Nielsen is reporting that over 31 million people viewed Michael Jackson's funeral on television. While the number is very high, it does not take into account the millions of viewers who streamed the coverage through a variety of streaming sites, nor the thousands who watched in movie theaters nationwide. Analysts know that over ten million live streams were served online, however, it is not clear exactly how many people viewed.
The US Olympic Committee is set to launch its own cable network. The US Olympic Network will cover the Olympics and Paraolympics and will only be available on Comcast's digital classic tier. The goal is to generate revenue through devoting itself to Olympic coverage, while competing against NBC, who has broadcast rights to the next Olympics.
The SEC will continue to investigate Apple's lack of disclosure about CEO Steve Jobs health. While the company noted that Jobs was healthy, despite increasing weight loss and rampant rumors that Jobs was seriously ill, it is unclear whether or not the company made misleading remarks about Jobs health, in order to financially protect its assets. In the span of nine days in January, Apple went from saying that Jobs was healthy to noting that he had a hormone imbalance, to eventually announcing that was taking a medical leave of absence, during which he had a liver transplant.
Verizon filed a complaint against Cablevision with the FCC over Cablevision's refusal to make HD sports channels available on FiOS. Verizon claims that Cablevision is "intentionally and unlawfully" withholding programming rights for the NY Knicks, NY Ranger, NY Islanders, NJ Devils and Buffalo Sabres. While Cablevision, which owns the programming rights to each teams home games, sells Verizon access to its standard definition channels, Verizon claims that by refusing to sell HD channels as well Cablevision has an unfair advantage.
Google unveiled its new PC-based operating system yesterday. The Chrome OS is similar to its Chrome web browser in that it was built for people "who live on the web." The open source OS will initially be available for netbooks in the second half of 2010.
Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer 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. Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars