Driven by continued strength in its radio and television businesses, Univision has reported that the growth rate of its Spanish-speaking audience outpaced that of any top English-speaking TV outlet. The largest of this country's Spanish-oriented broadcasters, Univision posted net income of $79.2 million, or 23 cents per share, in the third quarter. The company also said it will record a pretax charge of $25 million in the fourth quarter and expects to realize an annual savings of $50 related to a planned six percent head-count reduction, according to Reuters.

NBC Universal--drawing on the Universal Studios unit of the now-combined media conglom--yesterday announced that on January 1 it will launch a new channel, Sleuth, devoted to TV cops and robbers of a bygone time. Many of the programs and films set to air on Sleuth ("Miami Vice," "The A-Team," "Scarface," "Casino," for example) will be extracted from the Universal vault and dusted off for cable-TV audiences. A distribution deal with Time Warner Cable will enable Sleuth to launch in five million homes. There are no plans at this time to redistribute any of NBC's current crime shows (the popular "Law …

Four years after joining CNN as its marquee nighttime presence, Aaron Brown has been yanked from his anchor desk. He will leave CNN because its fast-rising star, Anderson Cooper, has been awarded Brown's coveted "NewsNight" time slot, leaving no opportunities for the former ABC newsman at the Time Warner-owned cable network. Cooper, the 38-year-old son of Gloria Vanderbilt, has ascended to the throne with astonishing speed following his reporting from the Gulf States in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His passionate, albeit Everyman, POV has seemed to resonante with viewers. And in recent weeks, when he was paired with Brown, …

On this date in 1920, Pittsburgh radio station KDKA broadcast the results of the presidential contest between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, an event regarded in some circles as the first significant radio news broadcast.

Nielsen is the latest casualty of Hurricane Wilma. Due to outages in the South Florida area, Nielsen has not released ratings for the Miami area, reports The Miami Herald. The paper confirmed that more than 200 homes in Nielsen's sample were affected in the market, falling below Nielsen's minimum of 425 households for reporting the market's ratings.

WPP Group, the parent of MindShare, Mediaedge:cia, and MediaCom, has taken an equity stake in The Weinstein Co., the new Hollywood studio created by Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein, reports Adweek.

Not previously reported, but Variety Inc., the Reed Business-owned chronicler of the entertainment industry, has decided to shutter V Life, the high-profile startup that rolled out nationally only several months ago--effective with the February 2006 issue. According to an insider, the trade publisher came to realize that the consumer-mag publishing formula, which requires far higher expenditures for both ad sales and edit, did not appeal. It always seemed like an odd experiment, but V Life had begun to find an audience, and it was different, content-wise, from some of the competition. Lesson learned: Trade publishers need to stick to what …

Kellogg's $500 million U.S. media buying review has been narrowed down to two finalists: incumbent Starcom and contender MindShare, reports Adweek. MindShare already handles Kellogg's $100 million media account in the U.K.

The Food and Drug Administration held the first in a two-day series of public hearings on direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising on Tuesday, and three things became clear from the testimony, reports Advertising Age: 1) Drug ad supporters recognize change is needed; 2) Opponents want complete reform; and 3) The FDA is stuck somewhere in between.

In another shakeup within the cable TV industry, privately held Cox Communications has agreed to sell its cable TV systems to Cebridge Connections in a multibillion dollar deal that would more than triple Cebridge's subscriber base, making it a major player in the cable business. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but Reuters reports that the price per cable subscriber that Cebridge would pay Cox would be in the $2,500 to $3,000 range, making the deal worth at least $2.35 billion.