News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), the big media conglomerate that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, issued Q1 data on Wednesday after regular trading was over. Revenues declined 4%, but earnings per share went up 10% to 22 cents. According to Bloomberg, that was enough to beat analysts by four pennies.

That's pretty decent for the company, but there are a couple of spots in need of serious help. It goes without saying that the newspaper industry is having a rough time, so it's not so hard to understand why the news groups experienced a significant decline in operating income.

Cable giant Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) posted Q3 numbers earlier today. It seems like the company is doing well with earnings growth and cash flow, even if revenues moved up a meager 3%.

Adjusted earnings per share grew over 20% to 28 cents per share. According to our earnings preview, the market was looking for 25 cents per share. Operating cash flow increased a little under 3%, but free cash flow went up almost 20%, aided by a smaller amount of capital expenditures compared to the previous year's similar quarter. I'm sure shareholders are more than satisfied with the growth rate of the green stuff over the past three months. Comcast saw excellent expansion of free cash over the last nine months, too.

Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA), which is said to be buying a controlling stake in NBC Universal, is scheduled to discuss its third quarter 2009 financial results in a conference call Wednesday at 8:30 AM ET. You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's website.

During the three months that ended in September, Comcast launched an internet portal for kids, a collaboration with the NFL, and a trial of On Demand Online. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect this leading entertainment, information, and communication provider to report earnings of $0.25 per share, just a penny per share lower than in both the previous quarter and a year ago. Comcast earnings have beat the Street view in the past four quarters, by as much as seven cents per share. Revenue for the third quarter is expected to be 3.5% higher to $8.9 billion.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the advertising market could be ready for an upswing. Michael Morris, an analyst at UBS, is making a connection between improved sales at retail stores and a robust environment for commercials and the like. His reasoning is sound: if retail businesses are doing better, then they might want want to take advantage of new cash levels to invest in marketing initiatives aimed at bringing in traffic.

Indeed, the advertising industry has been in the dumps. Any good news is welcome. Media entities such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, are counting on increased opportunities to sell their respective inventories at better prices.

Printers of the world unite! Feeling the squeeze from the likes of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), a group of magazine publishers is forming an industrywide joint venture ... for protection.

Led by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), participating companies would create a digital storefront for their content. In this way, they could peddle their goods without the hefty carve-outs that come with Amazon and Apple deals.

Analyst upgrades:

• UBS upgraded Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to Buy from Neutral and raised its target to $265 from $170, citing higher iPhone expectations, new partnerships, and likely upward revisions to Street estimates driven by gross margins.
• Wells Fargo upgraded Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) to Outperform from Market Perform. The firm views a possible deal between end General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal positively, as it thinks NBC will provide higher-margin growth for Comcast.
• Janney Montgomery upgraded Michael Baker (AMEX: BKR) to Buy from Neutral after the company completed the sale of its Energy business. The firm raised its target on shares to $46 from $40.
• Jefferies assumed coverage of Endo Pharma (NASDAQ: ENDP) and upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold. The firm cites valuation, a strong base business, and solid cash flow for the upgrade, and has a $30 target price on shares.
• Marten Transport (NASDAQ: MRTN) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Stephens.
• U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette.

Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) is feeling a little heat from studios Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal. The major media companies would all like to make more money from Netflix's business model, according to BusinessWeek.

No one is really satisfied these days with the DVD industry. Growth in home video is no longer what it used to be. So content makers perceive a need to engage new strategies to offset the this lack of expansion. It would be nice if those strategies were confined to innovation in movie development and the reduction of project budgets. Instead, trying to negotiate more beneficial deals with distributors such as Netflix will probably be the focus of media execs.

Is Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) getting ready to buy General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal? Hard to say. According to our sister site DailyFinance, it looks like the rumor of this theoretical event might be just that -- a rumor, nothing more. Then again, maybe there's something to it.

It seems likely, though, that Comcast does want to clinch a deal with some big media company. Remember when Comcast wanted to buy Disney (NYSE: DIS)? Quite frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up taking NBC Universal off GE's corporate hands. But which group of shareholders would this benefit the most?

The roots of Vivendi go back to the mid 1800s, when the company was created by an Imperial decree by Napoleon III. Basically, it became a top provider of water.

