Darrell Etherington analyzes a report that Apple is working on a Siri-powered TV that would allow viewers to operate the television through voice commands,  with a projected 2013 launch. "Many pundits have proclaimed an Apple television a bad idea, but it’s a chorus we’ve heard many times before; the iPod, iPhone and iPad all had very vocal detractors..." writes Etherington.

Among the responses to Time Warner Cable's earnings report was Peter Kafka's, noting that the company still insists that while it's losing subscribers, that's not a sign of cord-cutting. While he can see the logic of the company's argument, he can't help throwing in a slight touch of snark: "Here’s the company’s story in an almost-easy-to-understand chart," he writes.

The Chicago Tribune may debut a  32-page book review publication, Printers Row, in January, as an add-on print publication to cost $2. Sounds like the pub would be similar to the New York Times Book Review, though the test issue contains a piece of fiction, not commonly found in the Times version -- now "so popular that it is sold separately, at a price of $91 annually for mail delivery in Illinois," writes Lynne Marek. The Trib had a separate book section reportedly as late as 2008 -- and what is described by a former editor as a literate, reading …

Brian Stelter reports on Twitter's "symbiotic relationship with the television industry," which includes "the proliferation of Twitter logos and language on news and talk shows." In the latest iteration of this trend, users will now be able to cast weekly votes for "X Factor" contestants on Twitter. Producer Simon Cowell notes he reads the hundreds of viewer tweets on this show each week and makes changes accordingly. "It’s like having millions of producers working with you,” he says. Still, Twitter doesn't seem to be monetizing all of these connections, though chief exec Dick Costolo is quoted saying they "are going …

Allen Stern provides details of Monday’s Living Social promotion on Anderson Cooper’s new syndicated daytime talk show.  The first 20,000 to go to Living Social with the special code words revealed (“Molly Cooper”) on the show would receive $10 towards a future deal.  The brilliance of the promotion, according to Stern, is that entrants won’t be notified if they’re one of the first 20,000 entrants until two weeks have passed -- and since you need to be a Living Social subscriber to enter, this means that people who want to win the $10 will keep opening accounts for days to …

And the newspaper paywalls keep coming. This time it's Minneapolis' Star Tribune, which will launch a metered digital subscription plan Nov. 1. Initial cost will be $4 per month for an introductory period through January. Similar to the New York Times plan, non-subscribers will be allowed to access up to 20 articles a month for free.

UM has hired Yin Woon Rani as North American president -- a position empty since January, when former N.A. CEO Jacki Kelley was promoted to global CEO. Rani was  previously head of the GlaxoSmithKline consumer health-care team at WPP's Grey Worldwide.

We just couldn’t resist a news story titled “Why Chimpanzees Should Not Be In The Entertainment Industry.”   So we read through this article, which seems to be written like a scientific paper (hypotheses, evidence, conclusion), and found that participants in a study who viewed PSAs about chimpanzees were more likely to view them as an endangered species and unsuitable as pets; while those who viewed commercials featuring real chimps as actors, on the other hand, were inclined to feel the opposite way. The latter group also disliked ads featuring chimps in human situations. “This, in combination with concerns over animal …

Time to say goodbye to another newspaper TV critic. This time, it’s the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Storm, who is retiring after 22 years in the job. In this, his farewell column, Storm goes through a long list of the best entertainment shows during his tenure (with a little connect-the-dots among Fox’s long-forgotten “Down the Shore,” MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and AMC’s “Breaking Bad”). But we’ll just pull something he wrote back during the 1991 Gulf War and now repeats here: "Given our technical capabilities, network competition, and the public appetite for drama, it seems likely that instant news will continue to …

Claire Atkinson reports how traditional radio -- well, giant station owner Clear Channel in particular -- is making a preemptive strike on the likes of online upstarts Pandora, Rhapsody and Slacker.  Led by media honcho veteran Bob Pittman, Clear Channel has recently relaunched iHeart Radio to reach listeners over multiple platforms (satellite, HD, mobile, online) and also bought tech firm Thumbplay so it can offer Pandora-like features. While 81%  of listeners still dial into AM/FM radio, 11% now only listen online, according to Arbitron ratings.