The Tribune Company, which recently filed for bankruptcy, was bought out last year with a jerry-rigged deal by billionaire CEO Sam Zell. He put up only around $300 million of his own money and funded the deal with a Tribune employee stock ownership plan. Zell essentially controlled the company through a series of vetoes without owning any equity. Was that good or bad? Case against Zell: Buying Tribune was a bit of sport for a restless billionaire looking for a new challenge. There was plenty of asset-and cost-cutting and cosmetic changes at his papers, but little evidence of improving the …

The perfect storm of readers and advertisers who are migrating away from print, added to a steep recession, is threatening to destroy newspapers as we know them. Papers now seem to be the equivalent of the railroads at the start of the twentieth century: a once-great business eclipsed by a new technology. But even as big papers have become less profitable they've become more popular. The blogosphere, which piggybacks on traditional journalism's content, has magnified the reach of newspapers. People use papers more than they did a decade ago. The difference is that today they don't have to …

The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are expected to announce this week that they will stop home delivery of the papers' print editions on four days of the week. They will only deliver the paper on the most lucrative days--Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Other days, the companies will sell abbreviated print editions at newsstands. While other newspapers contemplate similar moves in response to the ad slump, the Detroit papers would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to both curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. They have been hit particularly hard …

Maurice Lévy, CEO of Paris-based Publicis, is so optimistic about the election of Barack Obama that it tempers his worries about the economy. "It erases all the bad images of the last eight years with one vote. It demonstrates the strengths of America, a formidable lesson for the world." In the downturn, the CEO is convinced that big, geographically diversified advertising companies like his, and small, boutique agencies with creative reputations will fare better than midsize companies. But Lévy doesn't want to be too big. He says he is not holding discussions with Interpublic, as has been rumored. …

Few if any magazines have successfully imported their brands to a commercially viable TV series. That includes the lifestyle makeover show that Real Simple magazine and cable network TLC jointly launched this fall. Called "Real Simple. Real Life.," the fledgling show needs a makeover itself. Its ratings are miserable. The installment that aired on TLC Dec. 5, at 7 p.m., averaged 287,000 viewers, not much more than the 207,000 viewers who tuned in for the repeat later that night at 2 a.m. So far, there's no decision if there will be a Season 2. Two years in …

Tara Walpert Levy, president of Visible World, offers 10 mistakes that marketers and agencies often make when they try to target their television ads. Some common blunders are obvious and some aren't. For instance, media buyers love buying air time in advance, but that is not always useful. Be careful that you are not "airing a winter commercial featuring hot soup when the temperature rises above 70." Too much repetition is easy if a brilliant ad initially airs to tremendous acclaim. Viewers could love a spot as the playoffs begin. "But by the end of the World Series, …

The signing of actor Hugh Jackman as host of the ratings-challenged Oscars is a signal that "we are trying to give the evening more of a nightclub-party feel," says the show's producer Laurence Mark. So don't expect a stand-up monologue at the start of this year's program. "Since it's a celebration of movies, we wanted a movie star," rather than a stand-up comic, he says. Mark and exec producer Bill Condon say their goal is to keep the show brisk and fast-moving. But that's no easy task since the board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & …