After a month-long stalemate, the television upfront marketplace is starting to move. NBC Universal and GroupM are close to finalizing a major deal for broadcast and cable inventory for next season. Under the deal currently being discussed, GroupM will pay an average CPM of minus 7%, compared to last year for its prime-time inventory, say insiders. For its cable deals, the buying conglomerate is said to be paying an average CPM between flat and minus-2%. It's not clear the amount of dollars in play. NBC took in an estimated $1.85 billion in the 2008/09 upfront. None of …

Pop icon Michael Jackson died yesterday afternoon, not long after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center. It was the site of a syndicated newsmagazine, TMZ.com, which first reported the news of his hospitalization and also broke word of his death. The TV networks then scrambled to pay tribute to Jackson with specials on his life. ABC News -- which had scored several exclusive interviews with Jackson during his career-- aired a 9 p.m. special. NBC expanded its previously announced Farrah Fawcett tribute to 9-11 p.m. and devoted it to retrospectives on both pop icons. CBS decided to air a …

The top 10 travel and hospitality brands boosted their product placements on prime-time broadcast television by 34% last year, per Nielsen. Most of the brands were hotels, mixed in with the JFK and LAX Airports. Of the hotels, three Las Vegas resorts posted the most product placement occurrences: The Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, and New York New York Hotel & Casino. Among broadcast network TV shows, Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance" was tops, with 534 placements for the travel and hospitality category. The show's backdrop of the Las Vegas …

American Idol's Simon Cowell is setting up a global entertainment company with U.K. retail entrepreneur Philip Green. The joint venture, to be based in Los Angeles and London, would encompass TV production, talent management and merchandising. Cowell's talent show "X Factor" may bow in the U.S. as one of the enterprise's first ventures. Cowell also runs entertainment company Syco, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment. The new venture would co-exist alongside Syco, with Cowell taking care of creative matters while Green handles the business side. The two tycoons aim to take on "Hollywood moguls and U.S. entertainment corporations …

The New York Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild have reached a tentative deal over wage and benefit cuts at the Boston Globe. Underlying pessimism over the inevitable cuts has been an unspoken assumption that downward trends in print readership and ad revenue will continue until they converge at zero. But it looks like that's not going to happen, writes Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University assistant professor. Somewhere there's a stabilization point. Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell has proven that it's possible to get small enough to break even or earn a small profit. Surely the Globe can …

Setting aside their competitive urges, Comcast and Verizon have agreed that Comcast will sell advertising for Verizon's FiOS television service in 10 markets where they both operate. Comcast's advertising sales division, Comcast Spotlight, will sell spot cable ads for Verizon starting in the fall. Comcast says the Verizon deal is its largest ad sales agreement. The five-and-a-half-year deal covers Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Fort Wayne, Ind., Harrisburg, Pa., Pittsburgh, Portland, Ore., Richmond, Va., Seattle and Washington, D.C. In January, Comcast Spotlight reached an ad sales deal with another rival, Dish Network Corp. Comcast sells ads for Dish's ten …

It looks like Vogue might be slipping. Rival Elle banked more advertising pages than Voguein the first half of the year. It's the first time the 24-year-old Elle has outshone its more elite competitor. The most recent six issues of Elle held 970 advertising pages, a 22% decline year-to-year, compared to Vogue's 956 pages, a 32% decline. In comparison, Vogue had 10% more advertising pages than Elle last year. Time Warner's InStyle remains the leader, posting 1,151 ad pages year-to-date. Elle, Marie Claireand similar magazines now enjoy larger profiles thanks to their involvement …

Cablevision, Major League Baseball and the New York Yankees cable network have reached a multiyear deal for live streaming of online Yankees games in the team's home market. Cablevision Internet customers who receive the Yankees' YES Network will be able to buy a package to see the games live on the Internet starting July 8. It will cost fans a one-time fee of $49.95 for the remainder of the season or $19.95 for any 30-day period. A price for a full season for next year has not been set. Up to now baseball fans have not been …

The New York Times is likely to begin charging users to read its news on mobile phones before it charges them to read content on its Web sites. Martin Nisenholtz, head of digital operations, says the publisher is considering paid subscriptions on the iPhone and similar devices because they allow for less advertising than the Web. "It's not going to be tenable for publishers to offer their content for free in the mobile platform forever," he says. Currently, The New York Times is available without charge on the iPhone, but the publisher charges a fee for its content on …

Esquire, Harvard Business Review and Bon Appetit are among the magazine titles that will launch iPhone applications in coming months through a partnership with developer ScrollMotion, which also created the People magazine app. After the newly released Apple iPhone 3G S sold over 1 million units last weekend, interest in the device as a platform for magazines is heating up. "What we never had before was a good enough device that rivaled what it was like to read in the magazine space," says ScrollMotion co-founder Josh Koppel. "With touch screens, the iPhone is a magic slate." That slate …