Ex-News Corp. CEO Peter Chernin wants Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, owned by his old boss. While News Corp. bankrolls Chernin's new Fox production company, it has no plan to bid for MGM, with or without Chernin's involvement, there is one possibility that could see the two unite. Sources say he could fold the Fox deals in MGM and oversee all new productions made under the historic trademark, including any James Bond sequels and movies based on "The Hobbit." Chernin would have an equity stake in the entity, but News Corp. would be the primary owner with or without a financial partner(s) if …

News anchor Russ Mitchell will leave "The Early Show" at the end of the week, but will continue to be anchor of the Sunday edition of the "CBS Evening News" and become national correspondent for CBS. It's the first change since longtime NBC producer David Friedman was hired, though the decision was made before his arrival, according to sources. The show, which trails "Today" and "Good Morning America" also features Harry Smith, Maggie Rodriguez, Julie Chen and Dave Price, the weatherman. (Ms. Chen has been on maternity leave since September, and a date for her return has not yet …

More than a dozen startup broadcast networks continue to vie for carriage on TV stations' subchannels, offering broadcasters a way to leverage their digital signals and generate a new source of revenue. Profits may be in the future, since start-u costs are expensive, but viewer response is favorable. Plus, though overshadowed by mobile DTV, multicasting is one of the great hopes of digital broadcasting, which was fully implemented just last June after a long transition. In digital, stations can broadcast multiple channels: their main service in HD and secondary ones in SD. They can also add a mobile …

Steve Bellaria, a former cable executive with Charter Communications, lead staffer on the FCC's spectrum reclamation plan, says broadcasters are worried abou a worst-case broadband scenario that isn't on the table. He says the plan that will be vetted by FCC commissioners would be voluntary and would not require any broadcaster to sell its spectrum to the government or give up the ability to transmit in HD, multicast or mobile, at least initially. Depending on demand, the commission might have to look at the spectrum issue again. Bellaria says any idea that the FCC or special interests are …

Does Conan O'Brien's contract give NBC the right to bump him to 12:05 to make room for Jay Leno at 11:35? That's the $40 million legal question. If O'Brien's contract has a time-slot language, like David Letterman's, he's in the right. If there isn't, presumably NBC could void his deal without paying him off. That's the position NBC executives are taking. However, if the breach-of-contract claim ever got to court, perhaps O'Brien could argue that specifying a time slot was not necessary because "The Tonight Show" has aired in essentially the same time period for decades. Late-night is a …

With print newspapers struggling to turn a profit, many have turned to the Web to stay viable. While some offer their online content free of charge, other papers have played around with subscriptions by charging readers a monthly fee. But that strategy may backfire, says a Harris poll released Wednesday. Among more than 2,000 online adults surveyed, 77% said they wouldn't pay anything to read a newspaper's stories on the Web. And among those willing to pay, 19 percent would cough up between $1 and $10 a month; only 5 percent would shell out more than $10 each month.

An Australian study found every hour spent sitting in front of the television raises the risk of premature death from heart disease by 18%. Researchers tracked the TV-viewing habits of 8,800 adults and followed them for six years. They found those who spent four hours daily in front of TV had an 80% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease than those who watched the box for less than two hours. Prolonged inactivity, which can raise blood-sugar and cholesterol levels, is to blame for the health effects, not TV, said David Dunstan, a study author and researcher at …

Music from artists on labels owned by Warner Music Group, the world's third-largest music company, will be available to U.S. subscribers of digital music service eMusic. The deal makes 10,000 catalog albums from artists like REM, Depeche Mode and Aretha Franklin available for downloading. But the deal, to expand eMusic's subscriber base, does not include newer hit records. eMusic offers downloads from independent labels and catalog music from major labels to subscribers who pay a monthly fee. Warner Music is only the second major music company to sign on, after Sony Music. eMusic is not a digital store; …

Target Corp. is launching is own e-commerce site by the start of the holiday shopping season in 2011. It also announced several of the vendors that will construct the platform. Target announced last year it would move off of Amazon.com Inc.'s e-commerce platform. Amazon, will continue to support Target.com until the new site is debuts. Target will use Sapient Corp. as its chief systems integrator and will build the new infrastructure on a WebSphere e-commerce platform from IBM Corp. and database software from Oracle Corp. Endeca Technologies Inc. and Autonomy Corp. will provide applications for site search and …

The economic slump has prices for Super Bowl commercial time falling for only the second time in its history, but it is still the most expensive on television. TNS Media Intelligence said 30-second commercials during next month's Super Bowl on CBS are selling for between $2.5 million and $2.8 million. That's a drop from last year, when ads averaged $3 million on NBC. Big players like Pepsi and General Motors are staying on the sidelines. This leaves holes for smaller companies like Diamond Foods and Dr Pepper Snapple to publicize their products before 100 million viewers. About 20% to …