Gainers Rare Among Top 50 TV Groups in 2008

Herbert G. Klein, 91, a San Diego newspaperman who was a longtime aide to Richard M. Nixon and was White House communications director during much of the Watergate era, died July 2 at his home in La Jolla, Calif., after a heart attack.

An electrical room incident at Fisher Plaza East knocked out power. KOMO and KUNS remained on air; only KVI-AM was disrupted.

Friends and family in his hometown mourned and paid tribute to the popular TV pitchman who died last Sunday of a heart attack in Tampa, Fla. Mays' body was clad in his signature blue button-down shirt and khaki trousers as were his pallbearers. The Discovery Channel, which airs Mays' reality show, covered the funeral.

Nielsen Thursday officially announced the launch of local people meter service in Portland, Ore., and Pittsburgh, replacing its "set meter" service in those markets, but said it was delaying a previously planned launch of the service in Baltimore until July 7, due to a "very difficult conversion to digital television" in that market.

Retransmission and Internet revenues can't climb fast enough for TV stations. But in a few years, both will be contributing significantly to stations' coffers. Each revenue source will be over the $1 billion mark, according to two recent estimates.

Genachowski vows "commission's doors will be open" to broadcasters still struggling in the wake of the analog shutoff.

A dour report on job losses in June sent stocks sharply lower Thursday. Major stock indexes fell more than 2.6% after the government said the U.S. unemployment rate hit a 26-year high. The Dow Jones industrials closed at their lowest level in six weeks.

The faltering economy is causing many stations to consider outsourcing master control and other technical back-office jobs. Among those that may provide such services are third-party firms as well as LIN, Media General, Raycom and other station groups that have already began centralcasting or hubbing.

Local broadcasters are increasingly degrading their high-definition picture quality due to multicasting -- transmitting digital subchannels alongside the primary HD stream within a station's 19.4 Mbps digital TV pipe.

Gray Television, owner of KKTV in Colorado Springs, Colo., has asked the FCC to substitute its ch. 10 allotment with ch. 49 in order to improve the station's coverage.

A joint research repoft by the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing and research firm NeuroFocus found that TV earns high marks for emotional engagement, commercial recall and intent to purchase. Small-screen media is less immersive; as such, viewers tend to find that advertising on mobile and Internet platforms is not nearly as engaging as it is on TV.

In a move that will make it significantly easier, faster and far more efficient for ad agencies to buy local and national spot cable TV advertising, the leading spot cable TV rep firm, National Cable Communications, has integrated its sales systems with Donovan Data Systems, the leading provider of "back office" data processing systems for advertising agencies. The breakthrough will enable media shops to place orders and process spot cable TV buys electronically and without any manual paper insertion orders.

Fox's So You Think You Can Dance pulled ahead of NBC's America's Got Talent in their shared 9 p.m. timeslot last night, a week after the Wednesday night debut of Talent topped Dance. Dance averaged a 3.1 adults 18-49 rating, 0.2 ahead of Talent. Last week Talent had a 3.1 and Dance a 2.9 in the hour.

The networks have done a good job of explaining away the impact of DVRs on ratings, noting that, in fact, few users actually bother skipping through commercials. But that is about to change, according to one top researcher. As more and more users acquire and begin to use DVRs, ad skipping will become a far larger issue for networks, and those annual cost-per-thousand pricing increases will become a thing of the past.

The mysteries that continue to surround Michael Jackson's death include a frustrating and potentially costly one for news organizations: how and when the fallen pop idol will be laid to rest and where a memorial service would be held.

Nearly two in three Americans say news organizations have given too much coverage to the death of Michael Jackson, but half say the media have struck the right balance between covering the pop star's personal life and musical career.

Since the digital TV transition, many areas of the western state that received signals from Denver stations via translators now get nothing.

Weak over-the-air TV reception wasn't the only snafu for ABC O&O WPVI Philadelphia in June's digital TV transition. WPVI, which has the region's top-rated Action News, also lost its popular radio dial position -- 87.7 FM.

Harry Jessell's column on the troubles of digital VHF missed the mark. It can work as well as UHF transmission if it is allowed enough transmission power, receiver performance improves and indoor and outdoor antennas are designed to receive both spectrum bands properly.

LIN is moving Patti McGettigan from head of news at its WOOD Grand Rapids, Mich., to its CBS affiliate in Indianapolis.

TV viewers in the Cincinnati market will have four choices for local news at 6 p.m. when Raycom Fox affiliate WXIX expands its year-old 6:30 p.m. newscast to an hour on Sept. 21.

The three biggest carmakers in America say the long decline in U.S. auto sales has bottomed out, as the industry reported its smallest monthly sales drop this year, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal.

DirecTV has reached out to Blake Krikorian as a possible successor to Chase Carey as CEO. If that doesn't work out, another option could be joining the DirecTV board.

Chase Carey, who rejoined the media conglomerate as deputy chairman, president and chief operating officer, received a signing bonus of $10 million and will earn a base salary of $8.1 million.

For the first time in a generation, American TV is getting a new format: the half-hour drama. We're conditioned to expect a sitcom during a 30-minute time slot, but now networks have figured out they can pack all the drama of a traditional hour-long series into just 30 minutes.

The company tells companies whether their commercials are good enough, smart enough -- and whether people like them. And in real time, too.

Facing a July 10 government funding cutoff, General Motors Corp. is calling for quick approval of its bid to sell its "good" parts into a new company and emerge from bankruptcy protection.

Actor Neil Patrick Harris is in the midst of cutting a deal with CBS and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to host the 61st annual awards show on Sept. 20. Insiders cautioned that the deal is not yet completed, but all sides are working toward setting Harris as this year's Emmycast frontman as soon as possible.

ABC has ordered a new reality competition show from two Last Comic Standing producers in which comedians have to be funny on the fly. In The Fast & the Funniest, a group of stand-ups travel cross-country competing in challenges and performances. The first three to reach the final destination will perform for a cash prize.

The court seeks further arguments in case that could undermine the longstanding ban against corporations spending on issue advertising.

Station group owner Young Broadcasting Inc. faces auction on July 14 in New York, according to its attorneys. The company probably will be sold or reorganized as a whole, according to the Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal law offices. Attorneys say there has been a "healthy amount of interest" in the auction, being undertaken at secured lenders' insistence.

The family of Karl Malden says the actor who won an Oscar for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire and starred in ABC's The Streets of San Francisco in the 1970s has died.