Like any TV series in this media environment, the third episode of the Republican presidential debate show has seen some viewers getting a little bored. After the surprise record 24 million average viewers on the Fox News Channel for the first debate in August, and the 23.1 million viewers scored by the CNN in the second debate in September, the latest one on CNBC only produced 14.1 million. (The first Democratic presidential debate in mid-October, earned CNN 15.3 million viewers).

Less advertising and more programming? Seems a few cable networks are finally getting the message -- this after decades of a growing glut of commercial messaging. But is it too late?

How to get more people to use Twitter? Supposedly some 320 million people are active monthly users. So, what are we missing here? The easy overarching answer: regular engagement.

The NFL would tell you it did pretty well for its first streaming effort on Yahoo, which posted an average viewership of 2.3 million viewers per minute viewed for the Buffalo Bills-Jacksonville Jaguars game in London. This might not look great compared to traditional TV ratings -- around a Nielsen 13.5 million for ESPN "Monday Night Football" game to a high on NBC's "Sunday Night Football," which can average 23.9 million viewers. But for the NFL (and for Yahoo) all this is incremental, emboldening the league to pursue more early-morning Sunday games to capture a growing Asian market audience that …

Big end-of-the-season theatrical box office results are coming -- thanks at least in part to "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." But how much TV advertising for the movie will there be?

TV network executives are worried about the long-term weakening of advertising revenues. The near-term question is whether they can make up for this problem -- not just with digital revenue, but, more importantly, in retransmission fees from pay TV providers, as well as reverse compensation money from their TV station affiliates.

ESPN will be laying off another 300 staffers from its 8,000-member workforce, following about the same number of cutbacks made two years ago. But no worries: Content is still king -- and employees are simply what's needed to run the kingdom.

The biggest cable TV company, Comcast, seems as if it's finally willing to license its valuable set-top box data. But will this be too late for marketers?

CBS says it knows the truth about the movie "Truth," which focuses on a controversial CBS "60 Minutes II" story. The network says there are too many errors in the movie -- as well as being a "disservice" to other journalists. Perhaps to no one's surprise, CBS isn't running any advertising for the movie.

heater owners continue getting hit from all sides these days -- from competing at-home digital viewing technologies, to movie studios looking for a narrowing of theater-to-video-on-demand exhibition windows. And now Netflix wants to step over the theatrical threshold with "Beasts of No Nation," which opens this past weekend.