AMC announced today that the most famous ad men since Larry Tate and Miles Drentell will definitely be back on the air in early 2012 -- though perhaps without the aid of the characters' creator, Matt  Weiner.  Entertainment Weekly reports that AMC has released a statement officially authorizing production of season 5 of "Mad Men," while noting "ongoing, key non-cast negotiations" -- presumably with Weiner. Meanwhile, The Daily gives Weiner's side of the story.   The money quote, from a creative source: "Weiner is being completely screwed by AMC," since the network is mandating budget cuts like shaving …

Here's an upbeat, detailed analysis of how local Philadelphia TV stations are attempting "to boost revenue and keep up with technology: joining forces, rebooting websites, reformatting news shows, branching into new time slots, creating new shows, and, in one instance, starting a new local channel," according to Jonathan Storm, the Philadelphia Inquirer TV critic. Overal, the economic picture for these stations is fairly bright: "revenue increased last year, even as ratings continued to drop."

The conflict between cable channel owners and cable operators over who owns the rights to stream those channels to new devices like tablets has come to a head in recent weeks. Most recently, Viacom and Scripps Networks squared off with Time Warner Cable. On Monday, Time Warner Cable took the fight to the consumer, with a Web campaign asking why some TV stations wanted to "take away" the "freedom to watch on more screens." More examples follow in this New York Times piece.

Reed Business Information is killing the dead-tree version of its venerable Computer Weekly and selling its Web site to IT publisher TechTarget.

Yep, NBC has launched an iPad app for its coverage of the wedding between England's Price William and Kate Middleton. It has also announced the scope of its 20 hours of coverage of the event from NBCU stations -- which will include (ugh) Real Housewife of New York LuAnn De Lesseps giving her take on "Bravo's Watch What Happens Live: Royal Wedding Spectacular."

Probably no big surprise, but 2011's unusually large share of major global disasters is already "wreaking havoc on the already-skeletal budgets of cable and broadcast news organizations," with many having already spent their annual budget in the first three months of the year, according to The Wrap.Find more of the particulars in this story, such as a handy-dandy chart spelling out some of the numbers involved -- including the "$1.5 million one network said it spent covering Japan's earthquake/tsunami in a single day."

Yes, today's the day (2 p.m. ET) when the New York Times pay system for digital content goes into effect globally -- an effort still haloed by much murkiness, notes Paid Content's Staci D. Kramer. "The logistics are far more complex than anything should be that doesn't require a degree in quantum physics," she writes, noting that many media outlets initially got some of the details wrong. "'Paywall equals no access' is much easier to grasp than 'paywall has lots of windows and a doggie door.'" Meanwhile, speaking at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Dallas. Martin Nisenholtz, …

FX's first step back into sports broadcasting after a hiatus of about five years will be onto the gridiron. The channel should announce today it will air 13 college football games on Saturdays this fall.The attempt to build a strong cable sports outlet that competes for sports right packages is prompted partly by COO Chase Carey's return to News Corp., Broadcasting & Cable reports.

Long-form, meticulously sourced journalism -- presumably near death in the Internet age -- is having a bit of a renaissance, mostly due to tablet and other e-reading devices, according to the New York Times' David Carr. "In the digital realm, there is infinite space, but somehow this hasn't resulted in a flowering of long-form content," freelance writer Evan Ratliff told Carr as the rationale for Ratliff's helping to found The Atavist, which so far has presented three serious pieces of multimedia journalism available for the iPad and other mobile devices.

Apparently Golf Digest divested Tiger Woods of his "playing editor" title after his marital and PR troubles peaked. But now, wearing an almost goofily earnest smile, Woods appears on the cover of the pub's April issue. "A number of" readers have protested, according to editor Bob Carney, who prints several of their comments on the Editors' Blog, along with an explanation of why the "extraordinary golfer" still deserves such coverage.