TV's spring appears in lamb's clothing -- but a lion could be revealed. Tiger Woods' practice session at the Masters yielded little-to-no outbursts from the gallery of onlookers. TV and golf tournament executives feared a lot worse. Then again, real play hasn't started yet.

Simpler technology. Big screen. No physical keyboard (who writes anything longer than 140 characters anyway?) That's what the iPad is about.

Media piracy is a bad problem in Spain for U.S.-based movie studios. Under Spanish law, piracy is only illegal if done for profit. Thus, many Spanish consumers feel taking free movies from illegal Web sites isn't that bad -- more like borrowing a book from a friend.

Martha Stewart probably wants her own cable channel -- like what Oprah Winfrey is getting from Discovery Communications. Who doesn't?

It's not about whether Fox News' "Glenn Beck" show has lost some 200 advertisers for his outrageous remarks -- not when there are potentially 2,000 TV advertisers out there. It's not about whether Beck thinks the Democrats are out to destroy America. It's not about whether he also has issues with some Republicans as well. It's about the viewership. If viewers are informed -- or maybe just entertained -- that's enough. Television is that kind of business democracy.

People believe in television. Apparently people who appear on TV shows believe in it more -- too much more. Recently a French TV quiz show instructed contestants to pull a lever to deliver electric shocks to a man strapped in a chair whenever he got the wrong answer. But in reality the "shocked" man was only acting. And by the way, it wasn't really a TV quiz show. It was an experiment for research purposes.

CW is now doubling the amount of advertising online on its Web site, to some 20 thirty-second commercials per one-hour TV episode -- just about the same commercial load as on TV. The network wants to add back in all that viewing to its traditional TV buys that marketers have been missing. Its plan is to do a number of deals combining TV and Internet advertising for this upfront season.

Just in time for the upfront season, Oxygen is doing its best to hammer home messages about Disney-ABC Television's Lifetime, with an omnipresent business marketing campaign directed at potential TV advertisers. The campaign points to a host of ways that "Generation O" is better for TV advertisers than "Lifetimer"s. Yeah, we get it.

With the fractionalization of media, Americans are scattered around hundreds of TV networks, millions of Web sites, video games, movies, mobile phones, and, of course, growing social networking areas. What's an out-of-work politician to do? Get a reality show.

So now we've learned that Viacom blew it twice to get the big foothold in Internet land. Along with its failure to pursue MySpace back when it was a hot commodity, Viacom could have had a shot at buying YouTube for perhaps much less than Google paid in 2006: the whopping sum of $1.65 billion.