Shira Ovide

Web surfers frustrated at paying high prices for relatively slow broadband service won't get much short-term relief from the Federal Communications Commission's effort to make U.S. Internet service faster and cheaper.

After years of bidding up fees for the rights to televise sports, U.S. media companies are putting on the brakes.

A year-end flurry of ad spending helped moderate steep declines at some newspapers and magazines, and fueled an uptick at others, raising hopes for a recovery in 2010.

Comcast has courted NBC Universal for months, but the companies would need to take a long detour to Washington before they make it to the altar.

Television-network owners News Corp. and CBS Corp. are pushing cable operators to pay monthly fees to carry their broadcast TV stations.

Disgruntled Tribune bondholders have asked a US bankruptcy judge to let them investigate Sam Zell's 2007 buyout of the newspaper-and-television chain in an effort to derail a plan that would hand the company over to its banks.

Tribune Co. said its ownership is likely to change as the newspaper-and-television company emerges from bankruptcy-court protection, a shift that people familiar with the matter say would likely put the company in the hands of its lenders and shrink primary debt by more than 90%.

Time Warner is set to announce a separation of its America Online (AOL) division as soon as today. Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes has signaled for months that Time Warner was likely to move forward without the Internet unit, and the company said last month it expected to spin off all or parts of the business.

The weekend bankruptcy filings of Philadelphia's two major newspapers and Journal Register Co., publisher of the New Haven Register and 19 other dailies, marks the latest in a wave of companies crushed by corporate debt and is likely a sign of more pain to come.

Two major newspapers publishers are taking steps to outsource international coverage, as falling revenue is causing more U.S. papers to shrink their foreign and national footprint. Tribune Co., which owns the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is in talks with the Washington Post Co.