OTA Scoops Up Boston LPTV For $4.1M

It is all my wife’s fault. More than a year ago, after I’d written a number of blog posts about the importance of choice in video, and the fact that cable was dragging their feet in the a la carte world, she called my bluff. “Ok, if you’re so sure there’s better stuff on the web than on cable, why don’t we cut the cord and find out?” She dared me. Duh, I can do that. No sweat. And so our adventure began. We called Time Warner and said boldly — “Please cancel our cable — today.” Snip. Gone.

The larger thing 2012 showed us is that election TV is much like the rest of TV today. On a day to day basis, it's less dominant, because of audience fragmentation and the increasing importance of the Internet. But — for some of the same reasons — a very few live-TV events (or surprises like the 47% video) have a massive, multiplied reach and effect.

Just how important is broadcast journalism? Think of it as a lifeline when everything else is unreliable or simply out of the question. It is a time when every available person in your station has a common goal, regardless of whether they're program, sales or administrative: it's the time to serve the public by acting as both the conduit for official news and information and to make sure that information flows in both directions.

Like the auto and steel industries before it, the media business is on the horns of the innovators dilemma — threatened by disruptive new technologies but unsure how to embrace them. Harvard Business School prof Jeff John Roberts has some advice.

Many anchor comments at the end of stories provide no particular insight or useful information of any kind. They are little more than platitudes.

Whether your guy won or lost on Tuesday night, you have to admit it made for compelling television.

Five years ago, the Writers Guild of America went on strike. For 100 days, Hollywood was more or less on lockdown as writers held out for higher residual earnings on new media revenues, including DVDs, online streams and more. Now here we are, five full years later — and those squabbles over residuals seem even more important.

Professor Nir Tessler, head of the nanotech department at Israel's elite Technion University, describes his view of the future in which digital printing technology will render the first and second screens undistinguishable. In fact, there won’t really be any screens at all.

Twenty-five years ago WFLD Chicago's Fox 32 News debuted at 7 and 11 p.m., entering a crowded local news field that included four well-established and successful competitors. (Robert Feder)