How tough are things at General Motors?

Not only has the car maker scaled back on its advertising budget, but now it wants the ad agencies it works with to cut their fees by as much as 20 percent this year and next, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

It’s no surprise GM has pulled back on some marketing — just look at any figures over the past year. It’s not like anybody else in Detroit is going gangbusters with their spending either — Ford and Chrysler have also cut their spend, data from TNS shows.

But the WSJ article underscores the risks to the advertising and media industry posed by the meltdown in Detroit. Car makers, after all, are huge clients for advertising agencies. The money they spend also fuels revenue for the media companies that carry the advertisements, from television to print and beyond.

Here’s what the article says about the GM move:

“The owner of Cadillac and Chevrolet works with dozens of agencies around the country, including Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett and Interpublic Group’s McCann Erickson and Campbell-Ewald.

Several ad executives familiar with GM say the cuts could translate into more than $20 million in total savings for General Motors, but likely will mean layoffs for the agencies involved.”

If GM gets its way, you can bet others will be clamoring to follow suit.

Keep an eye on: 

• Warner Music Group posted a smaller quarterly loss as improved sales in Europe softened the effects of the slowdown in the global music industry (Reuters)
• Google has sold Performics, the search agency it got in the acquisition of DoubleClick, to Publicis Groupe (AdAge)
• A flurry of films arriving in North American theaters between now and September are opening on a Wednesday — long considered a moviegoing dead zone — as studios seek to build early buzz for movies ahead of the traditional Friday dash to the multiplex (Reuters)
• LA Times, which has struggled of late, is posting some solid traffic gains on its Reader’s Representative Journal blog (paidContent.org)

(Photo: Reuters)

Dallas Morning News and Providence Journal publisher AH Belo Corp is getting some online representation. David Morgan,  who worked at Time Warner’s AOL between September 2007 and February 2008, is joining the Dallas-based company’s board, the Morning News reported on Thursday.

Morgan was founder of Tacoda and Real Media. See Buzzmachine proprietor Jeff Jarvis’s short, complimentary writeup about Morgan here .

Also joining is John Puerner, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times, whose territory butts up against Belo’s Press-Enterprise daily newspaper in Riverside County, California.

Mr. Puerner, 56, a private investor, spent most of his career with Tribune Co. He was publisher, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times from April 2000, shortly after Tribune agreed to acquire it, until May 2005, when he retired from Tribune.

And here’s the simple, if somewhat vague reasoning:

“Their backgrounds in both print and Internet media will add crucial insights to the board’s deliberations,” said J. McDonald Williams, lead director of A.H. Belo.

Belo, which recently split from the larger Belo Corp (which remains a television broadcasting company), is yet one more U.S. newspaper company trying to manage the downturn that papers have been going through as print advertisers chase the readers who are leaving newspapers in favor of getting their news online.