This morning I was reading an excellent piece on Ars Technica asking the question Did "Lazy Sunday" make YouTube's $1.5 billion sale possible?. I looked back at our data and blog posts over the past few years to see whether we can help answer the question. To remind readers, "Lazy Sunday" refers to a Saturday Night Live "rap about a pair of lame white guys from the Village who wanted nothing more than to spend a Sunday afternoon in the theater, watching The Chronicles of Narnia". NBC Universal's general counsel, Rick Cotton, said (at DMW's Future of Television Forum East last week) that he believes that the SNL skit vaulted YouTube to popularity. We blogged about this skit the week after it aired in December 2005, showing that in one week, the skit propelled YouTube ahead of Google Video with much of that traffic coming from MySpace. Visits continued to climb from there.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

The Microsoft - Google battle was back in the headlines this week with both companies announcing acquisitions in the online advertising space and increased speculation about the future of Yahoo. On the acquisition front, Google (NASD: GOOG) announced on Tuesday that it has received approval from the European Commission for its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the final step to completing the transaction. Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt applauded the announcement noting that "with DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform.”

Los Angeles, CA - Digital Media Wire is pleased to announce agenda and speakers for the upcoming Future of Television (www.televisionconference.com/west) to be held at the Hollywood Roosevelt in Los Angeles, CA on Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25, 2008.

DMW’s CEO & Publisher provides a wrap-up of the top stories of the week. Who’s hot, who’s not and what’s the industry buzz?

It was a crazy week for all of us at DMW with much of our time spent on planning three major events we are producing in the coming weeks: Digital Music Forum East in New York City, February 26-27; The Millennials Canada in Toronto, March 5; and Future of Television West in Los Angeles, March 24-25. We have been producing the entertainment industry’s leading digital events for years, but developments over the past year have really increased the profile of our events, which now attract large (often standing room only) crowds and camera crews from leading media outlets, such as CNBC, CNN, PBS and the BBC.

While the WGA strike is now a memory, the immediate future of the television industry remains anything but clear. Uncertainty about the viability of online platforms as strong business models, questions about content on mobile platforms, and the increasing penetration of entertainment alternatives like video games and social media are only some of the issues. At the 2008 Future of Television Conference in Los Angeles on March 24-25, an extraordinary group of speakers will gather to evaluate the state of the industry, and discuss what lies ahead.