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Apple TV is reportedly developing ad-skipping technology so owners of a set-top box can watch shows commercial-free. The propsed deal with cable companies would reimburse programmers for skipped ads.

Google is really just hoping to beat Apple to the punch, despite the fact that the company already has its Apple TV streaming product on the market, according to The New York Times "Apple’s thinking… is that any next-generation television service must be set up in partnership with existing distributors, in part for quality assurance reasons. A future Apple service could include a user-friendly interface layered on top of Time Warner Cable or Cablevision’s channel lineup."

Adoption from the major networks is "very unlikely to support any service with their linear feed that allows for commercial messages to be skipped even if they get some form of compensation," Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer for WPP's GroupM, told AdAge. "This is not a viable economic model and subscribers to the system would not pay an adequate premium to compensate for it." 

Netflix is banking on getting on cable set-top boxes to hit aggressive growth targets in the next few years — but not every U.S. operator is eager to play ball with a company they view as a rival.

John Malone, whose Liberty Media owns a stake in Charter, has dismissed the notion that MSOs should pair up Netflix. At the company’s annual investor day this month, he said cable operators should team up to create a Netflix-like subscription VOD service, criticizing the industry for being slow to respond to over-the-top competitors.

Longer term, Netflix projects that it can be two or three times larger than HBO’s current linear base — with 60 million to 90 million subs in the U.S. Hitting those numbers would likely require pay TV deals, to reach consumers who don’t want a separate box for streaming Internet video.

Still, you might say a revolution is brewing in the living room — and this one will be televised. It portends not only a change in the TV viewing experience but also poses a threat to cable and satellite TV distributors. Even network executives' notions about scheduling — how positioning a new show adjacent to a popular program in the evening lineup to drive ratings — look anachronistic at a time when Nielsen estimates that 47% of all American households have DVRs and can watch recorded shows whenever they choose, and 55% of broadband homes have at least one TV connected to the Internet, according to market researcher the Diffusion Group.

Concerns about how to reach this group known as the "never connecteds" and count their viewing in a show's ratings adds to a list of headaches that include slumping prime-time broadcast TV ratings and the flight of advertisers to cable.

these smart TVs may look dated compared with what Silicon Valley giant Intel has in store for later this year, not to mention whatever Apple Inc. is planning with its mysterious but hotly anticipated flat-screen TV.

or Internet-based TV to be a competitive option, it either needs to be cheaper than cable and satellite or it needs to provide the content that subscribers want in a better way.

For the companies still working on Web TV, it would mean charging less than traditional competitors for a service while paying more than traditional competitors to offer it.

for a Web TV offering to be truly Web TV, it would need to offer all the channels consumers want alongside the "over-the-top" video capabilities like Netflix and Hulu that they associate with Internet viewing.

“By defining the services as cable companies, they provide a path to finally change the way consumers get their television and cut the cord without losing out on key programming,” he said.

Mr. David pointed out that by classifying Aereo as a cable company the court in effect overturned a previous decision which outlawed a similar service called Ivi. Ivi delivered broadcast television over the Internet and sort to pay a minimal royalty fee for the privilege.

The court at that time said that Ivi was not a cable company. Mr. David said that FilmOn is finalizing the certification process for qualification for this fee and that the company will soon be able to provide local network TV service in the 18 cities it is active in.

"This is not a Shazam-like feature. It happens before the ad is even broadcast,

ble to read the digital signals coming from the TV satellite feed (used for both satellite and cable TV), telling it when a TV spot from a specific brand has begun. It then triggers the launch of a mobile ad within three seconds of its detection of the TV spot.

On the other end, Xaxis targets users using data from TV audience measurement firm Kantar, which taps into about 1 million U.S. TV households. This could tell Xaxis, for example, which viewers index high for consuming television dramas or live vocal competitions. The campaigns are only designed to reach connected devices on a home Wi-Fi, rather than those who are on mobile devices, Finnegan says. "We want to reach people who are stationary and if they are on Wi-Fi we can assume they are hanging out at home," he notes.

