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TV may be going everywhere - from hand-held mobile to streaming Internet services and devices - but one of the biggest alternate channels for television content is already in millions of American households: videogame console devices such as Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PS3, and Nintendo's Wii. According to new research being released today by Knowledge Networks, one-in-five U.S. consumers already are using game systems to watch TV or movie content at least once a month. The new report, "Over-the-Top TV: A Complete Video Landscape," which comes from KN's ongoing Home Technology Monitor tracking studies, details how American consumers already are utilizing...

Viacom networks MTV, BET and CMT are giving an hour of free air time to President Obama less than three weeks before the midterm elections. The so-called “A Conversation with President Obama” will be live and commercial-free on six Viacom networks at 4 p.m. on Thursday. The networks will not give equal time to a Republican before the election, according to a spokeswoman. MTV denies that the Obama hour of TV is political, despite the timing, weeks before the midterm elections.

Are the three news networks actively working to defeat the Republican candidate for Governor in Wisconsin? According to the far-left Service Employees International Union, yes, they most certainly are. SEIU spokesman John-david Morgan - also, incidentally, a former journalist - told a staffer (audio embedded below the fold) for GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker that local media affiliates for all three major networks were "willing partners" in the union's efforts to defeat Walker. The staffer gave a fake name and recorded the conversation without Morgan's knowledge."They've really been willing partners in it,"

An alarming survey by Credit Suisse should serve as a wake up call to the broadcast networks and cable companies that they need to take control of their revenue destiny right now, while they still have some negotiating power. Analysts there found that 37 percent of Netflix subscribers aged 25 to 34 substitute Netflix for pay television. Almost 30 percent of users between 18 and 24 are using Netflix’s streaming service instead of cable or satellite. The Credit Suisse survey was of about 250 Netflix subscribers. “Netflix’s low cost, subscription streaming service (with improving content) is our biggest worry and...

One of the top priorities for the next president of ABC News won't be figuring out who should eventually succeed Diane Sawyer as anchor of the network's "World News Tonight." It will be deciding whether there will be an audience worth pursuing for "World News Tonight" when Sawyer walks away. With ratings and revenues declining and their core audience growing old, the news divisions of the broadcast networks -- like the newspaper and radio industries -- are struggling to reinvent themselves for the digital age. The playing field between traditional media and new media has been leveled, but the aftershocks...

Execs may issue denials about possible deals such as ABC/Bloomberg or CBS/CNN, but the partnerships seem to have a whiff of inevitability There’s a lot of juicy gossip swirling in media circles these days regarding who may be getting into bed with whom—and the potential players involved are big. The question of “how big” leads right to ABC News. Deep cuts earlier this year ginned up the rumor mill that the division was being readied for a sale or merger with cash-rich Bloomberg TV. At the same time, persistent speculation about a CBS News deal with CNN bobbed to the...

Once again, the co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Joe Scarborough hinted that "certain networks," (ahem, MSNBC) hold quite the double standard between Democrats and Republicans. When the subject matter was President Obama's snub of an Iraq War question during his vacation at Martha's Vineyard – he remarked "We're buying shrimp, guys" – Scarborough pointed out that network coverage of Bush would have been far more negative.As NewsBusters reported last week, Scarborough also believes "certain networks" will "maul" Haley Barbour if he runs for President in 2012.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-national-broadband-plan Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 16, 2010 Statement from the President on the National Broadband Plan America today is on the verge of a broadband-driven Internet era that will unleash innovation, create new jobs and industries, provide consumers with new powerful sources of information, enhance American safety and security, and connect communities in ways that strengthen our democracy. Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the Transcontinental...

In addition to participating in the Fortune, TIME and CNN Global Forum in South Africa (the 11th iteration), speakers including Katie Couric, Wolf Blitzer and former Pres. Bill Clinton caught some of the action at yesterday's USA / Ghana match at Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Other scheduled speakers included Suze Orman and Tavis Smiley, but neither could make it. During halftime of the game, Blitzer Tweeted this picture of Couric, himself and a famous musician. Another perk: really cool matching red jackets. Orman would be proud.

