Carson Daly has his eye on the 12:30 a.m. slot on NBC if and when Conan O'Brien jumps to 11:30 p.m. in 2009. While his current show -- "Last Call With Carson Daly" -- celebrating its fifth anniversary, he says he hasn't talked to the network yet. "The only thing I can do is say ... We want to be in the position where we are considered a 12:30 replacement when that happens," he says. He adds he isn't bitter that NBC has thus far declined to name him O'Brien's successor at 12:30 when the network announced O'Brien …

How to measure what someone find objectionable is dependent on the advertiser. But the trade mag has found there are certain TV shows media buyers know many of their clients won't approve. Usually, it is sexual content or coarse language; sometimes, it's violent content of the kind that arouses complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. Still, there is a consensus among media buyers as to the most objectionable shows, based on a survey by the magazine. At the head of that class is "The Jerry Springer Show," which showed up on the most lists of respondents. "Springer" …

General Motors slashed its ad spending by more than $600 million last year, a drop so huge that it should convince doubters that the age of mass-media marketing is going the way of the horse and buggy. While GM disputes the figures from TNS Media Intelligence that show a falloff for the first 11 months of the year, from $2.65 billion in '05 to $2.03 billion in '06 -- claiming it cut measured spending only 10% -- TNS stands by its methodology. Its numbers mean a cut so dramatic that it would be bigger than the total advertising …

When Virgin America said it had $178 million in investment funding to launch U.S. passenger service -- the most ever for a new domestic airline -- ad agencies started readying pitches, with top shops like Goodby Silverstein and Crispin Porter & Bogusky strutting their stuff for Virgin marketing chief, Spence Kramer. The ideas were first-class, but Kramer recalls, "I just wasn't swayed." A startup carrier that had yet to hire a pilot, Virgin wanted more than slogans and 30-second spots. That's when Anomaly, a 2-year-old startup, came to the table. The shop showed off plans to design the interiors …

General Motors has caved to pressure from a suicide prevention group and agreed to change an ad that featured an assembly-line robot throwing itself off a bridge after making a mistake. The move came just days after the company said it would stick with the spot. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention went after the company last week, charging that ad -- which appeared in the Super Bowl -- is a dangerous and insensitive message. A spokesman for the automaker said the about-face came after GM executives met with the group Friday morning. "We talked to them, heard …

High-definition TVs will be in 151 million homes worldwide by 2011, says a new report from Informa Telecoms and Media, with more than half in the United States. The research group estimates that global high-def penetration was at 48 million homes at the end of 2006, out of 1.2 billion households worldwide that have a TV. Informa says 58 percent of current high-def homes are in the United States with another 20 percent in Japan. But falling prices should lure millions more to buy the product over the next few years. "The falling price of high-definition sets has …

Black Entertainment Television Chairman Debra Lee is opposed to any move by regulators to force cable operators to offer "a la carte" packages, saying that "destroys the diversity of cable" and "really flies in the face of the business model." And it is already an industry facing problems as viewers -- and programming -- migrate to new platforms. "Last year was the first year you really saw a shift away from TV, and the story is that it's going to digital. We're beginning to see more of that," she says. Advertisers are struggling to figure out how to …

Guinness wants to see some new creative work, even as shipments from the company -- owned by British liquor giant Diageo -- have been up during the run of its "Brilliant" themed campaign. The move coincides with the relatively recent arrival of Jim Young as president of the Diageo North America unit. Company reps have apparently told some Guinness distributors that he intends to try and make the brand more contemporary. And part of that strategy will include more buys on NFL and NCAA Tournament telecasts, along with Spike TV, Fox and ESPN. Guinness' measured media …

"The NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams" will go high-definition next month, making it the first to broadcast the evening news in the format, although ABC and NBC already air their morning news shows in HD. The network's Nightly News' HD launch may dovetail with those of news broadcasts at affiliates, as the net pushes owned and operated stations to accelerate their HD rollouts. There are also plans to do a HD simulcast of MSNBC, but likely not until 2008. Currently, there are about 30 local stations in the U.S. that produce their newscasts in high-definition.

Rupert Murdoch has finally announced the long-awaited launch of a business channel that will compete with CNBC for the small -- but sought-after -- audience interested in financial news. The Fox Business Channel, in the works for at least two years, will be overseen by Roger Ailes, the Fox executive who helped shape CNBC more than 10 years ago. The channel is expected to be on basic cable in 30 million homes by the end of this year. While that is just one-third of the homes reached by CNBC, it is equal to those served by Bloomberg Television, …