Hallmark may have to come up with a card for getting out of the branded entertainment business. At a time when marketers are realizing the potential of launching entertainment divisions and ambitious repositories of content, the greeting card giant is looking to unload its entertainment assets. But some maintain Hallmark Cards is wasting a valuable branded entertainment opportunity by siphoning off the network at a time when marketers are undertaking ever-more-ambitious roles as content creators.

Two months after launching the first cable channel that has devoted significant time to citizen-created journalism, Current TV chairman Al Gore said he is on a mission to democratize the media. Gore said television has been a one-way medium. But for the first time in history, inexpensive video technology and broadband Internet is changing the equation.

DirecTV, the satellite television operator, is introducing a $30 million advertising campaign on Monday to promote its highly anticipated digital video recorder. The campaign, created by the New York office of BBDO Worldwide, is DirecTV's first widespread public effort to distance itself from TiVo. Of DirecTV's 14.7 million customers, 2.3 million now subscribe to TiVo. DirecTV, which pays TiVo a monthly fee of $1.13 per TiVo subscriber, hopes those users will switch to its own service.

Coca-Cola Co. is moving its $150 million-plus North American flagship advertising account to independent Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., from Berlin Cameron & Partners, New York. The move comes as Berlin's parent network, Red Cell United, part of WPP Group, competes for a hotly contested global advertising assignment for the flagship brand as one of two finalists with Wieden.

The chief executive of McGraw-Hill Cos., whose publications include BusinessWeek magazine, said advertising for traditional forms of media has been slow to bounce back from a slump because of competition and other factors. "The (media) advertising area has been very, very slow to recover," Harold McGraw III told Reuters on Thursday at a meeting of the Business Council, which includes chief executives of several companies. "You've got a lot of competition for advertising dollars, whether it be Internet, cable, other kinds of media outlets," he added.

As rivals circle, ESPN boss George Bodenheimer is trying to push his world-beating brand even deeper into the lives of sports fans.

Remember merger mania? Remember the bigger getting bigger yet? Remember when the prices of media stocks weren't stalled? Me neither. Welcome to the new modesty. The moment of non-mergers. This is appropriate because the media landscape is slowly repopulating with non-moguls. (Was that Michael D. Eisner walking the halls at an investor conference last month before watching his successor Robert A. Iger from the audience? Yes.)

The Association Of National Advertisers debuted a new logo and revitalized brand today at the opening of its 95th annual conference, "Masters of Marketing," held at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

As companies devote more attention to marketing, they are creating the elevated title of chief marketing officer to match. Bigger marketing budgets have led to the hiring of marketing chiefs, who usually oversee all aspects of a company's marketing, advertising and communication. But while many marketing officers are hired to make rapid changes, they have also found the job hard to keep.

Rachael Ray, host of the Food Network series, 30-Minute Meals, $40 a Day, Inside Dish, and Tasty travels, will host a daily syndicated talk show beginning in the fall of 2006. The show will be produced by King World Productions, in association with Harpo Productions and Scripps Networks. The series will be distributed by King World and will be based in New York. Ray will continue to appear on the Food Network.