Despite what people may tell you, the vast majority prefers celebrity gossip, cat pics, and personally relevant fare over serious, substantive news. That’s according to a study of thousands of U.S. consumers conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. What explains this preference? “The culprit isn't millennials or Facebook,” The Atlantic suggests. “The problem is our brains … The more attention-starved we feel, the more we thirst for stimuli that are familiar.” 

Hearst's HGTV Magazine and Food Network Magazine are increasing their rate bases in 2015, the former to 1.2 million, and the latter to 1.7 million.

Magna Global forecast a significant rise in U.S. TV revenue of 8.3% this year, "after a dismal 2013 in which revenues were down 0.6%" writes Sam Thielman. Still, "with a 27% market share in 2013, digital media is now bigger than national TV, but still significantly smaller than television as a whole (TV commands 40% market share)." And, as others have reported, digital media ad sales are expected to surpass total TV sales by 2018.

Why are targeted online ads so commonly considered to be “creepy?” For one, unlike the real world, “It's different online, where I am supposed to see ads because something about my data suggests that they are relevant to me,” Sara Watson writes in The Atlantic. On a deeper level, “Personalization purports to be uniquely meaningful, yet (based on the generalizing statistical distributions and normalized curves methods) it alienates us in its mass application,” Watson suggests. 

Once again, there are predictions of a Meredith acquisition of Time Inc., according to a Citigroup analyst cited by The Street. The deal is not likely to occur before Q4 of 2015 "because of the tax-free nature of the Time spin-off."

Jon Steinberg, former president and CEO of BuzzFeed, just joined the Daily Mail to help the British publisher build its U.S. digital business. Officially serving as CEO of North America for Mail Online, Steinberg plans to establish the Daily Mail as this country’s "largest news and entertainment site," he tells CNNMoney.com. Part of a broader strategy, “The tabloid-oriented Mail started to expand in the U.S. a few years ago.” 

For better or worse, some suggest that Reddit’s breaking news platform is reshaping the business. “Armed with a new live thread system built by Reddit engineers, a group of volunteer moderators have elevated the site to the forefront of the real-time news movement,” according to Mashable. Yet, as Mashable notes, Reddit’s news mining system has had its hiccups, like the time it implicated an innocent college student in the bombing of the Boston Marathon. 

Comcast will be testing a service streaming videos through its new X1 cable set-top boxes by the end of the year, the company’s SVP of Video Matt Strauss told Janko Roettgers. "Strauss said that Comcast will be able to offer content producers a number of monetization options, which could include advertising as well as transactional fees, but said that the company is still evaluating its options."

Univision seeking suitors for its eventual sale, has been having preliminary discussions with CBS and Time Warner, and is seeking an asking price of more than $20 billion, according to reports.

Revealing a serious case of FOMO, Google reportedly wants a stake in Sir Richard Branson’s $2 billion space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic. Per the would-be deal, the search giant would gain access to what Sky News calls “crucial” satellite-launch technology. “The discussions with Virgin Galactic are part of Google’s ambitious project to put hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit in an attempt to extend Internet access to billions of people,” the news service reports.