‘Thor’ roars at box office. ‘Modern Family’ problem for USA.

Before the coffee. After remembering Veterans Day.

The Skinny: I ran a 10K Sunday at a pace of just over eight minutes per mile. Not bad for a geezer. I guess for me life’s a sprint, not a marathon. I’ll be sore for the next few days but it was worth it. Monday’s headlines include the box-office recap. Also, “Modern Family” isn’t delivering what advertisers were hoping for, and the latest anti-piracy education effort is making waves. Last but not least, happy Veterans Day to all who have served.

Daily Dose: Looking to woo younger viewers, Major League Baseball and MTV Networks have entered into a programming partnership. Among the projects in the works is an MTV2 show executive produced by Red Sox star David Ortiz and Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen that will try to connect the national pastime to pop culture and take viewers beyond stats and trivia and focus more on player personalities.

Bright world. “Thor: The Dark World” brought light to the box office with a take of $86 million over the weekend. Although that was beneath the most optimistic projections, it’s still a great start. Plus, those north-of-$90-million projections sounded a little absurd to me. But then, I’m no expert. The rest of Hollywood steered clear of “Thor.” The romantic drama “About Time,” which made its debut last weekend, rolled into more theaters but didn’t generate much heat. Also, “12 Years a Slave” is finally playing everywhere and had a decent weekend. Box-office recaps from the Los Angeles Times and Hollywood Reporter.

Get them when they’re young. The Motion Picture Assn. of America and the Recording Industry Assn. of America are teaming up on an effort to teach elementary school kids about piracy, which the entertainment industry says costs it billions of dollars annually. However, others are protesting the effort, saying that kids have more important things to learn about and that the proposed curriculum comes with a Hollywood point of view. More on the latest anti-piracy push from the Los Angeles Times.

Happy birthday, what’s next? It was 50 years ago this week that Comcast Corp. was born by bringing cable TV to Tupelo, Miss. Now it is the largest pay-TV distributor in the nation and one of the biggest programmers, with assets that include NBC and cable channels USA, CNBC and Bravo. The next step for Comcast is to get people to hold on to their cable service while signing on to receive content on new platforms. The Philadelphia Inquirer looks backward and forward with Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts.

‘Modern’ problem. USA Network shelled out about $1.5 million per episode for reruns of “Modern Family” in the hopes that the show would bring it more viewers in key demographics. But so far that is not the case and USA has not delivered the ratings it promised to advertisers. That means it has to give them extra ads to make up for the shortfall. USA has been trying unsuccessfully to spin that “Modern Family” is doing well and will ultimately pay off for the cable channel, but not too many people are buying it. The Wall Street Journal looks at USA’s “Modern Family” problems.

Spoiled brats. Thanks to new technology and new platforms such as Netflix and Amazon, kids get to act like, well, kids. That means they’re impatient and demand what they want when they want it and how they want it. Apparently, watching things live on TV when they can’t fast-forward is the end of the world. Of course, because most families who have Netflix and Amazon probably also have digital video recorders, they can just record shows to watch later. Anyway, the New York Times looks at how the media-consumption habits of kids are shaping content delivery.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: A look at how Britain is becoming Hollywood’s second home. A sad day for soap opera fans as Disney’s SoapNet is finally going away.

Follow me on Twitter. I run hard and don’t know how to quit. @JBFlint.