent with Newsquest included.

On the digital side, Chris Saridakis, SVP, chief digital officer, said that brand managers can’t go a full year without advertising. Therefore, Gannett has a positive outlook for the next two quarters, he said, as even the auto category is showing signs of loosening its grip on spending budgets. Meanwhile, in the community-publishing end, Dickey said that national retailers are starting to commit their spending, after six months of negotiating. The local side has been a little slower, but the unit is starting to book some business the past few weeks. Martore warned, however, that there is no monolithic U.S. economy, and ad sales commitments vary from state-to-state.

—Check in time: While travel has diminished with the economy, Gannett flagship USA Today has seen its distribution cut at many hotels. Last quarter, Martore alluded to the company’s work on getting another hotel agreement. While no deal has been signed yet, Gannett said it’s currently in discussions with the Marriott chain about a new deal.

Earnings release | Webcast (10:00 AM)

—Digital: Revenue tied to Gannett’s digital holdings, which include PointRoll, ShopLocal, Planet Discover, Schedule Star, Ripple6 and a majority stake in jobs site CareerBuilder, was $142 million compared to $20 million the year before. The numbers reflect the Q3 consolidation of ShopLocal and controlling interest in CareerBuilder, as well as the shifting of PointRoll, Planet Discover and Schedule Star from the publishing segment to digital. Operating expenses were $123.9 million for the digital segment, which has been largely shielded from the massive layoffs that have continued through recent weeks.

—Digital costs down: One reason digital can avoid the kind of job reductions that have hit Gannett’s 84 community newspaper division is because of other cost cutting. While operating revs fell 18.5 percent as CareerBuilder was indirectly hurt by rising unemployment figures, Gannett pointed to 24.7 percent lower operating costs in the unit, giving digital operating cash flow a 54.2 percent gain ($9.6 million higher than it was in Q208).

—Publishing: This segment’s operating revenues slid 25.8 percent to $1.1 billion.

—Publishing ad revs fall: Ad revenues were 32 percent lower in Q2, coming in at $753.1 million. Specifically, retail declined 23.7 percent, national was 22.4 percent lower, and classified was down 44.9 percent.

—UK declines: A number of sources have suggested that Gannett may eventually consider selling Newsquest, the company’s publishing operations. It certainly had good reason to give that more thought in Q2, as the unit’s ad revenues dropped 36.9 percent. Gannett pointed to unfavorable exchange rates between the dollar and the pound, as it has in past quarters. But overall, the same weakness that’s affected the U.S. is an issue in the UK. In particular, retail was down 21.9 percent, national fell 21.1 percent and classifieds fell 40.5 percent.

Zannino left his post in December, after Dow Jones’ sale to News Corp closed. According to Michael Wolff’s bio of Rupert Murdoch, Zannino met with the News Corp (NYSE: NWS). head early on in his tenure to discuss the purchase plans.

Before coming to Dow Jones in Feb. 2006, Zannino was EVP in charge of strategy, finance, M&A, technology, at fashion label Liz Claiborne, which he joined in 1998 as CFO.

WSJ describes Zannino’s new home as a New York buyout firm with $10 billion under management. In signing on to CCMP, Zannino told the WSJ that private equity seemed like a natural next step for him. The firm was previously known as J.P. Morgan Partners. Its parent J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. spun off the unit three years ago. Release

Before the Softbank funding in April 2004, 11-year-old Paltalk raised $4 million in funding in 1999 and 2000 from private individuals. Since the collective 20 percent it sold then weren’t preferred shares, Katz said there are no plans to buy out those past investors any time soon.

Though most of its video chat offerings are free, Paltalk generates roughly 80 percent of its revenues from subscription fees, Katz claimed. He didn’t divulge the company’s annual revenue amounts. The company also says it has about 4 million users, with roughly 5 percent representing paying customers. The pay services are mostly aimed at companies who want to set up a virtual conference room, which Paltalk charges between $90 and $1,000 per month to access. Advertising is a much smaller component of its revenues. “That has helped us get through this period,” he said. “Last year was our best year.”

Rafat adds: Paltalk is in a tough and competitive sector, and besides video chat competition from all major IM clients and likes of Meebo and Userplane, the market has moved towards more social/livestreaming options. The more buzzy—and newer—companies like Livestreaming, Justin.tv, Qik and others have focused on live streaming rather than chat, and are racing to configure their services on mobile, as both the originator of the live feed and a consumption platform. Paltalk subscription fee may help it now and near term, but the direction of the market is clear. Softbank Capital, meanwhile, is not raising another venture fund in U.S., as it said when the news about Eric Hippeau joining HuffingtonPost as its CEO came out last month; it can take any exit it gets at this point, and this is one way, I suppose.

