"The next front" in political advertising wars is South Carolina, where voters have already seen more presidential campaign ads (5,550) than the total (2,800) New Hamphsire voters had seen as of Monday morning. "With less than two weeks to go before the Jan. 21 primary, campaign strategists are racing to place buys before their competitors do and struggling to create messages that resonate in a market that could be saturated as early as this weekend," writes Jeremy W. Peters.

M&A activity in media properties should thrive in 2012, according to In a study conducted in November by AdMedia Partners. Nearly 60% of senior media and marketing execs said their companies would be in the market for acquisitions this year -- a figure up from 40% in the 2011 survey.  Traditional B2B media, with lower revenues, are probably going to be the hardest sell, according to Seth Alpert, managing director at AdMedia Partners.

In a first for glossy women's magazines, with its March issue Ladies' Home Journal will turn to crowd-sourcing for much of its content. LHJ will be running fact-checked, user-generated stories taken from its website and other digital channels, including posts on DivineCaroline.com, a sister Meredith publication site. The amateur writers will be paid professional rates.  Why, oh why? "The magazine says the changes were driven by research revealing that readers wanted a greater role in filling its pages," writes Nat Ives in Ad Age. "We’re sure they did, but just because people want to talk doesn’t mean it’s going to …

Six additional Gannett U.S. Community Publishing newspapers will develop digital subscriptions, including The Poughkeepsie [N.Y.] Journal, the St. Cloud [Minn.] Times, and the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D. These join a roster of three newspapers that launched paywalls in 2010.

Univision is introducing a free ad-supported Spanish-language news app, Noticias Univision, based on  its TV brand and Web site. Now available for iPhone/iPod, Android, with iPad version to come, the app differentiates itself from other news products by its social-sharing and citizen journalist features, the company claims.

At CES, Flingo introduced SyncApps, which could allow users to tweet what they're watching on TV to their social network on Twitter and Facebook without having to use another device. Mind you, that would mean one-click sharing of TV content without additional commentary, "since TV remotes aren’t built for inputting text," writes Ryan Lawler. The product would also "let broadcasters deliver relevant content like tweets, polls, and quizzes directly to the screen and to second-screen companion applications. It can also be used to display relevant tweets and hashtags on the TV, without broadcasters having to add them to the original …

ABC's Paul Lee apologizing "to the world" and "Bosom Buddies" for the horrendously reviewed "Work It"? CBS' Nina Tassler telling critics :"We don't read you. We're not making television for you. We just count the money"? Fox's Kevin Reilly apologizing for "I Hate My Teenage Daughter"? None of this really happened. These quotes just part of the "brutally honest" imaginary speeches Tim Goodman wrote for "the Big Four network heads as they greet the Television Critics Association at its winter press tour."

Sony, Vizio and LG are set to show the first of Google's new TVs and devices in more than a year at next week's Consumer Electronics Show, but the products won't be available for purchase until later. "The best estimate I can get from a knowledgeable [source] so far is 'first half of the year,'" writes Staci D. Kramer.

Why should it matter that, as reported today, Netflix has to pay full (no longer discounted) price for the HBO DVDs it ships to customers? Because HBO and Netflix are now competitors, and HBO and Time Warner want to "push Netflix to its breaking point, where it can no longer bid on first-rate content and price itself competetively for customers’ last $10. Or relegate Netflix to the subordinate role of a digital syndication channel aggregating the old, the weird, and the unprofitable," writes Tim Carmody "In another assault on Netflix's library, Warner Bros. [also owned by Time Warner] announced it …

"In most sectors of show biz, women often hit a glass ceiling. And yet, lots of women run cable channels. Why is that?" Three women cable channel heads, from Bravo, Comedy Central and Animal Planet, address this issue (and others) in a lively Q&A that starts chattily but soons deepens to include insights from how "comedy is the ultimate connector for [the younger] generation," to the bonuses of multi-platform viewing: "People are discovering library content on other platforms and then becoming new fans. Someone who wasn't old enough to watch South Park 10 years ago may now start watching new …