Cyberspace has become an indispensible component of everyday life for all Americans.  We have all witnessed how the application and use of this technology has increased exponentially over the years. Cyberspace includes the networks in our homes, businesses, schools, and our Nation’s critical infrastructure.  It is where we exchange information, buy and sell products and services, and enable many other types of transactions across a wide range of sectors. But not all components of this technology have kept up with the pace of growth.  Privacy and security require greater emphasis moving forward; and because of this, the technology that has brought many...

Five weeks ago (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Big Three Networks' combined evening news audiences dropped to below 20 million -- an audience about 5% less than what Matt Drudge in the summer of 2006 headlined as “TV’s Lowest Week.” Three weeks ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), their combined audience came in at 19.61 million, down over 12% from the previous year. For the week of May 3, the combined total fell further, to the point where they're one more really bad week away from hitting an all-time low -- a low that was "achieved" in mid-June of...

In response to the continuous compromise of networks, multiple countries have begun developing secure platforms and operating systems. Computer companies, university researchers, defense R&D contractors and militaries around the world recognize the criticality of networks and embedded processors within their equipment. They also recognize how vulnerable they are and that’s why so much attention is being given to building in security at every level of the system including the operating system. As discussed here, China’s Trusted Computing Platform (TCP) program has been underway for some time now and can be traced back to the early 2000s. The Chinese TCP includes...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-press-secretary-a-new-beginning-presidential-summit-entrepreneurship Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 05, 2010 Statement by the Press Secretary on A New Beginning: Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship President Obama, together with the Department of State and the Department of Commerce, will host the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., on April 26 and 27. Participants from over 40 countries on 5 continents have been invited to participate. The Summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing...

With buyouts and layoffs in progress, the mood at ABC News can’t be good — and it was not likely enhanced by the ratings report for the first quarter of the year, which showed that the network’s evening newscast, “World News” had sunk to the lowest numbers the program had seen in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987. The same story prevailed at CBS, where the “Evening News” also hit a new low for the months of January through March. So what’s happening? Is this a signal that viewers are abandoning network newscasts...

With buyouts and layoffs in progress, the mood at ABC News cannot be good. It was probably not enhanced by the ratings report for the first quarter of the year showing that the network’s evening newscast, “World News,” had sunk to the lowest numbers the program has had in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987. The same situation prevailed at CBS, where the “Evening News” also hit a new low for the months of January through March. The beneficiary was NBC, where “Nightly News” scored its best first-quarter numbers since 2005. Over all,...

Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of televisions and set-top boxes. The move is an effort by Google and Intel to extend their dominance of computing to television, an arena where they have little sway. For Sony, which has struggled to retain a pricing and technological advantage in the competitive TV hardware market, the partnership is an effort to get a leg up on competitors. The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate...

As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents. ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network's ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with "digital" journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories. Although the network will keep a minimal staff presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston, it will shut...

ABC News is making no secret about what is behind the sweeping staff cuts it now faces: raw survival instinct. “I just looked out at the next five years and was concerned that we could not sustain doing what we were doing,” said David Westin, the president of ABC News, as he explained the decision last week to jettison up to 400 staff members, a quarter of the news staff, in the coming months. The same compelling motive already instigated strategic retrenchment at ABC’s broadcast competitors. NBC, the one network with a cable news channel, MSNBC — and, not coincidentally,...

Staff cuts at two of the biggest broadcast-television news outfits in the U.S. foreshadow a shift toward cheaper TV news gathering, as broadcast-news groups face shrinking profits and increasing competition from cable and the Internet. ABC News, a division of Walt Disney Co., said this week it would embark on a "fundamental transformation" of its operations, a move that could cut as much as a quarter of its news staff of approximately 1,500, according a person familiar with the matter. The move comes three weeks after CBS Corp.'s news division began to shed more than 6% of its staff of...

The media gave President Obama credit during the campaign for promising not to raise taxes on the middle class. He was on the trail in New Hampshire when he made a "firm pledge" not to raise taxes on any family "making less than $250,000 a year." Obama is doing his best to break that promise, but the network news media haven't bothered to report it. On Nov. 6 when he endorsed the tax increase-laden health care reform bill that the House of Representatives passed on Nov. 7, Obama violated his pledge.