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The first batch of data from TiVo's new commercial audience measurement service supports the view that people will skip fewer ads if they see the ads as relevant to their circumstances.

The second-by-second service, called PowerWatch, covered May 2008, and it reveals that all demographic segments fast-forward through commercials at a high rate. For prime-time broadcast TV, 66% of the ads are skipped, and for all TV networks across all time periods, about half the ads are skipped.

Skipping, however, is 15% to 37% reduced if the ad is relevant, such as toy ads in a home with young children or political ads in a home with adults 50+. "Commercial skipping is not as random as some people think and there are clear differences by demographic group," says Todd Juenger, TiVo general manager. Read the whole story...

Yahoo has driven more than 100 million visits to its newspaper partners, it announced Wednesday. More than 775 newspapers provide news headlines to Yahoo sites with links that take users directly to the newspaper site.

"It's like a fire hose blasting us with page views," says one newspaper editor. At the Dallas Morning News, for instance, some placements have accounted for up to 27% of the day's page views, and 65% of the day's unique visitors. Yahoo places the stories based on variables including user votes and search. Top stories are given primary placement on Yahoo's homepage.

"Sharing our content brings steady traffic to our site and provides us with more inventory to sell to our advertisers," says Jon Beck, New York Daily News executive. For Yahoo, "linking to a network of newspapers gives our audience a valuable local perspective," says Yahoo media chief Scott Moore. Read the whole story...

In one of the first examples of a news segment migrating from the Internet to a prime-time news program, a feature story about penguins produced for NBC News' Web site aired on the "Nightly News" this month.

The penguin story is the first in a gathering wave of reports created originally for the Internet -- reported by a producer, not on-camera talent -- making it to the broadcast network, says Tom Peek, NBC executive producer.

"It was one of those small events that may well mark a watershed toward a truly cross-platform world, with professionally produced content playing wherever the audience wants to see it and breaking down the wall of TV network vs. online." Read the whole story...

An analysis by a trio of BusinessWeek reporters finds that Sam Zell should have seen the problems coming to the newspaper industry before he bought the Tribune Co. last year. They say Zell's blind side may cost the media company its life.

Zell's "deal from hell" as he calls it, is his $8.5 billion purchase of the Tribune Co. in December 2007, "a transaction that's shaping up to be one of the most disastrous the media world has ever seen," say the reporters. Zell stumbled into a morass of plunging sales and rising costs. He miscalculated expectations of declines in newspaper ad revenue and he loaded the already strapped organization with more than $8 billion in fresh debt to pay for the deal, "leveraging the company to within an inch of its life." say the authors. The conclusion: a different buyer might not have taken on so much debt, which would have made a significant difference in the prospects of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and other Tribune holdings. Read the whole story...

CBS Television Stations inked a deal with American Express and its digital agency Digitas to run integrated on-air and online ads in six local TV markets.

American Express will integrate its TV ad content with ads on the sites of CBS' local stations. The TV ads will also coordinate with ads on CBS' network of local blogs and community sites.

The deal demonstrates how interested advertisers are in multiplatform buys, says Jonathan Leess, CBS executive. "Marketers are looking for more than just the Web, and we are bringing them back to TV and leveraging online with TV." CBS delivers 10 million streams per month across its local sites. Read the whole story...