The National Football League has put Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, in charge of a committee that oversees the nascent NFL Network as it tries to gain some cable carriage. The net is in less than 45 million homes, even as it hangs on to a late-season game package that might have gone for north of $400 million in an open market, putting Jones on the hot seat. "Today, there are more options than ever before for consumers in terms of choosing a television provider," says Jones, noting that satellite companies like DirecTV and Dish Network and …

NBC Universal's "Deal or No Deal," the game show hosted by Howie Mandel, is heading into syndication next fall. While widely speculated that NBC Universal would roll out a half-hour version of the hit into syndie, the show's distributor has announced that it has cleared it as a strip on most NBC owned-and-operated stations, including WNBC in New York; KNBC in Los Angeles, Chicago's WMAQ and KNTV in San Francisco. It will also run on stations owned by CBS, Allbritton, Scripps and Sinclair. Mandel will host the syndicated series, along with the NBC's prime time. The show is being …

Talks between Hollywood writers and studios broke off over the weekend, raising the specter of a strike that could cripple the TV industry. The Writers Guild has been talking with studios represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers since July. Friday's negotiations ran for just an hour, and are not scheduled to resume until Tuesday. Each side is blaming the other, hurling accusations of intransigence and showing their frustration at the slow pace. The current contract expires Oct. 31, and studios and TV networks have begun stockpiling scripts. In 1988, a strike lasted 22 weeks, and …

After a year of negotiations, the rumored distribution deal between Home Box Office and the Ultimate Fighting Championship has been choked out, with the net saying that it will not be airing live UFC events any time in the near future. "After lots of discussion, it became apparent that the business model doesn't make sense for either one of us," says Ross Greenburg, president of HBO Sports. "So we agreed to go our separate ways." However, he adds, "you never know what the future holds." The UFC isn't talking--but in August, President Dana White virtually guaranteed a deal by …

Some Filipino-American groups are calling for a boycott of ABC and parent company Disney after a network executive said a broadcast apology for a perceived racial slur on "Desperate Housewives" was unlikely to happen. "I don't think they (ABC) are taking us seriously," says Rico Foz, spokesperson for the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (Nafcon), after meeting with Robert Mendez, ABC's senior vice president for diversity and talent development. The broadcast apology was among the demands made at the meeting, which was followed by a protest in front of ABC's New York studios. The fuss is over a recent …

A federal court in Wisconsin has rejected a demand by Procter & Gamble that rival Kimberly-Clark stop running its "brick baby" ad campaign for Huggies diapers. P&G, maker of the Pampers and Luvs brands, sued Kimberly-Clark over the spots, and wanted an injunction stopping the campaign. It claims the company was unfairly disparaging other diapers, as the ads suggest other brands are more suited for bricks than babies. "We are disappointed in the ruling because we think the current advertising is not fair or accurate, and we don't think it serves consumers well," says Lisa Jester, a spokeswoman for …

The Toronto Star will change the way it sells space early next year, switching to modular ads and sectional pricing where advertisers get charged different rates depending on which part of the paper their ads are in. The aim is to provide the same standardized sizes and target opportunities found in other media, like online, TV and radio. Says publisher Jagoda Pike. "Newspapers have always been thought of as mass mediums, but through sectional pricing, the The Toronto Star becomes much more than that and offers unprecedented opportunity for targeting." Most newspaper advertising is sold by the line …

Procter & Gamble Co. is suing Kimberly-Clark Corp. over ads for Huggies diapers, claiming the "Brick Baby" campaign makes false claims about the comparative fit and comfort of its product compared to P&G's Pampers and Luvs. In the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Wisconsin, P&G says Huggies launched a new round of ads implying Pampers were better suited to be put on bricks than on babies, even though a May decision by the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus told Kimberly-Clark to modify similar ads. One spot shows two mothers, one …

A group fighting childhood obesity is out with a new ad that spoofs Sen. Larry Craig's trolling for sex in an airport men's room. The spot, from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, targets lawmakers who support subsidies for high-fat foods, like bacon and burgers, that are often staples of school-lunch programs. It features a man in a bathroom stall tapping his foot to signal he is ready and willing to get campaign contributions from the meat industry. Cash is then passed under the stall. Both are takeoffs of the events that led to the Idaho Republican's arrest …

Former Johnson & Johnson exec Kaki Hinton has signed up with MPG to be an executive VP and managing director on the Sears media planning and buying account, a piece of business the shop won in May as part of a $740 million review. Hinton, based in New York, will report to Steve Lanzano, CEO of MPG's U.S. operations. Hinton was VP of advertising services at J&J's Consumer Group and has also worked for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, which the company gobbled up late last year. Lanzano said Hinton's "firsthand client experience is arguably unmatched among our competition, …