DirectTV next month will team with Brainstorm Media to launch a year-long series of  monthly independent documentaries, including “Battle for Brooklyn” and “Big Boys Gone Bananas.”  Certain cities will also screen the films theatrically, sometimes teamed with live discussions post-film, writes Kelly Anderson.  On DirecTV, each airing will start with a hosted introduction and “conclude with a filmmaker interview that provides an update on the current state of the documentary’s central issue.”     

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has secured unpaid “product placements” on such TV shows as Fox’s “Raising Hope” and NBC’s “Parenthood,” Neda Ulaby tells NPR listeners.  The nonprofit group’s consultations with scriptwriters, etc., have been going on for 16 years with hundreds of shows.  The resulting storylines are contrasted with traditional product placements, such as a character on CW’s “Vampire Diaries” concluding an online search by saying “I Bing’d It.”  

Marking its first major “reinvention” ever, a redesigned USA Today will launch next Friday, Sept. 14, a day before it celebrates its 30th anniversary, writes Dylan Byers. Including a new logo, the paper will look differently in print, on the Web and via mobile.  

On the same day that Fox News reported publishing heir Victoria Hearst has joined the fight to have her family’s Cosmopolitan brown-bagged in retail outlets because it’s “pornographic,” the magazine announced a new fashion product line to be sold at 600+ JC Penney stores – which L.A. Times writer Tiffany Hsu notes are “often associated with dowdiness.”  Hsu says the products -- including “leopard-print panties, satiny robes and nighties and snakeskin-patterned clutches” -- were created in tandem by JC Penney design teams and Cosmo’s editorial team. Presumably, newly appointed Cosmo editor Joanna Coles wasn’t involved.  

At this week’s annual World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Kiev, Ukraine, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers released its annual update of “World Press Trends.”   First, the good news for the industry: More than half of the world’s population reads newspapers – 2.5 billion via print and 600 million digitally – more than the total number of Internet users. And global print circulation increased 1.1% from 2010 to 2011, with declines in North America, Europe and Latin America offset by strong gains in Asia and the Middle East. The bad news?  You guessed …

At Amsterdam’s International Broadcasting Convention, an Israeli company named Vidmind is introducing an Android-powered set-top box that reporter Janko Roettgers says will allow “virtual cable operators” to use the Internet to stream programming to TV sets, the Web, phones and tablets.  Vidmind is promising complete backend and cloud infrastructure as well.  “Who would buy into this kind of service?” Roettgers asks.  Part of his answer: “Anyone who wants to compete with big guys like Cox and Comcast on their home turf, without having any physical cables in the ground or satellites in the sky.”  

During the Video Music Awards telecast on Thursday night, PepsiCo and Verizon Wireless will launch a new MTV service called Reverb that allows ads to run simultaneously on MTV’s cable channel, MTV.com website and WatchIt mobile app.   Suzanne Vranica reports that Kraft will also begin using the service in the coming weeks.

Colgate-Palmolive has joined Mazda, Lincoln, MillerCoors and Bank of America as WPP clients deemed worthy of their own dedicated operating unit, writes Rupal Parekh.  Called Red Fuse Communications, the new unit will merge Colgate account teams from media agency MEC, creative shot Y&R, digital agency VML and other WPP entities.  Steve Forcione, WPP Global Managing Partner, was named CEO of Red Fuse.

Had enough of ad agencies “curating” and “ideating”? Tired of them being “experiential” and “artisanal”?  So has George Parker, who here provides some history of agencies’ “out of the box” thinking in “best-of-breed” verbiage, including JWT’s attempt at “commercial anthropology” and Saatchi & Saatchi’s launch of “business jazz.”  And Parker ends with a choice morsel from his recent book "Confessions of a Mad Man" (whose forward, btw, is from MediaPost’s very own Mad Blogger, Barbara Lippert).

Two syndicated shows produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios – “Rachael Ray” and “Nate Berkus” -- have landed an exclusive cable rebroadcast window.  You guessed it!  They’ll both be running on Oprah’s OWN, starting Monday.  “Ray,” still a broadcast success, and “Berkus,” cancelled after last season, will run in two-hour blocks each starting at 9 a.m. weekdays.