Scant buying lifted stocks for a second day Wednesday after the government reported a drop in companies' inventories.

NAB argues that Congress and the FCC have reviewed the playing field and found it level.

Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger said today the top U.S. media company is keeping its options open for dealing with TV network ABC and its struggling news division, including a spin-off.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves has put advertisers and affiliates on notice: both will soon be paying more. CBS TV affiliates will pay more in the form of substantial portions of the retransmission consent fees they receive from cable operators — or risk losing their network affiliations. And advertisers will face higher prices for commercials running on the network.

A spokesman for Charlie Sheen says the actor will soon be back at Two and a Half Men after undergoing rehab that temporarily halted production of CBS's top-rated sitcom.

Nearly all consumers — 97% — now use online media when researching products or services in their local area, according to BIA/Kelsey's latest study. Search engines lead Yellow Pages 2-to-1 as most-used source, and consumers are use mores source.

It looks like broadcasters could get more breathing room from the specter of government spectrum band-clearing for mobile broadband. The House Energy & Commerce Committee today passed the spectrum inventory bill by voice vote with an amendment that lengthens from two to four years the time in which the FCC and the NTIA are required to make recommendations to Congress about spectrum reallocation or sharing.

In its second week, NBC's new drama Parenthood stumbled. Whether its numbers fall further in coming weeks will determine whether the show gets a second season. Parenthood averaged a 2.6 adults 18-49 rating last night at 10 p.m., down 16% from last week's 3.1 in its debut.

In this TV world — unless you have an Oscars or a Super Bowl broadcast — grabbing big masses of TV viewers with one big hit is difficult. Still, TV networks and programmers do what they can these days to make sure everyone will see their programming wares. Media companies are using a technique called "road-blocking," formerly in vogue for TV commercial messaging: running programs across all of their networks and channels.

An estimated 41.3 million people saw The Hurt Locker top the popular Avatar for best picture in the most-watched Academy Awards telecast since 2005. Oscar viewership was up 14% over last year, keeping with a trend of bigger audiences for major events on broadcast television a month after the Super Bowl set the mark for most-watched telecast ever.

The president-general manager of Dispatch Broadcast Group's Indianapolis' NBC affiliate died suddenly of an apparent heart attack while on a business trip in Ohio.