Following NBC's Monday announcement that its new drama, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," will debut on Thursday nights at 9 p.m., ABC said Tuesday that it will move "Grey's Anatomy" to the same time slot, CNNMoney reports. Both are shots aimed at "CSI" on CBS. While the move could cut into the rating of the CBS hit, Shari Anne Brill, vice president and director of programming with Carat USA, says ""I just think it's crazy. There is an embarrassment of riches in one time period. Why don't networks counterprogram?" CBS is expected to roll out its fall lineup Wednesday.

The FBI admits to ABC News that it is going after the phone records of reporters when it investigates. "It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration," says one unnamed fed. The acknowledgement followed an earlier item noting that ABC "reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling." While the FBI said its investigations begin with checking government lines, "officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be sought if government records are not sufficient."

Saudi Arabia's ruler has told the country's newspapers to cease publishing pictures of women because the photos could make "young men go astray," the Associated Press reports. King Abdullah issued his edict during a meeting with local editors, who had recently begun to publish pictures of the fairer sex--always wearing a traditional headscarf--to illustrate stories. In addition to protecting the male population from temptation, "one must think, do they want their daughter, their sister, or their wife to appear in this way," Abdullah is quoted as saying.

Spanish-language TV networks are targeting $1.8 billion in upfront sales as the buying season gets underway this month--and they plan to help reach that goal by expanding content offerings beyond “staples” like soap operas and sports, Mediaweek reports. “For too long, there have been very few options,” says Luis Silberwasser, senior vice-president of Discovery Networks’ Hispanic group. “We’re going beyond what’s always been there, programming genres that are new to the Hispanic marketplace.” Even with a growth rate estimated by TNS Media Intelligence as almost twice that of the average for other media, there is room for more, notes …

The Internet is outrunning the boob tube in the race for the affections of younger Americans, Ad Age reports. According to a survey by Bolt Media, surfing the Web is the single most popular leisure time activity for 12- to 34-year-olds, followed by hanging out with friends and watching movies, relegating TV viewing to fourth, at 69 percent. And only one in four could name all four broadcast networks. The five most-watched TV networks were Fox, Comedy Central, ABC, MTV and Cartoon Network. “We're finally at an inflection point where advertisers are tired of spending more and more and …

A $400 million deal to buy dozens of newspapers around Boston is evidence that the suburbs are still regarded by investors as good turf for the suffering print industry, the Boston Globe reports. GateHouse Media, part of a New York-based hedge fund and venture capital firm, will buy a total of 124 newspapers, most of them small but in affluent, densely populated areas. And at a time when readers--and Wall Street--are running away from big newspapers, the deal makes sense, says Peter Conti, vice president of research firm Borrell Associates: big newspapers trying to serve a broad audience face …

George Hayes has filed a lawsuit against his former employer McCann Erickson and its parent company Interpublic Group of Cos., citing age discrimation. A 30-year veteran with the agency, Hayes faults McCann's new worldwide CEO, Nick Brien, for his dismissal, claiming that Brien preferred youth to experience, all in an effort to give the agency a youthful, modern image. "Mr. Brien stated that the young people in the group 'got it' when it came to 'new media' of the digital age, that 'things will be different around here,'" the lawsuit said. Valuing youth over experience doesn't guarantee success; sadly, lawsuits …

The networks have long acceded to presidential requests for air time, but the Chicago Tribune's Phil Rosenthal thinks they may soon start snubbing the White House. He notes that while NBC and Fox are planning to broadcast George W. Bush's Monday night speech--which he's making ostensibly to build support for immigration reform--CBS and ABC have yet to come to a decision. The timing of this address is particularly bad, coming as it does during the May ratings period when ad rates get set. Rosenthal adds that while they have always given in before, "at some point, some network is …

While some TV networks have finally begun making downloadable versions of popular programs available online, don't exact a quick or comprehensive convergence of the two mediums, writes Richard Siklos in the New York Times. "Even though no one seems to be making much money yet on these ventures and there are still chewy legal and rights issues to sort out, there is palpable excitement--a sense that the TV and movie industries are going to head off the pirates and file-sharing teens by making their products widely available online in legal ways," he says. But "it's not as close as all …

Google, which has been hinting at plans to expand into sales of television advertising time ever since it began peddling remnant print media space and acquired a company that sell radio ad time, is hinting at it again. During a Q&A session with reporters gathered at its Mountain View, Calif.-campus, the online search giant's co-founder Sergey Brin said Google is looking to expand its auction-based model to TV, reports Advertising Age. The report follows a story broken by MediaDailyNews that an ad industry task force has selected eBay to conduct a test of an online trading system for buying and …