At the peak of the YouTube coverage of the event, there were approximately 8 million concurrent viewers from around the world, likely a record for YouTube.  The company claims that they had millions of live viewers during the first Presidential debate, and during a peak of YouTube’s Olympic coverage, it delivered video for more than a half million concurrent live streams.

Google is slowly aggregating a viewing audience for live events, and offering its streams to a global audience is certainly making that happen more quickly. The more live events Google can offer, the easier it will be for on-the-fence cable subscribers to cut the cord.

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Despite the grand indulgence and self-congratulations of last week’s Emmy awards show, Hollywood may have a huge problem on its hands. The U.S. Census Bureau valued license fees for international TV rights at $3.3 billion to American producers in 2010. The top-performing series in international markets remain NCIS, Criminal Minds and the CSI franchise – all dating from the early 2000s. Can Homeland, Breaking Bad and Boardwalk Empire – all winners of “best” Emmys last week – replace these international hits?

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First, for some time, the movie industry has targeted its filmmaking power at the young, yet last year, movie attendance declined among every demographic group (including the young) but one:  those over 60, which actually increased.  Second, the publishing industry has long looked to Baby Boomers to lead all segments in book buying, and they have…until last year.  In 2011, book-buying leadership slipped away from those born between 1945 and 1964 to those born between 1979 and 1989, Generation Y.

What an inversion of stereotypes! Book-buying young people and movie-going elders, really?  Looking a little deeper, the younger cohort’s book buying makes sense because they are buying books for school and are purchasing digital books. Yet that younger age group has never taken the book-buying lead in the past.  Also, looking a little deeper into the over-sixty segment of the Boomers, the reality that they have money and time, and, in fact, indulged deeply in movies in their past suggest that they are returning to what once drove their media interests.  They are indulging their movie-going whims just as the younger cohort turns to digital technology to satisfy their move-viewing needs.

These realities have taken both industries by surprise, and as a result, every movie studio has an “older demographic” film in the pipeline, and every publisher is looking for another title to sweep across the youth market.  Marketing messages will adjust accordingly.

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Some outside observers are suggesting an analogy between this suit and early suits against the tobacco industry, suits that also claimed the industry knew of damage their products caused but chose to do nothing.  Last year, Sunday Night Football outperformed American Idol to become the country’s most watched television show of the year.  If this lawsuit brings results, what will advertisers and even the networks do to avoid being seen as contributors to the damage?  General Motors has already pulled out of the Super Bowl because the cost was too high.  What kind of impact could this lawsuit have?

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We’ve written about the ways in which producers of other goods are attempting to eliminate the middle man and sell directly to consumers and now some book publishers are following suit.  It appears that the publishers are more afraid of Amazon’s power (60 percent of the e-book market) than they are of piracy.  Can these publishers effectively dent Amazon’s profits, or is it too little, too late?

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These are not knockoffs like those the software and hardware businesses face; rather these are knockoffs of the original content but by people who make no pretense of being the original musicians. The fashion industry has faced this issue, as lower-priced stores create their own versions of runway fashion, putting the products in stores before the original designers get theirs to market. The idea of “rolling out” any product slowly around the world is anachronistic.

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Even after watching record labels get it wrong for years, m­ovie studios can’t get it right. DVD sales dropped 20 percent between 2010 and 2011, and increases in Blu-ray sales and digital downloading didn’t make up the difference. Expect an increase in piracy, not an increase in consumers spending time and money to get access to watch a movie they have purchased on any device.

On the other hand, in August, Nintendo will sell New Super Mario Bros 2 and other games for its gaming platforms, the 3DS and Wii U, as both direct downloads and physical packages. The company has previously offered high-end games on discs and cartridges, and smaller games via download. Customers can purchase via Nintendo’s eShop online store, or they can buy download codes from traditional game retailers. (Wired, 4/27/12)

Unlike the movie studios, Nintendo understands the changes that Pervasive Computing is bringing. Digital games on smartphones are training individuals to want and expect immediate access, which is changing business and delivery models for traditional game companies. How long will it be before sales of physical games sold at brick-and-mortar stores disappear completely?

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