Disney ABC Kids Networks, the ad sales and promotion arm of Disney Channel, Toon Disney and ABC Kids is promoting Eric Vincent to vice president of sales for the East Coast region and naming Becky Marquardt to the same post for the Midwest region. The group is part of Disney's Media Advertising Sales and Marketing Group, which handles all ad sales, marketing and promotion for kid-driven and family-inclusive TV platforms, online offerings, and kids publishing and radio. Vincent was an account executive for ABC Family and joined the company back in 1999 as associate director, prime time sales …

ESPN is taking a multiplatform approach to push its coverage of this weekend's Breeders Cup to young men, but the net faces a big challenge in making them care about horse racing. Ratings for the event, which moved to ESPN after 22 years on NBC, have been falling for years and continued to do so after last year's switch to cable. But ESPN is touting the Breeder's Cup as a series of 11 national championship races split over two days with the hope the glut of high-stakes racing that appeals to racing's older fan base can also pull …

Maria Shriver will not resume her TV news career after her stint as California's First Lady. The reason: the media carnival that kicked off following the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Shriver told a conference on women that media circus led directly to her decision. "It was then that I knew that the TV news business had changed and so had I," Shriver says. "I called NBC News, and told them I'm not coming back." She went on extended leave from the network when her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, successfully ran for the Golden State's governorship in 2003. She …

Two U.S. senators are threatening to introduce bipartisan legislation that would bar the Federal Communication Commission from acting too quickly to ease the rules on media ownership. Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, say they are considering a bill to nullify the FCC decision expected on Dec. 18. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has said he wants the agency to wrap up its examination of media ownership and reach a decision by December 18 on how many media outlets one entity can own in a single market. Martin is playing it …

The National Conference of State Legislators has taken sides with cable giant Comcast on the issue of the Federal Communications Commission leaving exclusive contracts for cable service in apartments and condos up to the market, saying any attempt to ban them on a federal level would infringe state sovereignty. In a letter sent to FCC chairman Kevin Martin, Maryland state Sen. Delores Kelly, chair of the communications committee for the NCSL, writes that such a ban would be "unwarranted presumption of state authority." The Baltimore County Democrat adds that her group "respectfully requests that you refrain from …

BET has inked integrated sponsorship deals with a pair of blue-chip marketers -- Toyota and McDonalds -- for its new original series "College Hill: Interns." Both brands will be featured within the narrative of the show and in coming episodes, the show's 10 interns will take on various work challenges, including a national print campaign for Toyota's Yaris hatchback and promoting McDonald's Emerging Artist Tour. The Yaris also gets top placement within the show itself as the interns use it to get around Chicago. For McDonald's, the cast will eat at the company's outlets and visit the …

Beam Global Wine & Spirits has dedicated itself to generating word-of-mouth with ad spending and a national effort behind Canadian Club whisky shows how serious it is. A print, out-of-home and radio campaign, the brand's first national campaign in 20 years, is tagged "Damn right your Dad drank it" and tries to position Canadian Club as an old-school, masculine choice. . One print execution, with photos of Dad fraternizing with various women notes "Your mom wasn't your dad's first," the ad reads. "He went out. He got two numbers in the same night. He drank cocktails. But they were …

GateHouse Media has gobbled up more print, agreeing to buy 14 daily papers, three non-dailies, a commercial printing operation, and other publications from Morris Publishing Group for $115 million. Among the dailies changing hands are the Dodge City (Kan.) Daily Globe; The Holland (Mich.) Sentinel; the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post; and The Shawnee (Okla.) News-Star. For Morris, says CEO William S. Morris IV, the sale is "in line with our strategic plan to focus on our larger markets and will enable us to pay down our existing bank debt." It is an excellent acquisition opportunity for GateHouse, says …

Google and Nielsen are set to announce a multi-year deal to provide demographic data to Google's system for selling television advertising. The move is important for Google, which is eyed with suspicion by traditional media companies, as it tries to extend dominance of Web search advertising to other realms, including print, radio and television. An entry into the TV ad-sales market earlier this year raised questions about whether it would try to compete with Nielsen on ratings data. Instead, Google will combine data it receives from television set top-boxes with info from Nielsen on viewership by gender …

It was a grim last week for the newspaper industry, with the two biggest newspapers publishers in the U.S. -- Gannett and McClatchy -- reporting lower revenue and profit. At the same time, Scripps announced it would split its TV and interactive businesses off from its newspapers in an attempt to get the market excited about its currently slumping stock. But the kicker of the week was when stock in The New York Times Company hit its lowest point in a decade after a Morgan Stanley fund manager who had been agitating for changes at the company sold off the …