Broadband Internet surfers in North America watch two fewer hours of television per week than do those without Internet access, while those using a dial-up connection watch 1.5 fewer hours of TV. The data come from a Forrester Research study released Tuesday that uses what it calls the longest-running survey of its kind, counting nearly 69,000 people in the U.S. and Canada as participants.

While cable companies focus on adding data and voice services, telephone companies get ready to roll out television programming over the internet. The goal: beat cable at its own game.

MTV will debut a concert special featuring popular hip-hop stars Eminem and 50 Cent on its recently launched broadband property, MTV Overdrive. The program, Inside Em & 50's Anger Management, will run at 8 p.m. on Aug. 3, six days prior to the special's cable debut on MTV.

Time Warner's AOL unit lost nearly a million subscribers last quarter, around four percent of its total base. Ad revenues, however, were up 45 percent to $320 million. The company said it set aside $3 billion to settle shareholder litigation over its disastrous merger with the online unit.

This industry continually latches on to the next great thing, sensationalizing it until it's larger than life. No doubt podcasting has crossed your radar. If you're on the agency side, you're probably on your third POV document; if you're a marketer, you've at least considered including podcasting as a line item on the 2006 flowchart. But what is podcasting? And why are people gaga over it?

Not all that long ago, America Online looked unbeatable. The country's largest Internet service provider lured millions of tech newbies online with its omnipresent dial-up discs and members-only content, offered an e-mail service that starred in a Hollywood movie, and merged with media giant Time Warner in a staggering stock transaction worth about $160 billion. Needless to say, the merger fell short of expectations. And Net stalwarts like Yahoo and Google, which AOL once dwarfed, are running away with the online advertising market.

A Federal Trade Commission survey of top online merchants released yesterday found that most were complying with provisions in the CAN-SPAM Act requiring them to honor consumer opt-out requests. The FTC developed a list of 100 top online retailers, then created three e-mail addresses. The agency registered each address to receive e-mail promotions, offers and newsletters from each of the 100 retailers.

A new study suggests that the overlap between search engine results is less than it was even a few months ago, and that the voices of each engine are growing even more unique. It's easy to think of search engines as black boxes that all deliver more or less the same results. But that's not an accurate view, according to a study released today by Dogpile and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University.

Tier-two search engine Ask Jeeves' new sponsored listings product is drawing cautious interest from search marketers. By and large, they welcome the new paid search alternative, but worry that traffic volume on the site and its syndication network may not be high enough to warrant the complexity it will add to their search buys.

Internet media company Yahoo Inc. on Monday said it will offer video clips from cable news network CNN's Web site and ABC News, a move to bolster the company's online news offering as it battles against Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.