Techno-politics

  If you are having trouble viewing our video player, check out MediaBytes on YouTube. YOUTUBE has added Insight, a new feature that tracks when and where videos are being watched. Insight breaks down views by both geography and time, giving video publishers some powerful new performance data. The tool has a number of practical Continue Reading →

  If you are having trouble viewing our video player, check out MediaBytes on YouTube. SHELLY PALMER analyzes Antigua’s threat to undermine U.S. copyright laws by legalizing piracy. Read this week’s essay to learn about the 1st InfoWar. GOOGLE submitted a letter to the FCC requesting that the “white spaces” between television channels be authorized Continue Reading →

  If you are having trouble viewing our video player, check out MediaBytes on YouTube. VERIZON and AT&T were the big winners in the FCC’s 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction. Verizon Wireless will pay $9.4 billion for 109 licenses while AT&T will spend $6.6 billion for 227 licenses. Both companies are expected to use their Continue Reading →

  If you are having trouble viewing our video player, check out MediaBytes on YouTube. THE FCC will relax local HD carriage requirements for DirecTV and DISH Network, making the terms less burdensome than those imposed on cable. The satellite operators will be allowed to down-sample local HD television signals to a lower quality, decreasing Continue Reading →

GENERAL MOTORS will shift half of its $3 billion advertising budget to online and one-to-one marketing within 3 years. That indicates a rapid increase over the $197 million GM spent online last year. The company plans to embrace a wide variety of formats, including gaming, search, interactive applications and more. THE FCC announced that the Continue Reading →

CBS has launched the CBS Local Ad Network for owned-and-operated television stations. The network will offer local web sites and bloggers widgets that provide local news, video and advertising. O&O’s will sell all advertising and give widget publishers a cut of the proceeds. Jeff Jarvis reports that stations will sell the ads at around $10 Continue Reading →

KEVIN MARTIN said he is willing to conduct testing of the digital transition in a few markets before taking the switch national next February. The FCC chairman had formerly claimed there was not enough time for testing. However, FCC member Michael Copps has continued to push hard for the tests and appears to have persuaded Continue Reading →

SHELLY PALMER offers up some alternative theories for the OSCAR‘s incredibly low ratings this year. It could be that the films were dark and the actors were foreign, but it could also have to do with something much less variable. SAG‘s New York board is urging the Guild to begin contract negotiations with the AMPTP 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 →

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 →