September 2012

A price-fixing settlement between the U.S. government and electronic-book publishers Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group Inc. and HarperCollins Publishers LLC was approved by a judge in New York.

With just 61 days to go before Election Day, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker is raising her estimates for political ad spending from $4.9 billion to $5.2 billion.

She upped her forecast based on television spending in August, which surged 77 percent on local TV to more than $171 million, compared to July. Local, network and cable TV are set to bring in $3.37 billion this election, boosting television revenue by more than 23 percent compared to last year. Local TV, at 54 percent, has the largest share of the three segments and is estimated to come in at $2.8 billion. Although spending has been accelerating, the real squeeze on commercial inventory, especially in key states and markets, is getting close. "The most crucial time is now," Ryvicker wrote. "While advertising picked up toward the end of second quarter, history would tell us that roughly 75 percent of total political dollars are spent within the last 7-8 weeks leading up to a general election." Ryvicker's analysis also shows that there are some shifts in spending in the past month. Though Cleveland ($35.2 million), Washington, D.C. ($32.6 million), Tampa, Fla. ($29 million), Las Vegas ($28 million) and Orlando, Fla. ($23.2 million) have been the top markets in absolute dollars this year to date, Washington showed the biggest change in the past month. More than $20 million was spent in the nation's capital from July 1 to Aug. 26.

If watching coverage of the presidential race leaves you with a touch of nausea, there's good reason: The portrayals of the candidates in the news has never been more negative, finds a recent study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Likely reasons for this is that while newsrooms are shrinking (and along with them, independent reporting), the mud-slinging campaigns themselves are making up a growing source of the narrative that's presented in the press. The report confirms the echo-chamber nature of cable news, but finds that newspapers, battered as their business model may be, are still churning out even-handed coverage of the candidates.

President Barack Obama has raised millions from Silicon Valley, totes his iPad everywhere and touts tech on the campaign trail, but at his party's convention, many of his big-name tech backers are missing in action.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was in New York at a press conference. Top bundler Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, is in the Bay Area prepping for a software event. And you won’t see Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg or Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman wandering around the Time Warner Arena, either. Silicon Valley at times drives the Democratic agenda — the convention platform touches on everything from building out broadband to beefing up cybersecurity — but it has a backseat here in Charlotte. The only Valley rep taking the forum stage during the three-day event is Steve Westly, an investor in clean energy, despite the numerous sponsorships by Web companies of parties, product demos and panel discussions. Yet it's not something that bothers many in the tech set. "What tech execs are busy doing is running companies,” said Michael Petricone of the Consumer Electronics Association. "This is a political convention, and what you do at political conventions is go after specific demographics."