Viacom Inc.'s profit jumped 60 percent in the first quarter on strong increases in advertising at its cable and television businesses as well as a one-time gain from an income tax adjustment, the company reported Thursday.

Direct marketers face political battles on virtually all fronts this year, DMA president/CEO H. Robert Wientzen told attendees at the Direct Marketing Association Government Affairs Conference here yesterday.

Trying to be funny is serious business. So it will be fascinating to follow a coming effort by the TBS Superstation cable television network to reinforce a nascent brand identity as a comedy expert, with a $50 million campaign that introduces the pointed theme "Very funny" and eliminates the "Superstation" from the network's name.

"Your newspaper is in peril," John Lavine, director of the Readership Institute, told a packed room of newspaper editors and publishers here today. Lavine was speaking about the latest findings on young readers released at a joint conference session between the Newspaper Association of American and American Society of Newspaper Editors.

With an economic recovery taking hold, newspapers have a chance to spur their transformation from traditional "ink on paper" companies to more broad-based media that lure readers in new ways, said John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America.

The editor of USA Today, the country's largest-selling newspaper, retired Tuesday amid a scandal over fabrications and deceptions by Jack Kelley, one of the paper's former star reporters.

Broadcasters could be made obsolete, if they don't adapt to consumers' needs in the face of emerging technologies.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Ltd. continued its makeover of DirecTV with the $3.55 billion sale of PanAmSat on Tuesday, a move DirecTV co-chairman Eddy Hartenstein said will help the company shore up its position in the increasingly competitive pay-TV market.

The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday, April 20, it will not raise antitrust objections to General Electric Co.Â's merger of its NBC division with Vivendi Universal Entertainment. "The commission has closed its investigation," an FTC spokesman said. The agency did not impose any conditions on the $14.1 billion deal in exchange for clearing the transaction.

'Roots', the Emmy award-winning network miniseries from the '70s might be too racy for prime-time TV today. That was one observation offered by First Amendment attorney Robert Corn-Revere during a panel session Tuesday at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas.