More Media M&A Madness

Another Media Property in Play!

Reuters received a takeover approach by a third party, but wouldn't say who. Those in the know say its Thomson group, the financial news company that aggregates information, like which analysts cover which company -- a service that we here at CNBC use quite often.

Just as Dow Jones has the Bancroft family protecting its interests, a board of independent trustees of the Reuters Foundation Share Company can reject a purchase of more than 30% of the company.

This takeover bid is connected to the ongoing Dow Jones takeover saga. Reuters could be interested in buying DJ's newswire service, a direct competitor to Reuters service, and Dow Jones Indexes, which calculates the DJIA (that Dow Jones Average we're always talking about on CNBC), both of which would fit well with Thomson's financial data service.

So what's going on with Reuters? It's spending big on expanding into new markets -- like Beijing, but that's led to a 30% drop in full-year profit.

Micro-hoo!

Yahoo and Microsoft are reportedly talking about a merger or partnership again according to the New York Post. Other newspapers say the talks may have ended or are focused on a joint venture.

Here's a sense of the companies' relative popularity: Microsoft's March unique audience was 119.6 million, and they're ranked number one. Yahoo's unique audience was 108.5 million, ranked number three. They both would gain new visitors if they did merge-- their unduplicated audience is 125 million.

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