Los Angeles - The Los Angeles Times yesterday announced that Russ Stanton, formerly the paper's innovation editor, has been promoted to editor. The paper also named Bob Bellack as president, development and digital media; and Rob Barrett as SVP of interactive. "This is a critical period for The Times -- in fact for all news media -- as we change and grow, and show we can sustain the future of one of the truly great news franchises in America," said Times publisher David Hiller. "Russ Stanton combines great personal leadership, communication skills, the highest journalistic standards and a commitment to excellence, and has been championing much of our work to become a truly multimedia news organization that's a relevant and engaging part of the 24-hour-a- day world of news and information."

New York - Video game publisher Take-Two Interactive (NASD: TTWO) has named Ben Feder as its CEO through 2012. Feder was previously CEO of MessageClick and has been serving as Take-Two's acting CEO since last March. On Friday, Take-Two also named Strauss Zelnick to the position of executive chairman. Zelnick has been serving as its non-executive chairman since last March.

Santa Monica, Calif. - Activision (NASD: ATVI) has announced plans for the next iteration of its popular "Guitar Hero" franchise, which will be built around the music of platinum-selling rock band Aerosmith. In development for the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and PS2 for release this summer, "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" will feature around 30 songs from Aerosmith, as well as other from bands that have opened for them.

Hong Kong - The Motion Picture Association (MPA) announced on Friday that six of its member studios have filed civil copyright infringement complaints totaling $1 million against Xunlei, a popular file-sharing network in China that is partly owned by Google (NASD: GOOG). The MPA stated that Xunlei's network offers "hundreds" of its members' titles, including "Spider-Man 3" and "Miami Vice," and noted that it sent 78 separate notices of infringement to Xunlei over a five-week period before initiating the litigation.

El Segundo, Calif. - Nintendo is expected to lead the next-generation console race by the end of this year, with a total installed base of 30.2 million Wii's, versus 25.7 Microsoft Xbox 360's and 20.3 million PlayStation 3's, but the Sony console is expected to make significant gains and eventually overtake its two rivals by 2011, according to a report from market research firm iSuppli.

Brussels - The European Union has proposed extending copyright terms for musicians in its member countries from 50 to 95 years, with European Commissioner for internal market and services Charlie McCreevy arguing that, otherwise, some older performers may lose royalties from their works before they are even dead. "If nothing is done, thousands of European performers who recorded in the late 1950s and 1960s will lose all of their airplay royalties over the next 10 years," said McCreevy.

Port Washington, N.Y. - U.S. video game sales were $1.18 billion in January, a 6% drop from a year ago -- attributed primarily to an extra week of sales reporting last year -- with Sony's (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation 3 notably overtaking Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) Xbox 360 for second place in hardware sales behind Nintendo's Wii. Overall hardware shortages after the holiday shopping rush pushed sales down 25% from a year ago, to $378 million; Nintendo moved 274,000 Wii consoles, while Sony sold 269,000 PS3's and Microsoft 230,000 Xbox 360's.

London - Live Nation (NYSE: LYV), a concert promoter and owner of live event venues worldwide, announced on Friday that it will acquire a 65% controlling stake in Mirage Promotions, a Dubai-based concert promoter.

Norwood, Mass. - The Polaroid Corp. has announced that it plans to wind down its instant film business, a response to the ever-growing popularity of digital photography.

McLean, Va. - Attempting to boost their sagging ad revenue, four of the nation's largest newspaper publishers -- including Gannett (NYSE: GCI), Tribune (NYSE: TXA), Hearst and The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) -- said on Friday that they will team to launch their own online ad sales network. The network, called quadrantONE, will work in a similar fashion to a networks launched last year by Yahoo and a group of newspapers, allowing national advertisers to buy space on more than 120 newspaper websites.

Bentonville, Ark. - Following similar recent announcements from Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) and Netflix (NASD: NFLX), retail giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) announced on Friday that it will drop its HD DVD offerings in favor of Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Blu-ray next-generation DVD format. Meanwhile, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Toshiba "is expected to pull the plug on its HD DVD format in the coming weeks." THR noted, however, that Toshiba says no official decision has been made.

Los Angeles - Confirming earlier rumors, video-sharing site Revver has been acquired by LiveUniverse, a company launched by former MySpace parent company Intermix Media's founder Brad Greenspan, according to reports from NewTeeVee and CNET News.com. While terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, News.com reported earlier this month that the struggling Revver -- which had seen the departure of all of its founders, and its staff cut in half -- was asking for only $300,000 to $500,000, plus the assumption of about $1 million in debt.

Yahoo! Search attracts a younger audience than Google. I promised a post with figures to back up my claim (sorry I am a day late - forgot it was Valentine's Day!). The following charts show the percentage of visits from each age group to Yahoo! Search and Google.com.