YouTube Said to Introduce Paid Service for Music

The competitive world of digital music is about to become even more crowded with the arrival of one of the most formidable forces on the Internet: YouTube.

By the end of the year, YouTube, a division of Google, will unveil a paid subscription music service to compete with Spotify and other streaming outlets, according to people briefed on the company’s plans.

Subscriptions to YouTube’s program, at about $10 a month, would be tailored to mobile devices, and let its customers watch videos — or just listen to the music on them — without interruptions from advertising, according to these people, who were not authorized to discuss the service publicly.

The deal would also allow record companies, which have long complained about low per-stream payouts, to reap bigger royalties on YouTube, which has become the dominant listening platform for young people all over the world.

YouTube declined to comment directly on its plans, but said in a statement: “We’re always working on new and better ways for people to enjoy YouTube content across all screens, and on giving partners more opportunities to reach their fans. However, we have nothing to announce at this time.”

The news of the imminent arrival of the service, which has been rumored in the music industry for months, was first reported by Billboard.

The service would solve problems for both YouTube and the music industry.

Mobile access to the site has skyrocketed — Google recently announced that 40 percent of YouTube’s traffic is mobile, compared with 6 percent just two years ago — but lower advertising rates on tablets and smartphones have caused some music labels to block their content from those devices.

Through the deal, YouTube would gain the licenses it needs, covering artists’ official videos as well as user-generated content like wedding videos with a popular song in the background.

In addition to higher payouts, the service could also help music companies tame somewhat the chaos of content on YouTube by organizing music in full albums and playlists.

YouTube has struck licensing deals for the service with Sony, Universal and Warner, the three major record label groups, as well as some independent labels, according to people involved with the talks.

YouTube is only the latest arrival in a crowded market. In addition to Rdio, Rhapsody and Spotify, similar subscription streaming services are offered by Sony and even Google itself — its Google Play Music All Access, developed and operated separately from YouTube, was introduced in May, also for $10 a month.

The music industry is also eagerly awaiting Beats Music, a subscription service expected soon from the makers of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. Music executives are hoping that the company’s success in marketing $300 headphones can translate into music subscriptions, which have been slow to take hold, partly because of all the free music easily available on YouTube and elsewhere.

Some analysts said YouTube’s success with a paid product may depend on its ability to compete with services like Spotify while still attracting users with free videos.

“YouTube is the world’s largest music search and discovery engine,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research. “Clearly there are people who would pay above and beyond using YouTube for free. It’s just about making a great consumer experience.”

AT&T to Introduce Solar-Powered Charging Stations

Starting Tuesday, 25 solar-powered charging stations will sprout in parks, beaches and other outdoor spaces in the five boroughs, part of a pilot project from the wireless provider in partnership with the city. The stations — 12.5-foot steel poles with three petal-shaped solar panels fanning out on top — can accommodate up to six devices at a time regardless of wireless carrier, with dedicated ports for iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys and standard USB charging cables.

Designed by a Dumbo-based firm, Pensa, with solar technology from Goal Zero, a mobile solar start-up, they are to remain in place in spots like Union Square Park, Metrotech Plaza and Rockaway Beach for three to four weeks at a time until October. If successful, AT&T could expand to other cities. The project will cost $300,000 to $500,000.

“We view this as a commitment to being a part of the New York community as a corporate citizen but also as a way for New Yorkers to continue to engage with their technology as they continue to consume more and more data,” said Marissa Shorenstein, president of AT&T’s New York division.

It is also good for the company’s bottom line. The city has more mobile customers than in any other market, and executives, who have promoted use of their network by providing free wireless in subways and at parks and cultural events, realized there was a need for more frequent charging.

And it is the biggest area of growth for the major telecommunications companies, said Eddie Hold, vice president of the Connected Intelligence unit at NPD Group, a market research firm.

“People are making less phone calls than they’ve made before and more importantly the newer generation of people are really not making many phone calls,” he said. “To make money out of data services the telecom companies need to convince you to connect as many devices as possible. The more you connect, the more data you use, the more money they make.”

