Cablevision Systems hopes to boost circulation at its new acquisition Newsday by allowing customers to purchase subscriptions to the paper via their television sets. For the six months ended in March, Newsday circulation dipped about 5% per the ABC. Cablevision has launched Newsday TV in the Long Island area, giving digital cable customers the option of instantly subscribing to the newspaper via an on-screen order form already populated with the customer's name and address. The Newsday TV channel features promotional information on the paper's sections and long-form videos of recent Newsday print stories. Cablevision will promote the …

Two new U.S. quarterlies being launched by the Reader's Digest Association are outgrowths of the publisher's Home & Garden and Health & Wellness affinity divisions. Best You, a health title set for Jan. 6, is modeled after Best Health, which RDA launched in Canada earlier this year. Fresh Home, slated for Feb. 24, is a takeoff of RDA's Australian title The Family Handyman. Unlike other, more homespun RDA magazines, the new titles are upscale and are backed by Web sites that focus on community. It's a risky business. Ad pages in shelter and women's health/fitness magazines overall …

The 30,000-member Newspaper Guild is trying harder to protect embattled newspaper advertising sales people. President Bernie Lunzer says the guild is boosting the efforts of its advertising committee, while also examining ways that financially troubled newspapers can be saved with new ownership. "We are concerned with the ability of the market to sustain some of these properties and are looking at alternative ownership arrangements. There are non-profits, co-op ownership along the lines of what was used in agriculture for many years, for instance. We would like to establish a [ownership] link back to the community," Lunzer says.

As traditional media planning gives way to connections planning, there are many things agencies can do for brands to make them "whole", writes David Hattenbach, global strategic director at DraftFCB. What are some of these new branding abilities? Thanks to the Internet, we can now create more complex communication strategies and narrowcast to multiple target audiences at once. Also, media can now "define who we are through actions rather than just words." Thirdly, today we can easily give our fans elevated access to the brand via privileged information, special offers and VIP status, turning users into …

News that General Motors, the country's No. 4 advertiser, plans to cut ad and media agency fees by as much as 20% is prompting widespread fear that others will follow. Paired with an austerity push by Procter & Gamble Co. and Unilever, the GM slashing suggests that the recession may be tougher than anticipated for agencies. Ad execs are betting that clients in similarly stressed industries, such as financial services or airlines, will squeeze fees and cut spending. "There's basically no organic growth out there," says Peter Krivkovich, CEO of Cramer-Krasselt, who adds he has not yet seen …

The flight of advertising dollars to the Internet is only one source of the pain felt by traditional media outlets. Another increasingly important culprit is the decline in ad revenue from auto advertising. In the first quarter, the auto industry spent $414 million less on advertising than in last year's first quarter, per TNS. Newspapers lost $131 million in auto advertising, largely from local dealerships having trouble moving cars off their lots. But the pain goes beyond local car dealerships ads. In the latest round of earnings reports from Viacom, Time Warner and other major media …

Now every sentient human with access to a mouse, a remote or a cellphone decides what's news, says columnist David Carr. Case in point: NBC spent a day trying vainly to plug online leaks of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. Trying to stop foreign broadcasts and leaked clips from being posted online was doomed to failure because information wants to be free and its consumers will find a workaround on any defense that can be conceived. Ironically, the "jail break of information" didn't damage …

In recent months, the three oldest TV networks have set up ventures to place ads on screens that consumers might see as they shop or buy gasoline. The question: "How do networks reach the consumers when they are on the move?" says Virginia Cargill, president of CBS Outernet. Media outlets use the screens to promote their shows and to wrangle advertising from marketers that want to reach consumers out of home. Spending on outdoor advertising rose 4.9% in 2007, while ad spending on TV overall, meanwhile, fell 1.7% per TNS. But marketers have yet to agree on …