Netflix reported earnings of $41 million for 4Q 2011, or $0.73 per share, which is better than analysts expected the company to do after its difficult run in 3Q. Netflix's revenue rose 43% to $876 million, but overall, profits were down 13%.

CBSSports.com announced its fantasy sports service is opening its doors to third party developers and companies to create apps for its products and services. CBSSports.com's innovative open Fantasy Platform will represent the first of its kind in the fantasy sports industry.

Lovefilm U.K. Ltd., an Amazon company, has partnered with the Disney-ABC Television Group in a deal that will bring full seasons of several of ABC Studios' American television series such as Castle and all six seasons of Lost to Lovefilm members.

Google disabled its author search functionality from Google News in favor of the Google+ Authorship capabilities it introduced in November. Searching within Google News for "author:‘firstname lastname,'" returns no documents, but participating journalists can opt to have a link to their Google+ profiles displayed next to articles they've written.

Netflix, Inc. and BBC have joined forces in order to offer BBC Worldwide programs, such as Doctor Who and Top Gear, to subscribers upon Netflix's U.K. launch early next year. Financial terms were not disclosed but the deal is non-exclusive.

This spring, some research had me making a series of calls to a range of people in the book publishing business, including authors, agents, publishers, and consultants. The topic-in broad terms-was about the shift to digital. How did these publishing leaders see the shift occurring today? How was it going so far, and-more importantly-what might the publishing landscape look like in 3 or 5 years?

Outsell, Inc.'s release of "The Business Intelligence Landscape Today: The New Rules of Aggregation" in September shed some new light on where content aggregators are succeeding and where they need to change in order to meet evolving market needs.

For the past week or two I've been dealing with friends and family clamoring for the iPhone 4S. One friend called me from her new phone to tell me all about the ridiculous and hilarious conversations she has with Siri. Apparently, if you threaten to buy an Android phone, it will yell at you. In light of all the "I will destroy Android" coverage the Steve Jobs biography has been receiving, I like to think of him showing up in the Siri labs with a smirk on his face, suggesting his programmers make Siri share his hatred of Droid phones.

With newsrooms shrinking, journalists need somewhere to peddle their wares. But needs don't generally go unmet in the digital age. Enter MediaCooler. In a Q&A with Journalism.co.uk the CEO of Media Cooler, Alison Yesilcimen, describes the site this way: "It's an online content market place that allows professional journalists to showcase and sell features and columns to global publications."

Much like print publishers have stood by and watched their customer base dwindle as the web took over, cable companies have been watching as their customers found new alternatives to shelling out hundreds of dollars for the privelege of watching The Jersey Shore. Accounts vary, but so far "cord-cutters" have represented a relatively small drop off in revenues. As internet connected TVs become more popular and a whole new generation of kids come out of college without any intention of ever getting a cable hook-up, smart pay-TV providers are looking for new ways to offer their consumers value.

Few, if any, would argue that the internet has dramatically and permanently changed the publishing industry. As print publishers have scrambled to find ways to compete with and, ultimately, embrace the digital world, some are excelling through a combination of traditional and online options. Others, new to publishing, are operating in the online-only world, but everyone is dealing with the age-old problem of circulation building and audience development.

While some speculate that the web unearths more news sources than ever before, research into the actual sources of online news point to a virtual duopoly of wire agency news sources, which some media analysts find alarming. Is the marked decline in original reporting a threat to the business model of online news sites or a necessary part of their financial survival?

As digitized content disperses, publishing brands and content wares splinter across countless platforms, devices, feeds, and syndication venues; the business and editorial infrastructure beneath it all, is fragmenting and reassembling just as quickly. The business models, like the content, are flying everywhere and the trick is to keep the overall vision on target, not just cope with content shrapnel.

In the Old Economy, those who owned the exclusive rights to a product or service could become very wealthy. Today the tables have turned; it’s openness and the free availability of good ideas that drive value. The mindset of not only the content consumer is shifting, but also that of vendors and even content providers, which seek to find ways to profit from the new (digital) economy. peggy anne salz

A year ago I would have said that the XML-based RSS protocol is still way too geeky for mainstream users, but RSS is catching on at a remarkable rate. The question is, how will content companies profit from its popularity?

Being the owner of two of the most important e-readers on the market puts me in a unique position to speak to the best and the worst of what e-readers have to offer. In my view, the Kindle - iPad comparisons I have read are usually based on a rather arrogant assumption: that reading books is, somehow, a more worthwhile intellectual pursuit than magazines, newspapers, or other content sources.

I am addicted to National Public Radio (NPR). Ask anyone here at the EContent office: there is a near-constant stream of talk-radio coming from my desk. It always gets me thinking, but one day, during a pledge drive, I heard a particularly interesting claim: NPR is one of the few news outlets continuing to grow. Since we here at EContent spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the fee vs. free debate, I couldn't help but wonder what member-supported NPR was doing so right that they convinced listeners to voluntarily give them money for what is essentially a free service.

When I was a bartender back in my college days, I often marveled at what people were willing to do to get a free t-shirt. OK, it went beyond marveling: Sometimes the bouncers and I would really push it, trying to find a point at which the crowd would cry out, "No, we will not do a chicken dance while singing ‘The Tide Is High' just to get that Jägermeister t-shirt." The thing is, there was almost always someone willing.

There is no getting around it. This column's moniker begs for a snarky retort in these dark times, so I may as well beat you to the punch line. By the time you read this, I expect that more than a few startups that made a big splash last year will be running out of cash, fading away, and/or selling out cheap.

As the eyes of old print, radio, and TV media turn to the internet for a bridge to take them across the current media business abyss, one troubling fact is becoming abundantly clear: The "real money" isn't there yet. Top executives at TV networks, magazine companies, and even newspapers have known for a while that on-air minutes and print pages sell at much higher rates and produce more revenue in most cases than even the most ambitious digital models.