Facebook has been in the news a lot lately, sometimes making good headlines, other times bad, and still other times it’s gotten ugly. The good news was actually great- Facebook announced that it had reached 500 million registered users. This is especially impressive since two years ago they had only 100 million users. The 300% [...]

The World Cup is almost into the second round but the real competition might be taking place behind the cameras, between the broadcasters. In the U.S., two companies have television broadcast rights: Disney (ABC and ESPN) has the English-language rights and Univision (Univision, Telefutura and Galavision) has the Spanish-language rights. It was expected that Unvision would [...]

Although I really love my new job in online advertising sales, as I previously worked for 12 years in TV, I am still irked when I hear media pundits declare the inevitability of television’s demise. It was thus with some sense of reassurance and satisfaction that I recently read the positive report by The Economist of the [...]

Back in June 2009 I conceived of what Apple’s, then rumored, touchscreen device might look like and how it might be used. One month ago Apple finally unveiled the iPad ; it only mildly resembles my conceptual model but it does embody a simple yet versatile multimedia device with a lot of potential. Since its introduction [...]

An article today in the Financial Times mentions how Apple is supposedly pressuring TV networks to cut their episode pricing on iTunes in half, from $1.99 to $1. The price cut indicates that television sales have been lackluster. While exact iTunes sales information isn’t offered, it is known that Apple had accumulated sales of 15 million TV episodes [...]

I wanted to follow up yesterday’s note on cable carriage fees by imagining a model that would determine such fees, at least partly, on the relative amount of audience that a channel attracts. It occurred to me that such a model would be well suited for a digital subscription service, since it could faithfully measure [...]

Yesterday a deal was announced between Univision and YouTube whereby the U.S. Hispanic network would bring a “hefty stable of short- and long-form programming to YouTube.” While this is “the first time any Univision programming is available on the Web outside of its own properties” a great deal of the network’s programming, particularly material from [...]

Apple has an impressive position in the music market. Through its iTunes store, the company currently has a 69% share of the U.S. digital music market and a 25% share of the total U.S. music market. Their position isn’t as strong however in the video market. This is especially apparent when you compare iTunes music and [...]

I recently attended Advertising Week in New York City and had a lot to hear from some very eloquent speakers. Here are the top 10 moments that I found to be inspiring, provocative or at least original. (10) Changing Roles: It seemed to me that change was a prevalent theme at the conference and that [...]

Last week Nielsen released the most recent version of its Three Screen Report, which measures consumption of television, internet and mobile media. As in releases since 2007 the study demonstrates television’s dominance in terms of time spent with the medium. On average a consumer will watch 278 minutes (4.6 hours) of “traditional” (non time-shifted) television [...]