I spoke with Marty Moe, SVP for AOL Money & Finance, News & Sports, who said that AOL was attracted to the site for two reasons. One, it’s a growing sport that’s increasing garnering wider TV coverage. Secondly, the global nature of the audience for mixed martial arts is also seen as a way to begin expanding Fanhouse’s view beyond an American audience. “We’re particularly bullish about the MMA category and we saw a good way to build market share internationally with this acquisition,” Moe said. “Plus, it was very agreeable price.”

—Acquisition strategy: While Armstrong was enthusiastic about the acquisition, Moe said that this was not a signal of a wider plan to acquire sites for MediaGlow for the sake of it, contrary to speculation. In general, Moe said it is a more focused strategy: “We are head-long in the content publishing business, we’re actively looking at what other opportunities might work for our sites. We’re taking a category by category approach to acquisitions and we’re actively engaged in exploiting market opportunities.”

—In-house or outside: Moe sidestepped questions about the balance of building sites in-house or buying up ones to add to its stable. Conversations with AOL execs over the past few months revealed that MediaGlow had planned to have 100 sites by the end of ‘09, from 70 in January. By the end of this month, MediaGlow will add exactly 15 new websites. Lately, though, sources have clarified that target, saying that there isn’t a specific numerical goal in mind to its website rollout, and that the number should be considered as more of a ballpark estimate.

—Some help wanted: As newspapers and other media outlets have continued to shed jobs the past few months, AOL has served as one of the main media companies actively hiring since this past spring. In addition to keeping most of the staff at MMAFighting, including its freelancers, on board, Moe said AOL is continuing to make editorial hires, though the volume of new jobs available there has slowed down.

Under the multi-year deal, OpenSports will build out fantasy games for FoxSports.com, with a rev-share component and an equity component where Fox Sports will eventually become a part owner of Open Sports (first reported by SBJ today, and confirmed by us).

It launched with two new free fantasy football games on FoxSports.com tonight; the promotion started during Fox’s broadcast of the MLB All-Star Game. After this, OpenSports will work on fantasy baseball games as well. Some more details on the games here and here.

As for the FoxSports.com move to the more logical Fox Sports family, this has been in the works for some months now (as we reported first in March, when Jon Miller came in), prior to the recent FIM and MySpace exec changes and reorg. Now that the future of FIM looks much smaller as a corporate overseer and other online brands are moving under tighter control of respective brand heads, the move means tighter integration between the online and TV unit.

FoxSports still has the deal with MSN, renewed earlier this year. Would be interesting to see how the MSN deal evolves, if at all, beyond what was re-upped this Feb: the deal included joint sales partnerships with MSN, but now with FoxSports.com being sold with the TV component and more cross-platform deals, it remains to be seen if MSN still fits in this mix from a sales perspective. Then again, the MSN firehose provides traffic Fox can’t match without a portal deal—one reason the deal was renewed. Other Fox Sports Interactive properties, including Scout.com, and WhatifSports.com brands, were merged into FoxSports.com brand hen the MSN extension deal was announced, and are also part of the Fox Sports group as well.

. A lot more on FoxSports.com’ plans going ahead was outlined in a recent AdWeekstory, including a multi-million dollar content revamp of the site and relaunch slated for September.

Meanwhile, on OpenSports, the company is closing in a $4 million round from its previous investors, the SBJ story says, on top of the $10 million it raised last year from these private investors such as E-Trade CEO Christos Cotsakos and former Office Depot Chair & CEO David Fuente.

Some of the “highlights” from the internal PR effort:

—Only $45 million of the company’s approximately $1 billion in debt matures before 2011 and “we expect to repay that in November with cash flow from operations and our revolving credit agreement.” The majority of the debt is due in 2015.

—The company closed down one of its two $400 million revolving lines of credit when it expired in May, using a $250 million loan from shareholder Carlos Slim’s Banco Inbursa and Inmobiliaria Carso. Some of the loan went to repurchase “roughly half” of the $100 million in bonds due in November. “We are paying an interest rate of 14% on the Inbursa debt. Yes, it’s a high rate, but given the state of our economy, our industry and the credit markets at the time we did the transaction, we believe it’s both fair and financially sound. ... He has not asked for nor been offered a Board seat and does not have a history of activism in the companies in which he invests.”

—The $225 million from the sale/leaseback deal for a large chunk of the company’s HQ space and other funds went to pay off $250 million in bonds due in March 2010.

—The proceeds of divestitures including WQXR sale for $45 million and the potential sale of the Boston Red Sox—the Boston Globe isn’t mentioned—will go to pay down debt.

