BEIJING (Reuters) –
Chinese firms selling advertising space on Google’s search pages have demanded clarity about the Internet company’s plans in China, warning they will demand compensation if it shuts its Chinese portal.

The warning from Chinese online advertising sales companies comes amid signs that Google Inc may soon move to close Google.cn, more than two months after it hit back against sophisticated hacking attacks from inside China and said it was no longer willing to offer a censored search engine.

Google and China have been tight-lipped since then about any talks to reconcile their differences.

A letter purportedly from 27 Google-authorized sales representative companies says the wait has gone on for too long, eroding their business, scaring off employees and putting big investments in jeopardy.

“We see a constant stream of information but cannot predict the future, we see business sliding, but there is nothing we can do,” says the letter, which was also posted on a website affiliated with China’s central television. “We are waiting now in incomparable pain and disquiet.”

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BEIJING – China without Google — a prospect that looks increasingly likely — could mean no more maps on mobile phones. A free music service that has helped to fight piracy might be in jeopardy. China’s fledgling Web outfits would face less pressure to improve, eroding their ability to one day compete abroad.

The extent of a possible Google Inc. pullout from China in its dispute with the communist government over censorship and hacking is unclear. But on top of a local search site that Google says it may close, services that might be affected range from advertising support for Chinese companies to online entertainment.

“If Google leaves, it’s a lose-lose scenario, instead of Google loses and others gain,” said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

Chinese news reports say Google is on the verge of shutting its China site, Google.cn, and has stopped censoring results. A Google spokesman, Scott Rubin, denied censorship had stopped and would not confirm whether Google.cn might close.

“We have not changed our operations in China,” Rubin said by phone from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. CEO Eric Schmidt said last week something would happen soon, and Rubin said he had no further details.

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NEW YORK – Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons,” a new consumer survey suggests.

That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday.

The project’s report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.

About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online — including those who already do.

There’s little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they’d look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment.

“If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center.

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MELVILLE, N.Y. – A former vice president and advertising sales director for Sirius XM Radio has been named the new publisher of amNew York.

Newsday Media Group announced Friday that Paul Turcotte will begin his duties as publisher of the New York newspaper beginning on Monday. He will report to Newsday Media Group Publisher Terry Jimenez, amNew York’s former publisher.

Turcotte was most recently at Sirius XM Radio. Before that he held senior management and sales positions with Hachette-Filipacchi Media, Men’s Health Magazine, and other magazine publishing companies.

Newsday Media Group is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp. It publishes Newsday, amNew York and operates Star Community Publishing, the Northeast’s largest group of weekly shopper publications, as well as several Web sites.

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NEW YORK – The Academy Awards have a tiresome habit of calling the annual Oscar telecast “Hollywood’s biggest night.”

This year the Oscarcast could prove to be a pretty big night for television, too.

The economy may be wheezing, but advertising time on ABC’s Academy Awards shindig (Sunday at 8:30 p.m. EST) is sold out, with the price tag reportedly $1.5 million per 30-second spot, up from less than $1 million last year.

And even in an era defined by eroding TV viewership, several promising signs — including the David-and-Goliath battle between “Hurt Locker” and “Avatar” — suggest Oscar could regain a measure of its past ratings glory.

Last year, the Oscarcast attracted 36.3 million viewers, with dark horse hit “Slumdog Millionaire” crowned best picture. In 2008, the audience, by Oscar standards, was even paltrier — just 32 million, as the not-for-everyone drama “No Country for Old Men” claimed the big prize.

But roll back the clock to 1998, when titanic interest surrounding “Titanic” helped bring an all-time-record of more than 55 million viewers to the show.

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