The media-land catchphrase of the moment--well, at least one of them --is "multiple platforms," as in "We intend to leverage our brand across multiple platforms for the sake of economic virtuosity." No one actually uttered that bloated sentence insofar as we know, but they easily could have. It seems that just about every company in the business plans to extend its brand's reach. The latest to do so is Meredith Corp., which owns a clutch of TV stations and magazine titles (such as Better Homes & Gardens). Meredith revealed this week that it intends to place some of its …

Behaving almost as if it were Time Inc., but on a budget that Time would dismiss as pitifully small, Bauer Publishing is said to be preparing two more weekly magazines for U.S. newsstands.  On the heels of In Touch Weekly and Life & Style Weekly, both of which have been surprisingly successful, Bauer now is looking to launch two very different titles. The first will be a photo-heavy roundup of weird, strange images from around the world.  Thought to be similar to Shock, which circulates in Great Britain, the magazine, about which not much is known at this point, …

The Globe and Mail of Toronto carries a good piece that mimics what we've been hearing for months now: it's about the Internet, stupid. Old-line media companies--newspapers and broadcast operations--are discovering that Web sites can be a powerful strategic ally in the fight for eyeballs--and advertisers.  Which explains Rupert Murdoch's purchase of MySpace and NBC's recent acquisition of iVillage.  Both sites operate as a portal for fairly large audiences (teens for MySpace, women for iVillage). By bringing these Internet properties into their tents, Murdoch and NBC have assured themselves of Web traffic that will also drive eyeballs back to …

Timothy Karr, campaign director of a national media reform organization, argues at AlterNet that the newer, larger AT&T--the one that just made an offer to buy BellSouth--cannot possibly be a good thing for American consumers. The formation of the new media elite -- Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T among them--assures but one thing: customers will pay more, not less, for telephone, TV, and Internet access in the future, what with behemoth companies controlling all three services beneath their gargantuan umbrellas. "As large telecom companies merge and jockey for position with the cable industry over the most lucrative broadband markets, the communities …

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual report on the state of mass media, released this week, contained a number of surprises.  Among them:  1. "Any idea that newspapers have turned a corner and are on a rapid course to extinction seems overheated. The circulation declines and job cuts will probably tally at only about 3 percent for the year. The industry will still post profit margins of 20 percent. And if one combines print and online, the readership of many newspapers is higher than ever.”  2. More people gave high marks to their local papers than to the …

The International Federation of the Periodical Press has published its latest list of magazine launches around the world. Here are a few: Shock: From Hachette Filipacchi Media in the U.S. comes a new magazine that, to quote its publisher, will "feature photographs of the frightening, the arousing, the weird and the beautiful." Amy: A British title for 5- to 8-years-olds. The ambitious mag will "feature a range of topics, including film, arts and crafts, stories, puzzles, dancing and quizzes." Style Journal: The Wall Street Journal Europe has contracted with a publisher to produce this title for high-income, high-style male …

Demonstrating that hard feelings have evaporated in the months since Comcast launched an unsolicited bid to acquire The Walt Disney Company, several sources are reporting that Comcast is close to a deal to purchase E! Entertainment, the basic cable channel partly owned by Disney. The two companies already are in a partnership arrangement with E!, but Comcast wants to own the content company outright, reports in Broadcasting & Cable and elsewhere say.  Since Comcast already manages E! and its sister channel, Style, no significant changes would be contemplated if the deal goes through.  For Comcast, purchasing the portion of …

This falls into the We-Suspected-As-Much-All-Along Department: The Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington, DC-based think tank, says in a just-released report that the dissemination of news is characterized more than ever by breadth, not depth. The availability of news from various sources--TV, cable, the Internet, newspapers--is impressive, but there's just not a lot of actual news there. It's not a new trend, either, but a continuing one. One explanation for the dearth of in-depth news is that journalism organizations on both the national and local levels have been cutting the size of their staffs. "It's the illusion of more …

The New York Times' Andrew Ross Sorkin takes a moment to sit back and analyze the recently announced deal between the Paramount unit of Viacom and DreamWorks, and he concludes that, basically, Paramount appears to have been suckered. It grossly overpaid for the glitzy content company headed by Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen. Sorkin does the numbers, and while he doesn't say that Viacom cannot make this work, he strongly suggests it's going to take some luck--big box-office hits, in particular--for the deal to look good on Viacom's books. He says too that Paramount, under …

Rumors continue to circulate about a soon-to-launch movie download service from Amazon.com, the supersize online retailer. Industry trade Red Herring: "Both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal cited unidentified sources who claimed the Seattle-based e-tailer is in talks with Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers about debuting a service that will sell downloads of movies that can be saved on a PC or burned on a DVD."  Amazon would not comment.  The move, if it occurs, would represent a continuation of an initiative already under way. Amazon has already announced a pop-culture interview show that …