Media Industry Archive

Digital television switch is today — The national changeover to digital television will take place today, after originally being delayed from February. Earlier this year, legislators feared that many citizens were not prepared for the switch. It is currently estimated that 2.8 million households, 2.5 percent of the TV market, are unprepared. At the initial February deadline, there were an...

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You may have read in the last few days that as of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Facebook will allow Facebook users to secure their username URLs, so that, for instance, yours truly, might lay claim to facebook.com/catharineptaylor, instead of what it is now, which is facebook.com/(some indistinguishable set of numbers). Valuable to those who want them, right? Right! With that in mind, people at least as...

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So it looks like my theory that Conan O’Brien is going to max out Twitter — for as long as there is something to max out — is at least partially right. The “Twitter Tracker” sketch made its second appearance last night, but, while even better than the first one, that’s just a comedy bit; what I’m talking about is the Twitterization of “The Tonight...

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Let’s say you work for Fox News, where the screamer Bill O’Reilly repeatedly pinpoints the whereabouts of one of the few doctors in the vast midwestern part of the country who provides late-term abortions, inflaming listeners by labeling this man “Dr. Killer,” and then an assassin shoots the doctor down in cold blood in his church. Is there blood on your hands? Of course...

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c End Times thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview Here’s a take two on The Daily Show segment on The New York Times. As my colleague Cathy Taylor notes, correspondent Jason Jones got the best of Executive Editor Bill Keller with his rendition of the old...

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Brant Publications, which produces such titles as Interview and Art in America, has been the brunt of some major criticism by people who’ve claimed that they weren’t getting paid. Now there is corroboration from Glenn O’Brien, who, up until recently, was the company’s editorial director. “They’re not paying anybody — even people under contract,”...

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c End Times www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview The New York Times must have felt that as another “journalism” outlet that has liberal leanings, “The Daily Show” would be kind when it had its faux reporter Jason Jones stop by the newsroom...

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If you were looking for a somewhat better alternative universe than what Nielsen presented earlier this week in first quarter ad spending numbers, don’t read this post about TNS Media Intelligence’s Q1 numbers. While Nielsen said that U.S. ad spending was down by a dismal 12 percent last quarter, TNS put the number at 14.2 percent, or $30.2 billion. While down by more than ten...

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At a dinner party with several close friends recently, the conversation turned to Twitter, and a debate ensued over whether the micro-blogging service had any value beyond serving as a narrow marketing outlet for people with something to promote. Those of us at the dinner have extensive backgrounds in media, academia, and communications. One of us uses Twitter frequently, another episodically,...

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The Boston Globe rejects paycut — The Boston Newspaper Guild at the Boston Globe has narrowly turned down The New York Times‘ proposed 8.3 percent paycut. The Times, the parent company of the Globe, had threatened to shut down the paper or cut salaries by 23 percent if the cut was voted down. Since the vote, the Times said it will instead try to implement a “turnaround.”...

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