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On a conference call with supporters, President Barack Obama called on them to continue to work toward what he said would be "a really close election." "The other side is ready to release just a barrage of negative ads," he told them. "They are getting massive checks from wealthy donors. The good thing is I've got you."
President Obama: Other Side Prepping Barrage of Negative Ads
U.S. District Judge William Alsup, overseeing a major lawsuit over smartphone technology between Oracle Corp and Google, has quietly ended his examination of those companies' relationships with paid bloggers and other commentators.
He had shocked the legal and blogging communities on August 7 by demanding names of "print or Internet authors, journalists, commentators or bloggers" on the companies' payrolls. But in an order issued on September 4, after Oracle and Google had submitted lists of names, Judge Alsup said he would "take no further action regarding the subject of payments by the litigants to commentators and journalists." He also said no commentaries had influenced his rulings in the case, other than "any treatise or article" he cited expressly.
Oracle-Google judge ends probe into paid bloggers
Nielsen's Local Television Market Universe dropped from an estimated 114,649,310 TV homes in 2011-2012 to 114,173,690, a decrease of 475,620.
Nielsen reps were not available on short notice to explain the diminished U.S. TV universe. The top 38 TV markets held their position from last year's Local Television Market Universe Estimates. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Oklahoma City and Anchorage were the biggest gainers, picking up three slots in market rank, while the most significant markets to drop in rank were Birmingham and Palm Springs (-3), and a bunch that slipped two spots, including Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York, Albuquerque-Santa Fe and Roanoke-Lynchburg.
Nielsen Local TV Market Universe Loses 476,000 TV Households
A lengthy speech from former President Bill Clinton on the second night of the Democratic National Convention drew almost 12 million viewers to cable news from 10-11:30 p.m., up slightly from the similar hour the prior evening.
The combined audience of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC was 11.83 million total viewers during the time period, according to Nielsen fast nationals. MSNBC again topped the ratings in primetime, drawing 3.31 million total viewers and 1 million in the key adults 25-54 demo from 8-11 p.m. CNN was second with 2.92 million total viewers and 962,000 adults 25-54 and Fox News was third with 2.7 million viewers and 629,000 in the key demo. On broadcast, CBS' coverage rated first, drawing 3.94 million total viewers from 10-11 p.m. and ABC was second with 3.54 million. NBC did not air convention coverage due to its telecast of the NFL season opener.
Clinton Speech Perks Up Cable Ratings in DNC's Second Night
Many cable TV operators still argue that cord cutting doesn’t exist, but Verizon’s FIOS TV director Maitreyi Krishnaswamy thinks it’s real, and growing.
But that’s not all: Krishnaswamy is also arguing that it might change the industry by putting pressure on studios. Cord cutting isn’t just about some people not paying for TV anymore, but also about enabling new and innovative business models, including unbundled subscriptions to individual channels. And Verizon is apparently ready to take the plunge as soon as the wave is big enough.
FIOS TV exec: Cord cutting is growing and changing the TV biz
More than two dozen colleges and universities are examining whether a different business model for textbooks works for their institutions. One of them is a two-year technical college. These higher education institutions are joining an expanded e-textbook pilot organized earlier this year by Internet2 — an advanced networking consortium — and EDUCAUSE — a nonprofit higher education association. The first pilots, based on Indiana University's e-textbook pilots, happened in spring 2012 at five universities.
More US Universities Enter the E-Textbook Fray
Nielsen says this summer and fall, TV networks will spend roughly the equivalent of $4.5 billion in TV promos -- with the majority of that messaging coming from its own network airwaves.
Just over 88% of broadcast TV networks marketing efforts -- or $4 billion -- comes from its running new season TV promos on its own network airwaves. Roughly 9.3% comes from cross-channel promotion via broadcast networks' sister cable channels. That comes to around $300 million. In addition, 2.4% comes from pay-TV efforts on other networks -- around $100 million. Looking at total gross ratings points: 336,600 goes on their broadcast networks, 35,600 goes to cross-channel promotion on networks' own cable networks, and 9,300 goes into pay TV media efforts.
(Gross ratings points are the collective sum of all ratings for TV promos.)
TV Nets Spend Billions Promoting Lineups
For all the buzz about tech companies tearing down the figurative walls of party conventions to involve every American online, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical that the physical event will come to an end anytime soon.
Even techies admit that party faithful will continue to gather in person every four years to wave placards and listen to speeches, and attendees will spend big bucks to be there. "It will always be a singular, signature, acceptance speech from the nominee," said Joe Lockhart, communications vice president at Facebook and former White House press secretary for Bill Clinton. "My guess is for the foreseeable future it will be done in a physical hall, with a bunch of excited people."
2012 Republican and Democratic National Conventions: Being there beats online
If Uncle Sam wins a recent court argument, every law-enforcement agency in the country will be able to track your every move.
More importantly, access to location data as comprehensive as that available to cell-phone carriers could allow law enforcement to determine everything from your complete social network and your health status to how likely it is that you'll repay a loan. The case at hand does not suggest that the Obama administration is attempting to gain this level of insight into the lives of every American citizen, but it's telling that the prosecutors seem ignorant of the power of the data they're requesting. To understand how important location data is, especially of the variety gathered by smartphones, it's important to understand what academics have already accomplished with this data.
What Will Happen If the Feds Get Warrantless Access to Phone Location Data
Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B. If Google's mission is to organize all the world's information, the most important challenge -- far larger than indexing the web -- is to take the world's physical information and make it accessible and useful. "If you look at the offline world, the real world in which we live, that information is not entirely online," Manik Gupta, the senior product manager for Google Maps, told me. "Increasingly as we go about our lives, we are trying to bridge that gap between what we see in the real world and [the online world], and Maps really plays that part."
How Google Builds Its Maps -- and What It Means for the Future of Everything