The spark for the project came after Hurricane Sandy, when AT&T supplied diesel generators and cell towers on wheels to hard-hit neighborhoods in the five boroughs.

Working with Goal Zero, which makes portable solar chargers, and Pensa, which had been experimenting with creating stationary street chargers, the company won approval this spring from city Parks Department officials to test them. They will rotate locations — including Orchard Beach in the Bronx, Governors Island, Pier 59 in Hudson River Park, Coney Island, the Staten Island Zoo and several cultural events.

In creating and testing the stations, said Chris Abbruzzese, vice president for marketing at Goal Zero, they found that consumers are aware of exactly how much of a charge they need to power a phone or tablet for, say, a commute home. Three 15-watt panels and a 168-watt-hour lithium ion battery pack can keep the stations operating through the night or five days without sunshine. The stations will allow a user to fill a smartphone in two hours, or grab a 30 percent charge in 30 minutes.

Advertising: Mountain Dew to Introduce a Sponsored Web Site

The PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo is teaming up with Complex Media on behalf of one of its biggest soft-drink brands, Mountain Dew, for a sponsored-content initiative that will be housed on a new Web site, Green-Label.com. The site will replace several Web sites and a YouTube channel that have been overseen by PepsiCo Americas Beverages since 2007.

“We have a lot of heritage” in content creation, said Jamal Henderson, senior brand manager for Mountain Dew at PepsiCo Americas Beverages in Purchase, N.Y. “This new digital destination will align everything we’ve done into a hub for youth culture.”

“It’s all in one place, and it’s dynamic,” he added, and signals “a transition from a campaign-specific approach to an ‘always on’ approach.”

PepsiCo Americas Beverages will work with Complex Media on the creation and production of content for the site, which will be led by an editor in chief, Justin Tejada, who recently joined Complex Media from a Time Inc. magazine, Sports Illustrated Kids; he will oversee a team dedicated to Green-Label.com.

“This is a rather large play for both Mountain Dew and us,” said Rich Antoniello, chief executive at Complex Media in New York. “We’ve done custom content development on a campaign-by-campaign basis for marketers, but never something as deep as this, creating a platform on a continuous basis.”

Green-Label.com will be billed by Complex Media as “presented by Mountain Dew,” echoing an earlier era of content marketing in which radio and television shows were “brought to you by” sponsors’ brands. Other Web sites in the same vein carry similar designations; for instance, The Adrenalist has articles about adventure sports that are sponsored by the Degree Men antiperspirants sold by Unilever and is described as “powered by Degree Men.”

Advertising sales for Green-Label.com will be handled by Complex Media, and the ad revenue will be shared with PepsiCo Americas Beverages. The current content marketing efforts for Mountain Dew, which include Green Label Art, Green Label Sound and Green Label Sports, carry ads only for Mountain Dew.

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. “Pepsi legal are not exactly easy people to deal with,” Mr. Antoniello said, laughing. Mr. Henderson said: “We’re excited about sharing in the risk and the reward. I can’t comment on the exact investment spend.”

PepsiCo Americas Beverages spent $44.2 million to advertise Mountain Dew in major media last year, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP, compared with $23.6 million in 2011, $16 million in 2010 and $24.2 million in 2009. During the first quarter of 2013, PepsiCo executives said last week, advertising and marketing spending for all the company’s brands rose by 11 percent compared with the same period a year ago.

Complex Media operates numerous verticals, or specialized Web sites, and publishes Complex magazine. All are aimed at the young men who are also the target audience for Mountain Dew. The sites that are part of what is called the Complex Media Network include Complex.com, Do Androids Dance, Four Pins, Nice Kicks and Sneaker Report; they are devoted to the same kinds of content that will be featured on Green-Label.com, on subjects like fashion, music, sports and style.

That is a primary reason Complex Media is “the right partner” to help evolve the content marketing efforts for Mountain Dew, Mr. Henderson said, along with Complex Media’s significant presence in social media.

“We’ll share on our social communities as well,” he added, referring to Mountain Dew’s presence on sites like Twitter.

