Gannett's USA Today Sports Media Group just bought Quickish, an online aggregator of sports stories that was formerly a one-man operation. The man in question, Dan Shanoff, will also work on other digital projects for the company. "The deal is one more sign that Gannett wants to bulk up in digital sports" -- other moves including its purchase of Big Lead Sports, writes Peter Kafka.

Looking back on her 13-year tenure as MPA president and CEO -- which will end in December, as just announced -- Nina Link discusses key issues in the magazine industry, including postal reform: “We’ve been instrumental in saving the industry hundreds of millions of dollars,” she says. “We thought postal reform was done in 2007, and oh yes, here we are again.” The organization is currently executing "a strategic rebranding and reorganization that she and the association have put in place over the past several years," she tells Ioanna Opidee.

The CW was the first network to finish its upfront sales, with a total of about $400 million, an average 7% CPM increase,  and volume down slightly from last year, writes Anthony Crupi. This was the first year CW bundled mobile sales in with its linear TV package. "According to multiple sources, Turner Broadcasting System on Wednesday began writing a flurry of business with a handful of major agencies, closing around 40 percent of its upfront deals," according to Crupi. "The company is commanding high single-digit CPM increases, putting it near the high end of the marketplace."

Dish Network's controversial (and litigation-attracting) AutoHop ad-skipping service "is a 'competitively necessary' response to the explosion of cheap Internet video," according to company Chairman Charlie Ergen. Ergen, in an interview with Shalini Ramachandran, said the release of AutoHop "aims to force the networks to develop 'more meaningful' ads, using, for example, demographic targeting of viewers. 'Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete,' he said." Ergen "implicitly acknowledged" that AutoHop's launch was also a ploy to gain leverage in retransmission fee negotiations.

How much would cable non-subscribers pay to have HBO streamed on the Web? Twelve dollars, on average, according to an analysis of tweets to HBO with that request, coordinated through TakeMyMoneyHBO.com, a new site designed "to get the premium cable channel’s attention," writes Natan Edelsburg. Beyond the obvious ubiquity of social media, this event also highlights how popular HBO content (like "Girls," whose characters probably couldn't afford to watch HBO, as the New York Times recently pointed out) has become with the cord-cutting generation, notes Edelsburg. HBO didn't respond directly, but did tweet an …

The Tribune Company, owner of TV networks and such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times, is expected to emerge from bankruptcy at the end of the year -- when it could sell off its print assets. "To many industry observers, Tribune is a case study of the erosion of US newspapers," writes the Financial Times. Meanwhile, "Tribune’s broadcast assets face a somewhat brighter future, with the local television business proving resilient."

Myrna Blyth, a "women's-service magazine icon," has been chosen as the first editorial director of  AARP, in charge of all content at the organization, including bimonthly flagship AARP The Magazine, writes Steve Cohn. Blyth was editor in chief/publications director of Ladies' Home Journal from 1981 to 2002,  and founded More magazine in 1997.

"As broadcasters attempt to shut down TV streaming service Aereo in court, several other start-ups are launching comparable services that risk undermining the lucrative retransmission fees charged by networks," writes William Launder. Launder discusses those start-ups -- such as Simple.TV -- with analysis from legal experts on what questions this trend raises.

India Ink, the nine-month-old New York Times English-language website targeted to Indian readers, is "a small-scale experiment in the Times’ larger international strategy," writes Adrienne LaFrance, paraphrasing  Jim Schachter, associate managing editor at the Times. The site's content has evolved from being mainly discussion-oriented to news-driven, with an audience roughly 40% based in India, with the rest from the Indian diaspora worldwide. "India was the right country for such a project because the newspaper already has a 'very large number' of readers there," said Schachter, who "doesn’t dismiss the idea of similar country-specific efforts at the …

Conde Nast's Entertainment Group's new hire is Fred Santarpi as head of digital, reporting to Dawn Ostroff, who came to the company last fall to generate film, TV and digital projects based on its brands. Santarpi was formerly Vevo general manager.