If you are having trouble viewing our video player, check out MediaBytes on YouTube.
Today marks the end of Analog Television. The transition, which should have happened nearly four months ago, will still find an estimated 2.8 million households without access to emergency television signals and broadcast television. Like I’ve said before, this is basically a Y2K situation for most, however, it will empower the use of White Space, which will effect the way we consume and interact with media in the future.
AOL acquired the local news site Patch and events site Going.com yesterday. Patch, which has founded by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in 2007 while he was still working for Google, is a hyper-local news site, which gathers content from a small team of writers, as well as user generated content. CEO Armstrong noted that “Local remains one of the most disaggregated experiences on the Web today — there’s a lot of information out there but simply no way for consumers to find it quickly and easily.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported that the online ad industry spurs $300 billion in “economic activity.” IAB, which sets standards for online advertisements, also noted that the industry employees approximately 3.1 million people. The study comes not long after the first report that online ad spending fell for the first time in its history.
Yahoo announced that Timothy Morse will serve as the company’s new CFO. Morse, who formerly held the titles of SVP and CFO of Altera, will replace Blake Jorgensen, who left Yahoo in February amidst massive shake ups. Yahoo hopes that Morse, who helped turn around Altera, a company who was under investigation by the government for stock options granting, can help right the search company, which is in the middle of restructuring its business.
After finally passing a strict three-strike policy for illegal filesharers, France’s Constitutional Council ruled that the laws were unconstitutional. In particular, the court noted that disconnecting an offender’s internet was unconstitutional as it held the accused guilty until proven innocent. The law, which High Authority (HADOPI) would police, would call for the the offenders to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were innocent.