In an interview with NYT TV reporter Bill Carter at the Paley Center, MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) CEO Judy McGrath insisted that despite appearances, TV viewing is still up among its young viewers. Carter prefaced his question about whether online was cannibalizing TV with an anecdote about his own kids…

As MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) ad execs begin meeting with marketers and media buyers for this year’s upfront, the Viacom unit is putting some finishing touches on reshaping its digital team. Later this morning, MTVN will announce that Suzanne McDonnell (image, left) will lead the Digital Fusion unit, while Heather…

With online ad spending slowly coming back from last year’s weakness, MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) hopes to see a further boost in revenues by adding deeper ad targeting across its vast 200 websites. The Viacom unit has been testing a variety of audience monitors for most of the past year…

MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) CEO Judy McGrath says the Viacom unit’s organic growth is “great,” despite its continued signs of weakness as detailed last week in parent company Viacom’s Q4 earnings. The company was hit by the soft ad market as well as lower sales of Rock Band bundles. In…

Viacom’s profits rose significantly in Q4, as the company posted modest revenue and advertising declines, beating analysts’ expectations. Global ad revenues fell 3 percent, while U.S. ad dollars slipped 4 percent, held down by slight weakness in the Media Networks and Filmed Entertainment segments. The Media Networks’ operating income grew…

		EPS*	Rev. vs Q408	Net Inc. vs Q408
Viacom	Release		3%	301%

* vs. Analysts' Estimates: Beat Met Missed

The amount raised by the Hope For Haiti Now telethon stands at more than $61 million, organizers announced late Monday, up from the preliminary figure of $58 million and likely to keep growing as proceeds from multimedia sales and more donations come in. Nielsen Media Research estimates that more 83…

Music games sales’ tempo may be slowing - but that’s only because instrument ownership is nearing saturation - and anyway, songs bought within titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero are flying off virtual shelves, MTV’s games SVP Paul DeGooyer told me at the Midem music conference. “Certainly, music games…

A stunning number of networks, sites, cable ops and mobile carriers came together Friday night to distribute the Hope for Haiti Now telethon, raising at least $58 million just that day, according to preliminary numbers via CNN. Repeatedly during the two-hour event, viewers were reminded that helping Haiti is an…

Tuesday night, CNN raised more than $7 million for Haitian relief during an quickly planned telethon on Larry King Live. That was small compared to the massive effort led by George Clooney and MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) will reach across the world. Star-studded telethon Help for Haiti Now will air…

MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) is promoting Kevin Arrix (pictured, left) to the role of EVP, Digital Advertising Sales, replacing Nada Stirratt, who jumped to MySpace as chief revenue officer over a month ago. The company will announce Arrix’s promotion later this afternoon. The move comes as Jason Witt has left…

MTVN’s Spike TV launched the first Video Game Awards (VGAs) in 2003, and has been delivering exclusive game trailers and performances to gamers—as well as a highly-engaged audience to video game and CPG advertisers—ever since. Last year, 10 million people tuned in to the awards, with 2.3 million in the…

This is not a surprise considering the continued decline of Rhapsody music service in the face of lots of new competition and the general malaise in the digital music market: MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) and RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) are talking about restructuring their Rhapsody America music JV, according to an…

Catherine Balsam-Schwaber has left her post as a senior marketing exec at MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) to take on a similar role at NBC Universal’s iVillage. This is the second big hire for iVillage within the past two months. In September, publishing vet Joe Lagani defected from Glam Media to…

MTV Networks’ Nickelodeon has acquired the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) franchise, for $60 million. The bulk of the payout goes to The Mirage Group—the company founded by the franchise’s creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird—but embattled media company 4Kids Entertainment will get roughly $11 million from the deal, in…

In its first month on the market, The Beatles: Rock Band jumped to the top of the music video game charts. It was the top selling music video game in September, according to the NPD Group, beating out rival music video game Guitar Hero 5. The Rock Band spin off…

Nada Stirratt is leaving her post as EVP, Digital Advertising for MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) to take on the role of chief revenue officer at MySpace, MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka reports. Her hiring comes about two months after Jeff Berman exited MySpace as sales and marketing head, after the company hired…

MTV Networks’ latest experiment with the minisodes format, Valemont, kicks off on-air and online Tuesday with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) cell phones playing a pivotal role in the plot as well as the marketing. For six consecutive weeks, two-and-a-half minute episodes of Valemont, a drama centered around a woman’s search for…

It’s not just indie companies like ngmoco or Zynga trying to grab a slice of the mobile gaming market—TV networks like *Disney*, *ESPN* and Nickelodeon have all recently made aggressive moves into the space. Nickelodeon just launched the AddictingGames iNetwork, a mobile offshoot of its AddictingGames.com casual games portal. The…

Just a few months after rival *Activision* brought in *Yahoo* vet Dan Rosensweig to head up its Guitar Hero division, comes news that MTV Games has added two new senior execs to its roster to prep for the launch of The Beatles: Rock Band. THQ’s former EVP of publishing Scott…