If you're a TV watcher these days, you've probably noticed that the commercials are looking more like music videos ? even as music videos are getting to be like commercials.

After a seven-year absence, Coca-Cola is back on the red carpet as a sponsor of the 2006 Academy Awards on ABC.

Wal-Mart, seeking additional ways to burnish its tarnished image, is turning to a new realm: reality TV. For the first time, Wal-Mart Stores is becoming a major sponsor of a reality television show, by signing a branded-entertainment agreement with ABC for "The Scholar," a summer series that begins a six-week run on Monday night. Wal-Mart will be woven into the plots of episodes of the show, which is centered on a competition among 10 high school seniors from across the country for a grand prize of a full college scholarship, valued at $250,000, covering tuition and expenses.

Tropicana Products Inc. will stop claiming that its Healthy Heart orange juice will reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, under a settlement reached with the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday. The ads, which ran from 2002 to early 2004, claimed that drinking two to three cups of Tropicana orange juice each day would lower systolic blood pressure by 10 points, raise HDL cholesterol by 21% and improve the HDL-to-LDL cholesterol ratio by 16%, increase blood folate levels by 45% and lower blood homocysteine levels by 11%.

The writer Murray Kempton once called them the Tom and Huck of American journalism, and their surnames became a single, swashbuckling compound noun: Woodstein. Now Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are together again, joined in a visibly affectionate, sometimes awkward embrace by the disclosure of Deep Throat's identity.

The Shell Group has consolidated its global media account at WPP Group agencies MediaCom and Maxus, which pursued the business in tandem, the client has confirmed. MediaCom here and Maxus in London bested Interpublic Group's Initiative here in the final round of a review for the estimated $240 million account. All three were already roster shops.

Church & Dwight Co.'s Trojan brand broke the first commercial in a serious-minded campaign that marks the first condom advertising on network broadcast prime time.

The troubled drug maker Merck is introducing this week what it describes as the first campaign in its 114-year history to help burnish the reputation of its corporate brand rather than sell its products.

Robert Johnson, who turned a $15,000 loan into the multi-billion dollar Black Entertainment Television, on Thursday stepped down as chief executive of the media company he founded.

A breakup of the media giant seemed like a done deal. Maybe not.