It’s a 26-year-old franchise, but with this ad campaign you’d never guess it. With the help of a Hollywood puppet maker, Discovery Channel’s team created Snuffy the Seal… and promptly snuffed him out. The clever tagline “It’s a bad week to be a seal. For the rest of us it’s pretty awesome” says it all. To sum up: Faux reporters and cameramen rushed to the scene of a rescued Snuffy, only to film a shark snatching him up in front of an army of aghast onlookers. As for the results? Snuffy gained 7 million fans, and 2013 was Shark Week’s best ever.

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Next Frontier: CableLabs Explores More than Speed Connectivity Era

Internet speed records are all the rage these days, with two separate breakthroughs making the headlines recently. One is more in the distant future, but the other hits closer to home.

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