Asked about the decision to find a branded content partner, Mr. Henderson replied: “Our goal is to always innovate and instigate and be a leader. To push the limits beyond.” That, of course, echoes the active lifestyle and confident attitude that the Mountain Dew brand projects in content marketing and traditional advertising.

Green-Label.com will also repurpose the content now offered online under the Green Label umbrella. And PepsiCo Americas Beverages will continue operating its brand-centric site for Mountain Dew, mountaindew.com.

PepsiCo Americas Beverages and Complex Media have worked together for a decade, Mr. Antoniello said, citing examples that include the ads the beverage marketer runs in Complex magazine and events on which the two companies have collaborated.

Mr. Henderson said the content marketing deal with Complex Media was “a single year kind of proposition,” adding, “Like anything we have, we hope it’s a hit.”

Mr. Antoniello said he wanted to “see how this goes, how much effort it needs, how profitable it is,” before considering whether Complex Media would “go all in” for other marketers and take on similar branded content assignments.

As content marketing becomes more popular, sponsors and creators are being asked increasingly about the value of such content compared with what is deemed to be objective content that appears in conventional publications.

If “authenticity and credibility” are not paramount, Mr. Antoniello said, the branded content will be dismissed by its intended audience, and the result will be the sponsor’s failing to achieve its goal “to have a deep conversation on a consistent basis with the consumer.”

Facebook Is Expected to Introduce Its Phone

But it needs to find a way to play a bigger role in delivering what consumers want from their phones: ways to communicate, find answers to questions, shop and be entertained. The company would especially like to become that workhorse for the vast majority of its users who live outside the United States and from whom, so far, it barely profits.

The company will make its biggest leap yet in that direction Thursday, when it is expected to introduce a moderately priced phone, made by HTC, powered by Google’s Android operating system, and tweaked to showcase Facebook and its apps on the home screen.

The Facebook phone adheres to two crucial product announcements in the last three months: A new search tool that encourages users to use their Facebook friend network to seek out everything from restaurants to running trails, and a news feed remade for mobile devices.

The details of the would-be Facebook-centric phone are under wraps. But the motivation is certain.

“Facebook would like to be, literally and figuratively, as close to its users as its users are to their phones, within arm’s reach when they are searching for information, news, time wasting, shopping, communication,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with the Altimeter Group.

That can be especially attractive if the new phone is affordable to emerging market users: Brazil and India are home to the largest blocs of Facebook users after the United States, and their numbers are growing swiftly as smartphone penetration increases in those countries. Many Indian cellphone makers, for that reason, have Facebook already installed on their home pages.

But Facebook makes little money by advertising to those international users.

By partnering with HTC, a phone maker based in Taiwan, the social network is signaling that it is “making an international push,” says Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Securities.

“The more people you get to use it on phones, the more ads you can deliver,” Mr. Pachter said.

Facebook made a little more than $4 a user in North America and $1.71 in Europe, but barely more than 50 cents in the rest of the world, including large markets like Brazil and India.

Ads are its principal moneymaker, and Facebook is under intense pressure to show Wall Street that it can make more money, and fast. Its stock market value is still far below its initial public offering price, and many analysts blame the company’s belated push into mobile devices.

Mr. Zuckerberg announced last year that Facebook was retooling itself as a mobile-first company. He has consistently said that it is not in the company’s interest to manufacture a phone.

“It’s not the right strategy for us,” he told market analysts in an earnings call in January. He wanted rather to see Facebook integrated into every device that its billion users hold in their hands.

Two-thirds of Facebook’s roughly one billion users worldwide log in to the social network on mobile devices.

A study commissioned by Facebook and carried out by the research firm IDC found that those users checked their Facebook pages an average of 14 times a day; in short, users checked in two-minute bursts adding up to about half an hour each day. Mostly, the users check their news feed.

The new Facebook-optimized phone will use a modified version of the Android software, The New York Times reported last week. When turned on, it will display the Facebook news feed.

Facebook already functions much like a phone, allowing users to chat, send group messages and even, in one experiment with users in Canada, to make free phone calls over the Internet. Its platform hosts a variety of applications that deliver things like music and news, and its newsfeed has been tweaked to showcase photos, which is what Facebook users post by the millions everyday.

