Mediagazer: Powerful, Niche Audiences Gather Around Live Web Programming … (Andy Plesser/Beet.TV)

Staci D. Kramer / paidContent:

Updated: Disney Makes Good On Threat; Pulls WABC From Cablevision On Oscar Eve — Midnight update: Get ready for some impromptu Oscar parties at New York-area households with Verizon FiOS or satellite: Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) couldn't find a way over a two-year impasse …

Discussion: Media Decoder, make the logo bigger, NY Daily News and TVbytheNumbers

Venuri Siriwardane / New Jersey Online:

ABC pulls signal from Cablevision just hours before the Oscars … Channel 7 went dark in parts of New Jersey this morning as Disney and Cablevision remained mired in a distribution stalemate. — The midnight blackout occurred just hours before ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards …

Discussion: Reuters, Epicenter and Hollywood Reporter

Diane Mermigas / BNET:

And the Oscar Goes... Anywhere in Digital Media Consumers Want — The retransmission fee stand-off between Walt Disney's WABC-TV and Cablevision that could prevent some east coast viewing of Sunday's Academy Awards is just the latest stress crack in a strained television and film landscape.

Discussion: Media Decoder, Company Town, Variety, Multichannel and MediaPost

Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:

Andreessen's Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats” — Legend has it that when Cortes landed in Mexico in the 1500s, he ordered his men to burn the ships that had brought them there to remove the possibility of doing anything other than going forward into the unknown.

Discussion: TomsTechBlog.com and TeleRead

Andy Plesser / Beet.TV:

Powerful, Niche Audiences Gather Around Live Web Programming to Build New Media Brands — While the audiences for viewing of live events might be relatively small, it can be an influential for the publishers seeking to build a brand, says Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3 …

Jennifer Van Grove / Mashable!:

The iPad Poses a Threat to Kindle's Market Share [STATS] — Independent research boutique ChangeWave surveyed 3,171 consumers and found that consumer pre-launch interest in the iPad is high. — Data demonstrates that consumers are more interested in purchasing an iPad than they were the iPhone prior to launch.

Discussion: TUAW

Maria Elena / Show Tracker:

Conan Twitter Tracker: How Conan Met Sarah — Ok, Conan, you're not such a bad guy, after all. We admit that for a while Friday we thought @LovelyButton was a figment of your Twitter imagination (read: Freckles and the gang), but now that we've actually spoken to her and have seen firsthand …

Discussion: CNET News, New York Magazine and Mediaite

Michael Calderone / The Politico:

Left gears up to fight media wars — From a glitzy new office in downtown Washington, the ideological war over the media is fully engaged. — Six years after its founding to counter what it said was “conservative misinformation,” Media Matters for America employs a staff of 70 …

Vanessa Thorpe / Guardian:

Why are women still a TV minority? — Study finds that females who do appear on television are often in soaps or on news to discuss ‘softer’ topics — Although there are more females, by a head or two in every 100, than there are males in the British population, on television women are still a distinct minority.

Emilybraham / Online Journalism Blog:

Summary of “Magazines and their websites” - Columbia Journalism Review study by Victor Navasky and Evan Lerner — The first study of magazines and their various approaches to websites, undertaken by Columbia Journalism Review, found publishers are still trying to work out how best to utilise the online medium.

Lynette Rice / Hollywood Insider:

Exclusive: ‘Fringe’ picked up for a third season — Sci-fi fans who may be concerned about the state of the genre on network TV (we're looking at you, V and FlashForward) have at least one reason to rejoice: EW has learned exclusively that Fox has picked up Fringe for a third season.

Discussion: The Wrap, TVbytheNumbers and New York Magazine

Reuters:

L.A. Times sells Disney front page for movie ad — (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times' critic may have panned the film, but that didn't stop Disney from paying top dollar to turn the newspaper's front page into a special advertisement on Friday for the new movie, “Alice in Wonderland.”

Richard Pérez-Peña / New York Times:
A Cover Ad That Mimics a Newspaper's Front Page

Discussion: ChasNote and The Huffington Post