Media Industries Project - Carsey Wolf Center

Discusses how YouTube has changed the way we consume media, including sections TV on the Internet, viral videos, politics, and music videos.

Discusses how major media companies are proposing a 28-day retail window before new releases can be rented from Redbox kiosks. Companies argue that the availability of new releases for $1 at Redbox kiosks hurts DVD sales.

But the last thing savvy tech companies want is for a product to end up as a frequent mention in #fail on Twitter. Yet that is exactly where Google Buzz was frequently mentioned, just hours after many consumers started to play with the new tool. One of the complaints was that Buzz seemed to have a mind of its own, picking names in your email inbox , and selecting them randomly for you to follow in your "Buzz" network. "Thanks Google Buzz, I'm automatically following 3 ex-girlfriends. #fail," wrote Tony Pitluga of Pittsburgh in a tweet that was widely re-tweeted last week. Another problem users discovered is that Google makes public everything you do in Buzz in its search engine, unless you set the privacy settings ahead of time.

NBC's current online coverage of the Olympics is discussed in light of the online technology and the use of "cable verification" to establish new online models limiting free content.

Media Decoder of the New York Times explores why the 2010 Winter Olympics may be the first loss on Olympics broadcast in NBC's history.

An withering critic of NBC's decision to limit online streaming of Olympic events to curling and hockey, in what the author describes as an attempt to force viewers into traditionally measurable media.

Update on the court case between Arbitron radio ratings and Spanish Broadcasting Systems over SBS's refusal to encode their signals so that Arbitron can measure audience. SBS claims that Arbitron's measurment under counts Hispanic listeners and hurts their advertising rates.

Google announced plans to provide fiber-to-the-home-connections of 1Gbit/sec speeds. Some argue that the announcement may be a negotiating tactic to prompt federal regulators to push for net neutrality.

A blog post covering a grassroots organizing effort to address the digital divide. Makjia Cyril argues that the cable companies are offering a false choice by tying broadband build out to net neutrality. An interesting perspective from outside the traditional media.

"Gawker Media, the eight-year-old online publishing heavyweight founded by Nick Denton, announced its first acquisition on Monday: the New York boldface name guide CityFile."

Article discussing Shaw Communications acquisition of Canwest Global Media's television assets. Article discusses legal and economic aspects of the acquisition.

Article providing an analysis of the collapse of Air America, and what that means for progressive talk radio.

Article describing the continuing decline in video game sales that began in 2009.

Article discussing MySpace's decline under News Corp's ownership.

"Twenty-five years ago, MTV was best known for music videos starring Michael Jackson and Madonna. These days, its reigning queen is not a recording star at all but rather Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, the rowdy party girl from the reality series "Jersey Shore. So maybe it's not surprising that this week the 29-year-old network bowed to the inevitable and finally scraped the legend Music Television" off its corporate logo."

"Who has time to sit on the couch and watch TV anymore? In the last 10 years, broadcasters have lost 25 percent of their audience. So to win back some viewers, the industry has a plan to grab their attention while they are on the move. Beginning in April, eight television stations in Washington, D.C., will broadcast a signal for a new class of devices that can show programming, even in a car at high speed. In all, 30 stations in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington have installed the necessary equipment, at a cost of $75,000 to $150,000

Video of Luge Crash raises interesting discussions about copyright and Fair Use. Google would not comment on the particular video but offered this general statement. "We approach each video individually, and we do not prescreen content. Instead, we count on our community members to know the Guidelines and to flag videos they think violate them. We review all flagged videos quickly, and if we find that a video does break the rules, we remove it, usually in under an hour." And, interestingly enough, regular TV broadcasters, with no licensing agreement with the IOC, are employing the fair use argument and airing the clip. Yet YouTube, and other online outlets are so terrified of the constant bullying from content creators that they're not going to take any chance and are taking the video down. In the end, nobody wins, people don't have access to the information, online video sites lose viewers and trust from their users and the IOC comes out as trying to hush up an unpleasant situation and (mis)using copyright law to do so.