Playing activist and agitator, Mark Zuckerberg says he called President Barack Obama to condemn the U.S. government's electronic surveillance practices. "When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government," Facebook’s CEO writes in post on his Facebook page. "I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.” 

By 2018, digital ad spend will overtake television, the one medium that's that’s "long been out ahead of everything else," according to an eMarketer study cited by Bill Cromwell. The forecast pits TV ahead by "by a very small margin, 36.4 percent to 36.1 percent."

Another carriage fee issue is brewing in the pay-TV world -- this time over SportsNet LA, the new Dodgers-owned cable channel. Every pay-TV distributor except one is balking at the price to carry the network, "the highest-ever carriage fee for a regional sports channel of its kind, with a monthly charge per subscriber beginning at more than $4 and likely escalating to over $5 in coming years," according to sources cited by Matthew Futterman. The one exception to the shutout is Time Warner Cable, "which was involved in the formation of the network through an $8.3 billion media-rights deal."

Hearst's Marie Claire introduced what it's calling a "pop-up magazine": Branché, "which loosely translates to “plugged in” in French," and will be distributed by Hearst employees throughout New York's "trendy neighborhoods" and "well-trafficked areas... such as Times Square," writes Alexandra Steigrad. Created as "an insider’s guide to New York style, culture and food and nighttime hot spots," the 40-page free book is half ads, with advertisers including H&M, Guess, and Macy's. Expect a new version in the fall.

Hip-hop artist and mogul Sean Combs has put in a $200 million bid for the Fuse cable TV channel, according to sources cited by Bloomberg reporters. If his bid is accepted, "he would convert Fuse, owned by Madison Square Garden Company, (MSG), into Revolt TV, which has backing from Comcast Corp."

Reader's Digest is getting its fourth CEO in three years -- Bonnie Kintzer, most recently CEO of  Women's Marketing Inc., who will take over for current company head Bob Guth April 7. Guth just announced his departure.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s inventor, is calling for an online “bill of rights” to protect the Web from government and corporate abuse. “Berners-Lee's Magna Carta plan is to be taken up as part of an initiative called ‘the Web we want,’ which calls on people to generate a digital bill of rights in each country -- a statement of principles he hopes will be supported by public institutions, government officials and corporations,” The Guardian reports. 

There's too much good stuff to watch on TV now to keep up, complains David Carr in this piece about an "excess of excellence that is fundamentally altering my media diet and threatening to consume my waking life in the process." In fact, "the growing intellectual currency of television has altered the cultural conversation in fundamental ways. Water cooler chatter is now a high-minded pursuit, not just a way to pass the time at work."

The Wall Street Journal launched its content marketing division, WSJ.Custom Studios, with a three-month campaign for Brocade using  "a native advertising component called Narratives, the content of which will live on wsj.com but will be 'clearly and compellingly delineated from news and editorial content,' according to [an] announcement," writes Joe Pompeo. "The move shows the Journal wading into waters that managing editor Gerard Baker had previously described as a 'Faustian pact' between news outlets and brands."

This year's ad spend for mobile devices will overtake spend for newspapers in the U.K. for the first time, according to an eMarketer report. "The forecast underscores a rapid shift in marketing budgets towards smartphones and tablets, as well as a long-running decline in print media," writes Robert Cookson.