Groupe Danone, Paris-based yogurt maker, is in the throes of a review of its global media business. The company spends about $500 million on measured media annually. Insiders say it is reviewing media accounts on a market-by-market basis, similar to its last media review in 2005-06. The U.S. portion of the Danone business is handled by MPG, which is participating in the review. The U.S. ad budget is about $140 million, per TNS. MPG won the account in October 2006, when it also won the client's assignments in France and Mexico and defended Spain and Portugal. Sources say …

Cox Enterprises, the owner of the Austin American-Statesman, has taken the newspaper off the market after deciding that offers it had received did not reflect the paper's value. "Cox said from the beginning that it would not preside over a fire sale," Statesman publisher Michael Vivio says. "This is a profitable company, and it just did not make sense to sell it for the prices offered." Cox put the Statesman and 28 other daily and weekly newspapers on the market in August 2008 and has sold most of them, including the Waco Tribune-Herald and The Lufkin Daily News. Two …

Scripps Networks Interactive posted a 49% jump in second-quarter profit, driven by strong fee revenue from its television affiliates. The company earned $79.5 million, compared with $53.3 million a year earlier. Scripps says expenses in the recent quarter fell 1.1 % year over year. Revenue for the Lifestyle Media segment, which includes HGTV and Food Network, was $351 million, a slight increase from $349 million a year ago. Total quarterly revenue decreased 3.7% to $391 million. Analysts had forecast revenue of $362 million. Revenue from affiliate fees increased 15% on improved rates for HGTV and expanding distribution …

Epix -- the pay TV company backed by Viacom, MGM and Lionsgate -- has signed a distribution agreement with Samuel Goldwyn Co. for all Epix platforms. The pact is Epix's first with a producer not owned by one of its backers, and it covers up to 20 of Goldwyn's films slated for release in 2010 and 2011. "Movies are what consumers want to watch on television, on demand, on their computers and on their mobile devices. Epix is designed to meet that demand," says CEO Mark Greenberg. Epix was formed in April 2008 after Viacom hit a …

Comcast reported a 53% increase in second-quarter profit, with a boost in net income to $967 million, up from $632 million in the year-ago period. The company's performance over the last three months outstripped analysts' expectations. Total revenue grew 4.5% to $8.94 billion, beating Wall Street projections of $8.86 billion. Despite the strong Q2 numbers, a faltering advertising marketplace continued to nibble at Comcast's fundamentals. Comcast CFO Mike Angelakis, says, "Our local cable ad revenues declined 20% this quarter, and we are not seeing any signs of recovery." Comcast's networks unit, which includes the cable channels E!, Style, …

Satellite TV operator DirecTV is in talks with cable networks to launch its own web video service under standards known in the industry as "TV Everywhere." The move would allow DirecTV's 18 million U.S. subscribers to access cable TV on the Web for free, as long as they can prove they subscribe to DirectTV. "TV Everywhere" is essentially a set of principles for pay-TV distributors that allow them to offer cable programming online. While DirecTV is agreeing to those principles, it intends to use its own technology and will create its own brand, much as Comcast has done …

A.O. Scott, from The New York Times and Michael Phillips, from the Chicago Tribune, will be the new hosts of "At The Movies," the venerable syndicated film criticism show made famous by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Ben Lyons and Ben Mankiewicz, hosts since September 2008, are leaving. The switch is a move to take the show back to its roots of one-on-one film debate that was established when it first began. Scott and Phillips "are regarded by millions of people as authorities in film criticism and will be lending their influential voices to 'At the Movies,'" says …

NBC has a new way to repurpose some of its news content. It is packaging lifestyle segments from its morning "Today Show," on a new Style Network program, "Tips Today." The style show is being produced by NBC's in-house Peacock Productions and will debut August 8 at 10 a.m. Each edition will feature segments from the "Today Show" focusing on fashion, weddings, home or beauty, bundled with new content. Rather than the typical "best of" compilation of footage from the prior week, "Tips Today" will dip into the "Today" archives, pulling segments that relate to the style show's fresh …

CNBC's audience plummeted 28% between July 2008 and July 2009, per Nielsen. Daniel Gross seeks to explain this ratings decline at a time when the country was experiencing "the most fundamental failure of capitalism since the Great Depression and important new deals between Washington and Wall Street." CNBC has embraced a highly politicized view of these developments. "The consensus on CNBC seemed to be that President Obama was half Joseph Stalin, half Jimmy Carter." Assuming it was planned, this oppositional strategy would make sense. Opinion journalists always prosper when the forces in Washington are arrayed against them. So …

Last fall, NBC started revamping the Web operations at its 10 "owned-and-operated" local broadcasters -- assembling digital media journalists from sites like Thrillist and AOL City Guide, as well print media refugees from Lucky, the New York Daily News and other outlets. So, how is it going? Not bad. In 10 months NBC's local Web overall audience has grown four-fold to 20 million unique visitors. It helps that the network has been promoting the local sites with commercials on "The Office" and "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien." NBC's goal is to create city-specific Web sites more authoritative …