SUPER BOWL XLII was the most-watched sporting event on record and the second most-watched TV program in history. Nielsen says an average of 97.5 million viewers watched the Giants-Pats contest. The most-watched program is still the M*A*S*H finale, which drew 106 million viewers in 1983.
THE FCC is facing a lawsuit from six cable programmers over the new dual must-carry regulations. Scripps, A&E, C-SPAN, Discovery, The Weather Channel and TV One claim that dual must-carry will cause them to lose channels on cable systems that must now dedicate both an analog and digital slot to other channels. The group argues that the FCC has no right to enforce dual must-carry and that doing so will violate their First Amendment rights.
COMCAST announced that several Hollywood films will be available via VOD on the same day they are released to DVD. It will also offer VOD pre-nework-run premieres from HBO, VH1 and Showtime as well as 30 Oscar-winning films to help celebrate the awards show. The announcements are part of “Project Infinity,” the company’s goal to massively increase its on-demand content offerings.
NEWS CORPS‘ Peter Chernin told analysts that Fox will not abandon the upfront, calling it “a valuable platform to interact with our advertisers.” Fox will, however, make fewer pilots than in the past. In related news, Rupert Murdoch put to rest any lingering speculation that News Corp. would challenge Microsoft for Yahoo, saying simply and clearly “We are definitely not going to make a bid for Yahoo.”
MYSPACE launches its developer platform today, one month before third-party widgets and applications are unleashed on the top social-networking site. Until then developers will test their apps on up to five users at a time. When the program goes live developers will keep all revenue generated by their widgets.