Who would have thought the Red Sox and Cubs would clinch their divisions on the same day? Just enjoy it.

Bob Lobel covers the Red Sox celebration (and by the way, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004)

And WGN has the Cubs celebration.

And just for old times’ sake… this video still gives me goosebumps.

Jerry Yang is a pretty smart dude, and while he may have a few more days of work before he can return to sitting back and counting his money he has been implementing some under the radar changes that are already beginning to make an impact.

Most importantly, even before Terry Semel’s ouster, Yahoo! has been hiring innovators in digital media and the entertainment industry to turn Yahoo! into the global entertainment property it has so long strived to be.

Some of the key hires we know about so far:

- Blake Jorgensen, Chief Financial Officer, (Co-founder of Thomas Wiesel Partners, known as a dealmaker)

- Alan Warms, Vice President and General Manager, Yahoo! News (Founder of Buzztracker, acquired by Yahoo! on Sept 14)

- Jamie Mottram, Senior Editor of Blogs & Community, Yahoo! Sports (Formerly of AOL Fanhouse, which he built from the ground up)

- David C. Farrell, Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer, (Formerly Chief Compliance Officer at Sun Microsystems)

- Kobe Parnell, Senior Project Manager, Yahoo! Platforms & Technology (Formerly a product manager at Microsoft)

- 100 engineers in Champaign, Yahoo! opened an engineering center in Illinois earlier this year, staffed primarily by laid-off Motorola engineers.

Yahoo! has hired many more smart people not publicly announced, and has brought in a number of executives through buyouts including Zimbra, Actionality and BlueLithium. These folks will make Yahoo! a global leader if Decker, Yang et all allow them to.

To promote his forthcoming greatest hits set, Columbia Records has launched a viral video campaign that allows users to insert their own messages into a Subterranean Homesick Blues video.

For most of the online video audience too young to know the video, Dylan stands flipping cue cards with the song’s lyrics on it. Slightly older audiences may remember an INXS video, Mediate, using the same style.

Head on over to dylanmessaging.com and send your favorite Bob Dylan fan a little viral love.

Congrats to OVW friend and fine-mind Brad Berens, on being promoted to the newly created position of chief content officer & editor at large for ad:tech expositions and iMedia Communications.

Brad is one of the finest minds - and more importantly, people - that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Check out his musings on his blog, Mediavorous.

Now where’s our speaking slot at Ad:Tech????

MSN is reducing the number of pre-roll ads it will show to users as part of its redesign and roll-up of the Soapbox player into the larger video portal.

Rob Bennett, MSN’s general manager, video, entertainment and sports, told Mediaweek, “The feedback on pre-roll is pretty mixed. We’ve definitely heard from our users that they’d prefer longer interval between ads.”

No kidding. Like YouTube, Soapbox’s content is mostly short form video “snacks.” But according to Mediaweek, Bennett says that MSN users will now only see a video ad every three minutes they spend streaming content on the site.

Every three minutes? It is no wonder that consumers of online video think there’s too much advertising. Every three minutes is simply ridiculous for content like that. If a traditional broadcast network tried to serve a mid-roll ad every three minutes into professionally produced content, users would revolt, and I’d support them. And thats for content actually worth watching.

This is another example of a company that should be taking a leadership position simply missing the boat. C’mon MSN & Yahoo! What gives? How many :30 second Netflix ads do I need to sit through when I want to catch a few clips of breaking news?

This isn’t MSN’s first failure with Soapbox either. As noted previously, MSN has had a string of blunders with their video platform. Maybe they’ll at least get the videos to play this time ’round.

We’re calling on Mike Hurt, Director of Ad Products for MSN and Chairman of the IAB’s Digital Video Committee, to push back on Redmond. Mike is one of the brightest minds in the online video space, and this 3-minute fiasco completely underminds his efforts to drive the industry forward without reeking of hypocrisy.

Yesterday Broadcasting & Cable reported the FoxNews.com and the soon-to-be launched Fox Business Channel have selected Maven Networks as the backbone for their broadband video platform.

An interesting announcement, it appears that NewsCorp is using Roo to deliver syndicated video content to its newspaper properties, and looking to a more robust system from Maven to handle content management and delivery for its broadcast properties. It will be interesting to see how they leverage both systems simultaneously.

Microsoft has done an incredible job of cross-promoting Halo 3, one of the biggest video game launches in years on the Xbox with Silverlight, one of their biggest technology releases in years.

Across the web, if you have Silverlight installed, you will see Halo 3. Microsoft’s homepage features a Silverlight ad for the game, and the website of agency AKQA which designed the Halo 3 site is similarly skinned to drive visitors to Halo3.com, an amazing example of Silverlight design.

When you consider Microsoft’s vertical integration, now owning hardware, content distribution and promotion across their various product lines it’s clear that we can expect to see a lot more of this type of thing in the future.

Google is putting a more direct sell on their filter for video discovery. From the Google blog:

Since new videos are constantly appearing all over the web, it’s difficult to keep tabs on all of them. But now Google Alerts will make it easy for you to add video to your other Alerts: News, Web, Blog and Groups.

The problem is that Google’s video search technology is not as good as some of the more focused video search companies like Truveo and Blinkx. With Google, you’re still mostly limited to the world of GooTube. So they’re making a stronger push to keep users going to them.

Google’s example in their blog post, a search for Jack Russell Terrier turns up only one video outside their realm in the top 100 results. A Blikx search for the same returns videos from CBS4 Miami, Metacafe, Revver, RealNetworks, ExpoTV and Funny or Die.

Either Google will need to acquire a competing video search company or improve their own technology to stay competitive in video search. For now they’re taking this sales technique of pushing results to users to stay on top. Competing video alert services are sure to follow.

We hate to say we told you so but… wait, who are we kidding, we love doing that! The long awaited top 10 Mitt Romney supporter created ads are in and well, 9 are in the final running.

The most popular video up to now has been stricken from voting because it came from Slate writer and long time Democratic wonk Bruce Reed. Earlier this week campaign estrategy director Mindy Finn told Wired that 10-12 finalists would be chosen based on views and love, Jumpcut’s unique rating system.

Above: “Way!” received the most love and views in the Romney contest.

In a follow up article in Slate, Reed picks on some of the questionable videos that made the cut, including:

Salt Lake Success IV,” which shows an elderly man in his room reminiscing about volunteering for Mitt at the Olympics. One viewer commented, “This is just a little creepy.”

and

“Mitt Romney’s Resume,” which shows someone (George W. Bush?) filling out a Harvard Business School application. The first viewer comment came from the Romney campaign, which advised the ad maker, “Please fix the spelling of President on the last shot.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

EchoStar Communications has acquired Sling Media for $380 million in cash. EchoStar took part in a $46.6m funding round back in February of 2006.

EchoStar is the parent company of DISH Network the third largest provider of pay-TV in the US with more than 13 million subscribers.

Earlier today today the company announced that their board of directors instructed the company to consider spinning off its technology infrastructure as a separate publicly traded company.

Doing so would allow the company to separate their satellite-leasing and set-top box manufacturing operations from the satellite TV biz. Among other benefits it would make the TV side a more attractive buyout target for potential suiters including AT&T. Sling offers the company a way to expand on existing set-top box manufacturing, giving them an entry into online video delivery.

For Sling, a company earlier targeted by content rights holders for facilitating the re-distribution of licensed content, it gives them a home where they can improve technology on traditional set-top box delivery and deeper pockets to spend on innovation.