The major presence of NBC Universal at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas represents a watershed moment for the television industry. NBC-TV Entertainment president Ben Silverman commented to JackMyers Media Business Report, "the companies here are featuring technologies that mean little without content. How much better are the technology demonstrations that feature NBCU programming compared to the ones with flowers and an ant crawling on a leaf?"

Question: How valuable is a site that bills itself as the place where the focus is "meeting new, gorgeous and entertaining friends, with the same desires and ideas about life and luxury"? Answer: TBD.

First Google TV Ads. Now Google TV sets. If you had any doubts that the world's largest media company has its sites set on the world's largest medium, the buzz at this week's Consumer Electronics Show should place them on pause. I don't know whether the rumor that Google will come out with a line of television sets is any more true than the rumors that it would come out with a phone to compete with Apple's iPhone, but I do know that Google has as much interest in finding a way into television's infrastructure than it does with the …

Not one to leave something unsaid, but last year -- a few weeks ago -- FCC Chairman Kevin Martin pushed through a last-minute vote along party lines (3 Republicans vs. 2 Democrats) to loosen cross-media ownership restrictions by increasing the number of entities (TV stations, newspapers and radio stations) that media companies could own in a given market to provide financial security to media corporations while sacrificing American troops -- I'm sorry, I didn't mean American troops -- while sacrificing the number of editorial and creative voices in a designated marketing area.

The recent Jack Myer's Think Tank article, "Advertisers' Strike Tax is the Solution to Writers/Producers' Impasse," opining that advertisers pay a 1% tax on media so those funds can be given to writers, is illogical for three reasons. One, advertisers already financially subsidize the TV industry; two, they are not responsible for the problems causing the strike; and three, the people who are responsible for and can settle it are not even at the bargaining table. But there is a way to resolve it for the long term...

Happy new year. For all practical purposes, viewers will notice very little impact from the writers strike until late February, when the networks' backlog of scripted programs begins to run dry. This reality, more than any other, is why the Writers Guild of America members have little motivation to alter their negotiating strategy. The networks will not feel any real pain until the May upfront selling season, and even then the true financial pain is not inflicted until the fourth quarter 2008 and beyond.

For those of you who know me, the statement I am about to make is rather obvious. For those of you who don't know me, well, let's just say I am an absolutist. That is to say, I absolutely feel one way or another about this way or that; I tend to have opinions that are black or white, never gray; and generally, when asked, "But why?" my reply is always, "Just because..."

Having spent the period from Dec. 19th to Jan. 1st either on a plane or under several feet of snow in Park City, Utah, I've been blissfully off-duty and have had surprisingly little interaction with TV. I've used the TV screen (or similar) to watch DVDs, play games and--upon my return home while my wife and I waited for our bodies to tell us we were tired--catch up on a couple of hours of "Saving Grace" on the DVR, but live TV and trade news were wholly absent over my particular holiday break. It had nothing to do with the …