“Jailbreaking” an iPhone will soon be a thing of the past now that the Library of Congress gave Apple smartphone users a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Comcast will launch a network version of their VOD Fearnet channel — suggesting that VOD-only distribution isn’t ready for prime time. Or that prime time is still the best time for ad supported content.

As the 2010 Tour de France prepares to climb the Pyrenees, TV ratings are up while TDF numbers are down. Crashes and injuries have forced 20 cyclists to drop out.

But riders’ pain may be cable’s gain. Versus’ live morning coverage is setting ratings records.

One of this summer’s “hottest” new shows is a reality based sports drama featuring daily updates each morning. It raises the usual reality fare a few notches, including spontaneous fistfights, a psychopath who has been kicked off the island, illicit drug use and egos which dwarf anything that Hollywood could imagine. This production uses real world class athletes competing for big prizes. And instead of unseen producers manipulating the circumstances to imitate reality…it uses reality.

Nielsen has announced organizational changes which will give set top box data greater visibility in the ratings company as well as testing to see how STB data compares to the ratings currency.

It’s Independence Day 2010 — and many of us aren’t feeling quite as independent as we did a few years ago. At least a million people without steady work will lose their unemployment benefits this week.

The pressures of meeting a mortgage, feeding a family, paying taxes and staying afloat are obvious. Valerie Menowsky says some of the other impacts and frustrations of being less than fully employed are less visible.

A little after Wimbledon and just before the MLB pennant races heat up, a lot of people with foreign names wear spandex and race bicycles crazy fast up and down mountains in a far away land we love to visit and Fox News loves to criticize. Beginning today in Rotterdam and ending three weeks later in Paris, it’s the Tour de France.