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 [...]

Last night CBS attracted an average of 106.5 million viewers during its transmission of Super Bowl XLIV, which effectively made it the most watched broadcast program of all time. While the Super Bowl has always been a major broadcast event in the United States its average audience has been growing steadily at around 2.3% since [...]

Last night the final season of Lost began with a double episode premiere, garnering an average of 12.1 million viewers. The good news is that this is about 6% more than last season’s premiere, and it’s also the first time since Season 2 that a premiere has a larger audience than its precursor. The better news is that the [...]

The NHL’s Stanley Cup and NBA Finals just finished up. The Stanley Cup had a strong series which went the full seven games; its ratings 19% above last year’s. The NBA Finals this year were so-so, especially in comparison to last year’s match up between the Lakers and the Celtics. Unsurprisingly the Finals draw 4% [...]