Roku has sold 5 million of its video and music streaming set-top boxes since launching in 2008, totaling 8 billion pieces of content streamed. That's an impressive performance for a little black box. 

As more and more reports swirl around the fact that consumers are turning away from traditional TV and cable, Roku claims that 25 percent of its customers use the device as their primary way of viewing television. 

"The milestone is significant, since it indicates that there’s a very real and growing market out there for a device that essentially just acts as a service layer for bringing web-based content to televisions, independent of what TV manufacturers themselves are doing with their own built-in Smart TV services," notes Tech Crunch.Continue reading...

“The Hispanic community is rapidly becoming the most influential voice in pop culture, business, and politics; their trendsetting impact will make or break the success of those seeking to gain brand popularity, market share and / or win the next election,” Forbes reports. 

And nothing demonstrates the cultural prowess of the demographic like the upcoming TV upfronts, broadcasters' annual dog-and-pony show where networks tout their upcoming lineups to advertisers. Both Univision—the No. 1 Hispanic network—and Telemundo, coming off its highest-rated January in network history, will hold upfronts on May 14. Univision’s newly rebranded UniMas, formerly TeleFutura and Galavision will also hold their upfronts that day, while Hispanic broadcaster Azteca has slated its presentation for May 13.

A step ahead of the game, Univision announced Mary Kay, MetroPCS, State Farm and Western Union as sponsors of the original web series, Arranque de Pasión, La Historia de Ela, which premiered April 1.Continue reading...

Oprah Winfrey remains a force of nature, but as she struggles to right her eponymous network, readies launch of an organic brand (also eponymous) on her Maui farm and prepares to address a comparatively small (for her) audience as the speaker at Harvard's 362nd commencement, her latest foe is the CRTC.

Canada’s TV watchdog has put OWN and Corus Entertainment (Canadian licensee) on notice for not fulfilling its educational mandate and has issued a mandatory order to ensure OWN in Canada "complies with its nature of service definition."

"Oprah Winfrey may have taught millions of followers the importance of self-esteem and the value of a good book, but the Canadian broadcasting regulator ruled on Friday that her fireside chats with other celebrities don’t qualify as educational programming, spelling the end of the Oprah Winfrey Network (Canada) as it currently exists," notes The Globe and Mail.Continue reading...

It's withdrawal time for millions of viewers of the wildly popular Downton Abbey, the British series that just concluded its second season on PBS. The period costumes, the two-track intrigue of the nobility and working class, the witty dialogue delivered in delicious British accents — all contribute to a success on American television not seen at this level since British classics such as Upstairs Downstairs and All Creatures Great and Small had their lengthy runs on PBS.

As fans anxiously await Season Three of Downton Abbey, however, another Anglophile-wooing TV channel is trying to take advantage of the the hiatus and the halo effect of the show: BBC America.Continue reading...

McDonald’s pulled in more than $24 billion in revenue in 2010, but it is always looking to sell more Big Macs. The company is introducing a new in-store television channel in California that will spread nationwide if it succeeds, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Restaurants with the channel will have large-screen televisions that are visible from 70 percent of the seats, airing content that is “customized to specific communities around the individual restaurants, and will include local news and entertainment features, such as spotlights on upcoming films, albums and TV shows,” the Times reports.Continue reading...

And the ratings are in... More people watched the premiere of Two and a Half Men with Ashton Kutcher than Comedy Central's roast of the star he replaced, Charlie Sheen. 

Now that doesn't mean much considering it broke a record for a roast on Comedy Central, attracting 6.4 million viewers to beat Jeff Foxworthy's record at 6.2 million views in 2005. The tally for Two and a Half Men? A whopping 28 million views, the show's highest ratings EVER. That proves that even Charlie Sheen's absence can have the same viewer drawing power as his presence.

What's interesting about the ratings is when compared to the amount of tweets per show, the roast fared better. A lot more.Continue reading...

One of the characters on the ABC Family hit Pretty Little Liars came out as lesbian earlier this year, which prompted the right-wing Florida Family Association to start asking the show’s advertisers to stop buying ads during the program.

It appears that the FFA may have had success with two brands, though one of them denies the organization had anything to do with its decision: General Mills and RE/Max.

E! Online reports that the FFA says that having an actively lesbian character on the show, which reaches a demographic of teenage girls and young women, "sends the wrong message to these young girls, a message that reinforces and legitimizes this homosexual lifestyle in a manner that could affect these young girls' sexual identity for a lifetime."Continue reading...

Netflix announced in July that it was going to expand to 43 Latin American and Caribbean countries by year’s end. Now it is known where a good chunk of content for that marketplace is coming from.

Telemundo International recently announced a program-licensing deal with Netflix, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Telemundo, owned by NBC Universal, will be providing 1,200 hours of content to Netflix annually that Latin American subscribers can get via streaming, the Reporter notes.

Netflix is already getting 3,000 hours of content from Televisa as well as 1,500 hours from Azteca.

In April, Netflix announced it had 23.6 million subscribers. It looks to increase that number substantially once it begins streaming content in Latin America.