The billionaire Newhouse family took a giant step yesterday to bring all its diverse magazine holdings under one name, Condé Nast Publications. The move means that the Advance Magazine Group moniker, which had been used as the parent company name, will be retired.

Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong.

Catastrophic natural events of late have offered stark reminders to major media companies, consumers and even grass-roots broadcasters of the unique role that local television and radio stations continue to play even in this dizzying era of rapid advancement in digitally enabled communications technologies. The trick now is for local broadcasters to believe in that mission and invest enough in it to leverage their connection with local viewers and advertisers in a way that will allow them to reinvent their business model before it's too late. There are recent signs that effort is under way.

Jeff Zucker has made a very fast climb almost to the very top of television's very greasy pole. Five years ago, he was just a producer?a famously smart, focused, cocksure TV-news Barnum who had recast, remade, and revived Today, yes, but still just a news producer, and at 35 no longer quite so precocious. But now he's a 40-year-old wunderkind without any recent wunders to his credit, apart from his own ascension.

Viewers shift away from NBC, with UPN's 'Everybody Hates Chris' beating out 'Joey.'

After months of wooing, Brett Gosper turned down an offer just last month from McCann Erickson, the agency he left a year ago. An impassioned show of support from Jean-Marie Dru, himself the subject of a recent whirlwind recruitment effort by Havas, convinced him to stay at TBWA. But in the weeks that followed, Gosper would second-guess himself.

Get ready for dramatic change in automotive marketing in the next 18 months, including a big drop in ad spending from SUV brands. As hurricanes hammer the U.S. Gulf Coast and send gas prices soaring, industry watchers anticipate hard times ahead for Detroit, and a sharp acceleration away from gas-guzzling SUVs, which until last year were the auto industry's darling. Instead, marketers are touting fuel efficiency and consumers are beginning to look with new interest at smaller cars and hybrid vehicles.

You didn't miss them. They just haven't been recorded yet. Earlier this year, McDonald's Corp. unveiled plans to enlist rap artists to produce several songs that would integrate the Golden Arches' iconic Big Mac sandwich into lyrics. The move, as first reported by Madison & Vine in March, was to be part of the company's ongoing strategy to court the youth market, especially young men, through hip-hop.

At some of the largest and most influential Christian churches in the country, the lights dim and congregants watch a sneak preview of a new movie - about golf. The Walt Disney Co. is marketing "The Greatest Game Ever Played" to faith-based groups even though the film, about Francis Ouimet's improbable win in the 1913 U.S. Open, isn't overtly religious.

The National Hockey League has unveiled its new television promotional spots for the upcoming season, which Commissioner Gary Bettman said will air locally, regionally, on national television, and in movie theaters. The innovative campaign is institutional in nature, depicting "the hockey experience" in a series of five vignettes. The broadcast campaign is scheduled to begin airing the week of Sept. 26.