The fourth season of the Courtney Cox-starring sitcom "Cougar Town" will run on cable net TBS rather than on the show's former home, ABC, starting early in 2013. "TBS also snagged encore rights to the 61 episodes from the show's three seasons on ABC, allowing it to inch closer to the number needed for syndication," writes Philiana Ng. TV critic Alan Sepinwall interviews the show's co-creator, Kevin Biegel, on "how quickly the deal came together." Biegel's initial take: "It feels a little like a prisoner on his way to executioner being told, 'Okay, the governor says you're not going …

Time Warner Cable is becoming a sports programmer on Oct. 1, when it will launch two regional sports channels, Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Spanish-language network Time Warner Cable Deportes. Attempting to "cut out the middle man" -- News Corp. which owns local cable channels Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket -- Time Warner has "shelled out billions of dollars to snag the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West  and now has its eye on the  Dodgers too," writes Joe Flint. Time Warner Cable SportsNet will also air the games of the Galaxy …

Forget search engine optimization; The Atlantic is changing its digital strategy "to capitalize on the growing importance of social networks, rather than search engines, as sources of traffic," writes Lauren Indvik. “Sixteen months ago we received the same number of monthly referrals from search as social. Now 40% of traffic comes from social media,” Scott Havens, senior vice president of finance and digital operations at The Atlantic Media Company, tells Indvik.  “Truly [our writers] are not really thinking about SEO anymore. Now it’s about how we can spin a story so that it goes viral.” Bob Cohn, editor of The …

GOOD magazine is much more than just a print pub or an online platform, writes Dan Levy, introducing his interview with GOOD Executive Editor Ann Friedman. With "a really awesome creative services team that makes custom content for partners," and advertisers sponsoring specific features, the company also straddles the traditional wall between advertising and editorial, says Friedman. She also stresses that while GOOD has a mission "as a creative and social good-oriented magazine," that "isn’t the same thing as having an agenda on an activist front" -- which might straddle another border Levy mentions, that between "mission-driven journalism" and "social …

Bloomberg L.P.'s new luxury lifestyle mag, Bloomberg Pursuits -- a spinoff of its monthly pub Bloomberg Markets -- will most probably double its frequency to quarterly in next year, and is working hard to court fashion advertisers, a fairly new category for the company. One step the company has taken: "Hiring former Harper’s Bazaar ad director Renee Moskowitz to get Markets in the door with fashion accounts," writes Lucia Moses. Also upcoming: two luxury-themed events "where advertisers can showcase their wares in front of readers."

Satellite TV provider DirecTV had an 8.5% rise in Q1 profits year over year, with a net income of $731 million, and is now focused on customer retention instead of expansion, writes Alex Sherman. "DirecTV is using programming, including its exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket football package, to persuade customers to stay and fend off competition" from the likes of Dish Network and Comcast, according to Sherman.

At a "flashpoint in the evolution of television," with  battle lines "getting clearer," Comcast is (and has been) working hardest of any  company to kill  the "cable killers," according to Stacey Higginbotham. She explains seven fairly technical points to back up this thesis, from how Comcast is "implementing data caps" to how it's "prioritizing its own traffic over other traffic at the packet level." "So there you have it," Higginbotham concludes. "Comcast is ready for the fight with over the top providers and it’s playing to win."

Why is subscription news aggregator Ongo shutting down by the end of May after less than 18 months in business, despite the financial backing of major newspaper companies like The New York Times? Adrienne LaFrance provides a thorough post-mortem, discussing issues like the service's "confusing pricing model" and "the fact that most of Ongo’s content was available for free on the web -- and the fact that many of its news orgs have chosen to focus on building their own paywalls." LaFrance interviews Ongo CEO Dan Haarmann, who notes, "I think that it’s going to take a while for the …

"The web design principles of professional news and information publishers have so often centred on looking good and having a good homepage," writes Patrick Smith. "But what if both those things don't really matter?" Smith explains how "the homepage is overvalued as a mechanism for generating visits to interior pages," and how to shift focus to a more successful strategy.

The New York Times is expanding its video Web site coverage with a biweekly series focusing on street style: a blog post and videos showing what  folks are wearing in all five boroughs (as opposed to "the same neighborhoods in Manhattan" that many style blogs focus on, according to online fashion editor Simone Oliver). First destination is Fort Greene, Brooklyn.