The directors of Viacom voted yesterday to split the company in two, supporting a plan by its chairman, Sumner M. Redstone, to increase the value of the company's shares.

As the TV shows duke it out for Jackson trial figures, NBC's "Today" pulls ahead in ratings.

Coke Classic appeared 1,931 times on U.S. television shows in the first quarter, almost as many times as it did in all of last year. Coke popped up on the "American Idol" talent show, the most-watched program last season, as judge Simon Cowell drank the soda while badgering contestants. Industrywide, product placements rose 27 percent, six times the growth rate of network-TV ad sales, Nielsen Monitor-Plus said in a report released this week.

Entertainment giant Viacom Inc. made things official Tuesday, saying its board has unanimously approved a split of the company into two separately traded entities to be known as Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. The split, proposed a few months ago by Viacom chairman and CEO Sumner Redstone, is expected to be completed in first-quarter 2006. Redstone will serve as chairman and controlling shareholder of both entities.

High-definition radio -- touted as the most exciting thing to happen to the AM and FM dials since they were invented -- is finally gaining some traction in the United States. While hardly anyone can yet receive their gussied-up signals, more than 370 radio stations are now broadcasting in high definition, a digital format that boosts audio quality and limits static. A handful have begun experimenting with digital "multicasting," which allows broadcasters to spawn inexpensive sister stations and could give traditional radio a fighting chance against the pumped-up variety of satellite and internet competitors.

Next time you're walking down a city sidewalk, look out for the Internet. It's all around you -- and not just in the phone lines and cables running under the streets or in the airborne Wi-Fi streams. In recent months, several services have sprung up to allow a communion of the real world with the Internet, with cell phones acting as the medium.

Most people already hear plenty from the advertising industry, which chases consumers in places ranging from cellphone screens to bathroom stalls - all on behalf of its clients. But the organizers of last fall's Advertising Week in New York, an industry promotion that included parades and networking events, say the business still does not do enough to promote itself. They are forging ahead with a second annual Advertising Week, planned for Sept. 26 through Sept. 30 of this year.

Madison Avenue appears divided over whether reports that giant marketer Procter & Gamble is slashing its TV ad budget reflect a new shift in dollars or shrewd negotiating tactics. Ad and network executives said P&G has been trimming spending but there is disagreement about the extent and depth of the cutbacks. The Wall Street Journal said the company was cutting cable ad spending by as much as 25 percent and network expenditures by 5 percent.

The media and entertainment industries are about to be rocked by a perfect storm of change: the convergence of all-digital television transmission, the prevalence of DVR-type devices, and universal forms of on-demand content -- all of it facilitated by a new standard of personalized portable interactivity.

BMW Group's Rolls-Royce Motor Cars unit named Harrison Troughton Wunderman, London, as its worldwide agency after ejecting Tequila from the position and rejecting pitches from OgilvyOne Worldwide, Rapier and WWAV Rapp Collins. The new agency is to help the British automaker sell its Rolls-Royce Phantom luxury automobile through a worldwide marketing campaign spread over three years. The Phantom costs about $420,000, almost 90 percent more than its Volkswagen-owned rival Bentley Continental.