AOL launched a new morning video show, called "AOL Daybreak" on its home page in partnership with Ben Silverman's multimedia studio Electus. Lindsay Campbell, best known for her work hosting humorous financial Web series "Wallstrip" and politics series "MobLogic," serves as the host.

The new series, about two minutes long in its debut, featured Campbell asking people in the streets of Manhattan what they would like from a morning news show. It is produced by network TV veteran, Diane Masciale, Adam Eland and Jeff Marks. Masciale, who serves as senior executive producer, previously was executive editor of ABC's "Good Morning America." Read the whole story...

John Budkins has been named vice president, programming and scheduling, for the CBS Television Stations group. He has spent the past seven years with CBS Television Distribution as vice president, sales for the Northeast region, will work with the group's 28 stations in acquiring and renewing syndicated programming.

Prior to joining CBS Television Distribution in 2003, Budkins spent two-and-a-half years with NBC Enterprises as VP of Eastern sales. Before that, he was director of sales and marketing for Hearst-Argyle Television Productions for two years. Read the whole story...

Newsweek.com may survive in some form, but its traffic benefit to The Daily Beast is questionable. One of the supposed benefits of the Newsweek-Daily Beast merger was that it would combine the traffic of the much-bigger Newsweek.com with the Beast's. Newsweek.com has 3.8 million monthly uniques to the Beast's 1.5 million, according to Web measurement firm Compete (although the Daily Beast claims its traffic is actually 5 million).

But as critics of the deal are pointing out, more than half of Newsweek.com's traffic comes from MSNBC and MSN. Newsweek pays MSNBC roughly $3 million a year for the traffic, according to sources. The traffic can vary by month; for the month of October, for example, it was 38% of Newsweek.com's traffic, per Compete.

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MLS and partner Big Lead Sports are increasing marketing for the newly launched "Pro Soccer Picks," its new online fantasy game, which asks players to select winners or who will score goals in each day's matchups -- in the run-up to the MLS Cup final on November 21. Major League Baseball, ESPN and others have introduced similar simpler games in recent years.

The idea is to build a consumer affinity for the sport that will ultimately translate to a more loyal and financially supportive fan base, said Chris Schlosser, MLS director of digital strategy. There are now about 30 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, generating annual revenue of about $1 billion. Read the whole story...

The joint sales effort between Turner and CBS came about when the networks teamed up to win the NCAA's media and marketing rights last spring with a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal. The coupled effort made sense from a programming and business perspective. Turner's presence mitigated the huge financial pressure that CBS felt to deliver on annual rights fees that average $771 million, and Turner's array of networks -- TBS, TNT, truTV -- would enable national distribution for every game of the men's basketball tournament, rather than the regional approach CBS used in the early rounds.

Turner and CBS executives are selling in-game units across all of their channels, but they're also working to create additional inventory through NCAA tournament shoulder programming, which will run before and after the games that day. Read the whole story...