Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's says more than $24 billion dropped out of the U.S. economy during the 16 days of government shutdown. In TV ratings parlance, what's the make-good situation on that? Answer: There isn't any (though some pent-up demand might dribble back).

Popcorn makes theatergoers ignore in-theater ads, according to a new study. (In a related story, overpriced Milk Duds and bottled water make you want to buy a BMW!) Seems that when people chew, they subconsciously try to sound out new brand names. Popcorn interferes with this.

Decades ago, media agencies separated television into neat compartments. For example, some agencies had separate media buying positions for broadcast networks, syndication and cable -- sometimes called "new media." There were glaring differences between the three when it came to coverage of U.S. TV homes, time periods of shows, and, of course, how ratings were derived for each. Back then (and even today), you could also find production companies that made shows specifically with cable, network, or syndication in mind. Did viewers know the difference? Did they know they were watching a cable show or a syndicated show?

Credit CBS for continuing its effort to get viewers involved in building a prime-time show episode. For the second straight season, it will allow viewers to vote on key elements of a "Hawaii Five-O" episode. My suggestion: Expand the effort and have viewers choose some of the advertising as w

John Malone, chairman/CEO of Liberty Media and legendary cable TV operating executive, sees cable operators missing the boat on new digital businesses -- everything from TV Everywhere efforts to competing against the likes of Netflix. Some of these efforts would work better if more multiple system operators merged.

DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg says "Bad" -- or at least its concluding episodes -- could have yielded a different sort of TV financial model.Katzenberg had offered a massive $25 million to the producer for each of the series' last three episodes. The aim was to sell them to consumers online in lucrative six-minute installments.

If you're a media executive, you're always worried about what young users are doing -- right now. But you might be guessing wrong. Are they using Facebook? Maybe not so much. Twitter? You could be behind the times.

Show me where TV viewership, social media TV messaging and social media "readership" intersect. A new Nielsen Twitter TV service hopes to do this. Nielsen says a typical TV-related tweet has a power rating of around 50. For example, if 2,000 people tweet about a program, 100,000 will see and read those tweets.

Where is the "mobile TV" business these days? In the simplest of terms, it would allow stations to send their signals to everyone's mobile phones. That represented a potential boon for the local station business, which -- apart from strong political and Olympic upturns -- has seen slower growth in recent years.

Everyone can now be the single subject of a media network -- even a 24-hour network. Editing not included. A product, first called "Memoto" and now named "Narrative" -- just a half-inch in size -- clips to your clothing and can take pictures of your life every 30 seconds using GPS technology. All day long, if need be. That's a lot of media.