Media buying companies report hiring was up 43% in Q1, a substantial climb from the 25% increase reported for the same quarter last year. That was among the encouraging statistics evident in a quarterly survey of media-buying companies by software provider Strata. In other good news, 56% of companies surveyed reported an increase in business in Q1, and a similar percentage noted that growth during the first half of this year should beat out that of the last half of 2010.

Reader's Digest Association President and CEO Mary Berner is out of the company, and Tom Williams, former CFO, is taking her job. Berner had been CEO since 2007.

Scripps Network Interactive's The Travel Channel is diversifying its business by buying a minority stake in Oyster.com, a three-year-old commerce and content site focused on hotels and funded by Bain Capital Ventures. As part of the deal, the Travel Channel will share revenue from trips booked on Oyster.com through travelchannel.com, as well as develop programming and other content using Oyster personnel.

"I continue to be astonished at the economic naiveté I hear in discussions of the business of news," writes Jeff Jarvis. To counterbalance that innocence, he's written a post of truisms and lessons for the new era. Among the "reality checks for newspapers": "Circulation will continue to decline." And "You no longer control the market. You are a member of an ecosystem. Play well with others." Among the tips about "opportunities: "Scaling local sales is the key opportunity." And, "We have not begun to explore new definitions of news." Lots of clear-eyed food for thought here.

In the battle for entertainment subscriptions, video should pass cable TV and satellite radio for the first time. Netflix is poised to become the largest subscription entertainment business in the world, with around 23.7 million subs, edging past Comcast, which could take a number-three spot to Sirius XM, according to Hollywood Reporter.

The Associated Press is expanding its experiment to distribute content from nonprofit, public-interest news providers like the Center for Investigative Reporting to newspapers. The AP picked up a fifth news provider -- the Maynard Institute -- and announced it has been working out the kinks of distribution, pushing content directly into newspaper's content management systems rather than forcing editors to search for it. Previously the project "was less pathbreaking than participants had hoped it would be when it was first announced - largely because the nonprofits' content (most of it, anyway) simply wasn't picked up by newspapers," writes Nieman Journalism …

The New York Times' Edward Wyatt details what he calls an "old media vs. new media lobbying battle": the growing clash between television broadcasters and wireless providers over the FCC's proposal to ask broadcasters to give up airwaves to the highest bidder -- which presumably would be from the mobile industry.The conflict heated up last week, with the National Association of Broadcasters' President Gordon H. Smith saying "We're in full battle mode to protect broadcasters from being forced to give up spectrum," and wireless lobbying group CTIA President Steve Largent "accusing broadcasters of 'desperate and inaccurate stall tactics,'" according to …

Cable and broadcast networks have begun adding Twitter hashtags to the bottom of the TV screen as a way to get viewers to tweet about the show when it's on-air, promoting watching at that time rather than later on DVRs or on-demand. Comedy Central pioneered the hasthtag trend, but Fox has become a part of it as well.

Yes, the Primetime Emmys will definitely air Sept. 18 -- but it's still not clear what network will broadcast them. Negotiations among the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the various networks -- begun when the previous contract was up last August -- have stalled. Among the issues reportedly at play: whether the presentation of certain awards will be cut to shorten the broadcast. Meanwhile, all this stalling could cause production snafus, notes The Hollywood Reporter.

"Aspirational, blue skies, upbeat, optimistic and character-driven." Those are the guidelines for shows getting the greenlight at USA Network, according to Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios, in a Wall Street Journal profile of the no. 1 cable channel.Still, USA, which is making more of an investment in original programming than ever before -- six shows, with more premiering in the fall to go head-to-head against network programs -- is in danger of becoming "formulaic." "In a creative world, when you have a brand the danger is that every show becomes the same show," Jon …