Free daily Metro continues to have the highest circulation in Hungary, distributing 332,000 copies in the fourth quarter of 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

The country's second highest circulated paper was paid daily Blikk, owned by Swiss publisher Ringier, which sold 227,000.

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The Newspaper Association of America spent almost US$1.6 million last year lobbying the U.S. government on issues ranging from advertising to freedom of information requests, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

According to a disclosure form from the Senate's public records office, the NAA spent a total of $1,578,000 (€1,071,428) in 2007, lobbying the government on issues such as “whether drug companies are allowed to market directly to consumers, the laws forcing government agencies to provide reporters with requested information, rules on how many properties media companies can own and whether telemarketers can call people who do not want to be called,” the AP stated.

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Two auditors of newspaper and magazine readership, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and the National Readership Survey (NRS), will appoint a joint chief executive, and will meet next month to decide whether to merge, Brand Republic reported Tuesday.

Appointing a joint chief is one of several steps toward merging in the long term that ABC and NRS are considering, such as merging their public relations operations. However, it is not an understanding that the two bodies will combine their offerings of data for media planners and buyers.

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Chinese mobile phone users are much more likely to listen to mobile music than users in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy or Spain, according to a survey by M:Metric.

The survey, conducted in December 2007, showed that almost 35 percent of Chinese respondents listened to mobile music in the previous month. Following are Spain and the United Kingdom, with 20 percent and 18.9 percent of respondents, respectively. In United States, however, only 5.7 percent of mobile subscribers were listening to music, which lagged behind any other countries surveyed.

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According to an interview with Bill Gates, Microsoft is not haggling with Yahoo over the rebuffed $31-per-share buyout offer, the Associated Press reported.

"We sent them a letter and said we think that's a fair offer. There's nothing that's gone on other than us stating that we think it's a fair offer. They should take a hard look at it," said the Microsoft chairman Monday.

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According to Parks Associates, the spending on "new multimedia" platforms will increase to US$12.6 billion over the next five years, which includes broadband multimedia advertising, estimated to be more than $6 billion, and embedded video advertising, which will account for over one-third of the total.

Mobile news and entertainment will achieve $5 billion in 2012, dominated by display and search, while on-linear TV services, such as video-on-demand and digital video recorders, will generate revenue of less than $1 billion, most of which are interactive ad spots.

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The Daily Mail has launched a new mobile phone service that, after connecting mobile phones to the Internet momentarily, allows them to send an unlimited number of free text messages to anyone on the system.

The MailTXT system requires readers to download a Java application to their phones, but there is no contractual requirement, and no subscription fee, Brand Republic reported Monday.

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A recent slide in results for Finland's SanomaWSOY and Schibsted in Norway could be just a bump in the road, or they could be an indicator of downward trends to come. Either way, both groups say 2008 is already looking better.

Schibsted saw shares slide 36 percent year-on-year, while Sanoma was down 25 percent from 2006 to 2007. Both missed fourth quarter forecasts.

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