media

At a time when many media companies are retrenching, women's magazine publisher Meredith (NYSE: MDP) Corp has pulled out its checkbook and taken a minority stake in Real Girls Media Network. The publisher of Better Homes and Gardens and Fitness wants to use the San Francisco-based women's content and social net aggregator to buttress its 31 websites.

Time Inc. is expected to lay off 250 staffers today as part of the 600 job cuts announced last month, NY Post reports, citing unidentified sources.

Social network Multiply.com has received $5 million in funding from ABS-CBN, one of the Philippines' largest media companies.

China has settled a dispute that will allow media companies like Thomson Reuters (NASDAQ: TRIN), Bloomberg and Dow Jones to provide financial news and info in the nation on their own terms.

A new digital studio called Agility Studios, started by three online vets, has launched today. The company, based in Los Angeles, has been founded by Scott Ehrlich, former VP of media at RealNetworks, who will serve as the company's CEO; Larry Tanz, till recently the President and CEO of LivePlanet, and will be the President and COO; and Keith Quinn, recently SVP of Production & Development for LivePlanet, who will oversee programming and production as the company's Chief Creative Officer.

-- Project Kangaroo: CBS Interactive's longtime CTO and SVP Mark Kortekaas has joined Project Kangaroo, a UK VOD platform similar to Hulu, as CTO. Kortekaas, at CBS (NYSE: CBS) since 2000, left in September, just a couple of months after CBS bought CNET. Kortekaas had development oversight of CBS.com, CBSNews.com and CBS.Sportsline.com.

Software firm Six Apart, which many major media and publishing companies use to run their blogs and in some cases power their entire Web sites, is laying off 8 percent of its staff—or about 16 employees—and the entire management team will take a 15 percent pay cut.

It's safe to say Ted Turner holds a grudge.

PPC-centric ad network and media company MIVA has secured a $10 million credit facility from Bridge Capital Holdings subsidiary Bridge Bank, NA. America's Growth Capital arranged the credit line, and MIVA was eligible to borrow $6.5 million of it as of the end of Q3.

Social media studio SpectrumDNA has acquired Revyver, a Seattle-based digital design firm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Revyver will operate as the studio's subsidiary. SpectrumDNA was founded in 2006 by former Warner Bros. exec Jim Banister, and develops white-label and branded "enginets" (or custom Websites, applications and widgets) like Addictionary.