"Did you get that faint SOS from the Cannes International Advertising Festival last month?" asks Erwin Ephron. "It read 'Mayday! Our audience has gone from watching commercials to making them ..." Ephron says he "couldn't help thinking that's the smoke above, what about the fire below? Shouldn't we worry less about consumers creating advertising and worry more about them ignoring and avoiding it?" Not that he blames them. Marketers say consumers are in charge and carefully limit them to answering surveys. Yet make no mistake, today's consumer is in physical control, he notes. Remember, people decide which media they'll watch, …

Local newspapers are bracing for Sept. 9. That's when a pullback of as much as $425 million in spending by the medium's largest advertiser--Federated Department Stores--begins, reports Ad Age. It will also mark the end of a "symbiotic relationship between homegrown department-store brands and the newspapers they've advertised in for more than a century," the trade magazine notes. The company's stable of department-store brands will officially be reborn as Macy's, backed by a national branding campaign and a $1.2 billion media plan expected to favor national TV and magazines rather than spot TV and newspapers. While the $425 million figure …

Comcast subscribers in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area will finally be able to see Washington Nationals baseball games next month on regional sports channel Mid-Atlantic Sports Network. An agreement was cut late last week that will bring MASN to 1.6 million people in the metro Washington and Baltimore areas on an expanded basis. As part of the pact, MASN and Comcast also agreed to drop various complaints against each other. Terms were not disclosed, but other MASN carriers are said to be paying an estimated $1.35 per subscriber, per month, Multichannel News reports. The deal also applies to subscribers …

ITV chairman Peter Burt has been keeping a low profile recently as speculation grows over the future of the company's chief executive, reports the Telegraph. Investors have been told very little, "but everyone knows that when Burt and the rest of ITV's board meet before Wednesday's interim results, top of the agenda will be to agree the final terms of Charles Allen's departure," writes Sylvia Pfeifer. While life in the business world can be tough, she says it must have been uncomfortable for Allen to read about people being touted for his job before he left the boardroom. Among the …

A Viacom approach to buy Bebo is the latest expression of interest from a traditional media company desperate to reconnect with a young audience, reports the Financial Times. But Michael and Xochi Birch, founders of the San Francisco-based social networking site, say they get approached every two weeks, but are in no rush to sell. Traditional media companies are struggling to remain in touch with younger audiences and seem to want to emulate the News Corp. $580 million buy of MySpace last year. Viacom has been particularly eager to crack the market for user-generated content. Michael Birch, the chief executive …

Forbes magazine may still call itself the "capitalist tool," writes Geraldine Fabrikant in The New York Times, "but it apparently no longer produces enough capital to support the Forbes family empire." Late last week, the five Forbes kids sold 40 percent of the company to a private equity group for $200 million to $300 million. "The sale not only provides capital, which could be money in part for family use, but may also resolve some growing tensions among family members," she writes. Over the last six years, the family has sold off many assets, most notably their father Malcolm's Fabergé …

The first half of 2006 was very competitive for celebrity weeklies, Ad Age reports. Most showed improvement in a key measure of customer interest: the newsstand. According to some estimates, Time Inc.'s People magazine continued to lead in single-copy sales with an average of more than 1.5 million copies a week--up about 2 percent over the first half of 2005. People's issue featuring the first photos of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt sold 2.2 million copies. No. 2 Us Weekly sold an average of more than 1 million newsstand copies, a 1 percent gain in the face of a higher cover price. But …

When free newspaper publisher Metro International arrived in France four year ago, established competitors cried foul and some of their workers took to the streets, writes Eric Pfanner in the International Herald Tribune. Now, Metro and other free papers are a fixture on the French cityscape, accounting for one in five papers read in France. Publishers of paid-for dailies are considering free editions of their own. The about-face reflects a broader shift in Europe, as free papers grow rapidly and publishers of existing papers increasingly turn to giveaways. News Corp. confirmed plans to start a free newspaper in Britain next …

The head of Emmis Communications has ended a bid to acquire the company and take it private in a deal valued at $567 million, reports The New York Times. CEO Jeffrey H. Smulyan says he withdrew the offer because the company he formed to do it--ECC--could not reach an agreement with a committee of independent directors who were considering the offer of $15.25 a share. The offer was made three months ago, and was considered too low by many investors and analysts. "Despite good-faith negotiations over the past three months," Smulyan says, "the ECC will be unable to reach agreement …

Newspaper publishers are expected to keep swinging the job axe in the second half of the year, reports Editor & Publisher. Writing to investors, a Wall Street analyst says the industry's ad revenue is barely moving--up 0.5 percent so far in 2006--but circulation continues to drop. Alexia Quadrani of Bear Stearns says newspaper publishers will likely reduce costs by eliminating workers. Although revenue growth may pick up in the second half and despite expected gains from online, she says publishers may announce another round of significant staff reductions before year's end to bolster 2007 financial performance.