TV

Nielsen and Twitter have forged a deal to create the "Nielsen Twitter TV ratings" to measure the total audience for social TV activity on the social media platform. Couple that with today's news that Nielsen is buying radio ratings leader Arbitron, and smart folks like Tom Taylor begin to ask, "Can radio be far behind?"

There's no real indication of such a development yet, but it's not hard to imageine that "a new radio morning show could be 'trending,' one of these days," suggests Taylor. Read more from him today here.

Read about Twitter TV ratings at LostRemote here and GigaOm here.

While we were waiting for Arbitron to finally unveil their long-awaited unified on-air/online radio measurement (see RAIN here), they've announced a deal with comScore and ESPN to measure audio, video, and display across radio, tv, the web, and mobile.

The goal here is to create audience measurement using common metrics on a national and continuous basis, so content providers and marketers can gauge the reach, engagement, and cross-platform duplication of audience.

"The unprecedented size and scope of the project is being driven by the multiplatform measurement requirements of ESPN, which delivers video, audio and display content via television (both in-home and out-of-home), online and mobile video, PC web, mobile web, apps, tablets, digital audio and terrestrial radio" (see yesterday's top story in RAIN here), the companies' announcement read.

The initiative (characterized as "five-platform" as it separates "smartphones" adn "tablets") will integrate "the census and panel-based PC, mobile and TV set-top box measurement capabilities of comScore along with enhanced, single-source, multiplatform measurement capabilities of the Arbitron Portable People Meter (PPM) technology," according to the statement.

Though no roll-out date has been announced, ESPN, comScore and Arbitron will unveil more details October 1-3 at the upcoming Advertising Week convention in New York.

Read the press release here.

Emmis' New York CHR station WQHT ("Hot 97") tomorrow launches a new web TV series called "Los Blancos." The weekly series will consist of 5-6 minute webisodes, focused on "the tale of two sisters who have taken on the responsibility of running their own family-owned cocaine business."

Inside Radio reports, "Emmis hopes to ultimately distribute season one of 'Los Blancos' as a continuous story arc for a one-hour cable TV show." Though a web-based TV series is hardly "typical fare for a radio station," it isn't new for WQHT. In 2010, the station launched "The Wizards NYC," a weekly web TV reality show starring station personalities.

"Online video is a great way to continue to curate content and create a rich media experience for our audience,” said Lin Dai, Emmis-New York and the Loud Digital Network VP of digital programming and entertainment. “Radio needs to think of itself as a cross-platform media company.”

You can find out more about "Los Blancos" from WQHT's website here. You can subscribe for Inside Radio's daily newsletters here.

Slacker Radio has arrived on Roku, a device used to stream web content to TVs. Roku also others apps from Pandora, SomaFM, Radio Paradise, Live365, TuneIn, Rdio, MOG and other services. Slacker's new app offers more than 200 curated stations, plus content from ESPN Radio and ABC News.

"Television apps are the latest frontier in personalized radio services," comments The Verge (here). You can find out more from Roku's blog here.

Satellite TV provider Dish has added Pandora to its Hopper Whole-Home DVR systems. Users with such DVR devices can now stream Pandora through their TVs.

"More than a third of all radio listening takes place in the home and Pandora delivered through the Hopper allows everyone in the family to easily access and enjoy music they love through their personalized radio stations," said Pandora's Business Development VP Ian Geller.

Dish's Hopper DVR also offers access to Facebook and Twitter, as well as photos, games, news, weather, sports updates and stock quotes. Engadget has more coverage, including Dish's press release, here.

Consumers are increasingly purchasing gadgets that enable them to experience web services -- from Netflix to Pandora -- on their TVs, reports USA Today. "Driving it is the consumer [appetite] for a wide variety of content on demand and the availability of devices that allow them to get that content on their big-screen TV," said an analyst at market research firm In-Stat.

Plus, "this holiday season could be the perfect time to bring these new services to your living room," writes USA Today. "There are bargains to be had."

The publication proceeds to run-through the various ways you could bring Internet services into your living room, from set-top boxes (like offerings from Roku, Apple and Boxee) to Blu-ray players to video game consoles to TVs with web apps built right in.

Though USA Today mostly focuses on the video app side of things, Internet radio and on-demand music streaming services are available on nearly all of the devices the article recommends.

If the research in USA Today's article is any indication, web-connected TVs are becoming more and more mainstream. We've seen indications of the desire for web radio on TVs in the past, from Comcast testing a native Pandora app for Xfinity cable customers (here) to Roku adding a dedicated Pandora button to their remote controls (here).

In fact, Roku said then that Pandora was one of the top five most popular apps on its devices.

And even if consumers don't necessarily buy a "smart" TV or Boxee Box for Internet radio services, they will be exposed to apps from Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Last.fm, iHeartRadio and others. As we've written about before (here), that could very beneficial to webcasters.

Finally, it's not just on the TV that web radio and streaming music is making in-roads with mainstream consumers. The New York Times reports today on a wide range of stereo devices ready to stream music from Internet radio and other web services.

You can find USA Today's article here and the New York Times' article here.