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THE OSCARS telecast averaged an 18.7 rating and a 29 share. That’s TV-Geek-Speak for the lowest ratings since 1974, about 32 million viewers – a 20% drop from last year. Some pundits are blaming the dismal ratings on the dark nature of the top films. Best picture, “No Country for Old Men” focused on a Continue Reading →

THE DISNEY-ABC TELEVISION GROUP has officially announced Stage 9, a new digital media studio. The studio’s first project is “Squeegees,” an online comedy show about a group of bumbling window washers. The 5-minute episodes will be released on Mondays and Fridays on both YouTube and ABC.com. However, this “new media” studio made a decidedly “old Continue Reading →

QUARTERLIFE debuted on NBC with a 1.6 rating and a 4 share in the 18-49 demographic, pulling in only 3.86 million viewers. It finished well behind ABC and CBS for the hour and viewers trailed off in the second half of the show. Creator Marshall Herskovitz said the show “bombed” and that it “shouldn’t have Continue Reading →

THE RECORDING INDUSTRY lost a major ruling in Atlantic v. Brennan when a federal judge in Connecticut ruled that merely making music available to other users is not evidence of copyright infringement. The judge also found that no proof of infringement was supplied by the record companies that brought the suit. With two of three Continue Reading →

THE OSCARS drew 32 million viewers, the lowest since 1974. That’s a 20% drop from last year’s 40 million viewers. This year’s broadcast averaged an 18.7 rating and a 29 share, compared to last year’s 27.7 rating and 42 share. The falloff is being blamed on the dark nature of the top films, such as Continue Reading →

SHELLY PALMER discusses the impact of newsclipper.org, a site that repackages video feeds from major content owners while stripping out the advertising. Read his analysis to learn more about this RSS-fueled challenge to the monetization of online content. THE OSCARS were dominated by “No Country for Old Men,” which received awards for best supporting actor, Continue Reading →

Scott Boyarsky, Director of Program Management at the Walt Disney Internet Group called me to chat about an extraordinary website called newsclipper.org. It’s extraordinary for a bunch of reasons (which I shall explain) but the most interesting part of our conversation centered around a simple, unavoidable truth: newsclipper.org does exactly what you or I might Continue Reading →

SHELLY PALMER and KEVIN MARTIN will talk about the transition to digital television on BLOOMBERG TV today at 12:10 ET. THE FCC is backing down from a plan to force TV stations to air up to 12 PSA’s per day warning viewers about the upcoming digital transition. Instead, the Commission is expected to accept a Continue Reading →

GOOGLE will announce AdSense for Video, allowing web site publishers to insert video ads into video content or to overlay text ads on top of videos. Ads will be contextually matched to both video and web site content. 20 partners have initially signed up for the program including Revver, Blip.tv, Brightcove and YuMe. THE DGA Continue Reading →

NBC has announced its plans for a modified upfront. In April the network will release a 52-week schedule of staggered show premieres and then hold small presentations for advertisers in New York, LA and Chicago. On May 12 it will host a “spotlight event” in New York to present the full range of advertising opportunities Continue Reading →