Will the broadcasters take any cues from USA Network's terrific upfront presentation earlier this week? Simultaneously amped up and stripped down, it was a refreshingly straightforward showcase for the network's programming, devoid of all those lectures and data clutter that typically bog down such events.

At breakfast the other day a friend brought up the topic of the impending TV Upfront and the industry's bullish expectations. He asked my opinion. I queried as to whether he was familiar with the Native American Indian's tale of the approaching winter. He wasn't. I proceeded to spin the yarn:

No discussion of DVRs would be complete without a mention of its Trick Play capability. Just like a video recorder of old, DVRs enable the viewer to choose the time to view regardless of the television schedule. The difference now is in the storage capability and in the ease of use of the DVR. Here are a few terms and definitions regarding Trick Play and its capabilities:

Steve McGowan, SVP Research at Discovery, returned to the network after a seven-year stint at Nielsen. Steve has a unique perspective on the evolution of Discovery from small start-up to large conglomerate. In an in-depth video interview, Steve talks about a range of subjects including the use of set-top-box data, the evolution of DVRs, and some predictions for the next five years.

Six weeks ago, we talked about the resurgence of research in the MediaTech space, about the need to rethink what and how we measure in a world where everything is media. And the key to this new activity, of course, was how we bring it all together with standards and currency and actionability.

As Thomas Friedman says, the world really is flat., That's what I kept telling myself as my son and I road-tripped from college campus to campus last week visiting computer science departments throughout the Northeast. The ingenuity coming out of these schools, it seemed to me, was a reflection and a direct result of the multinational, multi-ethnic, utterly heterogeneous populations of students and faculty inhabiting these departments.

The upfront season is underway and the cable hype has begun. As each network unveils its fall schedule and strategy, it generates a fair amount of industry press. Many of these stories don't focus on ratings, of course, because most cable networks don't have good audience stories to tell.

Continuing on last week's theme of PVRs and DVRs, we now take a look at the range of DVRs available in the market today from those that are self contained boxes within the home (such as the TIVO box) to others that are accessed via the Set-Top Box or through a remote server. Here is a list of all types of DVRs currently available along with their definitions:

Is Donald Trump a "carnival barker"? Are his collective media appearances of late the stuff of a "sideshow"? President Obama seemed to suggest as much during a very brief press conference yesterday in which he attempted to put to rest the largely Trump-fueled frenzy over the validity of his birth documents. I'll leave it to others to determine whether such words apply to Trump's mission to verify Obama's personal history. I will assert, however, that they describe perfectly the Trump we have been watching this year on NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice."

Sometimes we think we know something about a subject only to discover, as William Goldman once said about Hollywood, "nobody knows anything." Such may be the case with creativity, the necessary but missing element in our MediaTech business. purview of others and, as a former U.S. Secretary of D