There are fledgling experiments with commerce. Facebook users can buy online and offline gifts on Facebook with their credit cards. Equally important, Facebook’s insistence on real names means that Facebook can be something like an identity verification service. It is well-positioned to be a kind of mobile wallet, containing the equivalent of an identity card and seamless way to buy things.

“They want to have all the services that consumers want to use in the mobile world,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst with IDC. “They want to be the major consumer Internet platform.”

The Thursday announcement, which Facebook has described as an opportunity to “come see our new home on Android,” illustrates a fundamental problem for the company. Facebook must accommodate itself to mobile operating systems controlled by Internet rivals, Apple and Google.

Mr. Weide described them as “frenemies, mutually dependent but competing.”

Samsung Plays on Apple’s Turf to Introduce Galaxy S 4 Smartphone

At a packed event at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday, Samsung showed off the Galaxy S 4, which has a screen slightly larger than the latest iPhone.

The device has quirky software features, including Smart Scroll, in which the front camera detects when someone is looking at the phone, and scrolls the screen according to the angle the phone is tilted. The phone can also be controlled with hand gestures. Waving a hand down in front of the phone will scroll up on a Web page, for example.

“Once you spend time with the Galaxy S 4, I’m very confident you’ll find how its innovations make your life simple and fuller,” said JK Shin, president of Samsung Mobile Communications, at the company’s first promotional event for its flagship smartphone.

With the prominent introduction of the phone, Samsung is trying to end its role as understudy to its more celebrated competitor, especially in the crucial American market, where Apple still rules. Even as Samsung has surpassed Apple in global market share, it is often criticized in the United States as an effective copycat, taking most of its product cues from Apple. But Samsung has begun flexing its marketing muscle more aggressively here to try to change that perception.

“This is Samsung’s time right now,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “They are clearly gaining more attention this time around than they ever have.”

Apple itself is showing signs of concern. In an unusual move on the eve of the Samsung event, Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, gave several interviews in which he discussed flaws in mobile devices based on Android, the Google operating system used by most of Samsung’s smartphones.

But Apple still has many big advantages that allow it to defend its position in the mobile business. Its iPhone 5 was the best-selling smartphone in the world in the holiday quarter, even though Samsung’s vast portfolio of phones is bigger than Apple’s. By charging a premium for its products, Apple raked in 69 percent of the profits in the smartphone business last year, compared with 34 percent for Samsung, according to a report by T. Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity. (The numbers add up to more than 100 percent because Apple and Samsung combined made more money than other competitors lost.)

While analysts like Mr. Munster expect Samsung to gain market share in the United States in the coming two quarters, they predict Apple is likely to still dominate the crucial holiday shopping season, when gift shoppers buy mobile devices in droves. That is when sales of the iPhone typically outperform all other devices. By unveiling its flagship phone just before spring, Samsung is striking at Apple months before a new iPhone is expected to be released.

“Everyone stays out of the zone of iPhone launch periods,” said Horace Dediu, a blogger and analyst with Asymco.

Apple’s iPhones fly off the shelves in the United States, but Samsung is still the top seller of smartphones worldwide. And in the United States, Samsung is gaining.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, sales of Samsung devices accounted for 30 percent of the American smartphone market, up from 21 percent the previous year, according to NPD Group, the research firm. For the same time period, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 39 percent of the market, down from 41 percent the previous year.

Samsung is far exceeding Apple in its rate of growth worldwide. In the holiday quarter last year, Samsung shipped 63.7 million smartphones, up 76 percent from the previous year, according to IDC, the research firm. Apple sold 47.8 million, up 29.2 percent from the previous year.

Samsung has won the global volume race by releasing multiple models of smartphones at different prices and sizes, while Apple has released one new model every year. Along with the Galaxy S III, the Note II, a Samsung phone with an even bigger screen, has been a popular seller.

“Samsung’s momentum has been tremendous if you look at where they were three years ago to where it is today in the smartphone market,” said Chris Jones, an analyst at Canalys.

