After a rough fall, Fox got some good mid-season good news.   Its new serial-killer drama "The Following" grabbed the second best drama opening ratings this year --  a Nielsen 3.2 rating/7 share among 18-49 viewers on Monday night at 9 p.m. NBC's "Revolution" had the biggest opening rating results this year for …

Google reported that revenue rose 36% to $14.42 billion in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2012, compared with the year-ago quarter. Consistent with GAAP reporting principals, total acquisition costs (TAC) came to $3.08 billion or 25% of advertising revenue.

AT&T may not have gotten T-Mobile USA but it’s still after more spectrum. The company on Tuesday announced plans to acquire the U.S. retail operations of a carrier called Atlantic Tele-Network (ATNI) for $780 million. Under the deal, AT&T would get wireless spectrum licenses, network assets and 585,000 customers in rural areas of six states-- Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Ohio and Idaho. ATNI operates under the Alltel name in the U.S. through a subsidiary called Allied Wireless. The majority of Alltel’s assets and subscribers were bought by Verizon in 2009. AT&T was reported to be interested in …

Despite a record 9.8 million smartphone activations, including 6.2 million iPhones, Verizon reported a loss of $4.22 billion, or $1.48 a share, in the fourth quarter because of costs related to Superstorm Sandy and pension expenses.That's double a year-earlier loss of $2 billion, or 71 cents a share. On an adjusted basis, the carrier earned 38 cents a share. Revenue increased 5.7% to $30 billion. Wall Street analysts expected Verizon to post earnings of 52 cents a share on  revenue of $29.75. The nation’s largest carrier added 2.1 million contract subscribers in Q4 and 5 million in 2012, the …

U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Google evangelist Vinton G. Cerf to the National Science Board, National Science Foundation. The 25-member board serves as an independent body of advisers to both the President and the Congress on policy matters related to science and engineering and education in science and engineering.

In a long overdue move to map the search engine marketing landscape, PPC Associates released an infographic looking at holding companies and their SEM agencies, along with companies supporting small-and-medium size businesses, keyword and bidding , retargeting, campaign management, ad optimization, landing-page optimization and more.

Cross-channel attribution company Adometry said it secure $8 million in venture capital funding it will use to accelerate its product development, recruit talent and expand into new territories. The funding, led by Shasta Ventures, includes Austin Ventures and Sierra Ventures. Shasta Venture's Jason Pressman will join Adometry's board of directors.

OWN's "Oprah's Next Chapter" pulled a healthy Nielsen 3.2 million total viewers for the first part of her big interview with disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong -- but no overall record results. OWN’s best viewed telecast so far in its short history came in interviewing Whitney Houston’s family on March 11 2012, which grabbed 3.5 million viewers. OWN did say the show, which aired at 9 p.m. on Thursday, billed as "Oprah and Lance Armstrong: The Worldwide Exclusive”, pulled the best demographics for any weekday telecast. The telecast also ranked number one across all male viewers -- …

Pushing back against reports of a steep drop in its user base, Instagram on Thursday said it now has 90 million monthly active users and is seeing growth rather than decline. Reporting monthly usage for the first time,  the company told AllThingsD that total is up 10% in January from December. The disclosure is the latest twist in a metrics squabble that kicked off when the New York Post reported last month that Instagram had lost a quarter of its active daily users following its Terms of Service debacle. That prompted a blogosphere backlash, pointing out the Post …

National Geographic is known for its striking images from around the world. But now anyone can see their photos framed in its iconic yellow as part of the magazine’s 125th anniversary celebration. San Francisco startup Chute is powering a digital campaign that lets people takes pictures of “what matters most to them” and upload them to Instagram or Twitter at the hash-tag #framewhatmatters. The effort combines low- and high-tech, requiring participants to first cut print out and cut out the yellow border from the Twitter page to frame whatever photo they want to upload. Through the initiative, which National Geographic …