As social check-ins and chat are now driving TV tune-in and engagement, the long-anticipated disintermediation of the entertainment-to-home ecosystem has arrived.

A new study by Frank N. Magid Associates, reveals that one of every five consumers are using video game consoles, Blu-ray players or other devices to bring the Web into their living rooms on their television screens. The seachange has led to a flood of social TV partnerships in what Ad Age calls the "Exploding Social-TV Ecosystem."

"Connected TVs will bring the Internet to the large screen, in contrast to how the smartphone has brought the Internet to the small screen. Consumers will be able to watch and browse what they want, when they want, on a big screen through connected TVs," commented Mike Vorhaus, President of Magid Advisors, a unit of Frank N. Magid Associates, to the Los Angeles Times.

The research, part of the Magid Media Futures 2012 study, found that:Continue reading...

Forbes' piece on Vice breaking the billion-dollar valuation for its mix of original video programming — including Vice's VBS.tv partnership with MTV, YouTube's original-channel push this year and content for MTV and CNN) and branded entertainment partnerships such as the Creators Project with Intel — is as interesting for its insights into Vice as it is for surfacing Tom Freston's role as an advisor to the rising media brand.

The former chairman and CEO of MTV Networks has been keeping a relatively low profile since being chucked out of Viacom in 2006 after disagreeing with Sumner Redstone. Now an entertainment and media investor via his Firefly3 LLC and the chairman of the ONE Campaign, Freston is more committed than ever to social innovation, cause marketing and corporate citizenship, as he outlines in an interview with Kinsey last month.

Rupert Murdoch’s son James will be giving a second round of evidence to a House of Commons select committee this week. According to PaidContent, evidence has emerged that Murdoch's now-shuttered London-based newspaper The News of the World hired a private investigator for video surveillance of Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris over the past 18 months, two lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as “part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.” 

Lewis and Harris represented Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, the first hacking victims to sue the company for hacking their phones. PI Derek Webb has been employed by News of the World since 2003 and physically trailed “hundreds of targets including members of the royal family and serving cabinet ministers,” writes PC. Webb’s surveillance included family members and associates of Lewis and Harris, even targeting Harris’ two young children as well as John Prescott when he was deputy prime minister and Charles Clarke, former home secretary.Continue reading...

The strangest moment of the British parliamentary hearing into the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal today had to be Wendi Murdoch — that's her in pink, above — swinging at a protester (activist Jonathan May Bowles) who hurled a (shaving?) cream pie at her husband Rupert before he was hauled away.

The second strangest moment: CNN host Piers Morgan's virtual testimony on Twitter, where he defended Wendi and then himself, responding (on Twitter and then on-air) to allegations that he was involved in phone-hacking while running the now-shuttered News of the World.Continue reading...

The Wall Street Journal's headline says it all: "Showdown Time Comes for Murdoch." But even as US questions arise, fellow media mogul Steve Forbes writes that Rupert Murdoch will "survive and thrive again." 

As the News Corp. chairman and CEO, his son James and the embattled former (resigned and then arrested) News International head Rebekah Brooks appear before a three-hour parliamentary hearing into phone-hacking allegations in London today, Bloomberg News is reporting that Rupert Murdoch is ready to step down.

News Corp. COO Chase Carey is on standby to assume the CEO position, according to Bloomberg, while Murdoch would remain chairman in that scenario — all depending how today's hearing goes. CNN has more.

As News Corp. faces fresh allegations that phone hacking was more widespread than previously thought at News of the World, Rupert Murdoch's embattled "red top" tabloid has published its last issue, the production of which was played out over its Twitter feed.

Murdoch is fighting to defend his management team and keep institutional investors such as the Church of England from withdrawing support that would hinder his other titles, not to mention his BSkyB deal. The newspaper's former editor, Andy Coulson, was arrested Friday, as attention turns to News Corp. exec Les Hinton, Murdoch's "lifelong lieutenant and closest advisor," as the Guardian puts it.

Click below to see NotW's final cover, featuring its more provocative exclusives over the years, and check out its website and this video to see the newspaper's own tribute to its 168-year history.Continue reading...

The website is matte and functional in an era of high-gloss web-design primacy. It’s hot and provocative in a low-brow, National Enquirer kind of way when so much of its audience is elite and cool. It’s unapologetically conservative and yet liberals don’t want to miss it either. It makes web designers' teeth hurt.

With all of those quirks and apparent contradictions, web scoopster Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report remains one of the biggest successes on the web. After 14 years, it’s not hyberbole to rank the site with Google, eBay and Facebook among the most significant online innovations since the birth of Al Gore’s medium — as the New York Times' media critic David Carr noted this week.Continue reading...

If the charts (above) that The Atlantic published online today are to be believed, then what we're seeing regarding Gawker's move to a new platform is the Laser Disk moment of online publishing.

Back in February, we chronicled the rage against the redesign by Gawker's readers, whose negative reaction would appear to be supported by the grim chart above. Denton, of course, begs to differ. Continue reading...