Dow Nears 5 Year Low: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer October 23, 2008

Yesterday the Dow Jones closed at 8519, near its five year low. The story did not make the front page of the New York Times nor the evening news. Forget Joe the Plumber, where is Joe the Businessman?

Amazon's 3Q profit up 48% over last year. Despite profits being up, Amazon lowered its estimated 4Q sales. Amazon's stock took a hit on its forecast, which calls for earnings of $6-7 billion for the holiday season, down from $7.2 billion last year.

Netflix has reached a streaming deal with Samsung. The deal will bring movies directly to Samsung devices, giving users access to roughly 12,000 movies and TV shows through their television. While current users will have to connect their TV's to the Internet, future models will have Netflix built in.

Imeem is laying off 25% of its staff and maybe up for sale. The streaming media company hired Montgomery and Co. to explore a potential sale of the company. A rep for Imeem, which has raised over $50 million to date, said "Given the current economic climate, we decided to be proactive in cutting costs - before we needed to - for the long-term benefit of the business."

Comcast has broadened the reach of its DOCSIS 3.0 broadband service. The cable company announced that it will launch DOCSIS 3.0 in parts of New England, as well as outside Philadelphia and in New Jersey. Comcast's DOCSIS 3.0 offering, which will include the 250 GB cap per billing cycle, will cost $139.95 a month and will give users 10Mbps upstream.

Plus, today's consulting question, "Any word on Blackberry's Storm? When? Where? How Much?" Shelly has the answer on today's MediaBytes.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at [e-mail]

Comments

[rmajh5]

Is anyone paying attention? Our economy is faltering badly, and yet, here we are currently spending approximately 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq compliments of a preemptive war begun over 5 years ago to rid that area half way round the world from us of cancerous human activity, but when it comes to the cancers within our own society, it would appear that our local problems can wait.

Where are the religious and spiritual leaders and their flocks? Where are the community leaders and where are we the people? With areas like affordable housing, health care, public safety, schools and our general infrastructure in need of attention, when are we in America finally going to get it? If we don"t cure the cancers within, eventually, like the smallest melanoma on a human body"s foot, the cancers within our own political body will take our collective body down as well.

Call it the spiritually right thing to do or just, from our own self interest, the right thing to do, but it is to our advantage to come together and to spend the time, effort and money to make ourselves a healthier state and nation.