One of the most effective television ads for a media company was one that WINS, an all-news radio station in New York, ran several decades ago. It asked viewers if they knew how to set the [preset] “buttons” on their car radio, and then explained, “You pull out the middle button…tune to 1010 WINS…and then push the button all the way in.” In those days, all car radios had the same mechanical preset system. And since hardly anyone had ever read that part of the auto manual, a large number followed the advice in the ad.

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In an interview with John Byrne, BusinessWeek.com’s executive editor/editor-in-chief, Netflix (NFLX) CEO Reed Hastings conceded that his business faces similar troubles to what magazines are up against, as the use of broadband video is set to rise. For now, though, the DVD rental business is still growing and he’s content to pursue the streaming business down the road. Since this was during the luncheon session at the Magazine Publishers of America’s Innovation Summit, Byrne asked if Hastings reads any magazines.

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By now, there’s no need to repeat the backstory of Breaking News Online to the news junkies among us, especially those of us on Twitter and iPhone. If you do need the background, here’s the story. I was never a follower on Twitter, but I have been using its iPhone app ever since it launched in July. And with the new 1.1 version of the app, it has become even better with customization.

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Facebook may be the stickiest social network here in the U.S.–but LinkedIn is thought to be the default network for a “professional” profile and job history. So why are more employers using Facebook to do background checks on potential new hires than LinkedIn?

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The Public Radio Exchange has just released the 2.0 version of its iPhone app, which aggregates almost all the public radio stations in the U.S. This tuner is a collaboration by some of the biggies in the public-radio space: NPR, Public Interactive, American Public Media, and Public Radio International (PRI).

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Drippy Manhattan evenings aren’t usually a draw for an outdoor cocktail party but the FoundersClub NYC Internet Week soiree had something that overcomes a little rain: power. Barry Diller, the chairman and CEO of IAC (NSDQ: IACI), was hosting two of the hottest not-so-new guys in town—AOL’s Tim Armstrong and News Corp.‘s Jon Miller—in the Rooftop Garden at Rockefeller Center and the draw was irresistible for Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendy, Jeff Zucker, Sir Martin Sorrell and more from media, advertising and tech.

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Yahoo (YHOO) isn’t just selling, it is looking to buy, too.

The Internet web search and ad company’s chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit that Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will enable it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products.

Balogh’s statements shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Social networking remains a growth business, albeit one that has been hard to monetize. Yahoo has had it shares of stumbles trying to enter the space. In the past few years, the company has shut down or essentially shut down two of its previous forays into the business–Yahoo Mash and Yahoo 360, according to paidContent.org. Yahoo also fell short in its attempt to buy Facebook for around $1 billion three years ago.

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A pair of reports from eMarketer and The Kelsey Group paint a rosy picture of the search-advertising market over the next four years–with double-digit increases in spending for both Web-based and mobile search. It’s not surprising, given the instant gratification (and perceived ROI) marketers get from paid search ads.

But just how effective is search? New research from Penn State University suggests that people click on both paid and organic search links much less frequently than most marketers think: Searchers only clicked on paid search ads–even when they were supplemented by organic links–about 15 percent of the time. (The industry consensus is that a combination of both paid and organic search presence boosts an advertiser’s trustworthiness and search results page “coverage”—which increases click-through rates).

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I got WebEx’d. I saw a well-practiced demo of the new MySpace Music last night, and fell under the impression that the News Corp (NWS) JV with the labels was a simple, straightforward music destination: You search out a song, you add it to your playlist and you listen to it as much as you want, voila. After playing with it through much of the morning, I’m glad I left myself an out, acknowledging that a demo was not the same thing as a test drive.

But let’s start with something good: This is that rare bird, an ambitious new music site not crushed under the weight of legal limitations and lawsuit avoidance.

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Sitting in a McDonald’s in suburban St. Louis, breaking my rule about eating fast food when I’m not on the road and trying out the latest Zune gimmick–free wireless access via Wayport at roughly 9,800 golden arch outlets across the U.S. First impressions: Way easy and way slow. It’s not just the Zune Wi-Fi that’s sluggish; the free-with-food hour of Wayport Wi-Fi on my laptop is slower than real ketchup. It took about five minutes to establish a connection, load the page and log on. You could finish a Happy Meal by the time you’re actually doing anything purposeful.

As for the Zune, as soon as I went to the Marketplace area on my freshly updated second-gen 8G model, it started looking for the network.

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Michael Phelps who? In what is probably the greatest moment in this Olympics, Usain Bolt of Jamaica won gold in the 100-meter dash in 9.69 seconds, a new world record–and he didn’t even have to try after the first half of the race. But you wouldn’t know it if you were here in the U.S.–well, if you were not online actively searching for a video clip of it. NBCOlympics.com has a lame text story online, with a lamer Getty Images-supplied photo slideshow. Not that we were expecting anything different from NBC today, but it does add up to the growing frustration with the “bottled-up” (not my phrase … Jeff Zucker used it in a CNBC interview yesterday) coverage by the network.

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Beatles representatives, who haven’t yet reached a deal to offer the band’s music online, are now in talks with two video games companies for a Beatles-themed video game, in a move that could pave the way for a broader licensing of the Fab Four’s catalog, reports the Financial Times. The reps have been talking to with both Activision (ATVI) and MTV Games, the respective makers of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games…the two games have been successful in sales of the digital versions of songs featured on the games.

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Despite the fact that Microsoft has withdrawn its offer to buy Yahoo, the M&A machinery on all sides is still in full gear, and expect tons of activity in the next couple of months. The $50 billion or so that Microsoft was willing to spend is the money that’s still around, at least on paper. So who will Microsoft buy to make that leap it so hoped for?

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Long-suffering AOL may be worth more than some investors think. Last fall, UBS analyst Mark Morris pegged the value of Time Warner’s AOL unit at $13 billion, a mere 2.5 times revenue. That pessimistic view reflects AOL’s declining revenue, which fell 33% last year to $5.2 billion.

A lot has changed during the last few months. Oh, AOL’s revenue still is on the decline. But Microsoft’s offer to buy Yahoo for $42 billion has pressured its rivals. That bid, currently worth about six times Yahoo revenue, shows that even mature Internet companies have plenty of appeal to the right strategic buyer. And the pressure on Time Warner to sell AOL never has been greater. Its shares are trading at $14, down from $22 last year.

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I wrote some long stories for the Sports Business Journal, but nothing comes close to John Ourand’s magnum opus on ESPN in this week’s issue. Ourand, who worked on the report for three months, takes a deep look at the sharp-as-a-pistol folks from Bristol–and the way they are viewed by advertisers, media buyers, leagues and competitors.

The story keys off a well-traveled PowerPoint presentation called “The Emperor’s New Clothes: How ESPN’s Multi-Platform Strategy Hasn’t Improved Ratings” that claims moving to ESPN doesn’t help sports raise ratings in comparison to broadcast nets and that its vaunted multi-platform strategy doesn’t add much overall. Basically, as Ourand says, the idea is to bash everything about ESPN, which has been a lightning rod for criticism for much of its existence.

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