E.B. Boyd reports on Yahoo’s release today of its “second-screen” IntoNow app that automatically detects what iPad users are watching on TV and provides them with supplementary content on their tablets.  It works through an audio “fingerprint” embedded in the TV programming.  Boyd calls the process a “reimagining of what it means to ‘watch TV’ and the creation of a media consumption experience that is genuinely new.” Boyd says Yahoo is currently providing the secondary content itself, but that it’s looking at providing a “self-serve” solution for show producers. There are also opportunities being discussed for similar self-served content from …

Apple's App Store has made such a success of its Newsstand app for digital magazines and newspapers -- for example, since its debut Conde Nast's digital magazine sales rose 268% --  that it should consider the same model for sales of both games and TV shows, argues Erica Ogg. Ogg quotes a number of other sources on this topic, like "John Gruber at Daring Fireball[, who] thinks if Apple does do a TV it’ll be by curating all TV apps into a single store, essentially with each app being a channel of video, sort of like each app in …

Sinclair Broadcast Group will expand its geographic footprint by eight TV stations with its projected purchase of the Freedom Communications station group for $385 million,  in a deal that is expected to close later this year or in early 2012. With the new stations, which include ones in Albany, West Palm Beach and Grand Rapids, as well as its earlier purchase of Four Points Stations, "Sinclair will own and operate, program or provide sales services to 73 television stations in 46 markets, reaching 26.3% of the U.S.," writes Michael Malone.

Ten NBC-owned TV stations in major markets such as New York, L.A. and Chicago are making a "major investment" in local news coverage by making more than 130 new hires, according to a company statement quoted here. NBCUniversal aims to strengthen the stations' "news gathering and reporting capabilities."

Time Warner, like most big companies today, needs to cut costs -- but the only specifics mentioned in this piece are real-estate  (the Time Warner headquarters in Manhattan is called an "indulgence" by Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey L. Bewkes) and consolidation of shared services throughout the company -- which undoubtedly means some layoffs in departments like human resources. The company expects to use the $500 million or so saved to invest in "programming, journalism and digital translations of our products,” says Bewkes.

Social Guide, which provides social TV data, will debut an analytics platform this month. The company, which focuses heavily on Twitter, looks at "social TV, two hours before, during air and an hour after," according to founder/CEO Sean Casey, quoted here. Social Guide also has a movies product in beta, which will include an “intention to see statistic,” notes Casey.

DirectTV and News Corp. ended their weeks-long contract dispute with a new deal that not only assured the latter's broadcast and cable networks would stay on the satellite carrier's programming roster, but also extended the arrangement to include the Fox News Channel contract, not set to expire officially until early 2012. Among the entities included in the deal, whose terms were not disclosed, were FX, National Georgraphic and 19 regional sports networks.

Hear that ear-shattering noise? Not yet? If you turn on your TV or radio around 2 p.m. EST, next Wednesday, Nov. 9, all you’ll get on every single channel or station will be an emergency alert tone. Actually, we don’t know how annoying the tone -- or picture -- will be under the country’s brand-new Emergency Alert System, but we do know that every broadcaster, cable channel, radio station, and even satellite and telco TV provider in the whole country will have their signals interrupted for up to three-and-a-half minutes as the FCC and FEMA conduct the system’s first-ever nationwide …