The service was founded in 2000 by Hugo Dixon and Jonathan Ford, both of who worked for the FT’s influential Lex column before starting this. The company now has about 40 employees, and its columns get syndicated to the NYT in U.S., the Telegraph in the UK, Le Monde in France and others. From what I understand after speaking to some sources, its revenues are in the $10 million-and-above range, with about three-fourths of that coming from the banks and other financial institutions that subscribe to the online service, most of the rest coming from media syndication, and a tiny bit from advertising (it has ads in its online video service, for instance). It was profitable for the first six months of this year, as the NYT story points out, even as the financial industry imploded all around it, though unlikely that they would have been able to keep the same number of clients, or margins.

Last year, there was some controversy after WSJ Europe, which had run it daily for eight years, dropped it last year as its tried to build its own opinion hub under the “Heard On The Street” brand. WSJ owned a 7 percent stake in the company and there was rumor that it wanted to sell its stake, but that hasn’t happened yet. As it discloses on the site, it has about 40 shareholders (most of them employees and board members).

So the talks with Reuters comes at a time when the biz info giant is looking to build up its opinion/commentary hub, has started a number of blogs and hired away Felix Salmon, the former editor at Portfolio, as one of the leads, under, surprise surprise, Jonathan Ford, the co-founder and former deputy editor of BreakingViews (some more details on that here). And by the way, this Commentary hub is not a Reuters Media project, but a Thomson Reuters corporate project, which gives it more heft and urgency. Hence the talks with Breakingviews, if true, mean that Reuters’ own efforts aren’t bearing fruit as quickly as they thought.

Meanwhile, Felix writes a rather blistering piece on his own Reuters blog, laying out reasons why his company should not (and will not) buy Breakingviews (he says he has no direct knowledge of the talks). He says that the company isn’t doing that well with a subscription model in a collapsed financial industry, and Reuters’ model of free add-on commentary to its terminals (and giving it free on Reuters.com website a bit later) is the best model in the link-based economy going ahead. To which, someone in the comments (likely a Breakingviews exec) does an equally blistering fisking of Felix’s piece. Lotsa fun to watch this develop…

Polymath Fry - apparently because he’s smart, media-literate and direct - is doing a nice line in tech punditry. The author/actor’s latest comments - an admission (shock!) that he has downloaded a TV show via Bit Torrent - are garnering as many column inches as Monday’s “teens hate Twitter” hoo-hah…

At Apple’s own iTunes Festival in London, Fry used a lecture to call his favourite computer maker the “big tobacco” of online music, and compared the guilty pleasure of illegal downloading to masturbation, Stuff.tv says.

Fry: “The last thing I illegally downloaded - was it a gay sex romp? ... It was the season finale of House.” He had already downloaded the whole series legally but needed to download the final episode of the show, which stars former comedy partner Hugh Laurie, while traveling in Indonesia, Fry said. Later, via Twitter: “Hope I’m not misunderstood. Such a pity if I get misrepresented as a ‘help yourself and be a pirate’ advocate ...”

Still, who needs 15-year-olds? We think Fry’s knack for telling it like it is is getting better and better…

The vocal opposition follows written criticism ICANN has received from several groups including the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Telecommunications Information Agency, which have said that the new domains will likely create confusion among consumers and also force trademark owners to defensively purchase domain names. The DOJ and the NTIA both want the initiative delayed until ICANN completes a study to determine some of its economic implications, according to a report on the ICANN website. ICANN doesn’t seem inclined to bend. It says it has already spent $13 million on designing the program and lists a number of initiatives it is undertaking to respond to the feedback.

Under a draft plan, anybody will be able to apply for a top level domain name, although they will have to fork over a $185,000 application fee to ICANN first. ICANN will then evaluate applicants based on whether they are financially and technically able to run a registry. Once an application is accepted based on those criteria, ICANN will invite third parties to post any objections they may have, before ultimately deciding whether or not to give the entity the go ahead.

The Digital 45 packages range from $1.49 to $1.99. But as with the vinyl 45s—which are still a staple of indie record labels—it’s questionable whether users will want to pay a little more simply for an extra song and old album art. After all, users still have the option of paying $1.29 for Prince’s 1986 hit Kiss by itself—will they really pay another 70 cents for the previously unreleased “Love or Money”? (The latter is also available for 99 cents alone.) Rhino is owned by Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG), which doesn’t break out results for the unit. Download sales has been one of the few bright spots for Warner Music over the last year. In the second quarter, digital income was up 7.1 percent to $166 million.

