Media Industry

Newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst wanted to make a splash with his New York headquarters in 1926, so he hired Joseph Urban, an Austrian emigre with a flair for the theatrical. The veteran set designer had worked for the Metropolitan Opera, the Ziegfeld Follies and Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions movie studio.

There may be one constant in the media sector in 2007: its obsession with Google Inc. and the Web. Internet envy had old media working overtime in 2006. Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone became so overwrought after losing the MySpace social networking site to News Corp. that he served up his well-regarded lieutenant of 20 years, Tom Freston, as a scapegoat. Freston was sacked.

When some of the world's biggest media and advertising companies talk about Google Inc., they borrow a term from the teen flick "Mean Girls." Google, as they see it, is a "frenemy" -- an enemy who acts like a friend, or part friend, part enemy. Martin Sorrell, chairman and chief executive of advertising giant WPP Group, recently used the term. He is among the media executives who can't decide whether Google is trying to help their business or kill it. That's where David Eun comes in.

In a sign of its growing clout as an entertainment player, Apple Computer Inc. dropped "computer" from its name Tuesday and unveiled two devices that promise further upheaval in the rapidly changing media industry.

After months of planning, two of Southern California's wealthiest men flew to Chicago on Saturday and made their case for buying a large and potentially controlling stake in Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Cubs and other newspapers and TV stations.

Hours after Anna Nicole Smith's death, people across the globe tried to cash in on her celebrity by listing for sale items such as bobblehead dolls and poker chips bearing her image. But positioned to benefit the most were media outlets that tried to feed the enormous appetite of its audiences. The frenzy promised to continue into the weekend with tonight's airing of "Death of a Centerfold" on NBC's "Dateline," to be followed by Fox News' hourlong special "Anna Nicole: Tragic Beauty."

CHICAGO -- Tribune Co. directors met Tuesday with no resolution of the company's months-long auction. The lack of acceptable buyout offers appeared to be pushing the company toward a recapitalization without outside investors, according to several people familiar with the process. Such a transaction, they said, probably would involve borrowing heavily to pay shareholders a large dividend and spinning off Tribune's TV broadcasting division.

Tribune Co. took a calculated risk when it purchased Times Mirror Co. in 2000, acquiring newspapers in markets where it already owned TV stations despite federal rules barring such combinations. Tribune executives expected the restrictions to be gone by now. That they are not has posed an obstacle to the Chicago-based company's sale.

When the battle for control of Tribune Co. got underway more than eight months ago, investors hoped that a sagging share price would be bolstered as bidders assessed the true value of marquee assets such as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

White teenagers who are the most avid watchers of R-rated movies or who have television sets in their bedrooms are more than twice as likely to take up smoking compared with white teens who don't, according to a report published today. Experts said the study confirmed Hollywood's pervasive influence by showing that even when other risk factors -- such as peer smoking -- were taken into account, media exposure remained a powerful force on white children.