Every so often, a product comes along that everyone expects to be a pathetic failure but turns out to be rather good. I would put in that category the internet replay services offered by broadcasters in the UK and the US.

The US product is Hulu, a video service offered by NBC Universal and Fox on which one can watch full-length replays of television programmes made by the two broadacasters as well as a few films.

The UK product is iPlayer, the internet service offered by the BBC which is becoming so popular that one or two internet service providers have protested that it is taking up too much bandwidth.

I cannot vouch for iPlayer because I live in New York and am barred from using it but I did use Hulu the other night to watch a couple of past episodes of 30 Rock and I have to report that the experience was a pleasure.

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I hesitate to say this because he has built a vast global media empire and I have not but I think Rupert Murdoch is wrong about the Wall Street Journal.

The resignation under pressure of Marcus Brauchli as its managing editor this week brought to the surface underlying tensions between Mr Murdoch and Mr Brauchli over the editorial direction of the paper.

I agree with some of the changes that Mr Murdoch wants to bring to the paper but in one big respect - his wish to compete more directly with the New York Times - he is misguided.

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Well, that did not take long. The resignation of Marcus Brauchli as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal just 11 months after taking up the post and four months after Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones occurred faster than almost anyone expected.

Despite Mr Murdoch’s pledge not to interfere in editorial matters, and the creation of a special committee to ensure that Mr Brauchli was not told what to do by the paper’s new owner, it never seemed entirely plausible that Mr Murdoch would remain editorially detached.

His influence - transmuted through Robert Thomson, the former US managing editor of the FT who is now publisher of the Journal - is evident in the paper’s extra political coverage and the expansion of its opinion pages.

My sense is that Journal staff are uncomfortable about Mr Murdoch’s enthusiasm for taking on the New York Times by broadening the political coverage. Even if it does the job well, it will inevitably lose some focus.

One question is how much of a fuss the committee will kick up over Mr Brauchli’s rapid departure. Since he has resigned, the committee has no obvious grounds to interfere but its members are likely to feel uncomfortable if they do not at least make a statement.

They will not want to meet the fate of the independent directors of the Times of London, who did not protest when Harry Evans resigned as editor in 1982 after falling out with Mr Murdoch. They are still there but have not been taken very seriously since then.

It promises to be quite a drama in the world of US newspapers and of financial publications, including this one.

The transfer of Wonkette by Nick Denton of Gawker Media, my former Financial Times colleague who went on to other things, is a warning to those thinking of launching new media ventures.

Nick has sold, or perhaps more accurately passed on, three of the blogs in his empire including Wonkette, which was the founding blog about politics and Washington DC.

It still has healthy traffic figures – 5.9m page views in March – and is attracting a lot of interest in this election season. So why give it away – or something like that – to Ken Layne, its managing editor?

The answer is, in short, that there is not much advertising in political coverage. Nick’s biggest sites, such as Gawker, Gizmodo and Jezebel, draw advertisers because they have high traffic and clear commercial niches.

Technology companies can advertise to readers of a gadget blog such as Gizmodo while, to judge by the ads on Gawker, film and television companies hope to drum up viewers by advertising there.

But Wonkette was the closest thing he had to a general news site focusing on a traditional subject. That did not make it attractive to any particular group of advertisers, so Wonkette was not very profitable.

Nick has himself put the sale in the context of hunkering down for an advertising recession. It raises the broader point that a lot of “free” content on the internet ultimately depends on attracting advertising.

If there is none in the segment, then the future of blogs as businesses is suspect. I wonder what this means for the newer online politics publications such as the Huffington Post and Politico?

One thing I regretted when we moved from London to New York two and a half years ago was that my then seven-year-old daughter was just starting to learn about Tudor kings and queens. We had visited the Tower of London to look at the spot where Anne Boleyn was executed.

The move across the Atlantic meant that she instead got to learn about American Indian tribes. Without any disrespect to Native Americans, this struck me as being a poor substitute in terms of wealth and intrigue.

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For my Financial Times column this week, I have returned to the topic of Guy Hands’ views of A&R men and taken in Time Warner’s move to fold New Line into its Warner Brothers studio.

I argue that creative executives such as A&R people and film producers must get used to more financial discipline and lower pay because media companies can no longer afford to indulge them.

You can read the column here. Comments are welcome below.

The Guardian asked various UK media luminaries yesterday what Peter Fincham, the new director of television for ITV, should do with the ITV1 channel. I was particularly struck by the reply given by Daisy Goodwin, an independent producer:

Peter has to decide how far to take ITV1 upmarket and whether he can take the audience with him. So far the changes have been risky, the wrong kind of risk because they haven’t worked.

Um, the wrong kind of risk because they haven’t worked? If all risks were judged on that criterion, then none would ever be taken because it would only be worth investing in certainties.

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I was pleased to see John Micklethwait, editor of The Economist, comparing the Financial Times to General Electric as a training ground of editorial management talent. A shame that he did not credit me but perhaps great minds think alike.

Good Lord. Talking of internal memos to staff, here is one sent out today by Roger Ailes, chief executive of Fox News. Unlike Jerry Yang’s, Mr Ailes’ memo is written with meticulous clarity, as befits one of the great media communicators (I make no judgement about the message, just how it is expressed).

His message to staff is: Quit whining and, if you don’t like working here, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Actually, there is no need to paraphrase because that is pretty much exactly what he writes.

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On the plane on the way back from Davos to New York, I caught up with The Bourne Ultimatum, the Paul Greengrass-directed action thriller, starring Matt Damon.

Like many Hollywood films these days, it was a travelogue of countries as well as a drama. Madrid, Tangiers, Manhattan, Waterloo Station . . . it went to all the most glamorous spots.

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