The minds behind the a new programming experiment at News Corp. "aren't reinventing the entertainment wheel," writes Mike Duffy in the Detroit Free Press. He says they're just giving it a new escapist spin with a female-appeal eye-candy plan--all soap operas all the time--rooted in the wildly popular telenovela format, a linked story line presented serial-style. The concept is huge in Latin America and other countries around the world, and now the "jauntier telenovela sensibility is being channeled into an Americanized melodramatic mix of catfights and possibly campy delights with My Network TV," which premieres Sept. 5 on more than …

It should be a pleasant change for London commuters next month to find themselves the target of a lavish battle for their attention. As Rupert Murdoch's new free newspaper--thelondonpaper--is launched, Associated Newspapers will respond with a free version of the Evening Standard called London Lite. That means that in addition to Metro in the morning, commuters will now have two free papers for the way home. The art of the newspaper war is a cunning one. At the same time, as its new freesheet was announced, Associated made a seemingly paradoxical move. While 350,000 to 400,000 copies of London Lite …

"Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story," an 11-part multimedia series for the Christian Science Monitor, has brought millions of readers to the newspaper's Web site. According to WebSideStory's HBX Analytics, the CSM's Web site analyzer, the series had more than 450,000 unique visitors on its first day of publication, more than 1 million page views on that day, and 1.5 million page views the following day. Normally, the site attracts an average of 121,247 page views per day in July. The firm also noted that much of the traffic was coming from major news outlets and "consumer portals," such as CNN, …

Food & Wine didn't have to look far to find a successor to Julie McGowan after she moved to Travel & Leisure. The new vp/publisher of the magazine is J.P. Kyrillos, former associate publisher. He tells Ad Age "we helped to create this whole food epicurean revolution, if you will, when Food & Wine launched in 1978." There is a dynamic consumer segment out there, he adds, and "we call them the 'always hungry,' people turning these chefs into superstars, making wine consumption such that we're going to eclipse Italy as second-biggest wine-drinking country." Kyrillos also has his sights set …

"Just a couple of years ago, it was inconceivable that Fox would be heading into the fall season with the strongest prospects of any of the broadcast networks," writes Kevin Downey in Media Life. It was even more unlikely that it would do so with two back-to-back season wins behind it. But that's right where it stands less than a month out from the new season, he writes--poised to win its third broadcast season in the eyes of media buyers. And wherever it is in January, "Fox can expect the midseason return of "American Idol" will push it back into …

A ruling by a federal judge that the nation's top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws and lied to the public for years about the health hazards of smoking could be a windfall for newspapers. While the judge did not order them to shell out billions in smoking-cessation programs, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler did order the companies to publish in newspapers and on their Web sites "corrective statements" on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine.

Billionaire financier Carl Icahn is not finished with Time Warner. After backing away from an attempt to break the media conglomerate up, Icahn is now ready to increase his stake--and influence--in the company through a new fund. In a letter to investors in his fund, Icahn says he will raise a "special purpose vehicle" for the sole purpose of investing in Time Warner. Because Time Warner is already his fund's largest investment, making up about 27 percent of his fund, he said in the letter that the only way he felt comfortable increasing his stake in the company was through …

Chrysler's oft-maligned "Ask Dr. Z" campaign will continue through the end of the year--although some broadcast spots may be revised after Sept. 5, when the current schedule ends. "Dr. Z could be used to promote some of our upcoming products, like the [Chrysler] Aspen and the [Dodge] Nitro," says Eileen Wunderlich, marketing communications rep for Chrysler. He might also be used for more image advertising, she added. The campaign broke in July and focuses on the company's American and German engineering and design, with Chairman Dieter Zetsche as the pitchman. "It's like a joke, which can be funny the first …

"Brace yourself Dennis FitzSimons: The 'operational activist' is here," says Crain's Chicago Business. While the focus this week was on billionaire Nelson Peltz's long proxy fight with H.J. Heinz Co., the investor also laid out his philosophy for forcing changes at the companies he and his Trian Group invests in. That includes Tribune Co., where FitzSimons is chairman and CEO--and a recent addition to Peltz's short list. While they declined to discuss a new 1.1 percent stake in Tribune, Peltz and his associates described an "operational activism" they said applies to all their holdings: "We've spent our lives living and …

It's a common belief that today's kids consume media differently, getting their news from unusual sources, like "The Daily Show" and blogs. Not so. It turns out that teens and young adults are much like adults in regard to how and where they get their news--and much of it comes from local TV, according to a recent poll by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg. Younger folks see local TV as the best source of news; the Web comes in second. "We kind of expected the Internet to show up higher," says Jill Darling Richardson, deputy director of Los Angeles …