• They’ll be conspiring with Intel and Sony on the project. Google’s ready to take itself (and the rest of the Web) into your living room with the still-under-wraps project. Much like everything else they do, the plan is the make the platform open using Android OS. They also plan on working with Logitech to come up with a tiny keyboard for the remote (which could be awesome or lame – jury’s still out). Either way, this makes the comparably underpowered Apple TV seem like last year’s news. source

• 20 minutes into the big show,
  the Oscars popped on source

• Ah, studies! The things we love! The Pew Internet and American Life project just released a really interesting study about readership habits, with the key point being that online news is a huge chunk of readership nowadays. Here are a few key numbers and points, because we know that you guys like it when we do that for you:

The overall key number from this study:

• 59%like getting news on AND off the Web

We like mixing mediums:

• 92% get their news from multiple media platforms daily (as many as six)
• 2% get their news solely online – we call these people early adopters

Who reads what, where?:

• 78% like to get news from a local TV station
• 61% like getting their news on the Internet
• 50% still like reading news in a local newspaper

Online usage habits:

• variety Most people don’t have favorites. 65 percent don’t have a preferred site for their information.
• national Local news isn’t read so much online – weather and national news are much more popular.
• social Talkers are a big driver of news – three-quarters of people get news via e-mail or social media.

Lessons to take:

• » Newspapers need to focus on local: Many newspapers already do so. It’s their bread and butter, and the journalism they offer is still valuable. Readers agree, which is why they still prefer newspapers and TV for local news.
• » Can’t stop the Web: Online news is already ingrained into the public consciousness, and much of it is grabbed through social media. And it’s decentralized reading too. No point trying to plug it up at this point. In fact, it’s grabbing a massive hold on mobile phones, too.
• » People like talking about news: 72 percent of news-readers say that journalism is a social experience – they read because they like talking about it. Online, this means that social media needs to be a huge part of news-distribution efforts. source

• $1.99 the price Apple currently sells TV shows for – it’s also a dollar extra for HD, and it’s expensive
• $1 the price Apple is gunning to sell TV shows for, which could help it take on Hulu
• $30 the price they want to charge for all-you-can-eat monthly Apple TV subscriptions source

• What does MTV stand for now? Heaven forfend, but should ‘Jersey Shore’ prove to be so successful that it keeps the network alive for another three decades, will ‘MTV’ only make sense to those of us who know that it used to stand for ‘Music Television’?
• TV Squad blogger Annie Wu • On perhaps the most painfully obvious change to MTV’s logo. It no longer refers to itself as “Music Television.” This move honestly has been due since about 2000 or so, really, but now it symbolically cements in stone that MTV can no longer go home. Rather than be depressed about it, we’re just going to watch some music videos on YouTube. At least somebody gives us what we want. source

• It’s perhaps the best ten seconds in TV history. Stephen Colbert could seriously say this for weeks on end, and it would make us feel much happier about the fact that Sarah Palin exists. That, friends, is a great clip.

• Macquarie Group Australia had a pretty awesome gaffe happen on live TV thanks to one of their bumbling workers, who decided to look at porn while an analyst was getting interviewed for a financial program. Best part of the video is the very end. A classic of the form. The guy responsible could be in huge trouble, by the way. (Duh.) source

• 35% increase from 2008; 26.6 million watched source