Finally, a pay TV provider who gets it. Dish Network is offering up a more honest approach to TV advertising: fast-forward through the TV content to get to the TV advertising. Dish, seemingly tongue in cheek, calls it "Reverse AutoHop." Why? Well, you can figure it out -- instead of the regular AutoHop's fast-forwarding through commercials, this feature allows viewers to focus on Super Bowl ads, which have their own brand consciousness separate from that of the game.

Thank social media for providing potential Super Bowl advertisers with preliminary audience testing. GoDaddy's edgy spot "Lost Dog" just got the axe because of this.

Consider SnapChat's new Discover service, which features 11 media partners, including National Geographic, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, CNN, The Food Network and ESPN, all of whom will create short-form content for social media users.

Too early to starting talking upfront? In the next few weeks, you can be sure media analysts will have intense questions about the 2015 TV marketplace, including the upfront. Uncomfortable moments followed some TV advertising estimates that all kind of TV advertising activity were down 1.5% fourth quarter. Was this "delayed" spending? Was it because of a shift to digital? Was it from the deflating TV economy? The real results are coming, with a slew of fourth-quarter financial results from major media players set to arrive over the next several weeks.

With all the talk about an explosion of TV shows, there is also scarcity of one particular TV genre: the sitcom. This category has long been a major contributor to syndication for TV stations, but now there's a weak marketplace of these shows for the coming years. While TV stations are somewhat set for this fall, seasons in 2016 and 2017 offer up slim pickings.

Deflating interest in the Super Bowl? Don't count on it.

CBS and Walt Disney decided to go the negotiation route to get rid of a particular thorn in their side, the commercial-skipping function, called AutoHop, on Dish Network's Hopper set-top box. But Fox took a more aggressive route through the courts, only to lose in this effort. Still Fox downplayed the result, saying AutoHop is hardly used anymore.

A rocketing stock price for Netflix -- up 14% in after-hours trading to just under $400 a share on Tuesday, just after releasing its Q4 2014 results --- must have rustled the feathers of traditional TV media companies, even if just a little bit. Still, this is a new year, and those media companies aren't taking this lying down.

An older woman across the street comes out of the house every couple of day to sit on the porch and blow-dry her hair. There's an extension cord; a cup of coffee; and some warm Los Angeles weather completing this tableau. It's a ritual -- those small events that continue to be important in our daily lives, no matter what. Watching TV is among them for sure.

Local cable advertising sales will be a significant part of a cable operator company's revenue someday, with the promise of big scale addressable and programmatic advertising. Even then it may be hard to tell by looking at financial statements.