Apple of Cupertino, Calif., is famous for products that create markets, as was the case with the iPhone and iPad. Apple has accused Samsung of stealing many of its best ideas in the mobile market. Last year, it convinced a jury that Samsung had infringed Apple patents, winning a $1 billion award that a federal judge in the case recently reduced to $600 million, a figure that could change as the case develops. Some recent moves by Apple have appeared to be in response at least in part to competition from Samsung. It released a smaller iPad and a bigger iPhone after Samsung had been selling smaller tablets and smartphones with bigger screens for a while.

“Right now Apple is the challenger, and basically the power dynamics have changed already,” said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at Alekstra, which helps companies reduce their phone bills. “Suddenly, Apple looks a little defensive.”

Before Thursday’s introduction, Samsung’s new smartphone generated nearly as much discussion and excitement in technology blogs as a new iPhone. “This is like the hype around the iPhone was two years ago,” Mr. Kuittinen said. “A year ago nobody cared about Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s not like the tech blogs wrote five posts a day about it.“

The Galaxy S 4 has several notable features. One, Dual Camera, allows the user to take a photograph with the front and rear-facing cameras simultaneously. At a basketball game, for example, a user can shoot a photograph of the game with the rear camera and the user’s reaction to it with the front camera; the two shots appear in one photograph.

Before Thursday’s event, a Samsung employee said the Smart Scroll feature would rely on tracking eye movements to determine where to scroll. When asked about the lack of eye-controlled scrolling in the new phone, David Park, a manager of Samsung’s mobile division, said the company had experimented with several approaches and decided to use the tilting method.

Samsung also added Group Play, which will allow multiple Galaxy phones to link together to play a game together. It uses Wi-Fi to bridge a connection.The phone will be available next quarter on Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Sprint. The older model, the Galaxy S III, was extremely popular because of its large screen and software capabilities; for a while it even outsold the iPhone. The company did not reveal a price for the Galaxy S 4, but said it should be the same as other premium Samsung phones, which have cost $200 with a contract.

To defend its lead in the market, Samsung will have to introduce capabilities in devices and set trends, said Chetan Sharma, a mobile communications consultant. But Mr. Kuittinen of Alekstra said Samsung has been setting the trends for a while. This year, Apple should introduce an iPhone with an even bigger screen, he said.

“They knew that if you do a phone with a huge 5-inch display, it will have big demand because it turns out people really want to have a phone with an enormous screen,” he said. “Apple didn’t know that.”

Ford and Chevy Introduce Smartphone GPS Connections

But navigating in a car with a cellphone can be awkward — and dangerous. To avoid looking down at a handset’s small screen, an awkward cradle is needed to mount a phone on the dashboard. Also, instructions from tiny cellphone speakers are often drowned out by road noise or music in the car.

A better, safer solution would be to feed a phone’s maps and instructions through the car’s larger, built-in display and sound system. Now, two automakers are allowing this to happen.

Ford has teamed up with the navigation company Telenav to enable Telenav’s Scout software to run on compatible vehicles outfitted with Ford’s Sync system and software called Applink. A $25-a-year app, Car Connect, lets drivers connect Android phones to the dash. (An iPhone version is in the works.)

They can have maps displayed on the car’s screen, use hands-free voice commands and hear directions through the car’s sound system. Also included are traffic information, red-light camera warnings and speed trap alerts, features rarely found on in-dash systems.

Chevrolet’s new compact, the 2013 Spark, is the company’s first vehicle to offer a similar feature. Rather than storing expensive, obsolete maps and navigation in the dash, Spark’s MyLink program relies on a $50 app that owners download to an iPhone or Android handset. Called BringGo, the app worked well in a test drive through New York City traffic, ably providing directions through various boroughs and rerouting automatically when the driver insisted on making a wrong turn.

Telenav, which also supplies the maps for Ford’s $800 built-in navigation option, contends there will continue to be a market for an all-in-one, in-dash solution. But as the app generation grows and more drivers become comfortable connecting their phones to their cars, automakers may be forced to hand over the navigation reins to smartphones.

