The Washington Post's Patricia Sullivan is reporting this morning that Art Buchwald, a longtime syndicated columnist, died on Wednesday of kidney failure. He was 81.

Just days after announcing that it had hit the 6 million subscriber mark, Sirius Satellite Radio has paid Howard Stern $83 million in stock after the subscriber numbers well exceeded estimates for year-end 2006.

As a Sirius subscriber, I'm really not surprised to see the growth in the space, for them or XM. They've definitely proven that people will pay for something if they see some real value to it - irrelevant of the companies "making money" yet or not, they definitely have some part of the right idea, especially when it comes to content sans advertising. Additionally, I've gone from seeing one friend who works for Clear Channel go from blowing off the satellite space to realizing that it wasn't going away anytime soon in less than 18 months.

Merger or not between the duopoly, I think that satellite will be around to stay for quite some time. While many believe (I'm pretty much one of them) that IP-based content delivery will end up being how we receive our radio, etc., in our vehicles and at home (a lot of us do that already), I'm one to believe that the space could be "led" by Sirius and XM, especially as they've already set up pretty significant Web presences and ability to listen to the same content they delivery via satellite.

The answer to that question, at least so far, is no.

Over the weekend, the first four episodes, plus about 15 minutes of the fifth episode, of the upcoming sixth season of FOX's hit show "24," were available for download, for free, on torrents. For those of you not in the know, essentially what that means is that by using a torrent client (click on the above link to "torrents" to learn more about the concept), anyone who came across the link to the show's files could download them in a few hours (if not much faster - your network may vary). Within a few hours, pretty much all of the top television blogs, among others, picked up on the story, and thousands of people were quickly involved.

But what I found most curious (other than the fact that there appears to be a DVD that was created, that will be made available the day after the two-part, four episode premiere hits televisions, that was used as the source for the torrents, which are DVD-quality video) was the fact that exactly zero "mainstream" outlets covered the story, at least as far as I can tell as of right now. When searching "24 torrent" in Google News, sans quotes in my search, I get two Web hits or searching "fox premiere 24," also sans quotes, I get three results.

I've asked a popular television columnist for her thoughts on the subject, and will update accordingly if she has a chance to respond, but in the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on why this kind of thing wouldn't generate a bit more of a response, considering the potential downside. I mean, with more than a week to go before the show when the torrents hit the market, there was a huge chance for some loss of viewership, especially if people were to start making discs for their friends and family and passing them out, etc. Obviously this isn't the first time this has happened, and while I don't think that this was done on purpose at all, as it would be a huge risk for FOX and the studio, you'd have to think that something that was one of the big "buzzes" of the 'net over the weekend that had potential advertiser and viewership implications could maybe get a mention somewhere.

In case you haven't noticed already, or you're wondering what's up, Los Angeles' KKBT-FM, "The Beat," has been changed to KRBV-FM, "V100, the Best Variety of R&B," reports Radio Ink. This change has also brought a new on-air lineup including a local morning show rather than a syndicated show featuring Tom Joyner.

Wednesday heralded some bad news for editorial staffers at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Associated Press reports, as 71 employees were laid off, effective January 17.

As we see more and more of these layoffs showing up, I'm wondering if it will herald the start of new daily publications of some note in these marketplaces, as it is obviously easier to "staff up" to production level, add in the AP-like service of your choice, and keep your focus to the Web. Think about it this way - the newspaper layoffs are not forcing these publications out of business (at least not for the most part), but are getting them into a position where they are "realizing" the streamlining of newsgathering, printing, etc. etc. Additionally, they're in the unfortunate position of having senior people making money in excess of what newer, even online-only, publications are offering - or need to offer.

In case you hadn't already seen it, Boing Boing posted Wednesday about how Thrasher magazine had put its first 12 issues online for all to view. Yep, from way back in 1981. V. cool.

Well, I've gotta say. Spending almost two weeks in places where Internet wasn't exactly prevalent was quite interesting. Also, North Dakota is very flat, at least the Eastern portion of it. Just thought you should know.

Back from the dead here, and should be back on track and reinvigorated for the '07. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and more soon!