With all the talk about second screens and multiplatforms and the challenges ahead, it's a good time to reflect on where the television marketplace is headed. Robert Tercek of Creative Visions did just that at the recent Second Screen Summit in NYC. His Cassandra-like assessment of the state of television, called "Ten Things That Should Be Obvious But Apparently Are Not," could stir fear in the hearts of some media executives.

What went wrong with "Arrested Development"? Why was one of the most widely anticipated shows of the year such a dud -- its inexplicable Emmy nominations notwithstanding? And what does this have to say about making good television shows?

Pilots for most of the broadcast networks' new 2013-14 series have been available to critics and other interested parties for several weeks now -- long enough for everyone with a stake in the television business and related arenas to watch them, contemplate them, debate them and rate them. Not that any of us are free to do so, because the networks have made clear (as they always do) that the screeners they distribute shortly after the annual upfront presentations in May are intended for background purposes only and are most definitely not for review.

Char Beales has had many roles in her illustrious career, from public television station intern, to a media buyer at JWT, and a researcher at WBBM CBS O&O and WRC NBC O&O and NCTA. From there she moved to CTAM, where as president and CEO she has expertly steered the organization through the myriad of changes in the television landscape since the 1990s.

The summers of the new millennium have brought us a number of extraordinarily popular reality competition programs that were so successful they became mainstays of their networks' traditional season schedules, from CBS' "Survivor" to Fox's "American Idol" to ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." But if memory serves, we haven't seen a scripted broadcast summer series that achieved the kind of success currently being enjoyed by CBS' "Under the Dome" since the arrival of "Northern Exposure" on the same network way back in July 1990.

A recent article in CIO magazine titled "How to Profit From the Ultimate Big Data Source: The Weather" inspired me to talk with former media industry research executive Rob Frydlewicz about analyzing weather using Big Data. Rob publishes the NYC Weather Archive blog, and for years has been examining large data sets for strategic insights and forecasting purposes.

2013 is shaping into the year of distribution consolidation - a change of partners. Scale drivers to the tune of nearly $9 billion, to date, as tallied by SNL Kagan.

"Glee" has always prided itself on keeping it real, with "ripped from the headlines" plots such as school shootings and transgender acceptance. But this past weekend's death of the show's star Cory Monteith is one story that is all too real for everyone.

The headline above is a bit misleading. The actual title of summer's best "new" show is "Carson on TCM." It's a fast-moving hour every Monday night on Turner Classic Movies of memorable interviews from the vast library Johnny Carson assembled during a remarkable 30 years as host of "The Tonight Show," still the most formidable late-night effort of all (Carson's time on it, that is).

After stints at IBM and Time Warner, Ruth Stevens launched eMarketing Strategy, successful in B2B marketing. In my interview with her, topics include how to measurably enact B2B protocols to help retain customers, and ways to quantify marketing and press efforts.