Time Warner Cable subscribers can forget about seeing the Denver Broncos-Kansas City Chiefs football game on the NFL Network this Thanksgiving. Fred Dressler, the MSO's executive vice president of programming, says it is "100%" assured that the MSO will not come to terms with the fledgling network before its eight-game Thursday- and Saturday-night package kicks off on Thanksgiving, Nov. 23. While he says the cable operator continues to negotiate with the network, it will not capitulate to demands that the service be placed on Time Warner's expanded-basic tier. "It comes down to whether consumers will be allowed to pay …

Burger King should pull its ad campaign for the XXL burger--the caloric equivalent of eating 10 fried eggs--because it violates a Spanish initiative against obesity, the country's Health Ministry says. It has been asking the fast-food chain to abandon the campaign for more than a week because the commercials go against an agreement signed by the Spanish Federation of Hoteliers and Restaurateurs, of which Burger King is a member. Under that pact, members of the federation said they would refrain from promoting huge servings. Each sandwich has an average of 971 calories--nearly 50% of the recommended daily allowance for …

Rising concerns about childhood obesity--and mounting negative press--have led some top food marketers to tighten up self-regulatory efforts on food and beverage ads that target kids under age 12. The Council of Better Business Bureaus and the National Advertising Review Council have established the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, a voluntary program with 10 major companies as the first charter members. The idea is to shift the focus of ad messages to children and encourage healthier choices and lifestyles. Top spenders on the board include Cadbury Schweppes, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Hershey, Kellogg, Kraft, McDonald's, PepsiCo and …

The 2006 election cycle set a record for the amount of money spent on campaign advertising in an off-year. The tone of the ads reached new lows, with candidates and the parties often resorting heavily to harsh personal attacks. But they may not have worked. Stanford University's Political Communication Lab designed an online experiment in which voters from seven battleground states watched a pair of either negative or positive ads--one from each candidate--and indicated how they felt about the content of the ad by continuously moving a slider from 0 (strong negative reactions) to 100 (strong positive feelings). …

Nostalgia-heavy network TV Land is about to update itself with a new lineup designed to reach out to what it sees as an overlooked audience: baby boomers. The Me Generation, those 45-plus--a demographically desirable group--has been vocal with accusations of neglect by the ad business. But now TV Land has unveiled plans for the 2006-2007 season to add new shows that are both celebrity-driven (George Foreman's "Family Foreman") and reality-based ("The Big 4-0"), which it hopes speaks directly to that audience, ages 40 to 60--becoming the first major cable net to specifically target that demo. "The Me Generation, …

Time magazine's move to chop its rate base offers advertisers the option to buy pages based on its total audience--including pass-alongs, rather than just subscriber and newsstands sales, as tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. It is the first magazine to do so, guaranteeing an audience of 19.5 million readers per issue. Buyers are generally impressed, since the move puts magazines on par with television and the internet, which sell total audience. Ed McCarrick, Time's publisher, argues that it would be a more accurate reflection of the weekly newsmagazine's reach. "It was very apparent as we talked with …

In its ongoing bid to be a central conduit of media, TiVo Inc. plans to broaden its digital video recording service later this year. The new feature--one of several TiVo has made lately--comes as homemade clips and Hollywood movies are all becoming more popular on the Web, and an increasing number of tech giants are tackling the barriers to deliver video from a computer to the comforts of a living room. "Broadband video is growing rapidly on the Web, but the television will continue to be the key way viewers want to watch video," says TiVo chief executive Tom …

Australia's biggest media buyer, Harold Mitchell, wants the government to trim network TV license fees and provide financial inducements to produce more dramas. Only then will the fortunes of the country's ailing TV industry turn around, Mitchell says. In the last five years, prime-time audiences have shrunk by 6%-16% in the under-40 crowd--while costs are increasing faster than revenues. "Unless we collectively act, commercial free-to-air television will lose more audience than it has already as a consequence of the emergence of new technologies," Mitchell says. He argues that Australian content is vital for maintaining network TV, but networks balk …

Commercial time on radio stations averages less than 10 minutes an hour, lower than the 12 to 14 minutes on TV. A study released Tuesday by Empower MediaMarketing, which analyzed Nielsen Monitor-Plus data in 15 of the nation's top markets, found that radio stations air 9.42 minutes of commercials per hour, with Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles airing the most at 10.25 and 10.15 minutes, respectively. The three markets with the lowest number of average commercial minutes were Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. (8.43), Atlanta (8.83), and Philadelphia (8.84). "Our belief as an agency is that radio is generally undervalued, particularly …

News consumers in Los Angeles, Baltimore and Boston--and other parts of the country--may have heard that local investors are interested in buying their main newspaper. And while they might think it is purely a business matter, it's more about them--and the future of journalism that informs their daily lives. Corporations are pushing for big cuts, but does the squeeze have to be this severe? It doesn't seem to matter to Wall Street, so focused on short-term results, that the newspaper industry last year reported an average operating margin of 19.3%--twice the average for the Fortune 500 companies. Potential …