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• Forecast: TV Retrans Dollars To $3.6B By 2017 by Wayne Friedman

  TV stations' new retrans revenues will more than double in six years -- as their TV networks look to grab more of those monthly fees. Total retrans dollars are expected to hit $3.6 billion in 2017, in the midst of a slowdown of multichannel subscribers. ...Read the whole story

• Oprah Finale Grabs 18 Million Viewers, Major Ad Time by Wayne Friedman

  "The Oprah Winfrey Show" ended her syndicated show with her biggest ratings in almost two decades -- something movie companies in particular anticipated in buying lots of TV commercials. An estimated 18 million viewers saw her last episode. ...Read the whole story

• electronics Kyocera Effort Opts For Substance Over Style by Aaron Baar

  "Our thinking was guided by Kyocera's president, who believes we're really in a new world where people really have to watch what they're doing in terms of controlling costs," Livingston Miller, president of Seiter & Miller, the agency behind the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. "What we tried to find was someone who was credible -- particularly an economist." ...Read the whole story

• MyNetworkTV Favors Crime Next Season by David Goetzl

  MyNetworkTV, operated by News Corp.'s Fox group, is dropping two game shows and going with an all-drama lineup next season. Gone are back-to-back episodes of "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" and "Don't Forget the Lyrics" on Tuesdays. They will be replaced by two straight hours of ex-CBS show "Cold Case." ...Read the whole story

• hospitality DoubleTree In Largest Campaign In Recent History by Tanya Irwin

  DoubleTree by Hilton is launching a year-long, global rebranding initiative that includes operational, marketing, advertising, online, social media and internal/external communications channels. The multimillion=dollar awareness initiative is the largest brand campaign for the brand in nearly two decades. ...Read the whole story

• Live Ore-Ida Spot On 'Ellen' Sizzles by David Goetzl

  Heinz's top North American executive said that a live commercial on the "Ellen" show last month for Ore-Ida produced record results. The integration backing the sweet potato fries line included Ellen DeGeneres showing off the product ...Read the whole story

• packaged goods Mitchum Pitches Pits In New Global Campaign by Karl Greenberg

  The television, print, digital, social media, point-of-sale, out-of-home and radio effort centers on creative by ad agency Mother and production house Brand New School that makes the human torso something of a palimpsest for various pursuits, with animation representing various jobs, hobbies, escapes and disasters superimposed thereon. ...Read the whole story

My Phone, My Remote: Let the Living Room Wars Begin by Steve Smith

"Who did that?" my wife wonders when she see the TV channel change even as the remote control sits abandoned on the coffee table. I am being puckish and have been fiddling with the various mobile app extensions of the set-top boxes we have here in the family test lab. "This is grossly unfair," she protests. "You are the only one who even knows how to turn the TV on anymore." ...More

• Set-Top-Box Lexicon: More on Content Forensics - Fingerprints and Signatures by Jane Clarke

  Continuing with last week's column on Watermarks (Set-Top-Box Lexicon: Watermarking) we now focus on other forms of content identification - Fingerprinting and Signatures. According to the CIMM Asset Identification Primer, Fingerprinting differs from a watermark in that fingerprinting does not add any new information to the content. It merely uses the asset's current features and characterisitcs to create a prototype identification that can then be compared to other content fingerprints on file in a reference database to see if there is a match. Here are the terms associated with content identification in its many forms: ...More

• Univision Eyes Growth Through Traditional TV Expansion by Wayne Friedman

  Traditional television -- broadcast and cable -- is a growth business, an area where media companies can add existing programming and channels. Univision, for example, wants to start three new cable networks, one for sports, one for telenovelas, and one for news/information. For many existing media companies, launching even one new network would be a massive undertaking -- especially in this TV environment. It has been a while since any media company made such a big shelf-space announcement about new traditionally distributed TV channels. ...More

• Why GoogleTV And AppleTV Are Still Hobbies by Sam Vasisht

  In an earlier article, I talked about why the nomenclature for GoogleTV and AppleTV is ill-conceived, and why Google and Apple are doing the marketing of these products a disservice. At the same time, the opportunity to bring Internet and digital media to the largest screen in the home is immense. The nomenclature, the product development and marketing approaches demonstrate that neither company has qualified this opportunity sufficiently. ...More

• Media Insights Q&A With Bill Harvey by Charlene Weisler

  Bill Harvey, Co-Founder, Vice Chairman and CRO of TRA, has helped that company create a new type of buying measurement using STB data and custom databases. Bill has had an illustrious career in some of the biggest ad agencies in the industry and has written extensively about advertising, privacy and research policy. In my interview with him, Bill talks about his background, the ad agency world and TRA and how it uses Set Top Box data. ...More

• More Specialization, As ABC Leaves Kids' TV Education To Other Programmers by Wayne Friedman

  TV is increasingly a business of specialization. Yet you might scratch your head wondering why ABC has decided to let someone other than Disney-ABC program its Saturday morning network kids block. In a continuing effort to focus on its bigger cable networks and programming areas, ABC struck a deal with Litton Entertainment to program its Saturday morning block, now called "ABC Weekend Adventure." ...More