DirecTV's Hartenstein becomes LA Times publisher Tribune Co. didn’t have much luck installing a company man at the troubled Los Angeles Times the last time the publisher position opened up. David Hiller, a 15-year Tribune senior vice president, lasted just two years in the job. So for the paper’s latest publisher, its fourth in eight years, Tribune has tapped an outsider, Eddy Hartenstein, the ex-president of DirecTV. Hartenstein faces a tough job. The Times has shed hundreds of employees over recent years, getting rid of top editors who refused to carry out the axings. The pace of those cuts quickened after Sam Zell bought Tribune last year, and nearly a fifth of the newsroom has been pushed out. Hartenstein, an engineer by trade, is a long-time Los Angeles resident, though he has little newspaper experience. He helped launch of DirecTV in 1990 and stayed with the company through 2003. After that, he served as chairman and chief executive of HD Partners Acquisition Corp.   Star razing: GM ends Academy Awards sponsorship General Motors has apparently decided to start by chopping the big stuff after pledging earlier this summer to reduce its advertising expenditures. The longtime sponsor of the Academy Awards, which spent more than $13 million on the 2008 telecast, won’t advertise on the 2009 Oscars, leaving the network without one of its biggest-spending sponsors. Already this year GM had dropped out of the Emmys, according to The Wall Street Journal. It comes during a rough patch for the American automaker, which announced a 20 percent reduction in its salaried workforce last month and promised to trim its ad budget as well. The carmaker is one of the country’s largest advertisers, spending $535 million during first quarter 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. The auto category has been hurting for some time. In 2007, GM spent $2.1 billion on advertising, down 9 percent from 2006, which was down from 2005, according to TNS. At least ABC, which sold upwards of $80 million in ads for the 2008 Oscars, has some time to find a replacement for GM. The ceremony, which fell to all-time low ratings this year, airs in February.   Pew: People still get their news from television first It’s no secret that Americans are turning away from traditional news sources in favor of the internet. But more people still get their news from TV than any other source, according to the Pew Research Center’s biannual survey released yesterday. Despite a noticeable shift toward online news sources, especially by younger people, 46 percent of those surveyed said the have a heavy reliance on TV to get their news fix at all times of day. The group who relies the most on TV news skews older, with a median age of 52, and the least affluent, with 43 percent unemployed, and they’re not likely to have internet access in the home. However, fewer are watching the nightly broadcast network newscasts and instead get their headlines from cable outlets such as CNN or Fox News Channel.   Beijing bounce: Friday ratings rise after recent dips After two days of declines compared to the 2004 Athens Games, the Beijing Olympics once again surged on Friday, with NBC averaging 25.6 million total viewers, up 8 percent over the comparable night in Athens four years ago. NBC averaged a 15.2 household rating and 28 share, 6 percent better than Athens’ 14.4/27, as Michael Phelps earned his record-tying seventh gold medal of the Games. NBC continues to dominate the competition. Its 8.2 adults 18-49 average was 134 percent better than the combined 3.5 for ABC, CBS and Fox, and among total viewers, NBC was 111 percent ahead of the 12.1 million for the other Big Three networks combined.   Coming soon to Canada, a domestic p#%rn channel Call it nudist nationalism – there’s apparently an appetite for domestically produced pornography in Canada. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission has approved the launch of Northern Peaks, a new digital porn channel that will feature at least 50 percent Canadian content. The new network has gained approval from the CRTC as a Category 2 specialty channel, which means its carriage is optional among digital cable and satellite TV providers. The CRTC actually only required that Northern Peaks air 15 percent Canadian content, but parent company Real Productions decided to go with at least 50 percent in order to make the channel uniquely Canadian. The company is still in talks with carriers, and the license won’t take effect until the company comes to an agreement with at least one distributor. There’s no word on whether advertising will be included in the channel or if it will be purely subscriber-based.