Consider this: For all the talk about how many advertising dollars are migrating online these days, there's still no bigger ad bucket than TV. Advertising on television accounts for about $70 billion in spending per year. Yet advertising on TV is still the least innovative ad medium around.

Please forgive me if I'm not shaken to my core over Comcast's acquisition of NBCU. There's been so much written in the past few days about why this is bad for us as consumers. Comcast, the distribution source, will now control massive amounts of content. It will certainly be poised to create a chokehold over what consumers watch and how they watch it. Prices will go up. Net neutrality will suffer. The new company will be able to suppress content from competitors and favor its own.All of that is possible -- maybe probable, even with some "voluntary" restrictions imposed by …

Last week we began with defining Set-Top Box, which is not as simple a task as it sounds. Generically, these boxes span the range from Analog (those that can only deliver data in one direction which is to the box) and Digital (those that have the ability to deliver data in two directions, which is to and from the box). Because they have the ability to deliver data back from the box, it is only the Digital Set-Top Boxes that can provide Set-Top-Box data. Digital Set-Top Boxes vary in level of sophistication, which can impact the amount and quality of …

small group of disruptive technologists and I spent the day yesterday in Ft. Myers, Fla. where we had the chance to dine at the Edison House. Pictures of Thomas Edison and friends donned the walls, and as we all reclined there, using our iPhones and iPads to communicate and demonstrate our visions, there was something very eerie about the whole experience. Edison's awarded patents (1,093) have touched all of our lives, and I'm certain that almost nothing we did yesterday could have happened as it did, had Mr. Edison not graced us with his presence (and vision).

We're living through a unique period in the media industry. In fact, I don't think we should refer to the "media" industry, at least for a time, until we rethink the assumptions now transforming it. It has become the mediatech industry. No element of media is unaffected by enabling technology, certainly not TV, and because tech is sexy and smart and not the core competence of most practitioners, it seems to be emerging sometimes on its own. It might need a new warning label: "Functionality does not enable provider to make money."

Nielsen is gearing up to IPO, and I am on the edge of my seat. The media-measurement category is red hot. Arbitron (radio ratings) is trading at a three-year high; so is comScore (Internet ratings). The upstart Rentrak (video store and VOD ratings) is at a five-year high, and the creation of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) invites forward-looking innovation. Nielsen is a critically important company in the media world: the bellwether for the industry and as close as you get to a one-stop shop for TV's $70 billion in media planning, buying and validation. And if …

Last week, I wrote a "review" of all the magical things that "happened" in 2011 in the media world. It was an exercise in satirical absurdism. Chances are, "Celebrity Pottery Wheel" will not be the tipping point for 3D TV. The actual changes for 2011 are likely to be much more ludicrous.

They say that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. In TV advertising and media research circles, that idea is the use of set-top box data. STB data is being developed and standardized for use as a research tool and also as the foundation for advanced advertising. But if an idea cannot be communicated, how can it be accepted and embraced? This is why the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) developed a single-source Set-Top Box Data Lexicon, a reference guide that creates a common language of terms and definitions for participants in the set-top box …

Well everyone's back, I presume, from Las Vegas. Is there a show in a more appropriate venue than CES? Except that for this event, in this location, everything that happens doesn't stay in Vegas; it gets recorded, videotaped and released to the press.

Last week I had the good fortune to travel to Las Vegas and CES, where the energy was sky-high, as expected, and television -- smart, connected, 3-D, on tablets, and more -- was at the center of the high-tech conversation yet again.