David Dorn, Rhino’s SVP for e-commerce and international catalog strategy, tells BillboardBiz that creating an event—like the 45’s 60th birthday, as if anyone was celebrating it—is a good way to get oldies some attention. “If you put a whole lot of them in the store in one shot, then they all sit there. They’ll have their promotion period, and some of them will get featured, but then they just sit in the store. To me it’s more interesting to market them each month and create a program around them and have something new to talk about every month.”

Deluxe said that it expects both businesses to bring in $7 million in revenue during the second half of the year (Deluxe’s total revenue last year was $1.4 billion). The acquisitions follow Deluxe’s purchase a year ago of business networking site PartnerUp, as well as Hostopia, which offers web hosting services for businesses. With the purchase of MerchEngines, Hostopia will now be able to offer search engine marketing services in addition to web hosting. Release.

This fits right in line with Hi5’s recent push to bulk up its virtual goods platform through a deal with Mochi Media—as the social network is trying to generate a greater proportion of its revenue from members, as opposed to advertisers. Two months ago it brought in Bill Gossman—formerly executive in residence at its biggest investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures—to help lead the shift in business models as CEO. Release.

It is a tough time to be a professional journalist. Newspapers are downsizing or disappearing completely, magazines are failing every day and the ones surviving are getting thinner. Online, the rage is all about aggregation and consumer-generated content. But I firmly believe that in the future we will need more professional journalists than we have today and they will be as valued—or perhaps even more highly valued—than they were 10 years ago.

Will these professionals work for the same institutions that they work for now? More likely no then yes. Certainly some of our current journalistic enterprises will survive and thrive but only the ones that make the transition to a “now economy” that demands “entwined content,” or stories told in prose, video and data all at the same time. The majority of the current kings of content don’t understand these changes or perhaps they do but feel helpless to respond to them. Today consumers wants to know what is happening right now (not 20 hours ago), and they want personal insight into the events. And by personal I do not mean from the point of the view of the writer (although clearly that is part of the puzzle) but rather personal to them. What do these events mean to me? How will they affect my world?

News for news sake will continue to be commoditized, but news that is specific to the end user and filled with real-time education will be hard to come by and highly valued. This will require smart, diligent reporters who do most of their work before the event happens. In other words, they know the topic inside and out, they know who the movers and shakers around that topic are, and, more importantly, they can get those movers and shakers to respond quickly at almost anytime of day.

Stories will still develop over time and across many specific installments of reporting. But the idea of a “scoop” having great value is gone. In an internet-enabled world, a scoop lasts for only a very fleeting period of time. The real value is the insight about that scoop. And because the web is multimedia, video will be extremely important too. We want to see the event; we want to feel like we are there with the reporter. So a reporter will also have to be good with a camera.

It will also be important to present raw data well. “Give me your thoughts,” say the readers, but let me see the data as well. Give me a chance to disagree with your theories and commentary. For this to happen, the institution supporting and paying the journalist will have to collect or buy the appropriate data and present it in a way that is both easy to understand and work with.

The world has changed, yes, but at the end of the day, people are still, well, people. They still have a need to know what is going on around them and how it may affect them. We have the tools to meet these needs, but unfortunately most of the legacy distributors of news have not been able to use them. Either they are too overwhelmed by the destruction of their current models or they are too leveraged with debt—or, in some cases, both— to see the opportunities within all the change.

This is not to say that consumer-generated content will go away. There will be blogs, or blog-like entities forever. And, clearly, the blogs will be read, but for the most part, not by many people. They more often than not will be highly targeted and not highly trusted. The exceptions will quickly be gobbled up by professional organizations and displayed as commentary, or morph into professional organizations of their own. This site is a great example of that. It launched as a blog but now holds very little in common with what most people would define as a blog. For the most part, the folks who create the content on this site (myself being a very obvious exception) are professional journalists. They make their living doing this and they will keep making their living doing it because readers like you and me find value in it. Because we trust it.

This last thought holds great hope for the legacy journalistic endeavors out there. Trust is a rare and highly valuable thing in media. It was one of the key reasons that Forbes.com was as successful as it was in the early days. We had instant credibility. But trust in and of itself will not win the day. Sites that don’t use the assets of the new form factor (as discussed above) will not be up to the competition, and online, the competition is more fierce than in any medium that has come before, because it is so easy for end-users to click away.

Which, of course, brings us back to why journalists will be the key factor in the success of any content site that deals with news. It is also the reason that barriers to entry online have now gotten as high as anything offline—and therein lies the silver lining for the legacy companies. Perhaps when the web was an infant, a site would be given leeway to find its legs, its voice and gain traction with readers. Now that the web is in its adolescence, there is little room for “finding one’s way.” You get just one shot with readers to show them what you can do, and you better do well enough with it to get them to come back another time.

