There's been a flurry of activity with respects to media companies in this past week. News Corp wants Dow Jones, Thomson Corp. wants Reuters and, for a time, it seems Microsoft and Yahoo wanted each other.

The Globe and Mail has this round-up:

When Richard Harrington stood up at Thomson Corp.'s annual meeting in Toronto this week, the chief executive officer told investors the company would pursue any takeover that would bolster the company's place in digital media.

Most in the room probably interpreted Mr. Harrington's words as a signal that Thomson would continue buying the small databases and little-known businesses it's been acquiring by the dozens over the past few years. “It's all about opportunities,” Mr. Harrington said.

But a revelation by sources close to Thomson Friday that the company is in talks to buy Reuters Group PLC indicates the company has far bigger plans in mind. With a price tag that could reach $18-billion (U.S.) it is also the latest sign of how rapid the pace of takeovers has become in media and Internet-related properties.

There was barely time for that report to be confirmed before word surfaced that Microsoft Corp. was in talks to buy Internet portal Yahoo Inc. for $50-billion (U.S.).
 
This all capped a week in which News Corp. bid $5-billion for Dow Jones & Co. Inc., one of the world's best-known media names and the owner of The Wall Street Journal.

While talk of the Microsoft deal cooled later in the day amid denials from the company, the speculation alone was evidence of the buying frenzy that is sweeping an industry where no deal seems unfathomable, and all are coming with nine zeroes attached. ...

The global buying spree in media started last year when big media moguls began buying up smaller players – mostly Internet related properties – by the armload. After News Corp. purchased MySpace.com, the social networking site that draws millions of viewers, other media players have been stocking up on digital assets.

Now the giants are buying each other. The strategy is to either build subscribers who are willing to pay for their information – the Reuters, Bloomberg and Thomson model – or to build mass audiences that can be sold to advertisers at a premium.

On the Internet, audiences are easier to buy than to build, which is why Microsoft has been rumoured to be interested in picking up Yahoo, the most popular Internet portal. With Google attracting the bulk of advertising dollars, and sites like MySpace growing their audiences rapidly, bulking up through acquisitions has become the strategy of choice.

But the dollars being thrown at media assets these days have not been limited to the so-called new media players like Thomson and others. Newspapers have increasingly drawn contrarian investors looking to gamble that a secular decline in circulation will stabilize and the slumping stocks of major publishers will rise again.

The purchase of Tribune Co., Chicago's storied newspaper proprietor and owner of the Los Angeles Times, by property tycoon Sam Zell is one recent example. Last month's acquisition by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. of 5.4 million shares in Torstar Corp., publisher of the Toronto Star and more than 100 Ontario newspapers, is another.