The increase, which includes cable channel revenues edging closer to networks’, is in part attributed to discussion of TV moments on Facebook and other social nets.

“TV is about creating ‘water-cooler moments,’ only now they don’t take 12 hours till you’re at school or the office,” said Carolyn Everson, vice president for global marketing solutions at Facebook. “They happen in real time.”

Marketers in categories like cars, fast food, movies, retailing and telecommunications have been increasing ad budgets in recent quarters, the report says.

Networks took in about $500 million to $700 million more in the 2010 upfront market compared to 2009.

Cable channels this year could bring in $9 billion to $9.2 billion, an increase of 10 to 15 percent from their upfront season last year and close or equal to what the broadcast networks are expected to sell, The Times said. (The story doesn’t give a total figure for over-air networks.)

Hispanic television nets could bring in $1.9 billion — up 11.8 percent from last spring.

“The biggest issue ahead may not be lack of audience or even lack of new revenue experiments. It may be that in the digital realm the news industry is no longer in control of its own future,” Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism write.

For the first time ever, more people regularly get their news online (46 percent) than from print newspapers (40 percent), the study says.  In fact, “Every media sector is losing audience now except online. …  In 2010 every news platform saw audiences either stall or decline — except for the Web.”

Rosenstiel and Mitchell say, “News organizations — old and new — still produce most of the content audiences consume. But each technological advance has added a new layer of complexity — and a new set of players — in connecting that content to consumers and advertisers.

“In the digital space, the organizations that produce the news increasingly rely on independent networks to sell their ads. They depend on aggregators (such as Google) and social networks (such as Facebook) to bring them a substantial portion of their audience. And now, as news consumption becomes more mobile, news companies must follow the rules of device makers (such as Apple) and software developers (Google again) to deliver their content. Each new platform often requires a new software program. And the new players take a share of the revenue and in many cases also control the audience data.

“That data may be the most important commodity of all. In a media world where consumers decide what news they want to get and how they want to get it, the future will belong to those who understand the public’s changing behavior and can target content and advertising to snugly fit the interests of each user. That knowledge — and the expertise in gathering it — increasingly resides with technology companies outside journalism.”

The new Gannett logo debuts Monday.

“The goal is to communicate that the company — long identified as the nation’s largest newspaper publisher and a major owner of TV stations — has evolved into a forward-looking digital power,” USA Today says.

All of the company’s properties are to begin more prominently identifying themselves as part of Gannett via the new logo. The publisher will also run ads with the new tagline, “It’s all within reach,” on national cable news channels and in digital, print and social media.

Among Gannett’s digital properties is Captivate, which programs TV-like screens in nearly 9,000 elevators and lobbies, the newspaper says.

In part thanks to high-definition broadcasts, Americans “are coming back to television in a big way. They’re enjoying TV more than they were three years ago, and they’re watching it more,” Jim McDonnell, a Deloitte principal, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The survey asked consumers to rank their top three types of media, and 71 percent of respondents ranked TV first, followed by the Internet (46 percent), music (35 percent), books (32 percent) and movies (25 percent), according to THR.

“Eighty-six percent said TV ads influenced them most, followed by online (50 percent), magazines (46 percent), newspapers (40 percent) and radio (27 percent). Billboards, in-theater commercials, ads in video games and other categories were further down the list.”

People watch TV on multiple platforms, and smartphones are particularly gaining in popularity. The study report says 33 percent of American households now own a smartphone, up from 11 percent only three years ago, and 40 percent of responding consumers who don’t have a smartphone said they are likely to buy one soon.

The study also found that social media has been a boost to TV viewing, because people don’t want to be out of the loop when online friends discuss programs.

“Consumers are not only watching television, they are talking about it, and those conversations are frequently taking place in real-time online and via IM/texting,” said Phil Asmundson, vice chairman and technology, media and telecommunications industry leader for Deloitte.  ”By embracing the Internet as a platform that encourages audiences to participate in discussions about their favorite programs, television is maintaining its hold on the American public. …

“And, because television has embraced the Internet and social media so effectively, the traditional television advertising model is alive and well,” Asmundson added.

The study also found that print magazines remain popular, and that cloud computing is emerging as a potential consumer entertainment storage and access solution.

Deloitte said its survey assessed media consumption preferences of nearly 2,000 consumers, ages 14 to 75 years old.

“After seeing the power of marketing effective viral content, brands are scurrying to invest in this type of material — and in many cases, are cutting back on their traditional advertising spending as a result,” the report says.

“It’s taking an editorial approach to telling your brand story, and the social-media space just lends itself so beautifully to that combination,” said Miki Berardelli, chief marketing officer at Tory Burch.

But, as online technology continues to find its footing, advertisers say they still get a better quality of reader with print magazines. So, regardless of  the quantity or readers available online and the fact that its results can be immediately tracked, print ads won’t be going away entirely anytime soon.

The old editorial/advertising divide argument is moot in the fashion world, WWD reminds us. “[F]ashion magazines blurred that line long ago — just check the credits in fashion shoots against what labels advertise.”

A bright spot in the trend, sort of, is that “as magazines cut staff or shutter altogether, the new editorial focus of fashion brands is providing a soft — and sometimes lucrative — landing spot for journalists and editors.”

Users can also comment on shared items and reshare them directly via the PostPost platform, which is by TigerLogic.

WebNewser points out that readers of the New York Post will certainly recognize the font used in the PostPost logo.

The survey is by ITZBelden in conjunction with the American Press Institute.

“When advertisers were asked where they planned to target their marketing dollars in 2010, the average allocation for newspapers was 23 percent,” Mutter says. “While this percentage would leave newspapers as the dominant local medium in most places, it is well below the 35 percent-plus market share that publishers enjoyed in the pre-Internet era.”

The poll indicates local advertisers will spend 13 percent of their ad budgets this year on digital media, giving digital media “the second-largest share of the dollars spent on advertising in a typical market, surpassing such traditional rivals as direct mail, television and the Yellow Pages.”

Newspapers can’t afford to lose retail advertisers, he says. “One potentially powerful way for newspapers to reassert their relevance to advertisers is by establishing themselves as experts in the growing array of digital media that merchants are hoping to use to lure customers to their businesses.”

Mutter has lots more at the link above.

They’ve been replaced by Twitter, and the last nails in the press release coffin were driven by BP (with another failure), JetBlue and, finally, Kanye West.

“[I]ncreasingly, the news media has a nifty new way of ‘reporting’ entertainment news: regurgitating celebrity tweets,” he writes. “It wasn’t that long ago that a celebrity with something ‘important’ to put out there, like an apology, would automatically say it through a tightly controlled protocol, like a set of engineered sound bites delivered via a well-staged interview. Now 140 characters or fewer suffices.”

But, “Of course, press releases will probably continue to stumble along, zombie-like, for years to come, because too many PR folks are still heavily invested in grinding them out,” Dumenco says.

“Among people aged 45 and older, 68 percent share news stories they see via e-mail, while 54 percent of those under 45 use Facebook,” a Min Online report about the survey says. “Among those 24 and younger, however, 90 percent use either Facebook or Twitter as the way they trade interesting news items with others.”

Regardless, almost everyone — 82 percent of adults — has “interacted with a news story on a site” and 83 percent say they are comfortable posting comments about online news stories.

The survey also found that people will read news from multiple sources, with as many as 80 percent saying they choose unfamiliar sources online.

“The results generally confirm publisher fears that online information gatherers have limited brand loyalty,” the report says. “The search-driven information economy has effectively leveled the brand playing field and challenged the brand equity many publishers spent decades building.”