With global revenue of $24.5 billion in 2004, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the video game industry dwarfs the $9.5 billion in domestic theatrical revenue earned by the film industry. That fact has movie executives hoping to turn all those loyal gamers into equally eager ticket buyers.

The media giant, set to split into two, tells its Paramount unit that the timing is off, sources say.

Will Donald Trump soon tell Martha Stewart "You're Fired"? Trump said that the poorly rated Martha Stewart spinoff "The Apprentice" has caused his own version of the show, now in its fourth season, to lose viewers. "The numbers are still good," Trump told ABC's David Blaustein. "I think there was confusion between Martha's "Apprentice" and mine. Mine continues to do well, and as you know, the other one has struggled severely."

Fox may give up its rights to televise any of Major League Baseball's American and National League Divisional Series playoff games under a new agreement, and those games could move to ESPN, and maybe a few to ABC, sources familiar with the negotiations say.

NBC, which used to own Thursday night lock, stock and barrel, now finds itself wearing the barrel on Thursdays. For NBC, this ultimate defeat on Thursday may be the spur to action. Its executives have been thrashing over possible changes on the night, including a return to a Thursday comedy block. That would almost certainly involve the risky move of transferring the comedy "My Name Is Earl," NBC's bright spot this season, from Tuesday to Thursday, perhaps as early as January. Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, asked about moving "Earl," said, "Anything is possible at this point."

Weeks after a public address in which he called female creative directors "crap," WPP Group's worldwide creative director, Neil French, is leaving the holding company, according to executives familiar with the matter.

Sirius Satellite Radio has awarded the marketing assignment for its Howard Stern channels to Havas' Euro RSCG, New York. Nine shops initially pitched the Stern project before the review narrowed to four finalists: Euro, Omnicom Group's DDB, Chicago; WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, New York; and SS&K, New York. Southfield, Mich.-based Doner, which handles the remainder of Sirius's business, was not involved in the contest.

Four Fox network programs, led by the comedies "The War at Home," "Family Guy" and "American Dad," topped a parents group's annual listing of the worst prime-time shows for family viewing. Television's two most popular programs - CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and ABC's "Desperate Housewives - are also cited as bad family viewing. So were "Two and a Half Men" and "Cold Case" on CBS.

How do you attract viewers to 'loneliest night of the week'?

On Friday, October 14, the ANA filed a Notice of Intention to Intervene with the District of Columbia Circuit's U.S. Court of Appeals regarding Viacom, Inc.'s petition for judicial review of the FCC's revisions to its Children's Television Act rules.