Condé Nast kicked off its third week of layoffs with 12 people getting the ax at Glamour, the company's second-most-profitable magazine after Vogue. Through November, Glamour's ad pages were down 20.3% for the year. Eight employees of Wired are also losing their jobs. The layoffs follow cutbacks at Vanity Fair and W on Friday and at Vogue earlier last week. The rolling layoffs are expected to continue over the next week, including some employees in the editorial department at Vanity Fair. That department escaped last week's cuts. The publishing company is estimated to have laid off nearly 400 …

Call it the Leno effect. NBC's decision to shift the late-night talk show host to 10 p.m. enabled the network to substitute a low-cost talk show for expensive scripted dramas. But it's playing havoc with many of NBC's 200 plus affiliates. Leno's weaker "lead-in" is undermining audiences of their 11 p.m. local newscasts, which bring in about a third of the local stations' revenue. Leno's new show averaged about 5.6 million viewers the first four days of last week, more than a third less than NBC drew last season with its drama shows. Local stations, whose goodwill the …

NBC Universal is increasingly offering marketers the chance to hitch their products to programs promoting a cause or health or social issue. The company is creating special programs across its broadcast, cable and online properties. It then packages existing episodes that promote a specific cause, such as the environment. These issue packages are touted to marketers as a way to better target their ads and product placements.

NBC Universal is increasingly offering marketers the chance to hitch their products to programs promoting a cause or health or social issue. The company is creating special programs across its broadcast, cable and online properties. It then packages existing episodes that promote a specific cause, such as the environment. These issue packages are touted to marketers as a way to better target their ads and product placements.

The forecast for comedy is finally perking up. CBS' "The Big Bang Theory" has been morphing from hit to mega-hit. The new ABC comedy "Modern Family" is earning critical raves and good ratings, This uptick in upbeat shows helped fuel a buying frenzy this summer, as networks nabbed more comedy projects than normal. More recently, the success of "Modern Family" and "Cougar Town" has led to a last-minute surge in single-camera comedy purchases. Family and relationships show up in much of this year's comedy development. Several focus on newlyweds, or couples with new babies. A handful of projects …

While online clips of TV shows may be available on Hulu, TV networks hope that diehard fans will click on the shows' dedicated Web sites to get the full fan experience. To generate those clicks, the networks are working to make their series' sites more unique with extras including blogs and interactive games tied to the shows and their characters. Advertisers are actually driving the change because they covet targeted buys of online ads linked to popular shows, as opposed to ads on store-like aggregate video sites. Building traffic at in-house sites also allows networks to sell inventory …

Los Angeles Times' publisher, Tribune Co., along with New York Times Co. and Hearst, say marketing spending from car makers such as GM and Daimler AG has rebounded in the third quarter. That may have helped stanch the severe decline of advertising sales earlier this year. Experts believe overall ad sales at U.S. newspaper publishers fell 23% in the third quarter to $6.85 billion, easing from declines of 28%-29% in the second and first quarters. Carmakers, which slashed national ad spending by 44% in the first half, bought advertisements again as the government's "cash for clunkers" program to …

ESPN and other radio companies are figuring out how to move talk programming from AM to FM. In an effort to migrate more affiliates to FM, ESPN Radio just signed an affiliation deal to put its brand on WNUW-FM, making the station the first FM sports station in Philadelphia. The station is the 29th FM affiliate ESPN has signed since January. Why FM instead of AM? According to Arbitron, 79% of radio listening is to FM and three-quarters of FM listeners never tune to AM. FM listeners are also younger (only 37% are older than 50) and there …

A CBS affiliate in Saginaw, Mich., is generating revenue by running obituary ads on-air and online. The TV and online obits could be "one of our top billers within two years," says Jeff Guilbert, sales manager of WNEM. Turns out that three of the region's four daily newspapers, which regularly run obituaries, have reduced publication to three days a week. WNEM owner, Meredith, expects to roll the concept out to its other stations and says it is also in licensing discussions with other station groups. Tom Cox, VP at Meredith's local media group, says funeral directors and mourners …

News Corp.'s Fox Reality Channel will cease operations March 31, 2010, paving the way for a new venture from the Fox Cable Networks group and possibly an outside party. The 4-year-old channel is currently available in only about 50 million homes. Despites its limited reach, the Reality Channel has been a moneymaker for Fox Cable because it provides a way for News Corp. to monetize library repeats of old reality shows. A new venture could make a whole lot more money. There's growing buzz around the TV business that News Corp. has new ideas for the channel. …