In a decidedly boastful mood, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts yesterday said that advertisers who find high-flying Google appealing because of its ability to deliver information and advertising to a sharply targeted audience ought to adore Comcast as well, especially now that the cable giant has completed the buildout of its video-on-demand platform. "We can work the TV model into that targeted, just-what-people-want world," Roberts told an audience at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York. "For an advertiser? Hello ... you want to be talking to us." Roberts said Google and other companies have contacted Comcast because of the company's …

One of the still-unanswered questions about the wisdom of combining the old UPN and WB networks is how News Corp. would deal with the loss of UPN affiliation by nine of its Fox-owned stations. Those stations--which are already in the process of debranding--will become CW stations this fall, and their content will be controlled by CBS and Warner Brothers. Some of the stations affected by the UPN-WB merger are in major markets, including New York and Los Angeles. "We're looking at unwired network things," News Corp. president Peter Chernin said yesterday. "We're talking to all of the other stations …

Kate White, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, this week told a Direct Marketing Association audience that although covers are but one component of a magazine, she spends half of each month working on cover lines and images. She noted, for example, that she retains control of the dress worn by the cover model, and that she focuses much of her attention on the background color for the cover shoot.  White emphasized the importance of cover lines for a populist magazine such as hers:  "If Jay Leno isn't talking about the cover every four or five months, then I know I'm …

Why is Brian Williams, and not Katie Couric, co-hosting the marathon opening ceremonies of the winter Olympic Games in Turino, Italy?  Good question, as Couric has served as co-host with Bob Costas for the last three Games.  The subject is taken up this week by Phil Rosenthal, the TV critic of the Chicago Tribune. He ascribes the change not to chance or scheduling conflicts, but rather a deliberate effort by NBC to de-emphasize Couric's star power in anticipation of her possible move to CBS later this year. Rosenthal:  "The networks says [Couric] is getting the [opening] night off this …

Either NBC has weak knees and has again caved to pressure from the religious right--or it's got serious internal problems in its public relations department. Yesterday the company said it never even intended to shoot a scene in an upcoming April episode of "Will & Grace" in which guest star Britney Spears hosts a cooking show called "Cruci-fixins." What's more, such a scene had never even been written, NBC claimed. Odd, since it was NBC that initially boasted of the comedic sendup--a boast that brought down the enmity and boycott power of the ultraconservative American Family Association. "Some erroneous information …

Media analyst Diane Mermigas tries gamely in this week's column to sum up the current state of the various industries she covers--cable, TV, telephony, satellite, newspapers, the Internet--and concludes that we are in a period of vast reformation. Virtually every planet in the media universe is in the midst of change, either due to deliberate decision-making or as an effort to survive in an ever-changing environment. "Every day seems to bring a virtual explosion of new developments at all levels of the entertainment, media and information food chain, contributing to a perpetual cause-and-effect formation of a new-media world," Mermigas writes. …

Alan Jacobson, of the Brass Tacks Design firm, recently sat down for a lengthy on-the-record Q&A with Mary Nesbitt of The Readership Institute to discuss the many problems confronting the newspaper business. They talked about readership scores, the need for editorial changes, and systemic troubles that have yet to be satisfactorily addressed. A lively, interesting exchange. Highlights (quoting Nesbitt): "We find that often changes [at newspapers] are focused on editorial content -- and not on circulation, or marketing, or ad content as well... it has to be a whole-paper effort, and the changes need to be big.... We think... that …

Ad Age's editor, Scott Donaton, returns to a topic that has long bedeviled large numbers of ad-industry professionals--the divide between media planners and media creatives. There was a time when the two worked shoulder to shoulder, but that gave way long ago to a model that largely keeps each group in its own too-isolated pod, to the detriment of each. Not good, says Donaton. "Media can be linked again to creative, but as an equal rather than a secondary discipline." How so? He proposes several models. "One is to take planners from the media agencies and physically situate them …

The podcast remains a vaguely mysterious and largely underutilized platform at most magazine companies.  Owing to its newness--very few people over the age of 35 seem to know what a podcast is--it's no wonder that magazine managements have ignored the marketing opportunities made possible by this fresh technology.  MIN gives a nod to magazines that seem to get it:  Allure, GQ, Make, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone have all experimented with audio and video podcasts.  Some have put up original content, while others have simply made party videos available--and even that, it seems, is appreciated by the content-hungry podcast nation.  …

For those who've invested their money in the future fortunes of Sirius Satellite Radio, John Heilemann's piece, headlined "Lost in Space," is going to seriously interfere with digestion for a couple of days. Heilemann's not a fan. Not that he thinks Sirius is headed into the tank or that it's been misplayed by its hard-charging executive team. To the contrary: He believes Mel Karmazin, the company's CEO, is sort of a genius. He's done what he was brought in to do--turn Sirius into a legitimate competitor to XM, which was the first big entrant into the commercial satellite radio arena. …