JOHN R. QUAIN

Bits Blog: Apple Likely to Introduce Smaller iPad in October Event

People are still having trouble finding Apple’s new iPhone, which is selling out in stores, but the company is already planning to introduce another new product in an event later this month: a smaller, lighter version of the iPad.

The event, which has not yet been announced, will be held Oct. 23, according to a person briefed on the company’s plans, who did not want to be identified talking about products that had not been announced yet. The location of the event has not been confirmed, but Apple typically hosts its product events either in San Francisco or on its campus in Cupertino, Calif.

All Things D, the tech news blog, earlier reported the October event date. Whispers about a smaller iPad began in July.

The event will take place just two days before Microsoft holds an event to release Windows 8, its new desktop and tablet operating system.

Media Decoder Blog: Barnes & Noble to Introduce New Video Service for Nook Devices

Barnes & Noble said on Tuesday it would introduce a new video store for its Nook products this fall, the latest expansion of the bookseller’s digital content.

The service will allow customers to stream and download movies and television shows for a fee onto TV’s and mobile devices, while storing the content in the Nook cloud. The video catalog includes HBO shows, like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood,” and movies including “The Artist” and “Toy Story 3.”

Barnes & Noble has focused heavily on its digital offerings to compete with retailers like Amazon and Apple. In April, it received a boost when Microsoft said it would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the bookseller’s digital division.

Barnes & Noble’s Nook enters a crowded market of digital rental services that let viewers download movies and television shows to mobile devices. The video streaming service would be similar to Apple’s iTunes in that viewers could rent single episodes, movies or whole TV seasons. Wal-Mart entered the streaming business in 2010 with its $100 million acquisition of Vudu, which allows viewers to rent high-definition movies on Internet-enabled televisions. Many new television sets now come with the Vudu and Netfix apps built in. Verizon and Redbox recently partnered to introduce their own streaming service.

Major studios have taken a blow in home video revenue in recent years as DVD sales and traditional rentals decline. Deals like the one with Barnes & Noble help bring in additional rental revenue and offer viewers another outlet on which to find content. That’s in combination with home-grown streaming services like HBO Go, which requires users to authenticate that they pay for Time Warner’s HBO before accessing hundreds of episodes of past and current shows on tablets and mobile devices.

William J. Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in a statement, “As one of the world’s largest retailers of physical video discs and digital copyrighted content, our new Nook Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection, as part of our expansive Nook store.”

Barnes & Noble currently has about 25 percent of the e-book market. In August, the company reported a loss of $41 million, or 78 cents a share, in the quarter ending July 28. Nook sales were flat over the previous year, at $192 million.

On Tuesday, Barnes & Noble also signaled its intentions to build a bigger presence in Britain. It said the company Dixons Retail, which owns the electronics retailers PC World and Currys, would sell Nook products in 600 stores. Barnes & Noble also named Patrick Nourvillois as a managing director responsible for building the Nook brand “outside the U.S. across the globe.”

USA Today to Introduce a Sleeker Look on Friday

USA Today, with its colorful omnipresence on airport newsstands and outside the doors of hotel rooms, is showing off its new look on Friday. And the makeover for the newspaper, based just outside the Washington Beltway, comes straight from Silicon Valley.

Its weather map is sleeker. Its television listings feature conventional television programs while also providing descriptions of related highlights online. Its “Your Say” pages include reader comments from Twitter and Facebook. And as the newspaper starts to look more like a Web site, its new Web site, which is being unveiled this weekend, will function more like an iPad, with a smoother scroll from page to page.

“We are really trying to reinvent a news business,” said Larry Kramer, the paper’s president and publisher, as he sat in a conference room at its glassy high-tech suburban headquarters, reminiscent of the offices where James Bond receives his orders from M. “We are trying to think of USA Today not as a newspaper, but as a news company.”

The broader makeover is part of an effort by USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, to combine the resources of all of its TV and newspaper assets. The company owns 82 newspapers in the United States, including USA Today, as well as 23 broadcast TV stations and some digital media properties. Gannett is also planning to rebuild its newsroom to create a single national news desk to house employees from its newspapers and television stations.

