2011

This year’s major technology’s stories included growing acceptance of channel-in-a-box systems, slow progress in mobile DTV, work on the next-generation digital television broadcast standard, finally getting rules from the FCC on loudness, a potential cure for stations’ lip sync problems, growing use of Skype by station newsgathering operations and cautious use of the cloud. In addition, the move to high def continued, but hundreds of stations still haven’t made that upgrade.

With a stronger-than-expected upfront and the most promising crop of fall shows in several years, broadcast television once again topped buyers’ list of must-have media in 2011.

The economy was the year’s top story, followed by the Middle East uprisings, the presidential campaign and the Japan quake and tsunami, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The Super Bowl and American Idol continue to capture the attention of U.S. TV viewers. According to Nielsen’s Top 10s, Super Bowl XLV between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers was the top individual telecast of 2011 with 111 million viewers, making it the most-watched telecast of all-time. Fox’s American Idol remains the top primetime program, a spot it’s held since its fifth season in 2007.

Throughout 2011, TVNewsCheck reported the deaths of outstanding men and women who shaped television as actors, lawmakers, producers, business people, journalists and on-air personalities. Here they are in chronological order of their passing as Part III of our Year in Review Special Report.

Part II of TVNewsCheck‘s annual roundup of the major news of the year (complete with links to earlier stories) covers programming — both network and syndication (adjusting to life in a post-Oprah world), journalism (Katie Couric’s exit at the network level and a news resurgence in local markets) and new media (the exploding use of social networks). In Part I, which appeared yesterday, you can review the year’s happenings in business, retrans, management, multicasting as well as regulatory and legal developments in Washington and elsewhere. Part III, which appears later today, remembers the electronic media luminaries who died during 2011. And Part IV, tomorrow at noon, will recap the year’s technology highlights.

As TVNewsCheck looks back over this year, we find that it didn’t quite fulfill the hopes that many had for it as 2011 began. What follows is the first part of a four-part yearend summary (complete with links to earlier stories) that covers business, retrans, management, multicasting as well as regulatory and legal developments in Washington and elsewhere. Tomorrow in Part II we’ll reprise the major developments in programming, journalism and new media and in Part III highlight those the industry lost in 2011. The year’s big stories in technology will be featured in Part IV at Thursday noon.