What has the massive multitiered marketing power of Comic-Con wrought? Or should we hold the outsize success of AMC's "The Walking Dead" responsible for the unprecedented infusion next season of series structured around supernatural creatures, super-powered beings and science-fiction and fantasy scenarios that will dominate the broadcast networks?

Although Bill Abbott started his career as a buyer at an agency, he soon moved into research, where he honed his strong analytical skills, and then on to affiliates and sales. But it was in research, according to Bill, where he gained his strong grounding for his future media roles, learning what drives the bottom line and what determines success and failure. His current position as the CEO of Crown Media gives him the ability to put all his experience to good use in steering his corporation through a sea of media change and disruption.

The traditional broadcast television season is an outdated concept -- right up there with quarterly sweeps periods and upfront week -- but it continues nevertheless, formally marking the beginning in September and the end in May of a nine-month period when most network programming is supposed to be new. Typically, broadcast goes dead after that final day in May (this year the 22nd).

Like other Bluth Family fans, I am excitedly looking forward to NetFlix's May 26 launch of a new season of "Arrested Development." If the trailer is any indication, the new season will be as mordantly funny as the original episodes, which ran on Fox from 2003-2006. It says something about the state of contemporary television, though, that a show that barely had enough viewers to stay alive on a major broadcast network, is now being touted as a major growth driver for an online streaming service.

In the opening moments of the four-part PBS series "Constitution USA," host Peter Sagal sums up the significance of this program far better than anyone else could. After noting that the Constitution of the United States was written in 1787, Sagal observes, "More than two centuries later, many of us don't have any idea what the Constitution says. Of course, that's never stopped us from arguing about what it means."

Alice Sylvester started her career in ad agencies before joining Media Behavior Institute as COO. Her deep knowledge of research well prepares her for the creative qual / quant application of MBI's TouchPoints study. In my interview with her, Alice talks about TouchPoints, how one measures emotions, agency research applications, and how the media landscape will evolve over the next few years.

Let's consider the traditional upfront week. Are its days numbered? If not, they ought to be. Almost everything about it has become a great big expensive waste of time. The crush of outsize events has made the week more of a grueling marathon than a valuable business event. And to what end? Thanks to digital technology and social media, advertisers already know what they're dealing with before the week begins.

Pivot TV, Participant Media's new venture into television, is apt to change the single-screen television paradigm with its blend of multiscreen programming formats targeted to Millennials and their media usage tastes.

Watching "Man Men," always a disquieting experience, was more unsettling than usual on April 28, coming so soon after the Boston Marathon bombing. The episode in question ("The Flood") revolved around the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and was a case study in how people react to national tragedies.

Media history was made earlier this week when, for the first time, two broadcast series that had been cancelled by their network returned to life largely intact on the Internet. Specifically, new episodes of the long-running and now former ABC Daytime serials "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" produced by Prospect Park's The Online Network and distributed via Hulu, HuluPlus and iTunes became available on Monday; this after an outcry from millions of fans of both shows when ABC saw fit to replace them with unremarkable reality efforts.