Time-shifted TV viewing has more than doubled over the past year and over 40 percent of Americans now make plans to record their favorite shows and watch them later, according to a survey released on Tuesday, reports Reuters. More than two-thirds of viewers have watched prime-time television series through video on demand, digital video recorders and the Internet, the survey conducted for the No. 1 U.S. cable TV operator Comcast Corp found. 61% of those who responded said they were using time-shifting technologies more than one year ago. Last season, the Tuesday edition of "American Idol" was the …

ABC announced that it had extended its deal with Peanuts Worldwide LLC, and with the Peanuts franchise's TV animator/producer, Lee Mendelson Film Productions, to air the much-loved animated Charlie Brown television specials for an additional five years. ABC took over the rights to the Charlie Brown TV specials in 2001. Titles include "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." The holiday specials continue to be viewer favorites. Last year, a rerun of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" attracted more than 11 million viewers. About 1 million of them fell into the MTV …

HBO, Time Warner Inc.'s pay-television channel, home to "The Sopranos" and "True Blood," holds cable and Internet rights to films from Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Pictures and is unlikely to make a deal with Netflix. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings opened his coffers last week, agreeing to pay the Epix cable channel more than $900 million over five years for online rights to films from Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Hastings plans to spend more to build the service, which offers DVDs by mail and online viewing for $8.99 a month, and has said …

"We are about to start work on developing a Chinese 'The Office.' How cool is that?" show co-creator Ricky Gervais wrote on his blog. In addition to the original British "mockumentary," there are versions in the U.S., France, Germany, Chile, Israel and the Canadian province of Quebec. ,br>,br> The show that mines office politics and corporate ineptitude for its laughs might face new challenges in China, where government censors tightly control media content. Gervais joked on his blog the show might not air if Beijing sees his latest project, "An Idiot Abroad," where he sends a culturally clueless friend on …

AOL intends to grow its Patch network of community news sites to include more than 500 neighborhoods by the end of December -- a move the struggling Internet company hopes will strengthen its online ad business. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong came up with the idea for Patch in 2007, while he was still an executive at Google Inc., and was an early stakeholder in the company. When AOL bought Patch, Armstrong said that he wouldn't take a profit from the deal and instead his initial investment would be repaid in AOL stock once AOL became independent of Time Warner. …

Hulu, the joint venture of News Corporation, Disney and NBCU for online television and movies, aims to go public through an offering that could value the company at more than $2 billion, according to people briefed on the matter. But despite its status as a big player in online video, the company currently makes little in the way of profit. In May, it reported taking in more than $100 million in revenue last year, though it added that it was on track to make that amount again by the middle of this year. It plans to add a $9.99-a-month …

Starbucks Inc., hoping to leverage its recent decision to offer free Wi-Fi at its stores, is working with Yahoo Inc. to create a Web site that would be customized for each location. In addition to The New York Times, USA Today, Yahoo and Zagat, Starbucks announced that publisher Rodale, Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. Boost and online charity DonorsChoose.org will also be contributing content providers for its Starbucks Digital Network. The site is expected to go live this fall. Customers who access the Internet at Starbucks will encounter the site first before they can surf the web. Starbucks began offering unlimited, …

In a major shakeup at the New York Daily News, Chief Executive Marc Kramer is leaving the paper after four years, marking the latest high-level exit. William Holiber, president and CEO of US News & World Report, will take on Kramer's duties at the paper, in addition to his magazine responsibilities. Kramer is leaving before his contract expires at year's end. Kramer is said to have been a driving force behind News owner Mort Zuckerman's decision to invest $150 million in new, state-of-the-art printing presses, despite the newspaper industry's widespread contraction. So far, the improvements, which allow for 4C …

The History Channel is having a remarkably strong summer, with an average of nearly 1.6 million viewers a night in June and July, up from 1.2 million in the same months last year. It is using established hits like "Pawn Stars" to breed new ones like "Top Shot," a firearms reality competition. Ad-supported cable channels are averaging the same number of viewers as they did last summer, with no gains to crow about. But when the 10 biggest entertainment channels are singled out -- USA, TNT, Fox News, Nick at Nite, History, TBS, A&E, Discovery, ESPN and ABC Family …

Will tablets save the magazine business? Nope. But if the industry's hopes for the iPad and its ilk pan out, digital editions could give the industry a billion-dollar boost in a few years. That's the conclusion of a new study sponsored by Next Issue Media, that's supposed to determine the industry's future, reports All Things Digital. It says iPad magazines and similar stuff will generate $3 billion in advertising and circulation revenue in 2014, assuming that the market expands beyond Apple to include Google and other competitors. But after you account for print dollars the digital versions will cannibalize, …