This adds to the set-top box Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) launched over the holidays, as well as its plans to offer mobile movie rentals with Microsoft. Kevin Lewis, Blockbuster’s SVP of digital entertainment, told the LAT the new Samsung deal was an indication that digital-movie distribution was “no longer a niche” or a “hobbyist thing.” Note to Blockbuster’s senior brass: Your rivals have already figured that out—which is why they have a huge head start.

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) have already struck similar deals with electronics brands like Samsung, LG—and for Netflix, most recently, Sony—not to mention streaming partnerships with TiVo.

The synergies between the two companies helped fuel the (still unsubstantiated) rumors about Amazon possibly acquiring Netflix, which sent the latter company’s stock price soaring (though Kara makes the case that Microsoft would be a much better suitor).

Then there’s Best Buy, which recently brokered a deal with CinemaNow to launch its own digital-download service; the electronics retailer has also inked an aggressive cross-promotional deal with TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) that includes development of a co-branded DVR (which could presumably include movie downloads as well).

Univision Radio will retain the WCAA call letters, while WNYC promises to maintain WQXR as “a listener-supported public station dedicated to classical music”—but with a weaker signal. NYTCo says the signal will still reach the “vast majority” of the station’s listeners. WYNC is raising money for the acquisition. The transactions require FCC approval but are expected to close later this year. The company acquired WQXR in 1944, selling the AM station for $40 million to Radio Disney (NYSE: DIS) in 2007.

—Assets for sale: NYTCo is in the midst of a well-publicized fundraising effort of its own, although not quite the NPR kind. Assets formally being shopped now include the Boston Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and its 17.75 percent stake in New England Sports Ventures, LLC (the company that owns the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park and regional sports net NESN). Earlier this year, the company raised $225 million in a sale-leaseback deal for part of its Times Square corporate headquarters and $250 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu.

—Proceeds will go towards debt: In a memo to staff distributed after the sale was announced (via TheAwl.com, NYTCo Chairman Arthur Sulzberger and President Janet Robinson said they “plan to use the proceeds from divestitures, such as WQXR and the potential sale of our interest in the Boston Red Sox, to bring our debt level down even more.”

»  Media moguls in Sun Valley may think it’s a fad, but Twitter continues to grow. [BattelleMedia]

»  Is Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the New York Daily News “inevitable?” [Daily Finance]

»  Despite the economy, some forecasters believe more people will pay for online video. [MediaWeek]

»  Universal has sent two versions of its new movie Bruno to the UK—one raunchy, and one less-so—so more teenagers can see it. [Variety]

But if it can gain traction in a competitive field, likely there will be more such job sites under the WSJ umbrella, complementing its vertical sections within WSJ.com. And maybe some tuck-in acquisitions. Another side note: DJ bought UK-based financial media company eFinancialNews in 2007, for $63 million, but missed buying another piece of the company eFinancialCareers by a few months; that is now a part of Dice.com Holdings. More details on the new site in release.

He went on to say that he did not understand why Google (NSDQ: GOOG) needed two operating systems—Android and Chrome OS. “I don’t really know what’s up at Google,” he said. (Google has said that unlike Android, Chrome OS is designed specifically for people who spend most of their time on the web).

As for Microsoft’s own plans, Ballmer said the company did not see a need for a web-only operating system, noting that 50 percent of the time that people spend on their PCs is not spent in the browser. “The model of the future brings together the best of today’s rich client Windows-style applications and some of the things that people consider the best of the web,” he said. “We don’t need a new operating system, what we need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows applications, (Internet Explorer), the way IE works in totality with Windows and how we build applications like Office.” Of course, any statement to the contrary would contradict what has practically become Microsoft’s motto—that people will want to supplement desktop software, not replace it, via the internet.

Other highlights from Ballmer’s on stage interview with Fortune editor-at-large Geoffrey Colvin:

—European Commission antitrust inquiry: Microsoft has said it will ship Windows without Internet Explorer in Europe in an attempt to placate European antitrust officials who are investigating whether Microsoft violated antitrust law by bundling the two products together. “Removing IE was the thing that was most consistent with European law,” Ballmer said. “We’ll move forward on that basis.”

—“I’m A PC” ads: Ballmer said that the ads had worked—and the company doesn’t plan to stop running them.

—Pep talk: Ballmer is known for his bursts of enthusiasm and he did not disappoint, ending the interview by walking around the stage while swinging his arms and telling the audience of Microsoft partners that “Despite the economy, we can really get out there and pump (up) the volume.”