Financial services giant John Hancock is rolling out a new ad campaign dubbed "Cursor" that focuses on the often difficult conversations family and friends have about money, with one TV spot featuring a husband talking to his wife about his mother's retirement funds. The ads are supposed to "evoke John Hancock's long-standing advertising legacy of depicting real people, grappling with important financial concerns, in an intimate and truthful way," says Jim Bacharach, the company vice president of advertising. Spending on the effort over the next 12 months will run to $26 million and the ads are breaking this …

Bausch & Lomb will "go pink" with a 2008 ad campaign that is also set to help the Susan G. Komen Foundation raise cash in the fight against breast cancer. In its first cause-related marketing effort, Bausch & Lomb partnered with the Foundation last year, rolling out special pink packages of contact lens solution and donating 10% of the proceeds form the specially marked packages to it. But there was no ad support involved. "The campaign was well-received and through research, we found that there was increased purchase intent and positive views toward the brand following last …

A sports stadium in Charlotte, N.C. will be renamed the Time Warner Cable Arena under a new deal between the MSO and the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats with change for the venue -- currently named after the team -- coming over the next several months. And in a related agreement, TV broadcasts of Bobcat home games will move to Fox Sports Net South from Time Warner's Carolina News14. The latter currently has the TV rights for 50 Bobcats games a season through 2015, but the station can be seen only in parts of Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro to a combined audience …

After two years of terrible ratings, insiders at CBS News say that Katie Couric -- who arrived to anchor the "CBS Evening News" in 2006 with much hoopla -- may be shown the door well before her contract expires in 2011, possibly as soon as early next year. Couric, who draws a salary of $15 million, has kept the net's news show mired in third place and getting rid of her would be part of a CBS effort to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast. With the exception of a couple weeks, Couric never even …

CBS, with possibly the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been talking to Time Warner about outsourcing some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, according to insiders. Over the years, the cable net has held talks with both ABC and the Tiffany Network about joint ventures. The CBS discussions have apparently been revived - and intensified. The conversations involve reducing CBS' news-gathering capacity but keeping its top personalities like Katie Couric, while also buying CNN's news feeds. But the same insiders caution that no deal is imminent and Sandy Genelius, a spokeswoman for CBS News, says "we …

Not long after the Publishing Group of America's announced plans to launch a health-themed newspaper supplement called Spry, Parade says it will roll out its own monthly dedicated along the same lines. Parade's HealthyStyle will be distributed on weekdays in its newspapers and have a combined circulation of 8 million. It will feature tips from celebrities and liftestyle advice from Dr. Mark Liponis of Canyon Ranch, former Self editor Emily Listfield and chef Cat Cora, chef and TV personality. HealthyStyle will come out in September and follows other recent Parade spinoffs aimed at newer and under-penetrated ad …