A judge in Milan has held that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi should be tried for tax fraud, false accounting and embezzlement in relation to the purchase of movie rights by his media company Mediaset, Bloomberg reports. Thirteen people, among them Mediaset Chairman Fedele Confalonieri, will be tried for fraud in connection with the case. The trial begins in November and the defendants face prison terms of as much as 12 years. Berlusconi has been dogged by corruption charges since entering politics in 1994, Bloomberg notes, and his allies in parliament passed an immunity law in 2003 to try …

CBS and Fox have asked a court to move forward with their case challenging federal enforcement of broadcast indecency laws, while ABC supported a bid for delay from the Federal Communication Commission, reports Mediaweek. On July 5, the FCC told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that it wanted to give affiliates 60 days to argue against its March 15 decisions that two common swear words are indecent when broadcast. Broadcasters had the chance to argue against the fines, but not the findings. The broadcasts cited were the 2002 and 2003 "Billboard Music Awards" on Fox, …

“On the playing field, the World Cup soccer tournament produced only one winner, but in the marketing arena the biggest media event of the year created more opportunities for glory--as well as a few disappointments,” writes Eric Pfanner in the International Herald Tribune. One winner was “old media”: “At a time when many viewers are turning away from mainstream media, the World Cup demonstrates the continuing power of live sports events to pull in the mass audiences that advertisers crave,” Pfanner notes. According to one analyst, through the semifinals, television audiences in 49 of the largest markets rose an …

Dan Rather “is still hotter than a Laredo parking lot about CBS,” writes Gail Shister in the Philadelphia Inquirer, pointing out that the legendary anchor was not identified on screen with the network on recent CNN appearance. Last Wednesday, Rather was on “Anderson Cooper's 360” to discuss his recent trip to North Korea, and he didn't want CBS in the picture. In an in-house memo sent from a “360” staffer, CNN producers were told to feel free to use taped snippets from Cooper's interview with Rather the previous night, but with a caveat: "Mr. Rather requests that his font …

"Sanitizing" movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, reports the Associated Press. Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence is an "illegitimate business" that hurts studios and directors who own the movie rights, says U.S District Judge Richard Matsch. The studios and directors' "objective... is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge writes. "There is a public interest in providing such protection." Matsch also ordered the companies named in …

While former editor Jack Fuller has been turning up in the Chicago Tribune's editorial pages to opine on everything from the evolution of American diplomacy during the war in Iraq (in late June) to how even good government can't be entrusted with the power of the death penalty (last week), Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader reports that he has kept away from the big story. Between those two essays, "his name was nowhere to be found in the Tribune, even though its business pages throbbed with coverage of a story he'd once been central to--the war within the Tribune …

"Continuing a long history of acrimonious relations, Univision Communications and Grupo Televisa are sniping at each other over the sale of Univision and the future of Grupo Televisa," reports Laurel Wentz in Ad Age. Univision, the biggest Spanish-language U.S. media group, recently accepted a buyout offer for about $13.7 billion from a private investment group. Televisa was a bidder, and is still angry at Univision's acceptance of the rival bid, as it expected negotiations to continue. While Televisa told federal regulators that it is ready to dump its roughly 11 percent stake in Univision at the asking price, it also …

News Corp. shareholders learned how much revenue a closely watched Internet division would generate--if they were lucky enough to be invited to a meeting last week in Australia with Rupert Murdoch, Reuters reports. Owners of the rest of the company's 3.2 billion outstanding shares were left in the dark until the following day when a UBS analyst put out a note on the proceedings. The disclosure of sales targets for the unit that oversees the popular online teen hangout MySpace.com--responsible for much investor enthusiasm about News Corp.'s long-term prospects--spurred experts on securities law to question whether Murdoch had given investors …

The Federal Communications Commission could vote next week to approve a pending bid by the top two cable companies--Comcast and Time Warner--to gobble up nearly 5 million customers from the bankrupt Adelphia Communications, reports Mediaweek. The takeover will be on the agenda for the agency's next regular meeting on July 13. "That indicates FCC Chairman Kevin Martin thinks he can garner three votes for the proposal, which has drawn controversy from critics alarmed that the enlarged cable giants may abuse their market power," Mediaweek says. But to allay the worries, Martin has also proposed requiring binding arbitration for some disputes …

Like anyone who works at an "ink 'n' grit newspaper" these days, Mark Morford is asked all the time if his medium is dead, he writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. Among the other questions: "Aren't all the nation's print rags suffering a horrible hemorrhaging of money and readership and cred? How much longer can dead-tree news possibly last in the age of blogs and cell phones and ADD media?" And the answer to most, he says, "is, of course, yes. And no. And sort of. "Everything is changing at an unprecedented pace that excites and terrifies almost everyone involved …