It was a business that generated tons of cash flows -- and allowed for dealmaking. However, this activity almost destroyed the company. As a result, over the past few years, Vivendi has been restructuring its operations, with the main focus on mobile.

Last year, I composed a not-so-bullish appraisal of NBC Universal's Jay Leno strategy. NBC Universal, which General Electric (NYSE: GE) has an 80% stake in, wanted to make sure that Leno's services did not wind up in the hands of a competing media entity when they handed The Tonight Show over to Conan O'Brien, so they bestowed upon him a talk program to be aired weeknights at 10 PM. It debuts tonight. I basically argued that NBC would survive without Leno, and that such an odd programming choice at 10 PM, when scripted intellectual assets are usually broadcast, might not be the optimal paradigm to engage.

Well, I still feel this is a risky move, but I do have to say that an article by Scott Collins over at the Los Angeles Times has piqued my interest in the expected economical benefit that Leno-at-10 might imply. Leno might not bring in a ton of eyeballs, but his profit margin could be acceptable given the lower capital necessary to fund his extravaganza.

It was a big weekend for Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF). The company had a Tyler Perry picture in the multiplex marketplace. As shareholders know, the talented writer/producer/director has a lot of brand equity with moviegoers. About a year ago, Lionsgate was doing relatively well with Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. That project opened in second place.

This year, Perry has done even better. Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself debuted in the top spot at domestic theaters as of early estimates at Boxofficemojo. Its three-day gross was roughly $24 million. It had some stiff competition. Coming in second was the animated sci-fi piece 9 from Focus Features, which is owned by General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal. Inglourious Basterds, distributed by The Weinsten Company, was third (the Quentin Tarantino flick has now gone beyond $100 million in total gross). News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) All About Steve came in at number four. Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Final Destination appears to be losing steam, as it dropped to the fifth slot on the chart.

Speaking of horror, Sorority Row from Summit Entertainment came in sixth. I thought this movie was going to rank much higher, but I was wrong. The marketing campaign looked good to me, but it apparently didn't fully resonate with the intended audience (perhaps a large amount of that audience decided to opt for Destination instead).

It took a while, but the broadcast media community is starting to realize that Nielsen Media may not have the answers to all their audience-related questions.

So, 14 of the largest players in the space -- including programmers, advertisers, and ad buyers -- are shelling out some cash to see if there's a better way. The group claims it isn't looking for an alternative to Nielsen ... but let's do the math on this one. If they aren't looking for some new choices, then just what the hell are they doing?

In the emerging markets, a key to growth is mobile. And, this is revving up M&A activity for the major operators, who are trying to grab marketshare.

This is certainly the case with Vivendi. Recently, the company's chief -- Jean-Bernard Levy -- said he has a credit line of close to $9 billion to do deals.

Well, he hasn't wasted much time. Late yesterday, Vivendi announced a buyout bid for GVT SA, which is a fixed-line phone company in Brazil. The transaction comes to about $3 billion (or a 16% premium to the current stock price).

Coinstar's (NASDAQ: CSTR) Redbox, a convenient movie-rental kiosk, has really shaken things up in the media industry. BloggingStocks has covered recent events surrounding this asset: Zac Bissonnette wrote an article earlier in the month discussing the subject of litigation with certain studios, and Brent Archer covered a possible options play connected to a deal with Viacom (NYSE: VIA).

I won't rehash all of the details, but let me boil it down to the salient issue: studios such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) are all worried about the devaluation of physical media. Redbox charges a single dollar per day for a DVD rental. This frightens content makers. Executives at these companies believe that discs must be defended since they are an important way of amortizing costs associated with making films. Even those entities that have decided to engage the Redbox model probably aren't happy about it. Lions Gate (NYSE: LGF) surely doesn't enjoy the deflation of the DVD, but it is playing ball nevertheless.

Nielsen ratings have always been an imperfect system of projecting who is watching what when. The advent of DVR technology and internet-streamed programming have made the television ratings game even more challenging.

So the major TV companies -- General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS), and Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) -- have teamed together to fight against Nielsen, which not only delivers arguably flawed data, but charges a hefty fee to do so.