Number of U.S. TV Owners Plunges to 'Practically Everyone' Levels
For the first time in 20 years, the number of American homes with TV sets in them has gone down.
Super Bowl Sets New Ratings Record
Yesterday's broadcast of the Super Bowl netted 111 million viewers, breaking last year's record of 106.5 million viewers. Those lousy advertisers got their money's worth!
The Average American Watches 34 Hours of Television a Week
"Americans watched more television than ever in 2010." U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Birthday Cock at Fox News
In your cocky Tuesday media column: those Red Eye boys are just as penis-obsessed as ever, News Corp gives a million bucks to Republicans, Nielsen's big IPO, and a reporter fired for wearing a nice hat.
• Prepare to enter the third dimension. ESPN plans to launch a 3D channel in June. And Discovery, Imax and Sony are teaming up on a 3D channel, too.
• Has Kathy Griffin been banned from CNN following her risqué performance alongside Anderson Cooper on New Year's Eve? Maybe yes, maybe no.
• Newsday is cutting pay and…
Kirkus Reviews Back From the Dead
After being folded by Nielsen last month, curmudgeonly book review magazine Kirkus Reviews is coming back—Jeff Bercovici reports an undisclosed buyer is resurrecting Kirkus this month. No such savior for fellow dead mag E&P, yet.
• Nielsen has concluded a deal to sell handful of trade titles like The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard to a consortium of investors that includes Jimmy Finkelstein and Guggenheim Partners. Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan was once part of the investor group, but ended up dropping out. [AdWeek, NYP, LAT]
• Nielsen also…
• Another ex-Post staffer has filed a salacious lawsuit against the paper. [HP]
• Yet another magazine is no more. Giant gave up the ghost today. [Gawker]
• Rupert Murdoch's son, Lachlan Murdoch, is teaming up with media investor Jimmy Finkelstein to bid on a handful of media trade titles owned by Nielsen, including …
• Lou Dobbs is leaving CNN! Tonight's his last show! Happy Wednesday! [NYT]
• Condé Nast magazines have lost a collective 8,359 pages of advertising in 2009, which represents a 31 percent decline from a year earlier. [NYT]
• One thing that Hearst has going for it: lots of cash in the bank. [NYP]
• Banker-turned-media…
Facebook Dumps Beacon, Finds Nielsen Love
Rejoice, Internet masses! Godly website Facebook has been forced to abandon Beacon, an advertising program that also published "updates" on your page. Don't worry, though, because founder Mark Zuckerberg and company have a new revenue scheme.
Cuts at Condé, Leno's Big Pick, The Glenn Beck Exodus
• The next top editor to fall victim to budget cuts at Condé Nast, at least according to Keith Kelly: Architectural Digest editor Paige Rense. [NYP]
• The first guest on Jay Leno's new show on Sept. 14: Jerry Seinfeld. [THR]
• Jay, Conan, Jon, Jimmy, Jimmy, or Craig? Now more than ever, celeb (and their publicists)…
CNBC's Probing Porn Journalism
CNBC, the nation's preeminent financial news network, aired an investigative special last night! Did they venture deep into the Heart of Darkness to investigate the welfare queens at Goldman Sachs? Well, no, they investigated the porn industry, naturally.
The Future of Newspapers, Legal Rumblings in DC
• The newspaper industry may look to take a cue from the music business in its elusive hunt for new sources of revenue. Because, clearly, if there's one industry to gleam some wisdom from, that's the one. [MP, WSJ]
• The Justice Department is looking into whether tech giants like Yahoo! and Google violated antitrust…
Plunging Profits at Disney, Mort's Plan to Save Papers
• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington…
Send Us Your Stupid Corporate Recession Tricks
Useless middle managers, desperate to stay busy and avoid layoffs, are coming up with ever dumber corporate responses to the recession. We will discover and mock them all, with your assistance.
Porn and ads account for two in five videos watched online
That's what the addition by subtraction equals when you compare comScore's 10.8 billion unique video streams counted in June to Nielsen's 7.5 billion — because of the two Web usage statistic compilers, Nielsen refuses to count "pornography" and "advertising" in the company's total. At first I though, "There's a…
Facebook: Nielsen got it wrong, our U.K. traffic is up
Traffic-tracking service Nielsen Online claims Facebook lost 400,000 U.K. visitors from December to January. Mark Zuckerberg & Co. say no way:
Nielsen will start measuring online video viewing in its TV panel by the end of 2008. Jim O'Hara, president of media product leadership for Nielsen — really, that's his title, "media product leadership" — says "our ultimate goal will be to bring full Internet measurement to the TV panel for both streaming and…
Nielsen can't make Google TV ads accountable
The last we heard from Google on TV advertising, cofounder Sergey Brin gloated that "interest" and "bookings" were up. He told us that "the remarkable thing about television advertising, is that it is almost as accountable as online advertising." I didn't believe him then. The news that Nielsen has agreed to provide…
British Internet users spend 11 minutes a day on social networks. Want something more interesting than that? Nielsen/NetRatings thinks Facebook is the top social net in the U.K. ComScore says they're No. 3 behind MySpace and Bebo. Either way, we're glad they didn't poll the Valley — based on an informal survey of our…
