A research note written by a teenager who works at Morgan Stanley has become the talk of middle-aged media executives and investors. Morgan Stanley's European analysts asked 15-year-old Matthew Robson, one of the bank's interns in London, to report on his friends' media habits. Morgan Stanley then published the "clear and thought-provoking" findings. Edward Hill-Wood, head of the team, estimated the teen's report had generated five or six times more feedback than the team's usual reports. Robson sets out a sobering case that tomorrow's consumers are using more media but are unwilling to pay for it. His peers …

TV networks are hoping that promoting new shows earlier than ever via online and offline media will bring bigger audiences this fall. For instance, ABC in late April started running promos for its new mysterious drama "Flash Forward," even before the network admitted it was picking up the show. CBS is giving affiliates promotional materials to tout fall programming at 10 p.m. well in advance of NBC's "Jay Leno Show" prime-time talk-show launch. Thanks to the rise of social networking on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, tipping off die-hard fans to early peeks at selected programs can lead to more …

HBO is the latest programmer to announce its participation in Comcast's "On Demand Online" trial. The test will allow 5,000 homes nationwide to stream cable programming online that they already receive as part of their cable TV subscriptions. HBO will make content from both HBO and Cinemax available as part of the Comcast trial, which is based on Time Warner's "TV Everywhere" initiative. Initially a combined total of 750 hours a month of HBO and Cinemax programming will be provided to the Comcast trial. Featured shows will include series like "True Blood," "Entourage" and "The Sopranos," movies like "Transformers," …

ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC Universal and other media companies are rushing to try to quash a congressional plan they say amounts to a tax on advertisements for prescription drugs. The proposed tax is part of a health-care reform package. Currently, drug companies, like many other marketers, can treat the cost of advertising as a fully deductible business expense. The plan would remove that tax deduction.

In an unusual use of out-of-home media, Domino's logos have been "cleaned" into dirty sidewalks in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York as part of an ad campaign. GreenGraffiti uses a high-pressure water hose to spray advertising images into the grime on the street. More than 200 of the Domino's ads were made on the sidewalk to promote the chain's American Legends pizza. GreenGraffiti ads are created by laying a stencil on the sidewalk and using a power washer. "Our franchisees can also do local things with the [clean graffiti] tool," says a Domino's rep. The first …

Media moguls and executives at Sun Valley this year spent a lot of time talking about how to best prepare for the challenges of the Web and mobile disruption. The upshot? Companies that once traded and leveraged their huge size and scale of distribution are now considering whether just being bigger might not necessarily be better in the new fragmented media world. "The notion that there are synergies between content and distribution has been dispelled," says Tuna Amobi, equity analyst at Standard & Poor's. "You're not going to see a Comcast Corp trying to merge with a Disney …

Consumer package-goods marketers are piling more pressure on marketing and media agencies, pushing them for ways to slash costs. For instance, both Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser, a $1 billion global spender, have called worldwide media-agency reviews in recent weeks. The growing list of global agency reviews by such companies is "primarily cost-driven," says Stef Gans, CEO of consultancy Effective Brands. He adds that the lure of agency lineups that better reflect current marketing realities is another motivator. Procter & Gamble's BAL (Brand Agency Leader) program, in which a lead agency gets a preset fee from which it …

As news organizations roll out their coverage plans for Sonia Sotomayor's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, an interesting innovation is coming from the Associated Press. AP is promising readers insider access to the toughest ticket in Washington with a Twitter feed, AP_Courtside. Predictably, some tweets link to AP blog coverage on Yahoo News and to the news agency's traditional content. But most noteworthy is AP's promise that readers will "direct our coverage" of the Sotomayor hearings. The Twitter feed started soliciting reader feedback last week. The approach is a first for the news agency and an experimental departure …

Some of the most compelling sports radio hosts are becoming TV personalities -- again. Dan Patrick, a 15-year veteran of ESPN, now co-hosts NBC's "Football Night in America," writes for Sports Illustrated and hosts his own national radio show. DirecTV plans to launch a three-hour televised version of that radio show. "The Dan Patrick Show" debuts on Aug. 3 at 9 a.m. There will be five robotic cameras and a handheld to give the TV show a feeling akin to "The Office." Patrick's staff will also enter "confessionals" during commercial breaks to discuss their thoughts on sports news of …

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch says his company will wait until the economy recovers before considering acquisitions, preserving its more than $6 billion in cash in the recession. "I don't see an end to the downturn, and I can't predict when we'll start to see a rebound," Murdoch said at the Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. "It's better to hold onto what we've got until it's clearer when there's an end." News Corp. built up its holdings of cash and equivalents to $6.05 billion as of March 31 from $3.24 billion a year earlier, according to …