Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) executives were probably ecstatic last night after the drama "No Country for Old Men," which its Miramax unit co-produced, won the best picture Oscar. Today, they must be depressed because a record-low audience witnessed the company's triumph.

Ratings for the Oscar telecast, broadcast on the company's ABC network, were probably the lowest of the decade, according to the New York Times. The telecast drew about 33% of people watching television, a steep decline from last year's 42%, the paper said.

This isn't a surprise. For one thing, as the paper notes, the leading movies weren't exactly crowd pleasers. Moreover, viewers got into the habit of not watching television thanks to the recent Hollywood writers' strike. Once media habits are established, they are hard to change. Perhaps, people have got enough on their minds with the faltering economy to watch overpaid celebrities pay homage to other overpaid celebrities.

Disney ad sales executives may be forced to give advertisers so-called make goods because of the ratings shortfall for failing to meet guarantees for viewership. ABC may be forced to give free advertising time on popular TV programs such as "Desperate Housewives" to appease angry advertisers. That may negate some of the benefit to the bottom line from "No Country's" Oscar triumph.

--Freelance writer Jonathan Berr edits the blog Ketchup and Eggs.

Last night's Super Bowl may have been the most watched telecast ever, according to preliminary data compiled by Nielsen Media Research.

Ratings for the contest between the New York Giants and New England Patriots were up 9% from last year. Figures for the number of viewers weren't immediately available from Nielsen. The most watched program of all time was the 1983 finale of "M-A-S-H." Until now, the most-watched Super Bowl was in 1996 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Shares of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), whose Fox Network broadcast last night's game, are down 18% over the past year as Wall Street worried that Rupert Murdoch's media empire would be hurt by a slowdown in advertising spending and the Hollywod writers' strike.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has cut a deal with TV ratings service Nielsen that will give the search company access to demographic data for ad targeting. Reuters says that, "Google will combine the data it receives from television set top-boxes with information that Nielsen, the dominant TV ratings company in the United States, provides on viewers by gender and age."

Google hopes that the additional layer of targeting will make its TV advertising sales package even more effective at aiming marketing messages at people who are most likely to respond to them. Today the company has access to a relatively small part of the country's ad inventory, about 14 million homes, through a deal with Echostar (NASDAQ: DISH).

Adding the Nielsen data to its current ad target system, which is used primarily on the internet, is likely to make network TV executives and sales organizations a bit tense. If the system works well, it could take the marketing and the pricing of inventory out of the hands that traditionally hold it. In other words, Google could destroy a system for selling TV ads that has been in place for decades.

It may not matter that networks and cable systems do not want Google to take away their roles as middlemen. If the new systems works, they are out of luck, and time.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor of 247wallst.com.

Ratings for Sunday night's debut of the sixth installment of The Apprentice were terrible. There were 600,000 fewer viewers than last year, though there was a slight increase in the coveted 18- to 49-year-old demographic, Reuters says, citing data from Nielsen Media Research.

This underscores the declining popularity of the show and the risks of reality television. Unlike scripted shows, producers usually can't count on a big payday in the syndication market. Does anyone really want to see Joe Millionaire again?

The Apprentice wasn't supposed to be a star vehicle for Donald Trump. It just worked out that way much to the delight of NBC and its corporate masters at the General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE). Efforts to expand the show with Martha Stewart were a dismal failure, so everyone is stuck with the Donald. He quite simply has worn out his welcome atop the pop culture zeitgeist. The fight he's had with Rosie O'Donnell hasn't helped the show's ratings either

Trump was the only thing that NBC had going for a while but that's no longer the case thanks to hits like The Office and Deal or No Deal. It's now theoretically possible for NBC head Jeff Zucker and NBC Universal CEO Robert Wright to summon the chairman of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. (Nasdaq:TRMP) to their board room and you know...