The Federal Communications Commission is investigating News Corp.'s operation of its television station WWOR-TV in Seacaucus, N.J. Biggest issues: complaints that the station doesn't provide an adequate amount of New Jersey coverage, or enough news or public affairs programming altogether, according to the the L.A. Times.

Yes, sports telecasts can get good ratings, but they lose millions of dollars a year. That was the message from Steve Burke, the new CEO of NBCUniversal, who also expressed reservations about bidding for future Olympics, according to Studio Briefing. Burke also said the company's focus would be the company's profitable cable channels, not the ailing broadcast one, which he didn't expect to see perk up until "three, four, five years" had passed.

There were some juicy examples of ousted Time Inc. Chief Exec Jack Griffin's corporate faux pas in a post-mortem in New York Times' Media Decoder. For one, he insisted on being at the top of all editorial mastheads for Time Inc. publications, listed before the editor in chief. And he made such "impolitic" remarks as telling a town hall meeting that he was glad to be at a company "where I can actually read the magazines" -- unlike his previous employer, Meredith, which published women's mags.

The Vanity Fair Daily blog rates the "product placement efficiency" of photo captions that appeared in various magaines illustrating Fashion Week events. The formula measured length of sentence versus number of product placements. One favorite: "Brooke Shields sipped Diet Pepsi from a Jonathan Adler designed straw at Friday's Pepsi Style Studio event in NYC."

Many magazines are avoiding iPad subscription deals with Apple to protest against Apple's taking a 30% cut -- or, according to Ad Age's Nat Ives, because subscribers must give their consent before providing any info about themselves -- the basic currency of publisher-advertiser deals. Still, three magazines that have already agreed to Apple's terms for Pad subscription deals -- Elle, Popular Science, and Nylon -- discuss the reasons why. At Elle, for example, working with Apple beats the expenses of creating an e-commerce platform of its own for iPad subscriptions.

Cheering reports about CBS' revenue for 2010 could still signal "heated negotiations with affiliates" over the issue of reverse compensation: "the network taking some percentage of affiliates' retransmission dollars," according to TV New Check. While retransmission fees are but a tiny percentage of CBS' total revenue, President-CEO Leslie Moonves expects them to more than double by 2013, from $100 million to $250 million -- and that's not even counting the affiliates' share. Expect the issue to flare up, as it has recently for Fox.

"The most important outcome of this week's emerging tussle between Apple and Google is that we are about to have an intense and financially difficult conversation about what a fair price is for delivering customers to developers, publishers, and producers," writes Forrester analyst James McQuivey in a well-reasoned post in Paid Content.He argues that the ultimate platform fee will probably be below 10% -- but not until after 2012, when there are enough competitive products on the market. In the meantime, he sees Google's announcement of a rate of 10% to Apple's 30% as providing "frazzled content companies with some …

Report are in that Charlie Sheen will be going back to production on "Two And A Half Men," soon, but in light of all the back and forthing going on -- and in light of the fact that this is the number-one show we're talking about -- TV critic Alan Sepinwall asks why the producers just don't shoot around the trouble-making, headline-grabbing star. He also quotes from a post by NPR's Linda Holmes in which she asks, "Is there any point at which you do not keep a guy in a high-profile job in family entertainment simply because using …

Just for fun, check out all the hypothetical scenarios of celebs appearing in the Oscars opening number, as dreamed up by The Washington Post's Jen Chaney. There's everybody from Meryl Streep and Sean Penn, who have special resonance as former co-stars of Oscar hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco respectively (Penn getting extra points for being Franco's lover in "Milk") -- to the cast of "Freaks and Geeks," the short-lived TV show where Franco got his start.

The Selma Times-Journal will charge for access to its content on its Web site, beginning in March, according to Editor & Publisher. The tiered system of payments, explained in full on the Alabama paper's Web site, ranges from an annual subscription of $48 to one month for $4.95.