The anti-Murdoch consortium wrote to the British government last week saying “We believe that the proposed takeover could have serious and far-reaching consequences for media plurality.” Besides a group of UK newspaper publishers, the letter was also signed by executives of the BBC and BT, the UK’s biggest telephone company.

The models will be able to download content from the Android Market early in 2011. Sony also says that the Intel® Atom® powered models will “also feature Dual View, allowing users to watch television while tweeting about what they’re watching, checking their fantasy football scores, or finding related content on the web.”

(Engadget has a hands-on review.)

The Sony models join the previously announced Logitech “Revue” Google TV box.

In an article in the September 6th issue of Time Magazine, Joel Stein makes the case against net neutrality by arguing that limited bandwidth needs to be allocated fairly. He says that is why your cell phone company “allows 911 calls through first, phone calls second, instant messages next and Web searches last.”

Allocating bandwidth is fine if you are an over-the-air broadcaster or cell phone company where there is limited (government licensed) spectrum. But let’s think about where most of us get our home internet service. Unless you are stealing it from your neighbor’s unencrypted router, chances are you are getting it from your cable company – which is also in the business of selling you pricey “silver” and “gold” packages of pay-tv channels.

What happens if you and a majority of the people in your franchise area begin watching True Blood, Dexter and Rescue Me by downloading them from Bit-Torrent? You and your neighbors cancel your high cost cable packages and opt for the basic package plus internet service. Watch your cable companies revenue decline while bandwidth usage goes up, making it harder for them to stream “on-demand” movies to those people who are still stupid enough to pay for them. How do you think that will make your cable company feel about net neutrality? Just Google “tiered service“.

The game had the best fast overnight numbers since the 1987 game between the New York Giants and Denver Broncos.

What comes after television, the internet and mobile is what has been commonly referred to as the fourth screen. But what is the deal with all these screens? What are they, why are they important and what do we as producers, designers, technologists and marketers need to know?

The panel was: Steve Ronson, EVP, AETN; Lance Podell, CEO, NextNewNetworks; Dana Spiegel, VP of Application Strategy and Development, Cathedral Partners; Michael Kogon, Founder and CEO, Definition 6. Denise Oliver, Co-Founder, ShortFormTV was the moderator.

It’s not that SobelMedia needed the extra publicity, it’s just that I like the promo that creativebubble did.

Related:

2010: The Year of TV Everywhere

Disney Touts a Way to Ditch the DVD – About “Keychest” and “DECE”. (Sorry, Rupert wants to charge you for this article.)

Lala Could Help Apple Redefine ‘Ownership’ of Content

And where is AdSense for cable?
I think it has a chance to catch on – as soon as cablers refine the
technology to deliver targeted advertising at the set-top level.

Related:
Congress to Hold Hearing on Cable Advertising (4/22/09)
CableLabs: tru2way
Canoe Ventures: In Forbes (6/18/09); Canoe Ventues Home Page

Over at the Meatball network, the move backward toward it’s first incarnation, the Almost Broadcasting Company, continues with the confirmation that Mike Shaw, the President of Sales and Marketing will be stepping down from his current role at the end of the year.

As both these events occurred on the same day, I should be saying that media divergence continues, but the first instance is a big fish eating a little fish and the second instance is just what happens when you have a “mature” business. (Just read that as “past it’s prime.”)

"I am starting to think that station managers need to split their organizations into two parts. Today the new hides in bits and pieces throughout the old. Make a new organization that is all about the new and put the best person in charge. Work out what it has to achieve and how to measure.

"At the same time make a coherent organization out of the old. Do your costs cutting here. Make this organization as efficient as possible. In a way Greenfield it – do not accept any assumptions about "we always have done it this way".

"Now you have a portfolio of the new and the old. Both will have to perform. Resources in the end will have to move over time to the new."

At least one TV network is already doing this…

“Most analysts and many executives agree that the economic model of
broadcast television — which relies much more heavily on advertising
than cable — is severely fractured. What they are wondering now is if it
is irreparably broken” says the article.

This doomsday scenario is not new, but as upfront revenue declined for a second year in a row, the situation appears dire.

But there might be some ways to postpone the inevitable.

They were joking, of course. But it’s much closer to the truth than any
of us would care to admit.

From Brian Stelter’s NY Times Emmy
Blog:

"In the Emmys sketch, Dr. Horrible declared that “television is dead,”
only to suffer the cliched fate of many a Web video: streaming lag-time
and pixelated images."