In a piece of news that should surprise very few people, Lehman Brothers has cut the stock ratings on the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner and several other top entertainment companies. The reasons behind this include the rise of legal digital downloading cutting into advertising revenue and the concern of piracy cutting into primary profits such as DVD sales.

"To be clear, our fear is that the damage that digital distribution inflicted on the music industry will replicate itself in the movie industry, and our fears are too great to justify keeping neutral or positive ratings on the creators and distributors of movie and TV content," wrote analyst Anthony DiClemente.

SpongeBob SquarePants is hugely popular in the United States with little children and immature adults like myself, but nobody thought he would make much of a splash in Japan.

It turns out those people were wrong, because SpongeBob is watched by 1.9 million households every day in Japan, which is even more impressive when you take into consideration that the series is only shown occasionally on network TV and that many households don't have cable or satellite, where SpongeBob SquarePants is shown on a more regular basis.

Also, it's not little kids who love SpongeBob the most, it's young women. This wasn't an accident, though: SpongeBob was introduced to Japan as a trendy, hip, underground kinda thing, something to be found on clothes and handbags and spread around by word of mouth. Apparently, it's been working.

[via The Beat]