MediaBizBuzz.com for February 4, 2008

In Play. 

Watching from the sidelines or from the 50-yard line this past week was riveting: In the presidential primaries, media, business, and certainly football. Is it something in the crisp winter air that marked the mood more than competitive, even combative? As the threat of a recession began to look more like a promise, bears came out of hibernation: After dismal showings in South Carolina and Florida, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani left the presidential race, leaving much tighter fields.While Obama appeared to snub Hillary at Mr. Bush's final State of the Union, the two made something of an embrace at their Thursday debate. Onto Super Duper Tuesday!

The opposite was true for Jerry Yang of Yahoo! last Tuesday as he received a courtesy call from Steve Ballmer, informing him of Microsoft's $44.6B hostile takeover bid that Thursday. In a New York minute the deal was taken apart six ways to Sunday. Silicon Alley Insider appeared to deploy all of its resources to examine the offer, fallout, and unintended consequences. Not that it was alone. By Friday there were stories about a couple of private equity firms that might serve as Yahoo!'s white knight, even a scenario where Google comes to Yang's aid (and Schmidt did phone Yang on Friday). On Sunday, after a reportedly internal gag order against speaking with the press, Google's head legal eagle David Drummond weighed in on its official blog, registering a note of concern from both anti-trust and privacy fronts. Payback time for MSFT's Google-DoubleClick dissing. Tune in this morning to hearMicrosoft's annual "strategic update," starring Steve Ballmer. That's 8am (EST) -- Sharp. If you miss that, there's always Friday: the Justice Department has scheduled a hearing over the deal.

NAPTE was notable for Jeff Zucker's opening plenary, text available here. As reported earlier the remarks indicated that the TV broadcast business was not as usual. Pilot season would be going the way of fossil fuels, as fewer series would be greenlit - sort of a cable mentality; emphasis on the Upfronts was also on the way out, and as to the business model itself: NBCwould be "re-engineering of our businesses from top to bottom, both at the network level and at local stations."TV.com has NAPTE video here.

United Hollywood, the WGA's blog, struck a cautionary note Sunday night about a possible contract, urging its membership to picket on Monday. LA Weekly's Nikke Finke reported that Peter Chernin was slightly more bullish, short of Blackberrying Sunday night that the deal was done on his way to the Superbowl.

And what a match up that was. The Giants' fourth quarter upset of the Patriots' perfect season (including its hubristic trademarking of "19-0") not only gave viewers a memorable game, but advertisers value. The $2.7 million spots reached 100 million potential consumers, with Starcom noting (from studying last year's Superbowl via TiVo Stop Watch and Charter cable subscribers) that DVRs enabled replay of ads, and at a rate as high as 30% over the initial telecast. And this year there's ample opportunity to see them again: AOL's Super Sunday Ad Poll has the ads up for the week for critique, while Hulu's blog is streaming them post-game as well (no membership req'd).

While Boston and New York faced off on the Gridiron, Jack Myers wrote of another rivalry that roared back to life: John Malone vs. Barry Diller. TiVo had its case for patent infringement upheld against Echostar, with the likelihood of at least $100 million in damages growing stronger with each appeal stay. More significantly, while it lost in terms of hardware IP, TiVo now stands assured of a life beyond the box in licensing its software technology, as it has recently done with Comcast.

There's a bidding war going on at the FCC's 700 mHZ Wireless Auction, only we won't know who the winners are until June 1st, when the Treasury must be paid. RCR Wireless is providing real-time coverage, with the ticker - it's like the Jerry Lewis Telethon there - now standing at $18.55B (exceeding all expectation). The good news is that the Age of Open Networks began last week, with a qualifying bid of $4.7B with the C-Block spectrum. The not-so-good? TechCrunch is concerned that some regional players may be gaming the system. In effect, sniping.

Last week also saw the renewal of Bob Iger's contract with Disney, for another five year hitch. And if you think that's a long stretch, consider Google: It was made public last week that the Google Brain Trust - Schmidt, Brin, and Page, are on board until July 2024, twenty years from the date of their IPO. Not to be outdone, chronologically-speaking, today NASA will send a transmission of The Beatles' Across The Universe into space. It is projected to reach the Polaris star system in 2439. Asked to comment, a spokesman for the otherwise notoriously permissions-averse Apple Corps offered, [We're] "always looking for new markets." That's the spirit.