Time Warner Cable and Belo Corp are negotiating a new agreement over how much Time Warner will pay Belo to carry several of its television stations in markets around the country, including ABC affiliate WFAA-TV (Channel 8) in Dallas. If the two sides can't come to an agreement by Saturday, those stations could go dark for viewers. For weary cable subscribers, it's just the latest public spat between a broadcaster and a cable provider. Time Warner reached a last-minute deal with the Walt Disney Co. several weeks ago. The new negotiations between Time Warner and Belo cover 12 of …

More has changed in media consumption over the last two years than in the 30 years that proceeded it, says Bruce Friend, president of Ipsos OTX MediaCT. Citing a new Ipsos OTX study of 7,000 online consumers ages 13 to 74, Friend said that thanks to smartphones and laptops, people are now spending one-half of their waking days interacting with media, and have increased their media consumption by an hour per day over the last two years. "Communicating is now entertaining, and entertainment is communication," Friend adds. "The speed at which things can be delivered thanks to broadband, …

To kick off fall TV premiere week, CBS has teamed with Yahoo to maximize online buzz for its new and returning shows. This is Yahoo's largest single initiative to-date for any entertainment marketer and the largest premiere week online campaign to-date from CBS. The net will virtually "own" Yahoo this week, surrounding online and mobile users across the Yahoo network, including its home page, email service, mobile front page and Yahoo Messenger with CBS marketing messages. Earlier this year, NBC struck a similar deal with Microsoft's MSN to focus more of its digital ad spend tied to the fall …

Apple Inc. may be readying a version of its iPad tablet computer with a 7-inch screen to fend off a threat from competing smaller-sized devices, according to an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw LLC. The product may be ready as soon as the first quarter of 2011, Rodman analyst Ashok Kumar writes. The current iPad has a 9.7-inch screen. Apple may be considering the smaller iPad to vie with Samsung Electronics Co., maker of the Galaxy Tab. The wireless tablet device will run Google Inc.'s Android operating system and be offered by the four biggest U.S. wireless carriers: AT&T …

A new AdweekMedia/Harris Poll says significant numbers of viewers find TV commercials confusing at least some of the time. Older respondents to the poll, conducted in July, were especially likely to voice this complaint. Among those 55-plus, 8% said they're "very often" confused by the TV spots they see, with another 20% saying this happens "somewhat often." But young adults aren't immune, either.  Among 18-34-year-olds, just 2% said they're "very often" confused by commercials, but another 16% feel this way "somewhat often." This put them nearly on a par with the 45-54-year-olds, among whom 4% said they're "very often" …

Five years since starting its green marketing efforts under the "ecomagination" term, General Electric is introducing another round, online as well as on television and in print. The new batch of ads, which begins appearing Monday, is centered on an idea called "Tag your green." It is intended to encourage new ways of thinking about the environment and also fight the feeling, encapsulated by the expression "green fatigue," that overcomes eco-warriors who wonder if efforts to improve the environment is working. The "Tag your green" effort has a digital emphasis, with content on Web sites like Flickr, Howcast …

According to Borrell & Associates, political spending on digital media should double this year vs. 2008, reaching $44.5 million. Despite that hefty growth rate, "that's really not much," said Kip Cassino, Borrell's vice president of research. Some estimates place digital spending at 1% of total political media dollars. The hesitancy may be because there is little research on the impact of digital ads on voters. "Spending has just not developed this year," said Ted Utz, managing director of the local rep firm Petry Digital. Utz said his company works with around 10 top political ad agencies. Perhaps the …

An alarming survey by Credit Suisse should serve as a wake-up call to the broadcast networks and cable companies: Analysts there found that 37% of Netflix subscribers aged 25 to 34 substitute Netflix for pay television. Almost 30% of users between 18 and 24 are using Netflix's streaming service instead of cable or satellite. The Credit Suisse survey was of about 250 Netflix subscribers. "Netflix's low cost, subscription streaming service (with improving content) is our biggest worry and could become 'good enough' for consumers with moderate income and TV usage to use as a substitute for pay TV," said …

For the 2009-2010 prime-time broadcast season, ABC saw its average viewership come in third, behind CBS and Fox, according to Nielsen. More crucial, is its viewership in the demographic coveted by advertisers -- people between the ages of 18 and 49. ABC nabbed an average of 2.692 million viewers, Nielsen said. Producing better-watched programming is crucial to ABC's success. ABC has seen its upfront sales decline in recent years, according to recent estimates from Fitch Ratings. The Disney net once marched in lockstep with the arguably more stable CBS, securing about $2.5 billion in ad commitments for the …

Technology companies racing to deliver video to the living room over the Web are exploring the idea of offering ads on their services, seeking to capture some of the billions of ad dollars that flow to television, per The Wall Street Journal. A few companies, including TiVo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., have released ad products tied to broadband-video services designed to be accessed on television sets, not computers. They include ads that can take a viewer to a movie trailer on YouTube when the viewer pauses a TiVo-recorded TV program, as well as ads that can be accessed by …