As News Corp., NBC, Viacom and others send prime-tie content to the Internet, local TV affiliates are wondering whether they're the next business to be left behind by the Internet revolution. NBC and News Corp. plan to distribute prime-time content across a large network of major Internet publishers. CBS made a similar announcement last week. Viacom's MTV is building interactive Web sites and whole virtual worlds out of its popular TV shows, and consumers are spending more time with social networks and online video sharing sites like YouTube. Moreover, it's an on-demand future, as the big telecoms, Apple, Joost, YouTube, …

Legally speaking, it may not amount to much, but bad publicity isn't something Yahoo needs. On Wednesday, a day after its stock plummeted 11% due to poor earnings, a Chinese couple sued the Sunnyvale, Calif. giant and its affiliates for providing the Chinese government with information that led to the husband's imprisonment for his writings on the Web. Last year, Wan Xiaoning was sentenced to 10 years in prison for what the Chinese government describes as "incitement to subvert state power." Under pressure from Beijing, Yahoo coughed up emails the man sent to electronic journals advocating free speech and …

EBay had a markedly different day on Wall Street from its Web partner (and rival) Yahoo, delivering better-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Wednesday. Thanks to sharp growth from its Skype and PayPal units, and a higher average price of selling goods on its auction site, first-quarter profit surged 52 percent. The San Jose, Calif. firm reported net income of $377.2 million, up from $248.3 million a year earlier, sending shares up 5 percent in after hours trading. Overall sales were $1.78 billion. Growth was fueled by a 31 percent rise in revenue from PayPal, while Skype, eBay's voice over …

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel on Tuesday was bullish about the prospects for the Web giant's new partnership with a consortium of newspaper companies to sell online advertising through a joint network. He said the initiative was an unparalleled solution for local and national advertisers. The addition of McClatchy earlier this week brings the total number of nationwide dailies to 260 that will sell ads using Yahoo's ad targeting technology. Publishers and industry critics agree that the move is a boon, but it's no panacea for the ailing print business. A combined sales force with established relationships with local advertisers …

MySpace is entering the news aggregation business-and why not? The service, called MySpace News, is a cross between Google News, which collect and arranges stories based on keywords, and Digg.com, which lets users vote stories, the most popular appear sequentially in a given category. MySpace News will send crawlers to scour the Web for stories, which users will vote on. The most popular stories become the top news on MySpace. News Corp. is searching for ways to keep its more than 100 million unique visitors, who spend an average of 10 minutes on MySpace and visit 19 times …

What does the latest BlackBerry blackout say about Research in Motion? That the wireless services provider's network is operating at capacity? We still don't know, but millions of BlackBerry owners, who depend on the device to stay connected to their work and personal email accounts, stopped receiving messages at around 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday night, lasting until 8 a.m. Wednesday morning. Sure, it wasn't a terribly long blackout period, and it came after peak work hours, but it may take a while for customers to regain their faith in Canada-based RIM, which failed to hold up its end …

Candidates in the 2008 Presidential race are doing a pretty poor job of marketing themselves online. While Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama have put loads of material on their Web sites, loaded videos on YouTube, posted profiles on MySpace, and even opened up offices in Second Life, "there is a sense it is mostly one-way traffic -- from "them" to us," analysts say. How very un-Web 2.0 of them. Oxford University Professor Helen Margetts, who directs research at the Oxford Internet Institute, says that politicians need to expand their online efforts by allowing more interactivity and user-generated content. "They …

Yahoo's first-quarter earnings came in below expectations. Prior to yesterday's call, there had been some investor optimism over the better-than-expected performance of Yahoo's Panama search advertising system, but all that was erased as the company reported an 11 percent profit decline of $958 million on sales of $1.67 billion. However, CFO Sue Decker put on a brave face during the call, attributing the decline to the phase out of Microsoft's search business (which was announced 18 months ago now), and the rising cost of driving to Yahoo sites. She said wider adoption of Panama and strategic partnerships with eBay …

IAC/InterActive Corp. on Wednesday said it plans to launch a new community site aimed at African Americans, coinciding with a larger social networking movement away from the mass chaos of MySpace toward better-targeted, smaller communities. The unnamed site won't launch until next January, but it will feature news, entertainment, advice and local business information, in addition to integrating several of IAC's 60-plus Internet brands, including Ticketmaster, dating site Match.com and the search engine Ask.com. However, IAC won't be the first to try and corner the market. AOL's Black Voices, for example, is one of the early leaders, offering services …

If you've got a BlackBerry, you've probably noticed that email service is down. Research in Motion, which makes the handheld devices, confirmed there was a problem early Wednesday. However, aside from a recorded message, RIM has largely kept mum on the issue. This morning, company executives denied an interview request to New York-area news channel CNBC. "We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide updates as soon as they become available," the rest of the message said. The problem started around 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday; it prevents BlackBerry customers' emails from being pushed to the handheld devices, affecting …