THE BROWSER: Truth and rumors from the tech world
iTunes video boosts TV ratings
Downloads of The Office and Lost are on the rise, and so are their ratings.
Owen Thomas, Business 2.0 staff writer


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.

BellSouth exec defends fee demands

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.

Your ad here: Google Maps
A popular download: the ABC hit
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.

Bloggers are just writers

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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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.