National Cable Communications (NCC), the nation's largest spot cable advertising representation firm -- and owned by the country's largest cable systems operators -- has been retained by satcaster DirecTV to take over national spot sales for regional sports networks carried on DTV in nine markets, as well as melding those DTV carried networks into cable interconnects in said markets. Mortal enemies -- just listen to the consumer acquisition campaigns -- uniting in common cause to sell more commercial inventory in a difficult, increasingly fragmented market. Sound familiar.

As many of you know, I have never been one to pay heed to the latest and greatest pop-business theories. So when I came across an article in the July/August Harvard Business Review, "Should You Invest in the Long Tail?" by Anita Elberse, I was very intrigued. Elberse's findings indicate that, thankfully, "It would be imprudent for companies to upend traditional practice and focus on the demand for obscure products. The data show that it is difficult to profit from the long tail."

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a number of talented researchers in the analysis of data obtained from one of the early addressable television advertising field trials. One thing that became clear early on was that addressability affected channel surfing. By examining how a set-top box typically behaved during non-targeted commercial breaks we could establish a commercial-tuning baseline. We then compared tuning behavior during addressable commercials and saw significant deviations from the baseline.

For today's offering I am going to borrow heavily from a colleague who sent an email over the weekend after being struck (forcibly, it seems) by the realization that he was at the epicenter of a volume and variety of media use and exposure that he had not previously appreciated. Working with some of the data collected through our observational research methods has undoubtedly heightened his awareness of media use, but what is remarkable about his account is the sheer array of behaviors on show in the account that follows -- video, audio, portable and time-shifted media, GPS, email, IM, …

While attending an industry gathering last week, myself and a few colleagues were asked to muse on the challenging times ahead for the various pay TV platforms. My assignment: cable industry ruminations. In my opinion, the cable industry is facing more competitive threats than ever, challenging its dominion over the pay TV universe.

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.