The vast majority of Americans – 95 percent – still watch television using traditional cable or satellite options, according to Nielsen. But the number of households that choose to opt out of cable or satellite TV is on the rise, from 2 million in 2007 to 5 million in 2013, Nielsen’s data show.

“This scares the bejesus out of the cable and satellite people,” said Jim Barry, a spokesman for the Consumer Electronics Association in Arlington, Va. “I think it’s going to change the business model.”

A main driver behind the high cost of cable and satellite in recent years is the expensive license fees networks pay sports leagues to broadcast their games. The cost gets passed on to consumers to pay for the “bundles” of channels they get with their cable satellite subscriptions, whether they plan to watch sports or not.

YouTube is reportedly in talks with those same networks to stream TV through a paid service called Unplugged that could serve as a Web-based alternative to the cable box.

The moves highlight the massive shift taking place in the TV industry as networks seek to stanch the flow of cord cutters by looking at former adversaries in the tech world to help recapture audiences, particularly younger ones

The plan, which has reportedly been in the works since 2012, would package the four major TV networks with a smattering of cable offerings.

Almost three months after striking a deal to acquire second screen TV app specialist GetGlue, i.TV has "retired" the GetGlue brand while introducing a new brand and social TV app called "tvtag" that will enable users to share, comment on and react to what they’re watching.

Tvtag will aggregate the i.TV second screen audiences from GetGlue, DirecTV and Nintendo (via the Nintendo TVii feature that’s baked into the Wii U console and Wii U GamePad). i.TV CEO Brad Pelo said the move will give tvtag access to an aggregate, potential reach of about 10 million users.

The new app replaces the GetGlue platform with one that  lets users “tag” moments within individual TV shows and sporting events with comments, doodles and memes. Keeping some of the old GetGlue features in place, tvtag will still let users “check in” to a show to unlock digital stickers, while also integrating user polls tied to TV content and the ability to share show-related info on Twitter and Facebook.

To Intel, and to some analysts, the behavior by the existing distributors — in some cases giving financial incentives to friendly channel owners, in other cases including punitive measures in contracts — has an anticompetitive whiff. The antitrust division of the Justice Department is looking into the issue as part of a broad investigation into cable and satellite company practices,

In the face of customer losses, cable and satellite TV operators say they’re focusing on higher-value subscribers, willing to sacrifice bargain-hunting consumers who at satisfied with over-the-top video options like Netflix and free broadcast TV.

data clearly shows that cord-cutting is picking up the pace as the cost of cable and satellite TV service continues to climb skyward.

Media companies also want to gather and crunch all the data about viewing habits they can to sell to advertisers. The companies receive less high quality data when people watch network programming through an app from Dish Network or DirecTV instead of using their own apps.

"Both sides are paranoid. The operators think that if the programmers can create a one-to-one relationship with the consumer, some day they peel off and become their own HBO," said an executive at a media company involved in content negotiations who was not authorized to talk to the media.

Ad sales on the platforms are still small and hard to estimate, but revenue is expected to grow as more viewing moves to mobile devices

“TV and video content providers such as cable companies have a great opportunity to target heavy users with social TV in order to reduce potential churn,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner. “The time to take advantage of this opportunity is right now as social TV services have not yet been dominated by a single solution and the market is far from saturated.”

Connected TV will open up access to a much wider range of content via the Internet, opening the possibility of worldwide video sharing.

ideo influences consumers the most when considering a purchase – up more than 20 percent – banner and search advertising continue to decline. Less than 50 percent now find paid search influential when making a decision, down from about 60 percent during the past three years.

The Advertising Platform Formerly Known as Mass Media Advertising communications channels have always offered their audiences a value exchange. For instance, TV provides entertainment experiences in return for advertising and indirectly a cable fee, magazines present an edited cornucopia of material on a selected topic in return for a cover price and advertising.

Social media and digital advertising are currently testing the limits of their value exchanges by expecting consumers to provide specific information about themselves or their behaviors, which the digital properties can subsequently leverage in targeted advertising.

now younger consumers’ growing sense of entitlement gained in the digital world (where information was often offered at low or zero cost) is shifting across all channels. We only have to look at the emergence of TV cable cord-cutters or the growth of services such as Bit Torrent for evidence of this. Bit Torrent has increased its audience by over +70% in the last two years to a monthly audience of 23 million users.

The owner of the nation’s largest cable operator has begun preliminary discussions with both film and TV studios and other leading Internet service providers about employing technology, according to sources, that would provide offending users with transactional opportunities to access legal versions of copyright-infringing videos as they’re being downloaded.

The new approach would be an alternative to the Copyright Alert System, a voluntary initiative many leading programmers and distributors like Comcast have been utilizing since February. Other CAS participants include AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, as well as all studios affiliated with MPAA.

Using pirated content as a platform to drive legal transactions reflects an alternate philosophy regarding copyright infringement, one that sees the illegal activity less as a crime that requires punishment and more as lead generation to a consumer whose behavior is borne out of inadequate legitimate digital content options.

networks for years have complained that total viewing of their shows isn't being captured by traditional ratings measurements. This is a move to correct that.

decision to expand beyond traditional TV ratings measurement came out of a meeting in New York on Tuesday of the What Nielsen Measures Committee, a group that has been meeting for nearly a year.

By September 2013, when the next TV season begins, Nielsen expects to have in place new hardware and software tools in the nearly 23,000 TV homes it samples. Those measurement systems will capture viewership not just from the 75 percent of homes that rely on cable, satellite and over the air broadcasts but also viewing via devices that deliver video from streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon, from so-called over-the-top services and from TV enabled game systems like the X-Box and PlayStation.

Social network users are 27.3% more likely to say that the sites are important for making entertainment-related decisions than not (56% vs. 44%),

Twitter users are more likely than Facebook users to follow actors and actresses (41% vs. 32%), sports figures (25% vs. 17%), reality TV stars (23% vs. 16%), and journalists and reporters (15% vs. 9%). By contrast, Facebook members are more likely to follow companies and brands (49% vs. 37%), sports teams (30% vs. 22%), TV shows (49% vs. 30%), and movies (43% vs. 25%).

Roughly 4 in 5 respondents said they always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching TV, while 41% reported tweeting about the show they are watching. In fact, of those posting about TV shows, roughly three-quarters did so while watching programs live, and 51% said they post while watching to feel connected to others who might be watching.

There is growing consensus that traditional media, particularly TV, need to learn lessons from this. "YouTube is beginning to behave like a market leader," noted Elisabeth Murdoch in her 2012 MacTaggart lecture. "Believe at your own risk that their platform is based on homemade videos of cats in washing machines… Brands and talent are using YouTube to create direct-to-consumer relationships. Michelle Phan is the world's most popular make-up expert with over 600 million views. Yes – that's equivalent to a global Olympic audience generated by a 22-year-old putting on Lady Gaga makeup."

I'm a professional. If you expect me to jump at the opportunity to do something for free, like you're doing me a solid? No." Perhaps the scariest part of that comment for the old media is that these twenty-somethings know Jamie Oliver best for his supermarket advertising.

Cable television offers hundreds of channels, while YouTube gives us potentially millions from a global pool. The second is that technology now provides more versatility for watching content from the internet. For copying the tips from a make-up video, you might choose to use a smartphone in the bathroom; you can watch vlogs in bed on a tablet; for longer, more stylised productions, you've still got the big screen.

Factoid: 21.6% of pay-TV subscribers have downloaded their operators TV-Everywhere app to their connected device. Of those, just 30% use it more than once a week.

“Authentication is a barrier to usage. I bet half the audience doesn’t know what their user name and password is.

“It’s not unreasonable to assume that roughly, essentially we charge customers 20 cents a viewing hour. That is a staggeringly good value by any measure.” Rob Marcus, TWC “I’m concerned we are reaching a tipping point. Where we begin to price some customers out of the market” Jerald Kent, Chairman & CEO, Suddenlink Communications