Despite its unprecedented fundraising success, President Bush's reelection team is scaling back its massive level of television advertising, according to senior Republicans familiar with the campaign's planning. In the next few weeks, viewers in the 18 states where the ads have aired since early March will see about 30% fewer a week, one ranking GOP strategist said.

As the kingpins of Madison Avenue gather for a major annual meeting, there is further evidence of the growing challenge they confront in seeking to break through the cacophony of advertising that surrounds - and increasingly annoys - consumers.

The article in the Beijing Evening News told a shocking story of American hubris: Congress was behaving like a petulant baseball team and threatening to bolt Washington, D.C., unless it got a new, modern Capitol building, complete with retractable roof. There was a problem with the story. Rather than do his own original reporting, Evening News writer Huang Ke had cribbed, nearly word for word, his text from an American publication. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Ke hadn't bothered to vet the source he had plagiarized: The Onion.

Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, reported Tuesday that its net income for the first quarter fell 73 percent from a year ago, when it recorded a large non-cash gain. But the results before one-time items beat expectations and its stock rose.

Merrill Lynch expects a "new round of cable consolidation" in 2004. Merrill said, "Adelphia Communications, the fifth-largest U.S. operator of cable systems, may well prove to be the biggest prize, with 5.4 million cable subscribers." Adelphia is expected to emerge from Chapter 11 reorganization later this year. The research firm said Comcast, Time Warner and Cox Communications "are the only entities with sufficient balance-sheet strength to entertain a major acquisition of cable systems, among major cable operators."

As struggling Mitsubishi Motors prepares to unveil details of a restructuring plan on April 30, the car maker is plotting a new course both creatively and in its media mix.

Whether you believe it is a new sexual McCarthyism or you see it as a long-awaited campaign against programming that's crossed the line into indecency, U.S. television is about to get toned down.

EchoStar Communications warned Monday it could drop programming from its DISH satellite network because of a contract dispute, this time over CNN, TBS, Cartoon Network and Headline News.

The Interpublic Group of Companies in New York, which has been grappling for almost two years with operational and financial problems, paid more than $41.4 million in bonuses for 2003 to an unspecified number of executives at its agencies. The payments came after Interpublic paid no bonuses to any executives for 2002 and minimal bonuses for 2001.

Disgruntled investors sold down shares in News Corp Ltd on Tuesday after plans to shift its headquarters hit a potential hurdle when Standard & Poor's warned it did not favour firms having key index weightings in more than one country.