WPP is trying to push through a controversial multimillion-dollar bonus scheme for its chief executive. The holding company is said to be confident the scheme will be approved at its general meeting June 2, despite stiff opposition from UK shareholder groups. U.S. shareholders, who collectively hold a 38% stake in WPP, are expected to support the plan. According to the incentive scheme, senior managers who invest in the company's shares will be rewarded with up to five times as many free shares, as long as the firm hits certain key performance targets, including outperforming its rivals. CEO Martin …

Social-networking Web site Twitter has teamed with Reveille productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop an unscripted series based on the popular site. The show would harness Twitter to put players on the trail of celebrities in an interactive, competitive format. Twitter consists of 140-character postings from members around the world. The producers call their proposed series the first to bring the immediacy of Twitter to the TV screen. "Twitter is a technological and cultural phenomenon," says executive producer Amy Ephron, who created the TV show and took it to the Web company. Ephron and others are …

Since President Obama took office in January, CNN has seen its ratings drop. But the biggest disappointment has been the cable channel's silver-haired hope, Anderson Cooper. The ratings have plunged for his show, "Anderson Cooper 360," this year, with an even steeper drop in May, especially in the coveted 25-54 demographic. In that demo he's down nearly 30% from April, averaging less than 250,000 viewers. A rep for Cooper counters that, "Year to date, the show has an impressive 51% advantage over MSNBC in total viewers and a 41% lead over MSNBC in the 25-54 demographic." In …

The TV network E! hopes to benefit from the power of Twitter by running tweets from a number of celebrities during its programming. The "Celebri-Tweets" will appear in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen. TV networks have been aggressively exploring the potential of Twitter lately. In addition to encouraging celebrities and executives to tweet, networks have been making official announcements via the service. E! will also feature a "Celebri-Tweet" widget on its homepage keeping users up to date on what the celebrity Twitterati are saying in 140 characters or less. Other networks are creating …

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which tracks customer satisfaction across a wide range of industries, has unsettling news for newspapers. According to its "satisfaction index," in the first quarter '09, newspaper customers' satisfaction rating was lower than airlines and cell phone providers. Newspapers also had the steepest "satisfaction" drop of any industry in the quarter, per the survey. That's bad enough, but what's worse is how much newspapers' rating has slipped since the surveys began. It's off 12.5% since the survey's debut in 1994. In contrast, the most-satisfactory segment for the first quarter was the full-service restaurant industry. …

McClatchy is changing key aspects of its debt agreements in a bid to stay afloat. The publisher of The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, and more than two dozen other U.S. newspapers is planning to exchange $1.15 billion worth of existing debt for cash and new debt. The new debt comes with a higher interest rate of 15.75%, versus about 5%-7%, on existing obligations, but allows the publisher to pay it off several years later. McClatchy also will be able to use its revolving credit line for up to $60 million to pay off some debt, the company says. …

Local advertising media are collectively forecast to decline to $144.4 billion in 2013, down from $155 billion last year, per BIA and its sister company The Kelsey Group. This year, local ad revenue will drop to $141.3 billion and hit bottom at $135.8 billion in 2010, before reversing direction in 2011. The forecast includes newspapers, direct mail, TV, radio, yellow pages, traditional outdoor, cable TV, magazines and digital/online. On the plus side, new media presents opportunities for new revenue streams for all the media groups, say the forecasters. New media's share of total ad spend is forecast to …

Newspapers are reporting success chasing local online advertising with technology and ad inventory from Yahoo. The Yahoo newspaper consortium has reportedly sold nearly $50 million in Yahoo inventory so far, with sales running several million dollars a week. About 150 papers started using the new Yahoo platform last fall. Another 350 have signed up since. At Scripps newspapers, the new platform was largely responsible for a 30% increase in online-only ad sales in the first quarter, say company execs. The Yahoo partnership helped the Atlanta Journal Constitution line up fast-food and telecom accounts previously devoted to broadcast and …

For the first time Google TV Ads has begun booking upfront deals with major agencies and advertisers. Deutsch, Saatchi & Saatchi and other agencies, as well as advertisers such as Coldwell Banker are "coming to the table," says Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads. Yesterday Google hosted an event at its offices in New York with more than 100 chief marketing officers of Fortune 500 companies and their agencies. Tens of millions have been committed through the TV spot buying system in the year ahead, say executives. Many of the commitments run for a year starting in …

Competing TV stations have been sharing resources since January as they respond to a financial train wreck that has local TV broadcasters across the country reeling. Despite the excitement of the presidential election -- or maybe because it moved viewers to cable news -- ratings for local evening news shows nationwide dropped 11.4% from November 2007 to November 2008, per Nielsen. In Philadelphia, for instance, nearly $200 million in revenue, 25%, vanished from the TV market between 2004 and 2008, and an additional $50 million will be missing by 2012, say forecasters. "The situation is more dire than …