by Wayne Friedman on Jul 17, 3:18 PM
MSNBC.com will turn into NBCNews.com. For anyone with a long enough memory in the media business, that means you can forget about what the letters "M" and "S" mean before "NBC."
by Wayne Friedman on Jul 16, 12:49 PM
Jerry Seinfeld wants to give us a coffee break from our usual TV menu by starting a Web-based series,"Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," on Sony Pictures Television's original video site Crackle. That will help boost Crackle in its competition with bigger video sites like Hulu, YouTube and Netflix. Crackle has done this before with a few other celebrities. Some might say they are vanity projects.
by Fern Siegel on Jul 13, 5:45 AM
If you watched "The West Wing," then you've met your ideal president. HBO's "The Veep" posits an incompetent vice president much farther down the food chain.
by David Goetzl on Jul 12, 5:23 PM
The would-be "Diller Killer" has received a green light. Will the programmers that want to block it take its green?
by Joe Mandese on Jul 11, 3:31 PM
When we launched "TV Watch" eight years ago, the mission was to watch the people who watch TV: not consumers, per se, but the people in our industry - insiders, analysts and journalists - who shape the way we view the medium from a business perspective. On Tuesday, I received an interesting analysis from the folks at IHS Screen Digest that could, if true, change the way we look at TV forever.
by David Goetzl on Jul 10, 4:41 PM
Negative campaigning reached a new low over the weekend on ABC's "This Week" thanks to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Taking on the narrative about the GOP's Mitt Romney being an astute businessman, Jindal accused President Obama of having "never run a business, never run anything including a lemonade stand" before becoming president. This is great stuff and should be embraced. Perhaps the best chance for blunting negative campaigning is to treat it more like entertainment, while separating politics from policy.
by Joe Mandese on Jul 9, 4:14 PM
First Andy Taylor, now Quinton McHale. In the span of less than a week, television has lost two of its most indelible performers, and the passing of Andy Griffith and Ernest Borgnine seems yet another symbolic end of an era for a medium that itself seems to be entering a new era - and, if you ask me, not necessarily for the better.
by Wayne Friedman on Jul 6, 11:06 AM
The NFL is making it easier for TV viewers to watch their home team's games, especially if their teams don't completely sell out local games. Call this "new sports marketing in tough economic times."
by Wayne Friedman on Jul 5, 2:52 PM
What is the value of a "like" on Facebook for TV advertisers? For TV networks, the better question seems to be how much Facebook will essentially charge for that "like."
by Wayne Friedman on Jul 3, 1:55 PM
NBC's Summer Olympics are coming, and you might wonder how much commercial skipping will take place. Probably very little, among some 115 million U.S. TV homes. We all like to watch our sports live. That's the theory, anyway.