NEW YORK (Business 2.0) - When ABC and NBC started selling episodes of prime time shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "The Office" on Apple's (Research) iTunes Music Store, some worried that it would hurt broadcast viewership. Instead, TV Week reports, ratings have actually jumped, especially in the young-adult demographics most appealing to advertisers.

A top executive at the local phone company is defending its controversial efforts to get Internet content providers to pay extra to make sure online movies, music, and other bandwidth-intensive data get delivered to consumers quickly. Bloggers are divided: Some say consumers are already paying for the bandwidth via their DSL fees, while others say it's a reasonable way to avoid Internet traffic jams.

A popular download: the ABC hit "Desperate Housewives."

Roofs are now billboards, thanks to Google (Research) Maps and other satellite-image mapping services. Stores like Target (Research) have taken to painting logos on their roofs in hopes of getting photographed -- and then getting noticed by local searchers.

So says Simon Dumenco of Ad Age, who argues that distinguishing between writers by the tools they use is a silly practice. (We don't call Microsoft (Research) Word users "Wordders.") The immediacy of blogging is just an extension of TV's 24-hour news cycle to the written word. Soon, Dumenco argues, all journalists will be operating on blog speed.

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