Large media mutual funds appeared to be taking advantage of low-priced stocks and making bets on an improved advertising environment in the third quarter, beefing up on shares of CBS (NYSE: CBS) and News Corp (NYSE: NWS). while reducing their positions in distributors like Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Verizon Communications.

According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings over the past few weeks, the four largest mutual funds focusing on the cable space — Capital Research Global Investors, Capital Guardian Trust, Janus Capital Management and FMR LLC — focused on snapping up cheap stocks like CBS (which traded as low as $5.78 per share in July) and News Corp. (which traded around $9.47 per share in July) as well as strong performers such as Discovery Communications (NSDQ: DISCA) (which has had three straight quarters of advertising-revenue growth).

China’s Shanda (NSDQ: SNDA) is adding online video to its growing digital media empire, through the acquisition of user-gen video site Ku6.com. It’s an all-stock deal; Ku6 will keep its name, becoming a subsidiary of Hurray, the mobile content company Shanda bought out this summer. Full financials were not disclosed, though the companies said certain Ku6 executive staff need to stick around for up to two years to get a complete payoff. Forbes sources say the deal is worth no more than $50 million; it’s expected to close in the first quarter of 2010.

Founded in 2006, Ku6 competes with other popular online video sites like Tudou.com and Youku.com; partnering with Hurray to offer mobile video services—among other features—could help the company differentiate. Ku6 was backed by two rounds of funding from DFJ, DT Capital Partners, UMC Capital and SBI Broadband Fund; the company raised at least $30 million.

Three private equity houses are investing $180 million in web portal Sina (NSDQ: SINA), one of China’s biggest online businesses, according to reports from Reuters.com and WSJ, citing sources. Sequoia Capital is joining with Chinese investment groups Fountainvest Partners and CITIC Capital to back a management-led purchase of 5.6 million new shares, worth 9.4 percent of the company. The new money will in part fund new acquisitions.

Sina in fact announced the share placement officially in September—which will see the shares go to New-Wave Investment Holding Company Limited, a British Virgin Islands-based investment vehicle—but until now it has been unclear where CEO Charles Chao and colleagues would get financial backing for the scheme. This deal comes after Sina’s proposed merger with ad group Focus Media (NSDQ: FMCN) was blocked by Chinese regulatory authorities.

It calls itself “the ultimate BitTorrent source”, but P2P tracker Mininova has now removed almost all links to copyrighted content after complying with a cease-and-desist court ruling in August from Dutch entertainment rightsholder group Brein.

As the site’s staff write in a blog post, only content uploaded via the site’s legal P2P distribution service will be available, meaning Battletar Galactica episodes and Lady Gaga tracks have been replaced by more obscure music artists…

As I reported on Tuesday, a strategy review with which the BBC Trust has charged director-general Mark Thompson with leading seems certain to downsize the BBC’s online heft - and perhaps cut some digital channels, too - in response to commercial rivals’ concern.

Here, in two BBC Newsnight interview excerpts, Thompson says: “We will never put BBC News behind a paywall.” But the website: “Does it have to be this big? Can we focus it more?” Expect some cutbacks in 2010…

»  Playboy’s sale talks moving fast, according to our sources, and Iconix is still in there strong. A few other parties are in there, including a hedge fund. As we have reported, TV/online outsourcing is on table too, and among the names floated for that are Cisneros Group, with which PLA already has international TV deals and Penthouse owner Friendfinder Group. UBS is banker from PLA’s side on the deal.

»  South African media giant Naspers has $600 million to make digital acquisitions in Southeast Asia, but denies an interest in buying ICQ off AOL (NYSE: TWX), as has been speculated. [Bloomberg]. It also reported earnings and internet division grew 28 percent, mainly because Tencent in China is growing gangbusters. [Fin24]

»  Chinese portal Sohu (NSDQ: SOHU) is building a new headquarter in China, at a cost of $110 million, to be completed in 2012, according to an SEC filing it filed yesterday. [SEC]

»  In July, Salon hired an investment bank to raise money, its perpetual issue. No results yet from that effort, according an SEC filing. Its Q309 revs were down 48 percent. Also, it had about 10 layoffs in August, higher than previously reported (about six). Salaries for all remaining employees has been reduced as well. Severance costs about $33K.

