PHD has retained media planning and buying duties on Discovery Networks' stable of television channels after a review, three months after Scott Hagedorn was named U.S. CEO of the agency. The client launched the review late last year. Discovery spent nearly $80 million in media last year, per Nielsen. It is among Omnicom-owned PHD's top clients. Other finalists vying for the business were Universal McCann and The Martin Agency. Discovery has been a PHD client for nearly a decade. Before that, the business was handled by Creative Media -- one of three shops that Omnicom rolled up in …

As the economy nosedives, CNBC--the TV darling of the turn-of-the-century stock boom--is proudly letting emotion overcome it. To watch CNBC today is to enter a universe where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed. It has increasingly pinned the state of the economy not on Wall Street, but on the two-month-old Administration, including recommendations to "Obama-proof your portfolio." In a way, CNBC has no choice but to become political, since the economy itself has. It is as if--between MSNBC and CNBC--NBC News were trying to own both the liberal and conservative voices …

At the Montgomery Tech Conference in Santa Monica, California this week, the buzz seems entirely disconnected from the grim reality on Wall Street. The conference is coordinating over one thousand meetings between potential investors and startups--twice the number scheduled at the conference last year. While it's much harder to raise new capital these days, private equity and VC players still have billions of dollars--raised over the past few years--to invest. The tighter capital pool is pushing everyone to adjust. Investors are demanding profitability and are investing smaller amounts. They aren't thinking about IPOs. Instead, the exit strategy is a …

In a sign that a new Web-centric generation is moving into the late-night talk show scene, after only a week and a half on the air, NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" hosted guests who are much more Silicon Valley than Hollywood. On Wednesday Fallon interviewed Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht--co-hosts of Diggnation, a weekly online show in which the two talk about the most popular stories on Digg. For the uninitiated, Digg is a social-news Web site in which users submit and vote on the articles that hit the home page. During his show, Fallon called Diggnation …

To promote its flagship morning show, "Good Morning America," ABC has bought ads in rival early-bird programming, including CNN's "American Morning." In other words, when CNN's John Roberts cuts to a commercial break, you might see an ad suggesting you change the channel to watch GMA's Diane Sawyer instead. Since rival networks were not likely to accept an ad from ABC News, ABC made the purchases through local cable operators in the top 10 national markets, allowing its GMA ads to run between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on a range of cable-news channels. ABC's approach is the latest use …

The top 25% highest-performing banks are those that spend the highest portion of their ad budgets on TV, says a new study from Aite Group. The report examines ad-spending and return on advertising performance of 32 of the largest 50 U.S. retail banks from 2006 through 2008. Banks that performed best in driving deposit, loan and IRA account growth included big names such as Citibank and Wachovia, as well as smaller companies like Huntington, BB&T and Hudson Bank. These top performers generally invested 50% of their ad dollars in TV. Banks that performed less well devoted 23%-36% of their …

Ad spending in out-of-home advertising during the fourth quarter plummeted 15%--sending total OOH revenue down 4% for the year to $7 billion, per the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Fourth-quarter revenue accounted for $1.5 billion in total ad expenditures. The last time the outdoor business posted negative growth was in 2001, when revenue was down 1%. For the year, spending in insurance and real estate dropped 22.4%, while communications spending dropped 15.4%. First-quarter 2009 looks equally as grim as fourth-quarter 2008, say industry executives.

HBO is defending its plans to depict a sacred Mormon endowment ceremony in an upcoming episode of "Big Love," its drama about a Utah polygamous family. HBO said it did not intend to be disrespectful of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and apologized--but notes that the ceremony is an important part of the "Big Love" story line. News of the episode has sparked an online campaign by individual Latter-day Saints, who are calling for a boycott of "Big Love" and cancellation of subscriptions to HBO, AOL and other Time Warner Inc.-owned entities. The church itself is …

The second-quarter TV advertising market appears to be frozen--due to marketers that are unwilling to part with their dollars until the very last minute, say media buyers. Already, advertisers are pulling back between 12% and 14% of their "holds"--the second-quarter ad time they earmarked last May during the upfront sales session. Buyers are worrying about how many of those ad dollars will come trickling back in the scatter market, where ad time is purchased on an as-needed basis near air time. Marci Ryvicker, Wachovia media analyst, says that "the scatter market has really pulled back. Advertisers want to see …

In a feud that is grabbing loads of free publicity for both Comedy Central and CNBC, CNBC's stock picker Jim Cramer has agreed to step into the ring with Comedy Central's Jon Stewart tonight on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." He will be meeting face-to-face with the man who has spent the last week pillorying him over his flawed stock picks. The duel between the two media personalities started last week after Stewart savaged "Mad Money" host Cramer along with the rest of the CNBC crew for their coverage of the financial crisis. Shortly after, Stewart issued a …