United States

DirecTV-backed professional videogaming league Championship Gaming Series (CGS) is closing down. Launched in January 2007, CGS started with six franchises in the U.S. (in cities like LA, NY and Dallas), and expanded to international coverage this year.

Mitt Romney might want you to let Detroit go bankrupt, but David Pecker doesn't. Earlier this afternoon, the American Media chief sent all of his employees a fact chief supplied by the GM and intended to build support for an auto-industry bailout. American Media publishes the National Enquirer, Star and a number of fitness titles; it used to own two automotive magazines, Auto World and MPH, but folded both.

Here's Pecker's email:

ContextWeb, which operates the Adsdaq ad exchange, has added the ability for marketers to target the Spanish-speaking audience online by category and keyword. The new capability is the first time the company has offered targeting through its exchange in a language other than English. To lead the effort spanning the U.S. and Latin America, ContextWeb has hired Time Warner veteran Joe Kutchera as director of Spanish language markets.

Over three-quarters (77%) of current smokers in the US report increased stress levels because of the economic crisis — and two-thirds of those smokers say this stress has had an effect on their...

The confidence of U.S. ad executives continues to erode, and the plans for their advertising budgets continues to decline, according the most recent in a semi-annual tracking study of top marketer and agency media executive perceptions about the media economy. The study, the first fielded since the credit crisis and U.S. and global economic meltdown began in October, however, reveals that digital media options such as online and mobile marketing remain the most immune to reduced spending expectations.

Google had a large majority of search market share in October, accounting for 71.70% of all US online searches conducted in the four weeks ending November 1, 2008, while Yahoo Search, MSN Search and...

As I mentioned earlier, IFC hosted a luncheon today to promote its news press-crit series, The IFC Media Project, hosted by ex-MTV wunderkind Gideon Yago.

For most of the sports-viewing world, the big news in the deal announced today between ESPN (NYSE: DIS) and the Bowl Championship Series is the price tag—an estimated $500 million—and the apparently inexorable move of major sports from free over-the-air broadcast to subscription-supported cable.

Despite continuing gloomy economic conditions in the US, consumer confidence declined only slightly in November — slipping 2.3 points to 34.7, compared with 37.0 in October — on future expectations...

The poor condition of the US economy has caused the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) to re-issue its 2009 forecast for the local broadcast television industry to reflect larger-than-expected...