»  Maybe Borders is taking this e-reader thing literally: In UK it is close to filing for bankruptcy. [PCUK]

»  Playstation Magazine publisher Future’s future isn’t looking that great either. UK’s held up OK, U.S. is bad. [Reuters]

»  On Hulu for magazines: apparently launch is imminent and Time, Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith (NYSE: MDP) would be equity partners. [NYT]

»  Lachlan Murdoch’s back in the media game with an Aussie radio buy. Nielsen Business, as I reported first, next? [The Australian]

»  Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) is launching an ad campaign “on behalf of its customers” to target what it sees as unfair price demands by programmers. Good luck. [Reuters]

UK’s Telegraph Media Group editor-in-chief Will Lewis is becoming the company’s managing director for digital, and will head a new “entrepreneurial” division with 50 staff to lead the company’s search for new revenue streams. Lewis retains his editor-in-chief role across print and online, but Daily Telegraph deputy editor Tony Gallagher is promoted to editor to run the paper on a day-to-day basis.

TMG digital editor Ed Roussel tweeted the changes on Thursday and they are confirmed in a release from the company.

With both Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) overhauling the user interfaces of their search engines, it only made sense that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) would want to tweak the look of its site too. The company is testing out an updated logo and home page (See screenshot to the left). And the results pages now features a left hand column by default, which includes related searches as well as a colorful way to quickly navigate to other Google properties, including news. Search Engine Land reported last week that the changes could go live to all users next year—if the tests are successful. VP Marissa Mayer described the changes to the publication as “an overall cleaning up of the search results page.”

»  LinkedIn’s CEO says an IPO is not in the company’s near-term plans. [Reuters]

»  The Toronto Star will shed 20 percent of its newsroom staff. [E&P]

»  Monster.com’s impressions have doubled from this time last year (it now reaches 43 percent of the U.S. audience). [ClickZ]

»  Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is launching an e-book service in Japan. [TBI]

»  Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is one of the lead investors in an electronic-receipt company called Kvittar. [CrunchGear]

»  The Boston Globe‘s biggest union wants to oust its president. [Fishbowl NY]

Newspapers haven’t yet found the secret sauce of getting consumers to pay online, but games publishers certainly have. While Rupert Murdoch delays his grand paywall scheme and local papers start to tentatively get in on the act, Activision-Blizzard’s World of Warcraft celebrates its fifth birthday this week: its 12 million players pay £8.99/$15 per month (equivalent to £1.29 billion/$2.16 billion a year).

What makes pretending to be an elf more profitable than publishing news and information online? Maybe newspapers could learn a few things from the world of games as they try to monetise digital behaviour…

Video game-centric online video and original content company Machinima.com has raised $1.7 million in funding, per an SEC filing. Chairman and CEO Allen DeBevoise said the money came from previous backer MK Capital; the company is calling it an add-on to its first round, with the potential to raise a total of of $2.5 million, if necessary.

DeBevoise said Machinima.com’s viewer metrics had “tripled” since the company raised money last year; its content is attracting over 60 million video views per month—up from 20 million last November—with most of the traffic split between Machinima.com’s YouTube channel and the website itself. Machinima.com sells its own ads, though it partners with YouTube for certain campaigns; video game companies and movie studios are the primary ad buyers.

Evo Media Group, which offers a free website publishing platform, has raised $1.5 million in funding, according to several media reports. The company says more than 30,000 people are building websites using its DevHub platform, which launched in February; its network gets about two million unique visitors a month. Evo Media Group has partnerships with a number of internet companies, including Priceline, so that users can monetize their sites. It’s been profitable since August.