The cable TV industry, under pressure from Capital Hill to clean up programming or at least offer a family-friendly tier, today unveiled a major initiative to publicize existing parental choices even as it again declined to make changes to content.

As the television networks get ready for their big "upfront" presentations next month, seeking to sell commercial time ahead of the start of the 2005-6 season, competitors from another medium, magazines, are intensifying efforts to attract advertisers - in many instances, the same ones the networks want to woo.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said yesterday that its first-quarter loss narrowed slightly as sales at its smaller magazines, like Everyday Food, slowed the pace of revenue declines.

ABC News has discovered "startling" things about Fox's singing competition series "American Idol" -- just in time for the May sweeps!

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

Critics may like the changes made to the "C-B-S Evening News" since Bob Schieffer took over for Dan Rather last month. But viewers clearly haven't been intrigued. The show's average of six-point-one million viewers last week was the lowest since Nielsen Media Research began measurement with "people meters" in 1987.

NBC doesn't have to be No. 1 in primetime for NBC Universal to make a fortune in digital media's brave new world.

Mark DiMassimo, an advertising executive in New York, recently heard from a major client who decided to pull back on advertising in nationally circulated newspapers. The company's executives wanted to try a more targeted local-newspaper approach - inspired, perhaps, by the narrowly focused ads proliferating online.

Something has to be very wrong with NBC's "Today" if viewers are turning to ABC's Diane Sawyer as a refreshingly wholesome, down-to-earth alternative. For more than a decade Katie Couric has reigned as the Everywoman of morning television. NBC considered her so critical to restoring the pre-eminence of "Today" after the disaster known as Deborah Norville that in 2001 the network gave her a $60 million contract over four-and-a-half years to keep her from defecting.

Havas' Arnold has won creative chores on RadioShack's $250 million ad account following a review, the client has confirmed. The work had been handled by Circle R Group, the in-house ad unit of the Fort Worth, Texas-based consumer electronics retailer.