Mr. Kramer, who founded MarketWatch and joined USA Today in May, said that Gannett’s newspapers and TV stations would share more content on breaking news stories, offering a greater mix of video and print on the Web site. Print reporters will be given video equipment and will be expected to do their own videos.

Mr. Kramer also plans to better pair the papers’ national investigative projects with local coverage; smaller papers will run USA Today investigative stories with sidebars written by reporters about local impact.

“This has to be an orchestra,” said Mr. Kramer. “It can’t be a single instrument anymore.”

He is also hiring prominent journalists to give the paper a broad range of voices. For instance, the author Michael Wolff will write a weekly media column.

USA Today has the nation’s second-highest circulation among newspapers, behind The Wall Street Journal. But while analysts have welcomed efforts by all news organizations to blend print, video and digital reporting, they point out that USA Today’s print makeover is overdue. Alexia S. Quadrani, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase, noted in a July report that Gannett’s newspaper advertising revenue fell 8.1 percent in the second quarter, more than she had anticipated. She said she expected USA Today to remain weak in the third quarter.

Ms. Quadrani pointed out this week that Gannett recently benefited from TV advertising related to the Olympics and the political campaign season, temporary bursts of revenue. And she stressed that Gannett still depended heavily on its papers.

“A revamp is going to be welcome because I think you do need to do something to reinvigorate that brand,” said Ms. Quadrani. “They’re still more skewed toward print in terms of where their revenue and cash flow comes from.”

It’s unclear whether changing the design will be enough to power growth for the broader company. Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, said that when USA Today started 30 years ago, it was innovative because it provided national content that travelers needed. Now travelers receive much of that information on mobile devices.

“The real problem is what is the real mission of USA Today,” he said. “It used to tell me the weather. Now I have the app for that. The once revolutionary and original mission of the paper has been usurped.”

The new version will feel familiar to readers who mostly get their news online. There’s more liberal use of color. The state-by-state coverage, with news summaries for all 50 states, takes up a full page and has been redesigned. (Mr. Kramer joked that the previous layout was like “telling you to eat spinach.”) There will be apps to accompany coverage for events like the Oscars.

Gracia C. Martore, Gannett’s chief executive, said the company’s 5,000 journalists had already started collaborating on stories. During the shootings in July in Aurora, Colo., the company’s network of TV stations depended on content from KUSA, Gannett’s station in Denver, until 18 journalists from other stations arrived to pitch in. During the Olympics, reporters from KUSA who knew Missy Franklin, a swimmer from suburban Denver, helped Gannett’s other news outlets cover her.

“The great thing about Gannett right now is the leveraging of assets that used to be housed in silos,” said Ms. Martore. “That’s how I think you survive and thrive in a digital era.”

Gannett executives said they made the changes because readers said in surveys that the paper needed a makeover. Two-thirds of its readers are male and college-educated and the median household income for USA Today and USAToday.com is more than $62,500.

“They felt the brand hasn’t been refreshed in a decade,” Mr. Kramer said. “It’s like ‘What have you done for us lately?’ ”

Ms. Martore said that these were drastic changes from when she started working at Gannett 27 years ago. “When I joined,” she said, “the consumer was an afterthought.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 13, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated Mr. Kramer’s professional status when he was hired in May as the publisher of USA Today. He had been working as a media consultant and teaching courses in college. He was not at MarketWatch, the company he founded. 

 An earlier version of this article misidentified James Bond’s boss. His boss is M, not Q.

USA Today to Introduce a Sleeker Look on Friday

USA Today, with its colorful omnipresence on airport newsstands and outside the doors of hotel rooms, is showing off its new look on Friday. And the makeover for the newspaper, based just outside the Washington Beltway, comes straight from Silicon Valley.

Its weather map is sleeker. Its television listings feature conventional television programs while also providing descriptions of related highlights online. Its “Your Say” pages include reader comments from Twitter and Facebook. And as the newspaper starts to look more like a Web site, its new Web site, which is being unveiled this weekend, will function more like an iPad, with a smoother scroll from page to page.

“We are really trying to reinvent a news business,” said Larry Kramer, the paper’s president and publisher, as he sat in a conference room at its glassy high-tech suburban headquarters, reminiscent of the offices where James Bond receives his orders from M. “We are trying to think of USA Today not as a newspaper, but as a news company.”

The broader makeover is part of an effort by USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, to combine the resources of all of its TV and newspaper assets. The company owns 82 newspapers in the United States, including USA Today, as well as 23 broadcast TV stations and some digital media properties. Gannett is also planning to rebuild its newsroom to create a single national news desk to house employees from its newspapers and television stations.

Mr. Kramer, who founded MarketWatch and joined USA Today in May, said that Gannett’s newspapers and TV stations would share more content on breaking news stories, offering a greater mix of video and print on the Web site. Print reporters will be given video equipment and will be expected to do their own videos.

Mr. Kramer also plans to better pair the papers’ national investigative projects with local coverage; smaller papers will run USA Today investigative stories with sidebars written by reporters about local impact.

“This has to be an orchestra,” said Mr. Kramer. “It can’t be a single instrument anymore.”

He is also hiring prominent journalists to give the paper a broad range of voices. For instance, the author Michael Wolff will write a weekly media column.

USA Today has the nation’s second-highest circulation among newspapers, behind The Wall Street Journal. But while analysts have welcomed efforts by all news organizations to blend print, video and digital reporting, they point out that USA Today’s print makeover is overdue. Alexia S. Quadrani, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase, noted in a July report that Gannett’s newspaper advertising revenue fell 8.1 percent in the second quarter, more than she had anticipated. She said she expected USA Today to remain weak in the third quarter.

Ms. Quadrani pointed out this week that Gannett recently benefited from TV advertising related to the Olympics and the political campaign season, temporary bursts of revenue. And she stressed that Gannett still depended heavily on its papers.

“A revamp is going to be welcome because I think you do need to do something to reinvigorate that brand,” said Ms. Quadrani. “They’re still more skewed toward print in terms of where their revenue and cash flow comes from.”

It’s unclear whether changing the design will be enough to power growth for the broader company. Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, said that when USA Today started 30 years ago, it was innovative because it provided national content that travelers needed. Now travelers receive much of that information on mobile devices.

“The real problem is what is the real mission of USA Today,” he said. “It used to tell me the weather. Now I have the app for that. The once revolutionary and original mission of the paper has been usurped.”

The new version will feel familiar to readers who mostly get their news online. There’s more liberal use of color. The state-by-state coverage, with news summaries for all 50 states, takes up a full page and has been redesigned. (Mr. Kramer joked that the previous layout was like “telling you to eat spinach.”) There will be apps to accompany coverage for events like the Oscars.

Gracia C. Martore, Gannett’s chief executive, said the company’s 5,000 journalists had already started collaborating on stories. During the shootings in July in Aurora, Colo., the company’s network of TV stations depended on content from KUSA, Gannett’s station in Denver, until 18 journalists from other stations arrived to pitch in. During the Olympics, reporters from KUSA who knew Missy Franklin, a swimmer from suburban Denver, helped Gannett’s other news outlets cover her.

“The great thing about Gannett right now is the leveraging of assets that used to be housed in silos,” said Ms. Martore. “That’s how I think you survive and thrive in a digital era.”

Gannett executives said they made the changes because readers said in surveys that the paper needed a makeover. Two-thirds of its readers are male and college-educated and the median household income for USA Today and USAToday.com is more than $62,500.

“They felt the brand hasn’t been refreshed in a decade,” Mr. Kramer said. “It’s like ‘What have you done for us lately?’ ”

Ms. Martore said that these were drastic changes from when she started working at Gannett 27 years ago. “When I joined,” she said, “the consumer was an afterthought.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 13, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated Mr. Kramer’s professional status when he was hired in May as the publisher of USA Today. He had been working as a media consultant and teaching courses in college. He was not at MarketWatch, the company he founded. 

 An earlier version of this article misidentified James Bond’s boss. His boss is M, not Q.