Archive: August, 2008

Victoria BC based ABE Books has been purchased by Amazon.com for a rumoured $90 – 120 million. Founded by Rick and Vivian Pura and Keith and Cathy Waters in 1995, ABE Books is the world’s largest repository of rare and used books with over 110 million titles in its inventory.

Though ABE (Advanced Book Exchange) has been bought by Amazon, its operations in Victoria will remain intact as will its stable of nation and genre-specific websites.

The purchase was announced earlier today.

Nearly one-fifth of all television programs seen in the last year were watch by viewers online. According to a report released last week by Integrated Media Measurement Inc., the Internet is quickly becoming one of the primary delivery vehicles for standard “network” television content.

The more affluent a household, the more likely they are to find and watch TV content over the Internet. In the study group, households with income in excess of $80,000 per year are 55% more likely to watch TV programming over the Internet.

Conversely, households with an income lower than $40,000 tend to tune into their favorite shows on a standard television at the time the content is scheduled for broadcast. Affluent women aged 25 – 44 with collage degrees and high paying jobs make up the largest demographic group in the survey.

Another finding in the survey showed that for the first time, online viewers are tuning into entire episodes of content rather than looking for shorter segments they might have missed or enjoyed enough to watch a second time.