These are not pleasant times for Jeff Zucker and his leadership team at NBC Television.  Having vowed to turn around the dreadful ratings of the past couple of seasons--and with some seemingly strong shows going into the current one--Zucker, head of the network's entertainment group, appeared positioned to perform a miracle.  But there's been none. Worse, NBC's Thursday prime-time lineup is fading.  This is of particular concern because NBC has long prided itself on the strength of its Thursday ratings.  This year's new Thursday shows—“My Name Is Earl” and “The Office”--began the season with  great buzz and good numbers, …

After months of talking about the wonderful benefits of advertising produced especially for DVRs, TiVo yesterday launched its Product Watch option; it allows users to pick and chose among ads that, according to TiVo, are longer than those TV viewers are accustomed to seeing and generally more informative as well. General Motors and Kraft Foods are among the first advertisers to try out the new format. Similar ads already are available on video-on-demand services offered by cable operators such as Comcast, says The Wall Street Journal. "Madison Avenue and the TV industry are closely watching consumer reaction to the services. …

Although faced with widespread skepticism and attacked by conservatives as a lame attempt at creating buzz for Arianna Huffington’s personal causes, the Huffington Post celebrity blog was launched a year ago this week, and it has managed during that time to achieve a certain amount of legitimacy.  (Full disclosure: I was among Huffington's original cadre of featured bloggers.)  USA Today pauses to take stock, quoting Huffington as well as others on the site's first-year achievements (and embarrassments, of which there have been a few).  "We are living in a 500-channel universe," the site's founder tells the newspaper. "There is …

Erwin Ephron's complaint is a familiar one: There are too many commercials on TV, and they arrive in swarms that are not only distracting and annoying, but actually serve to undermine the engagement the advertiser is hoping to create with consumers. "We can bring engagement measures into media planning by reducing audience counts to potential buyers who actually see the ads. In this scenario we can improve TV measurements by improving targeting," Ephron says in his latest newsletter. (His headline: "Preventing Dis-Engagement.") "How many interruptions, how many commercials? The data are available. It is estimated that the average cable system …

Warner Bros.' TV unit is offering local television stations that buy reruns of its “Two and a Half Men” sitcom a tasty freebie--the right to stream the shows on the stations' own Web sites.  The plan calls for Warner Bros. and the stations to share ad revenue for the online videos 50-50.  For local stations, this represents a significant perk.  After bellyaching for the last several months about how badly they have been treated by their network partners, which have been in a non-sharing mood when it comes to revenues from Webcasts of their shows, the local stations at …

Rodale, which has long been associated with magazines about health and healthy living, has finally entered the market with a product about yoga. That's no surprise. In fact, the only question is, what took so long. In an increasingly crowded field dominated by Yoga Journal, it seems Rodale is a bit late to the party. But the Pennsylvania-based publisher has taken an aggressive approach to the launch of its new title. In addition to the magazine, to which it has not yet committed beyond the first issue, now on newsstands, Rodale has launched a rich Yoga Life Web site, …

Among those who argue for a more robust form of citizen media--which, in a nutshell, calls for variations on the blogging format--Dan Gillmor is an icon. He is frequently cited among his acolytes for his views on everything from free media to dispersed media. So it is somewhat surprising to read Gillmor's piece at BBC News in which he defends the essential nature of conventional print journalism. "Sound journalism is a foundation of an informed citizenry in self-governing nations. Economic trends [i.e., cutting back on newspaper staffing because of the effective competition of eBay, craiglist, and other revenue-siphoning Web sites] …

JupiterResearch's Todd Chanko, with the introduction of those new ad-skipping DVRs in mind, decides to answer the question put in a recent New York Times headline--"Someone Has to Pay for TV. But Who? And How?" His argument begins with the assertion that almost all of us are already paying for TV... via our monthly cable or satellite bills. So it's not a question of will we pay, but rather for what, and how will revenues be deployed across the industry. Chanko: "Broadcast networks are too reliant on one sector--advertising. True, diversification of their revenue streams would reduce one kind of …

The inimitable Arianna Huffington, who came over from old media to found The Huffington Post superblog exactly a year ago today, takes the occasion to expound on the presumed competition between magazines and the blogosphere. She concludes they are not--or at least, should not be--in competition. There's plenty of room in the pool for everyone, Huffington says. "It's not an either-or proposition. Despite drops in circulation, print magazines are not going the way of the dodo bird ... and the 75,000 new blogs appearing every day won't be the death knell of Big Media. Instead, if the mainstream media play …

The second Internet boom, which we're experiencing right now, has loosened the deep pockets of venture capitalists around the globe, many eager to invest in media companies positioned to reap huge rewards in the future. What this means for old media is that they are largely on their own. The capital markets are not supportive, nor are the big VC outfits. "The realization that the Internet is changing the media business has prompted traditional media companies to develop digital strategies," says FT.com. An understatement, to be sure. "The digital transformation of the media business was much talked about in the …