Later this month, readers of five dissimilar sibling titles -- Time, Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly -- will find each magazine giving big editorial coverage to the subject of new forms of 3-D media. Corporate executives ordered up the 3-D content and each magazine will handle it in its own way. For instance, Time is reporting on the new wave of 3-D movies, while Sports Illustrated is running a 3-D photo section. All the magazines will include 3-D glasses. Added together, the magazines' paid circulation guarantees to top 12 million. All the 3-D issues be …

Ad spending in out-of-home advertising during the fourth quarter plummeted 15%--sending total OOH revenue down 4% for the year to $7 billion, per the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Fourth-quarter revenue accounted for $1.5 billion in total ad expenditures. The last time the outdoor business posted negative growth was in 2001, when revenue was down 1%. For the year, spending in insurance and real estate dropped 22.4%, while communications spending dropped 15.4%. First-quarter 2009 looks equally as grim as fourth-quarter 2008, say industry executives.

The top 25% highest-performing banks are those that spend the highest portion of their ad budgets on TV, says a new study from Aite Group. The report examines ad-spending and return on advertising performance of 32 of the largest 50 U.S. retail banks from 2006 through 2008. Banks that performed best in driving deposit, loan and IRA account growth included big names such as Citibank and Wachovia, as well as smaller companies like Huntington, BB&T and Hudson Bank. These top performers generally invested 50% of their ad dollars in TV. Banks that performed less well devoted 23%-36% of their …

To promote its flagship morning show, "Good Morning America," ABC has bought ads in rival early-bird programming, including CNN's "American Morning." In other words, when CNN's John Roberts cuts to a commercial break, you might see an ad suggesting you change the channel to watch GMA's Diane Sawyer instead. Since rival networks were not likely to accept an ad from ABC News, ABC made the purchases through local cable operators in the top 10 national markets, allowing its GMA ads to run between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on a range of cable-news channels. ABC's approach is the latest use …

In a sign that a new Web-centric generation is moving into the late-night talk show scene, after only a week and a half on the air, NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" hosted guests who are much more Silicon Valley than Hollywood. On Wednesday Fallon interviewed Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht--co-hosts of Diggnation, a weekly online show in which the two talk about the most popular stories on Digg. For the uninitiated, Digg is a social-news Web site in which users submit and vote on the articles that hit the home page. During his show, Fallon called Diggnation …

At the Montgomery Tech Conference in Santa Monica, California this week, the buzz seems entirely disconnected from the grim reality on Wall Street. The conference is coordinating over one thousand meetings between potential investors and startups--twice the number scheduled at the conference last year. While it's much harder to raise new capital these days, private equity and VC players still have billions of dollars--raised over the past few years--to invest. The tighter capital pool is pushing everyone to adjust. Investors are demanding profitability and are investing smaller amounts. They aren't thinking about IPOs. Instead, the exit strategy is a …

As the economy nosedives, CNBC--the TV darling of the turn-of-the-century stock boom--is proudly letting emotion overcome it. To watch CNBC today is to enter a universe where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed. It has increasingly pinned the state of the economy not on Wall Street, but on the two-month-old Administration, including recommendations to "Obama-proof your portfolio." In a way, CNBC has no choice but to become political, since the economy itself has. It is as if--between MSNBC and CNBC--NBC News were trying to own both the liberal and conservative voices …

Through a multi-year deal with Air America Radio, Montel Williams is getting his own national radio show. The program, "Montel Across America," is slated to debut weekdays 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST. Williams' new show will take the time period currently occupied by "The Lionel Show." For 17 years, Williams was host and executive producer of "The Montel Williams Show," one of the longest running daytime talk shows in TV. He is currently launching a multimedia business based on his "Living Well with Montel" brand. This latest addition to Air America's lineup follows the network's news earlier …

The British government is keeping the ban on product placement in British TV shows, despite economic difficulties and a three-month lobbying effort by broadcasters. Media minister Andy Burnham says he does not see a convincing economic case for product placement, which is widespread in the U.S. "My priority is to protect the standards of broadcasting for which Britain is known worldwide. There are very serious concerns about blurring the boundaries between advertising and editorial." The European Union greenlit limited TV product placement in 2007, but individual governments still have the power to outlaw the practice. British broadcaster ITV, …