There are more people firing up their TiVo boxes these days: The DVR pioneer posted encouraging news on the subscriber front after Wednesday's market close. TiVo now watches over 2.7 million subscribers, 41% ahead of where it was a year ago. The news isn't all good, though.
For Watson, it was elementary. IBM's mighty supercomputer has landed the title of new Jeopardy! champ. No matter how hard Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings -- the two human contestants pitted against the machine -- tried, they were just no match for the brainy Watson.
Super Bowl XLV, which aired on Fox on Sunday, attracted 111 million viewers, making it the most-watched television program of all time, Nielsen said Monday.
Hulu reached an agreement with Viacom that will once again allow the video site to air episodes of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report," 11 months after the shows were pulled from the site.
So far, at least, Piers Morgan shows no signs of being CNN's next big star. His ratings have declined steadily, falling below that of his predecessor, Larry King, in his first two weeks on the air. But it may be too early to make a fair comparison.
Oprah Winfrey's new cable network is commanding some of the highest ad prices on cable, and it justified those rates with its heavily watched debut. Now, OWN will have to prove it can maintain its viewership levels throughout the year.
Here's a nice surprise for television advertisers: Digital video recorders are actually increasing, not decreasing, the number of viewers who are watching the commercials. Nearly half of the DVR owners in the critical 18- to 49-year-old age group watch the commercials, which boosts ratings, Nielsen says.
Bristol Palin helped boost the viewership for "Dancing with the Stars" when she made it to the final round, while her mother's show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska" got half a million more viewers in the same week.
It's not just that his new talk show Conan is attracting a huge audience -- more than 4.1 million for its first night -- but they're young as well. And advertisers are willing to pay a premium to reach these viewers because they're so difficult to find.
Networks broadcasting midterm election results attracted 11% more viewers than they did during the 2006 elections, and about a third more than the 2002 midterms, indicating the heightened level political interest among Americans concerned about House and Senate races, Nielsen reported Friday.
Many fans skipped the San Francisco Giants vs. Texas Rangers, which is a pity because the Giants played some extraordinary baseball as they captured the World Series. The poor ratings may prompt advertisers to ask for "make-goods" -- free commercials.
One new study says the boob tube's appeal keeps growing because it remains a relatively cheap form of entertainment in these tough economic times. But some experts say it's due to a proliferation of cable channels and the growth in use of digital videorecorders.
