In a serious and potentially costly legal challenge to The Nielsen Co., New Delhi Television Limited filed a suit in a New York court last week alleging that the "venerable ratings research company" manipulates "viewership data in favor of channels that are willing to provide bribes to its officials," writes Eriq Gardner. NDTV, the largest news channel in India, is seeking over a billion dollars in damages. Read the whole story...

A ray of sunshine amid the constant reports of newspaper layoffs: the Ford Foundation is giving the Washington Post a half a million dollar grant to "expand its government-accountability reporting at the national and local levels," which will pay for four new hires, according to a Post memo reprinted by Andrew Beaujon. In an earlier move to  “to preserve and advance high-quality journalism," the Foundation in May gave the L.A. Times a cool million-dollar grant to "focus on the Vietnamese, Korean and other immigrant communities, the California prison system, the border region and Brazil.” Read the whole story...

Disney, whose "channels aren’t popular enough to continue to justify the nearly $8.4B a year they currently generate from program fees," has the most to lose if pay TV moves to an a la carte system, according to a study by Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crockett, writes David Lieberman. Other big losers could be Time Warner (not including HBO) and News Corp. (not including its regional sports networks). But remember, this is "more... a statement of potential, than an illustration of anything happening now,” according to Crockett. Read the whole story...

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia continues its unbroken record of unprofitability for the past nine years (with the exception of 2007) with a publishing division that "fell 16% to $28.8 million in the second quarter, [whose] operating loss widened as the timing of ad-sales staff changes held back growth,"writes Smart Money. Read the whole story...