I am sure college basketball fans are feeling deeply deprived this March by the dearth of TV and online games available to them for their favorite tourney. Not! Obviously. I am besieged this week with pitches from media companies trying to tie their property into March Madness one way or another. One company that really does have the goods to merit special attention is the NCAA itself. If all of that nighttime viewing and daytime streaming is still not enough to satisfy bracket fever, then you will have a nostalgic treat at the new NCAA Vault.

Whether TV viewers are or are not "cutting the cord" with cable and other services has become the debate du jour. With every industry quarterly report we dicker over its meaning and whether the slow or negative growth in pay TV subscriptions is a sign of people getting their media from other means, namely online. Yesterday's SNL Kagan report showed an end-of-year turnaround in TV subscriptions, so that an early 2010 drop was overtaken by an end-year rush, netting out to a 211,000 increase in subs for the year. Some read this news as reassurance that the myth of the …

With the state of celebrity today, who is left worth roasting? Tonight on Comedy Central, the Friar's Club will give it another shot and take on Donald Trump. But here is prima facie evidence that roasts are irrelevant in an age of endless scandal and bad behavior. What is left to demythologize about a guy like this? What is left to rib him about? Comedy Central is going to give us a more interesting subject for pitiless roasting online - You.

Apparently chewing gum has a lot in common with music and aromas. Like a pop 40 tune from your teen years or a perfume from a former love, gum flavors have the same capacity for cueing nostalgic memories of good times. Retro-candy is a cottage industry. Amazon offers Gift Boxes from vendors targeting this niche. Chuckles, Pop Rocks, Turkish Taffy, etc. are all available packaged by the decade much like golden oldies compilations.

Remember the old adage, those who can't do, teach? YouTube seems to want us to keep this in mind in its latest project to enter a select couple of colleges with video training programs/promotions. Well, arguably, YouTube has always been in college. After all, who else on earth but college students have enough time to watch the billions of hours of horseplay and hijinks video that make YouTube famous. 'Dude, you gotta see this. Right in the nuts. Bam! That's gotta hurt. Any Amstel Light left?"

There are no legal limits on the number of quotation marks you can put around prose in this marvelous age of irony. Otherwise, our homey "Jen" Aniston would be on her way to the "pokey" by now after the two and three-quarter minute Smartwater video that went "viral" yesterday only a day after it posted. Okay, I will stop. Aniston stars with her patented 40-something adorableness in a viral video that sends up the viral video craze itself. Clipboard in hand, she admits that in "this day and age" it is impossible just to sell a product straight. Now it …

Warner Bros. Dark Knight shook up the media world yesterday, along with a few Netflix stockholders, about as easily as the caped crusader himself rattles street hoods. Launching a pay-per-view rental plan for its Chistopher Nolan flick on Facebook, Warner Bros. seemed to be re-jiggering what was an already-changed game of digital film distribution. If Facebook becomes a principle purveyor of film playback then what are the implications for category leader Netflix?

Trendy beer merchant Stella Artois has brewed a fun and highly elaborate promotion that leverages Mad Men chic, user-gen content, and an alternative reality premise. Whether it will prove a branding success is anyone's guess, but you have to hand it to the creative team for building a relentless online fantasy in which the user can play. The Le Cannes Casting Call extends the brand's upcoming sponsorship of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival by having users submit auditions to play the lead in a bio-pic about the purported "King of Cannes," Jacques d-Azur.

Was it something Steve Jobs said? Less than a year after the Apple CEO's infamous dissing of Flash-based site and video delivery, HTML5 support has accelerated quickly. According to video tech firm MeFeedia's survey of 33,000 sources, the share of Web video available for HTML5 playback has gone from 10% in January 2010 to 63% in February. The big jump has to do with mainstream support by the major players like YouTube, DailyMotion and Blip TV. As the company shows in a blog post, only about a quarter of sites surveyed had HTML5 support as of last May, but …

On the surface, the latest ad recall findings from last weekend's Oscar telecast come as no great surprise. Creative executions for M&M's ("candy hostages") and AT&T's depiction of husband flash-planning his anniversary in the background on his iPhone while talking to his wife, earned the highest consumer recall index ratings, according to Nielsen. While the Academy Awards are sometimes (mis) characterized "the Super Bowl for women," many of the ads featured in the telecast were in fact Super Bowl retreads or existing spots.