While HBO recently added a mobile version of its HBO Go service, an online portal that allows streaming of its series for cable customers, it is still hampered by its lack of carriage agreements for mobile service with two major operators: Time Warner Cable and Cablevision. "The cable companies may be unwilling at this point to launch a service that competes for users with their own digital platforms, or they may be seeking new content rights for HBO or other programming owned by Time Warner," writes MarketWatch's Nat Worden.

Want consumers to be truly engaged with your ads? Then combine TV and online messages. "Especially if Web content is related to the TV experience," using both will provide "maximum brand equity," according to a biometric study conducted by Innerscope for Fox Broadcasting, writes Broadcasting & Cable's Jon Lafayette. Of course, Fox Broadcasting offers both Web and TV advertising -- so it is publicizing the study as part of its upfront presentation. Also interesting to TV folk is this result: When watching TV ads only, viewers were 38 times more engaged than they were when experiencing online ads.

Despite Netflix CEO Reed Hastings telling All Things D's Peter Kafka  that the company is open to extending the runs of network shows in the fashion of DirectTV and NBC's "Friday Night Lights," TV by the Numbers' Robert Seidman cautions fans of such on-the-fence shows as NBC's "Chuck" to stop rubbing their hands together.  And hold off on that letter-writing campaign, he says. For one thing, "Chuck" hasn't even been canceled yet. For another, "Chuck" production company Warner Bros. "does not play nicely with Netflix as far as recent shows. Those shows can't be ‘doing well on Netflix' since they …

There's a new pay-radio station and it isn't on Sirius, XM or even Pandora. It's an Internet version of San Francisco public radio station KQED. For a $45 donation, listeners get an alternate feed of the station -- without any pledge drive interruptions for a full year. The special feed can be streamed on up to four browsers, including smartphones and tablets. Post Advertising calls this the "first experiment of its kind by any public radio station," but asks, "Does paid radio qualify as public radio?"

While running down the current menu of TV shows about eating and cooking, Breeanna Hare examines the reasons for food shows' continuing - and expanding - popularity. "If they're not entertaining us with standard reality-TV shenanigans, they're exploring a topic we can all dig into," she writes. Yet, even with networks ranging from VH1 to ABC cooking up new concepts like "Famous Food" and "The Chew," "there are only so many TV viewing hours that one should have within a day, and your typical fan can't possibly eat up all of this food programming."

"Media Guy" columnist Simon Dumenco relates the sad story of "Media Cat," an elderly feline who used to spend time napping on piles of magazines at a neighborhood newsstand.  Alas, the newsstand remodeled, so its low-lying stacks of glossies are gone - along with the cat. Media Cat may well be alive and hanging out in back of the store these days, but perhaps a sadder story is the vanishing retail visibility for print magazines.   Retail outlets stocking magazines have decreased 11.3% in three years, according to Ad Age's Nat Ives, and "magazine covers essentially served as eye-level (and waist-level …

Stuart Elliott writes that Interpublic's R/GA has added services like data visualization and event marketing as part of its efforts to stop marketers, other agencies -- and reporters like Elliott -- from labeling agencies as "traditional" or "digital."R/GA, a digital agency...er, I mean ad agency...had already offered such services as brand development and relationship marketing - and even the creation and production of television commercials -- in addition to mobile advertising, social media advertising, and, yes, "digital ad work for clients like Nike and Wal-Mart."Bob Greenberg, RGA chairman, chief executive and global …

The Wall Street Journal is the first U.S. newspaper to launch a Wikileaks-type file-sharing system for tipsters, reports Forbes' "Mixed Media" blogger Jeff Bercovici. Called WSJ Safehouse, the site allows sources to upload documents to a secure server where the paper's editors -- but no one else -- can access them via encrypted connections.  The New York Times, meanwhile, says it's "continuing to work" on the possibility of a similar system.

In a measure passed unanimously by the City Council and encouraged by the mayor, Salt Lake City has banned new digital billboard sites and the conversion of conventional billboards into digital ones.  But In Dallas, mayor Dwaine Caraway -- a former billboard owner -- "would like to see the whole city go digital because it is where the technology is today."  A Dallas City Council committee is recommending that the city should allow 25 new digital billboards over the next three years.

Allison Buckley profiles Howard Robertson, whose 10-year-old Spotset Radio Network is described as "the only unaffiliated, unwired radio network in the country."  Spotset works with advertisers to buy radio time from a database that includes over 13,000 stations. The company's latest project is a syndicated radio program to mark the 40th anniversary of "Soul Train," one of syndicated television's greatest successes.