Ad clients may be spending more marketing dollars on cable networks, such as Discovery Channel and ESPN, according to a poll of 225 ad pros by Beta Research. The survey found that 45% of respondents plan to hand over more money to Discovery this year, while 44% predicted they'd invest in more ESPN. Along with queries about favorable programming environments, the survey focused on audience retention during commercial pods. Half the executives who do business with ESPN/ABC Sports said that the cable and broadcast properties rated very highly when it comes to effectively reducing commercial churn. ESPN …

Next week the Chicago Tribune will become one of the first newspapers to simultaneously publish near-identical versions of itself in broadsheet and tabloid formats. The tab version will be offered for sale on weekdays at commuter stations, newsstands and in newspaper boxes. Home delivery subscribers will continue to receive the traditional broadsheet edition. The street-sale tab edition will remain priced at 75 cents. RedEye, the free commuter tabloid the Tribune launched in 2002, will remain unchanged. The Chicago Sun-Times, the Tribune's tabloid rival, sells for 50 cents. The move is an aggressive bet that a switch in …

Unlike its competitors, the Fox network doesn't plan to make any major employee cuts in the near future, looking for other ways to cut costs instead. Fox has no massive layoff plans in the works, says Fox Entertainment president Kevin Reilly. "We're a lean company in success, and that prepares us for hard times." The net made several tough cuts during last year's work stoppage. "Our bottom line was trimmed during the writers strike, and we didn't let the line back out," he says. NBC and CBS cut several execs last month; ABC is rumored to be mulling …

Omnicom said it will be laying off 3,500 workers this January -- due to the economic climat. But that didn't stop the company from giving John Wren, CEO of the Omnicom Group, a grant of 1 million options on Dec. 29 with an exercise price of $25.48 each, or a face value of $25 million. A Black Scholes report pegs these options at around $4 million -- a huge bonus any one you slice it. Five other executives also received grants of 500,000 options that carry a face value of $12.74 million. Odds are that by the time …

Despite digital disappointments, Cathie Black, 64, is re-upping as president of Hearst in a three-year contract. She will continue to lead the ad-challenged publishing group that includes Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and O, the Oprah Magazine. Black, who has been president since the mid-'90s, must bring the group into the 21st century, even though she has been slow to develop a strong digital vision. Last year, the company derived about 6.5% of its estimated $2 billion in revenue from the Web. That lags the 10% that Time Inc. is notching. For now, however, Hearst seems convinced that change …

Nielsen Business Media and ContentNext Media have agreed to share online content that covers digital media, entertainment and technology. The relationship will allow Nielsen's media sites to distribute information and industry knowledge to paidContent.org's subscriber base and to use paidContent news on their sites. Mediaweek.com, Adweek.com, Editorandpublisher.com, Billboard.biz and THR.com, site for The Hollywood Reporter, are among the Nielsen properties sharing content. As part of the pact, news from these sites will be found on numerous paidContent channel pages.

American Media is amputating about 80% of Country Weekly's paid circulation to keep the title publishing. The 15-year-old magazine is abandoning subscriptions, lowering the cover price and returning to a weekly schedule. Instead of guaranteeing advertisers a paying audience of 435,000 people, the mag will sell about 75,000 copies per issue on newsstands. The move is unusual because magazines generally depend on subscriptions to supply a steady base of customers. Newsstand sales are far more volatile, with no guarantee that the same number of copies will sell week to week. American Media faces challenges beyond the recession. …