For the next 12 days or so, we'll be dining at an Olympic smorgasbord; a veritable all-you-care-to-eat timesuck of epic proportions. NBC promises us virtually constant access to the Olympics through its growing family of broadcast and cable networks. In a DVR-laden household, where multiple devices are accessible from multiple rooms, missing a single event is about as impossible as overthrowing a 100% monopolist in the TV ratings industry....

An interesting turn of events this week. An appellate court overturned a ruling from 2006 that will clear the way for Cablevision to launch Remote Storage Digital Video Recorder. Obviously, for some this is a victory; for others it is a problem.

Yesterday came the news that the much-respected Verona Suhler Stevenson (VSS) Communications Industry Forecast is reporting a very small drop in total time spent with all media (0.1% on last year, consistent with the drop reported for each of the two preceding years). I haven't had the privilege of seeing the report as yet, and naturally different media are reported as performing differently, but the overall conclusion makes sense to me and is consistent with the inevitable consequence of the growth of media that offer more control to the consumer

Did you catch the announcement last week about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM) and Weigel Broadcasting unveiling plans to launch a new TV network, This TV, utilizing unused local digital TV spectrum? The network will launch this fall offering children's entertainment and MGM's vast library of 4,100 films and 10,000 hours of TV shows.

"Ninety percent of all statistics can be made to say anything -- fifty percent of the time," words of wisdom lifted from a television service provider's recent commercial. I reviewed the advertisement on my DVR to insure accuracy. If I had not seen the ad for myself, I might have thought the commercial was referring to the Nielsen Company and their television audience measurement group. Alas, it was a DirecTV parody.

It is only when I travel I allow myself the guilty pleasure of the morning shows. On this particular Friday, I was locked into the "Today" Show (Sheryl Crow was going to play live) when a now-typical news segment came on about viral video...