Most of the big TV providers have signed on to a petition asking the government to revamp station retransmission rules, such as Cablevision, Charter, DirecTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable. But the nation's biggest cable company, Comcast, was missing. Comcast is in an odd position because it is buying a majority stake in NBC Universal, which owns the NBC broadcast network, an will benefit from retrans fees soon. The providers that signed the petition said they were trying to prevent the ABC-Cablevision battle just before the Oscars. They are asking the FCC to let the government step in …

Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, said "advertising will continue to be a very important revenue stream but the reality is in order for publishers to make this transition they have to find new revenue streams." But finding a model that blends free and paid is tricky. Some newspapers will or are charging online readers, but Conde Nast won't. Julie Michalowski, vice president for business development at Conde Nast, said a pay wall is not the strategy being considered by the publisher of The New Yorker, Vogue, Wired, and other magazines. "What we want to continue …

Moody's Investors Service changed its outlook on The New York Times Co (NYT.N) to stable, from negative, saying the newspaper publisher's revenue declines are likely to moderate. A stable outlook indicates the company is less likely to be downgraded from B1, four steps below investment grade, over the coming 12-to-18 months. Moderating revenue declines and reductions in operating costs will allow The New York Times to stabilize its leverage, a measure of debt relative to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, below six times. The newspaper reported 4Q revs fell 11.5% to $681.2 million, and warned that print …

Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company was keeping its options open for dealing with TV network ABC and its struggling news division, including the possibility of a spinoff. At a shareholders meeting he said there are no guarantees of what will remain part of Disney. Sanford C Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson said such speculation resurfaces periodically, on the argument that ABC does not fit in well with Disney's focus on exploiting its content and theme park properties across all divisions, adding: "ABC doesn't add a lot of value to Disney's other divisions," he said. But he did …

A court just ruled that the San Francisco Bay Guardian is entitled to half the advertising revenue of the rival SF Weekly to help collect $21 million in damages after a jury verdict of illegal price-cutting, a Superior Court commissioner ruled Tuesday. The order would give the Guardian its first substantial payment on the March 2008 verdict. The ad revenue would be "a very significant" amount, as much as $200,000 a month, said Jay Adkisson, a Guardian lawyer. The SF Weekly's parent company, Village Voice Media Holdings, will ask a state appeals court to overturn the ruling. The …

Searches for major U.S. broadcast news brands -- CNN, ABC, MSNBC, Fox, BBC -- fell across the board in February, according to data from Experian Hitwise. Each of the top 10 brands in the Broadcast Media category experienced loss of share compared with the previous month, and even generic searches for "news" dipped from 0.75 percent of searches in the category to 0.57 percent over the course of the month. In non-media categories, Toyota's recall troubles continued to dominate the automotive category, accounting for a large portion of automotive-related searches for the second month running. Hitwise, a subsidiary of …

Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, may add a television job to his magazine schedule. He is in final talks to be the co-host of a new PBS Friday night public affairs series called "Need to Know," which will be broadcast from the network's new studios in Lincoln Center. The co-anchor for the program, which begins May 7 at 8:30 p.m., is expected to be Alison Stewart, formerly of NPR's short-lived "The Bryant Park Project" morning show and, before that, anchor of MSNBC's "The Most." The new series, an extension of a PBS Web site with the same name, replaces …

Nielsen Business Media has sold Convenience Store News, Convenience Store News for the Single Store Owner and their related products to Stagnito Inc. Convenience Store News is the leading trade media brand serving the $633 billion convenience retailing industry through an integrated portfolio of two magazines, a Web site, Web seminars and six email newsletters. Nielsen recently sold its media portolio, including Adweek, Mediaweek, Hollywood Reporter, Brandweek, Billboard to e5 Global Media. Included in the Stagnito acquisition are directories adn guide books that are leading databases of chain retailers nationwide.

Jonathan Miller, head of digital media at News Corporation, said "dual revenue streams" are likely to co-exist online, add the choice between paywall or free is not mutually exclusive. They can co-exist based on quality of content and geography," he said at an industry event. Miller's boss Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corp, is against giving away media content for free and is planning to start charging for his company's Web sites, including Fox and the New York Post later this year.

CBS says it has sold out its ad inventory for March Madness On Demand, its upcoming live streaming of all 64 games of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. More advertisers have signed on this year versus last, including both brands that are advertising during CBS' broadcast coverage of the tournament and several Web-only advertisers. This year, Coke and AT&T are back as charter MMOD sponsors, though previous sponsor Pontiac has been replaced this year by Capital One. Besides Web streaming, CBS is once again delivering live games to Apple iPhone and iTouch devices via a premium MMOD application.