The long-anticipated rise of Apple stock to the top of all publicly traded company valuations, during the most volatile week in Wall Street history, reminds business it has much to learn from the company that Jobs built.

Just as the massive adoption of Apple's iPad and powerful apps has threatened Google's open-source Web stranglehold, the just-emerging HTML5 program language will change the media landscape for producers and marketers.

Television's program development system remains largely devoid of core incubator creativity, where cost-effective risk and failure can render something new.

News Corp.'s intense focus throughout the hacking scandal is on salvaging the Murdoch empire and a second pass at acquiring the 61% of BSkyB it doesn't own. The tattered Fifth Estate is being treated like mere collateral damage.

Facebook's Skype deal exemplifies new apps and strategic alliances aimed at using the social network to create a marketing and entertainment video-sharing economy worth billions.

Facebook is quickly moving to leverage its more than 600 million global active users (70% are outside the U.S.), 50 million active mobile users and $85 billion private-market value. It's geared up to drive social marketing and commerce.

Comcast wisely used a page from NBC's playbook and agreed to pay up for another decade of exclusive Olympic Game rights. But the real test will be whether the new controlling owner of NBC Universal can leverage one of television's remaining great live events as a platform for innovation -- not just marketing.

The moment Groupon goes public later this year, it becomes a takeover target -- it can't happen too soon, given the latest turn of events. The daily deal wonder has effectively created a booming industry from scratch -- at a time when financially withering consumers are showing renewed reluctance to spend.

Just when network and local broadcasters are getting comfortable with the notion that hefty retransmission fees are a solid second revenue stream, new technology comes along to undercut their sustainability.

How much of the new market economics HBO can attract and how much of its core business it can grow is a matter of response and timing. It reflects the quandary confronting so many other legacy companies caught in the digital shift.