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TO LISTEN TO HOWARD STERN’S new radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio, you need a satellite radio receiver and a paid subscription to the service–or do you? The show is being rebroadcast (albeit slightly delayed) on a bunch of “pirate” radio stations. It’s all over the Internet in the form of podcasts and progressively downloadable Continue Reading →

On February 5, 2006 the ABC Television Network will broadcast its seventh Super Bowl live from Detroit’s Ford Field.  Since the 10 most-watched television broadcasts in history have all been Super Bowls, one can assume that this year ABC will also enjoy a very large live audience.  Last year’s game was viewed by 133.7 million Continue Reading →

The most interesting thing about CES 2006 (The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) was my cab ride home from Kennedy Airport.  I struck up a conversation with my cab driver, and here’s what I learned. Amir Ramin, originally from Persia (the country we know as Iran) has been in the U.S. for over 22 Continue Reading →

It’s the dawn of a new year–filled with excitement, possibilities and promise. By now all of the new HDTV sets are hooked up, new iPods are formatted, iTunes accounts are set up, and BitTorrent 4.2.2 is properly installed. Let the media frenzy begin. Just one problem … according to studies by SA and Leichtman, over Continue Reading →

Some major telcos have started lobbying our elected officials for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, “regular” and “premium.”  You guessed it, not only would the telcos get to charge everyone more for the faster service, they’d also get to deny the faster service to competitors.  Ouch! As you can imagine, the prospect of Continue Reading →

Outlook didn’t just crash, it crashed and burned.  Nobody I know had ever seen this kind of a problem before.  I called my IT guru and described the problem–dead silence on the other end of the phone.  This was bad, and I knew it was going to get worse. The nuclear option: a low-level hard Continue Reading →

Cable and Congress are at it again. During a hearing that was supposed to be about indecency, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin brought up a study which “concludes that purchasing cable programming in a more a la carte manner in fact could be economically feasible and in consumers’ best interest.” The idea of a Continue Reading →

As many of you know, I am a composer/producer by trade.  One of my personal heroes is Michael Brecker.  He “set the bar” for an entire generation of saxophone players (myself included).  Attempting to copy his improvisational style is a “rite of passage” for aspiring musicians young and old. You are not unfamiliar with his Continue Reading →

Mae West once said, “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.” So here’s something you can do over the weekend just for fun. Create a blog page with one of those inexpensive blogging services like blogger or typepad. Subscribe to a bunch of relevant RSS (Really Continue Reading →

We hear the content industry and rights holders complaining about piracy everyday: file sharing, physical piracy, theft-of-services, derivative works, etc. But has anyone stopped to think about how many times consumers are asked to pay for the same content? Computer files may be the final form factor, but that is not stopping media companies from Continue Reading →