Showing how much clout advertisers now have with glossy magazines, the July issue of Bazaar devotes the cover and 40 of its editorial pages to the famous faces in the ad campaign for Estée Lauder's Sensuous perfume. The celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Hurley, star in Sensuous ads, but the issue carries none of those ads, planning to run them in future issues. For now, the magazine's Web site offers a promotional video that Lauder plans to show at its cosmetics counters. Insiders say other advertisers are likely to use the Estée Lauder example to push …

Paul Colichman and a business partner are building a media conglomerate around Here, television's only premium gay cable network. They recently paid $6.5 million to buy the Advocate, a news magazine, Out, a fashion monthly, and other sister publications. Colichman already owns gay entertainment portal GayWired.com and plans to expand the online presence of his new print publications. "Our point of view is that everything in media is cross-platformed now. We are in the content business, and to generate profit you need to be everywhere," he says. Colichman and his heterosexual business partner Stephen P. Jarchow also …

Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne--who pioneered the comedy-reality format with their MTV series--are betting the next retro TV trend will be weekly variety shows. "American Idol" producer FremantleMedia landed the rights to do the Osbourne's new variety program, which will also include appearances by Osbourne offspring Kelly and Jack. Rather than trying to re-create the amateur comedy sketches and elaborate production numbers of the variety hours of the 1960s and '70s, the Osbourne show is expected to mimic today's international variety shows, with comedy, musical performance and competition-style games. Many reality industry observers have been predicting a resurgence of …

For the first time, the broadcasts network's median age is outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo. According to a study released by Magna Global, the average viewer of the five broadcast nets' last season, not including delayed DVR viewers, was 50. ABC, NBC and Fox continue to grow older, while CBS--the oldest-skewing network--has remained fairly steady. "With traditional television no longer necessarily the first screen for the younger set, the ages of the broadcast networks keep rising," says Magna researcher Steve Sternberg. When DVR viewing is factored in, the nets (except CW and Univision) drop by only a …

After being the dominant cable news channel for nearly a decade, Fox is watching both CNN and MSNBC add viewers at dramatic rates. In the first half of 2004, during the last presidential election, Fox's prime-time audience of 25-to-54-year olds was more than double that of CNN. The first half of this election year, CNN has nearly as many viewers as Fox in that demo. CNN has added 170,000 viewers a night, on average, compared with the last presidential year, while Fox has shed about 90,000, per Nielsen. Fox hasn't slipped, says Republican strategist Scott Reed. "I just …