Fox will program two hours of infomercials on Saturday mornings starting in January. It's believed to be the first time a major network has slated full-blown, program-length advertisements on its schedule. The move follows an out-of-court legal settlement in which Fox terminated its deal with children's TV producer 4Kids, which had been programming Fox's Saturday morning kids block. Fox opted to return two hours of the block to affiliates, and program the other two with long-form advertising. Long term, the net hopes to fill the slots by sealing deals with major marketers to create more traditional-looking programs …

As the local cable marketplace continues to tank, spot cable firm NCC has quietly landed $1 billion in sales for the first time in its history. NCC allows clients to buy local cable and insert ads anywhere in 209 individual markets and thousands of targeted geographic zones. The company's reach puts it in front of 99% of all wired cable homes. NCC executives acknowledge that political ad spending made the key difference in an otherwise rocky year. Political spend came in at around $2.16 billion, with local cable accounting for 15%, or about $32 million, of the overall …

In the first of what it hopes will be many new partnerships, Reader's Digest Association has agreed to publish a magazine for a special interest group -- in this case evangelical Christians. RDA is partnering with Dr. Rick Warren -- pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., and the author of the best-selling "Purpose Driven Life." Together they will produce "an inspirational multimedia platform" that includes a magazine, DVDs and an online "Facebook for Christians." All of this is scheduled to roll out in February, 2009. Mary Berner, RDA CEO, calls the venture "an expression of our …

The E-Ink technology on Esquire's October cover was about as sexy as Angelina Jolie in the eyes of the magazine-buying public. Not bad for a flashing piece of plastic that some critics dismissed as a disappointment. It was the first time a magazine used the digital wizardry that powers the Amazon's Kindle. The issue sold an estimated 140,000 copies on the newsstand, per ABC. That's just about equal to sales of the July 2007 issue, which featured Jolie. But the bestseller so far this year was the January cover with Johnny Depp on the cover-which sold about 160,000 …

Fox has signed a deal to provide content for Airline TV. Beginning this month, a five-minute block of branded Fox entertainment will air as part of a 40-minute ad-supported entertainment block on Continental, Frontier and JetBlue Airlines flights. Airline TV was launched last year through a partnership between IdeaCast and LiveTV. It is projected to reach 33 million passengers by the end of 2009 and as many as 57 million passengers by 2010. Since the launch, IdeaCast, which has the exclusive rights to sell video ads and provide branded content on the network, has sold more than …

Competition between The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal is heating up as the U.S economy sours. The Journal's expanded news coverage and new lifestyle magazine are starting to attract wealthy consumers and luxury advertisers from the NYT, such as Saks, a Times advertiser since 1924. Dolce & Gabbana SpA and LVMH Moet Hennessy have also started advertising in the Journal. Circulation at both papers is also shifting. The Journal's average individually paid circ rose 2.4% to 1.4 million as of September, compared to a year ago, per the ABC. The Times' slid 5.5% to 858,985 on …

As financial services firms shrink after years of expansion, the financial media face a similar squeeze -- despite high readership. Increased audiences no longer mean increased advertising, and the companies are being forced to rethink their business models. Their solutions are varied, depending on the publication. The Financial Times is lessening its exposure to advertising by raising the price of its paper, selling newspaper holdings outside the U.K. and buying businesses that rely on subscriptions. Advertising now accounts for less than one-third of revenue from more than half in 2000. Bloomberg's response is to look beyond its …

The publisher of music magazine Blender and men's magazine Maxim is in restructuring talks that are expected to turn over the company to creditors, in another blow to star media deal maker Steve Rattner. Financial results at Alpha Media, publisher of the magazines, have dropped sharply amid an advertising slowdown, causing the firm to violate debt covenants. Through the first nine months, Maxim's ad pages were mostly flat, per the PIB, and overall circulation slipped 1.3%, per the ABC. Quadrangle Partners purchased Alpha from U.K.'s Dennis Publishing in June 2007 for $240 million, with an estimated $150 …

The market conditions for launching a cable channel next year are far from ideal. Nonetheless, Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Communications are moving full speed ahead with the Oprah Winfrey Network, which is slated for late 2009 or early 2010. Los Angeles-based OWN has recruited prominent TV biz execs for senior positions, including Robin Schwartz, former president of Fox joint venture Regency TV, as president. Robert Tercek, former MTV marketing maven, was recently named president of digital media. The hunt for a CEO has been put on the back burner, however, because candidates wanted more equity in the business …