NBC announced on Friday that it was canceling the original "Law & Order," leaving a big hole in the city's economy. Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, said that show annually provided jobs to about 4,000 people, including one-day acting roles. Many New York theater actors supplemented their incomes with "Law & Order" gigs. Its spending totaled about $79 million a year. During its 20-year run, that impact amounted to as much as $1 billion or more, she said. Producer Dick Wolf proved "New York City is an affordable place to …

Rentrak Corp., a provider of multi-screen media measurement for the advertising and entertainment industries, just signed an agreement with Gannett Broadcasting for Rentrak's StationView Essentials system. Gannett operates 23 television stations in 19 markets with a reach of 21 million households. StationView Essentials will offer Gannett local market viewing data, including ratings and shares, as well as Rentrak's ad retention indices, program "stickiness"/engagement factors and brand-based station ratings. Steven Walsh, Rentrak's senior vice president, local market sales, said the service "provides clients with an expanded view of which programs deliver the consumers of greatest interest to their advertisers." …

A special court's decision Friday against TiVo, which pioneered PVRs, in a patent infringement case certainly wasn't welcome news; shares of TiVo were down 40% in trading. In 2004 TiVo sued EchoStar, the Dish parent company, alleging patent infringement. Dish denied the charge, but lost in court. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which deals with patents, said the judge in the case had erred, and while it didn't specifically rule in Dish's favor, it ordered that the court reevaluate the issue. TiVo shareholders stampeded out of the stock because they thought the …

With print ad dollars increasingly harder to come by, publishers are now accommodating marketers' requests to use what's considered editorial space. The latest example is in Condé Nast's Bon Appétit. Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese is running a series of page number "takeovers." The fractional ads, which are labeled as such, appear in the corners of 10 pages in the June issue. Print ads are increasingly creeping into editorial space. Scholastic Parent & Child has been running ads on the corner of its covers and interrupting editorial content inside. Hearst's Esquire recently ran a cover flap that opened to …

The Gleeks have an app. So do "Dancing with the Stars" addicts and "Beavis & Butthead" fans. For popular TV series, there's definitely an app for that. Apps aren't a prerequisite for launching a successful series today, but mobile could bring back a slice of lost ad revenue and put shows on additional screens, reports Ad Age.   ABC and MTV were both first-movers on the iPad. Another breed of app is meant to be a companion to appointment TV viewing. Co-viewing apps provide information supporting what's on screen or aggregate social-media chatter, the real-time, digital sibling to water-cooler …

"I think mobile is a fantastic opportunity," Nikesh Arora, Google president of slobal sales, said at theInternational Advertising Association conference. "The advent of the iPhone, the Android devices and the Blackberry have finally given people reason in the Western world (to) start using the mobile data. And as you see that go up, you begin to see the relevance of advertising in those applications." Data is seen as the main driver of mobile companies' future revenue streams as new-generation technologies allow the transfer of large amounts of information at a high speed. Top global advertising and marketing chiefs …

Media buyers want to see one main thing out of the CW upfront: More programming. The network is a desirable buy because it reaches young people 18-34, but media buyers are bothered by the large number of repeats. They would like to see more originals throughout the year, including summer, where the CW has gone almost entirely dark the past few years. While shows like "Gossip Girl" and "America's Next Top Model" have seen ratings slide, they still pull high ratings among the network's target demo, women 18-34. And the network has a very engaged audience that is active …

The English-language broadcast networks may be upbeat about the potentially strong upfront ad marketplace for the 2010-11 season, but Spanish-language broadcast networks Univision and Telemundo are ecstatic. They anticipate a potential $1.5 billion take between them. Univision and its smaller sister broadcast network, TeleFutura, expect to bring in about $1.1 billion, while NBC Universal-owned Telemundo is expected to garner about $400 million. The Hispanic broadcast TV market might be overlooked, but it shouldn't be. For the past several years, Univision has consistently won the ratings battle for 18- to 34-year-olds on Friday nights, beating every English-language network in that …

Sony Corp. is considering developing a tablet-style computer that would compete with Apple Inc.'s iPad, though it wants more evidence consumers will buy them, said Mike Abary, senior vice president of Sony's Information Technology Products unit. Electronics manufacturers have renewed interest in tablet-style computers now that Apple, which sold 1 million iPads in less than a month after its debut, has shown it's possible to build portable devices with big touch screens and long battery life at a low cost. Sony wants more proof of consumer demand before pressing ahead with production plans, Abary said. For now, Sony …

The latest TV threat could come from Hulu, the second-most-popular site for free online video. A reportedly planned change to the site's revenue model raises new questions about the outlook for television companies, says Smart Money. Today, Hulu offers a menu of free streaming TV episodes, movies and clips for free, but the site plans to start charging a monthly subscription fee of $9.95 to access its full archive of videos. The last few episodes of most shows would remain free.  Hulu also poses a danger to the networks because it could be changing audiences' expectations. Sites like Hulu …