For a journo who has found success with decidedly old-school methods, Ed Gordon has some advice for aspiring broadcasters: get on YouTube. “In today’s world… it’s about producing and owning your content,” he told Mediabistro in the latest installment of So What Do You Do?. Gordon also advises young people with dreams of being on the small screen to “learn where your craft is headed,” and talks about the importance of perseverance when it comes to career success:

There are a lot of people who’ve given up trying to get on commercial television and have gone to securing their own YouTube channels, and I think, at the end of the day, that’s going to be the future of broadcasting. People are just going to put stuff out there. They’re gonna have their own YouTube channels, and eventually you’ll be able to buy things from those channels. But I think one of the things that people have to understand is it takes perseverance.

Read the full interview in So What Do You Do, Ed Gordon, Host of Conversations with Ed Gordon?

– Mona Zhang

The worlds of television, videogames and social media will once again collide on the ESPN2 series “SportsNation” today. EA Sports, which produces the “Madden NFL” football game franchise, is looking for an athlete to grace the cover of this year’s game, which happens to be the 25th in the franchise. To help pick the cover-athlete, EA is relying on users voting for their favorite on ESPN.com and on Twitter.

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MTV, VH1, CMT and LOGO have successfully made Social Media Week as sexy as Fashion Week. Today, at Viacom HQ in NYC, I’ll be moderating a panel featuring MTV’s Nev Schulman, VH1′s Drita D’Avanzo, CMT’s Cody Alan and Logo’s Ivy Winters to discuss “The Future of Social Media Interaction Between Fans and Entertainers.” Here are the details. Read more

Social Media Week is upon us again and I’m excited to announce that I’ll be participating in “Social TV: The next 12 months” hosted by Digitas. “From record engagement to major brand campaigns to multi-million dollar acquisitions, there’s no question that the intersection of television and social media has carved out a place in popular culture,” reads the panel description. Here’s a sneak peak from the other panelists and our moderator on what you’ll learn via Vines and short video. Read more

Updated: Last night’s game, halftime show, commercials and power outage combined to make it the most social event on television to date, according to data from Bluefin Labs and Trendrr. The Super Bowl tallied up 30.6M social media comments (Twitter, public Facebook data and GetGlue checkins), 2.5 times last year’s social activity of 12.2 million.

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Last fall Twitter acquired a mobile company called Vine, and today they rolled out what Vine has been building: a mobile app that enables users to take six-second videos with their phones and share and embed them. In many ways, it’s Twitter’s version of a video Instagram. You’re limited to six seconds, just like Twitter holds you to 140 characters.

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We all know that Twitter is a big TV driver, thanks to the open nature of the platform and the company’s relentless efforts to work with the industry. But Facebook has always been a bit of a mystery. The majority of interactions on Facebook are private, and until recently, its search product has been essentially useless. But we all know that Facebook maintains a tremendous reach advantage over Twitter.

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Twitter and Nielsen have struck a deal to create a new television ratings measurement that will gauge TV conversations on the social network. The “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” will launch in time for the Fall, 2013 TV season. In a release, Nielsen notes that the new rating will “complement Nielsen’s existing TV ratings,” adding value to the packages the company offers to networks and advertisers.

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VH1 is planning a suite of social-friendly elements to this year’s “VH1 Divas” special. We spoke to VH1 senior VP of VH1 digital Dan Sacher and VP of shows and events at VH1 digital Jon Mallow about what the network had planned for the event, which airs this Sunday, December 16 at 9 PM.

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Earlier we showed you Facebook’s 2012 year in review, now our attention turns to that other social network, Twitter. The company compiled many of the biggest events that sparked conversations on the platform, including TV programs, as well as trending topics related to TV. As with Facebook’s list, there were a handful of surprises.

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