Planet Media ... This week's media news at a glance

Microsoft has made a fresh approach to Yahoo about a deal to combine part of their online businesses, although the proposal stops short of a full acquisition of the internet media company. The approach came after Carl Icahn, the activist investor, acquired a 3.5% stake in Yahoo and sought to replace the company's board with executives open to re-opening takeover talks with Microsoft. - Financial Times, 19 May

French publishing group Larousse is launching its own version of Wikipedia. Its first free-access online encyclopaedia will feature the same contributor function as Wikipedia, but will try to improve the reliability of articles. - The Independent, 14 May

An appeal by Sky to prevent the disclosure of confidential documents in its legal battle with Virgin Media has been rejected. Three of the country's top judges threw out Sky's appeal and ordered the satellite broadcaster to pay Virgin £40,000 in costs. - The Daily Telegraph, 15 May

ITV has warned of further cost-cutting and a freeze on its programming budget. The alert came as the broadcaster said the TV advertising market had so far held up "relatively well" despite the worsening economic outlook. Michael Grade, ITV executive chairman, urged shareholders at the broadcaster's annual meeting to give him more time to turn around the broadcaster's performance. - Financial Times, 16 May

The board of market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), spurned a second approach from Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP - after receiving an increased 241.5 pence per share takeover proposal. WPP aims to break up merger talks between TNS, the world's third-largest research firm, and its German counterpart GfK, so that it can merge TNS with its own research arm Kantar. - The Daily Telegraph, 14 May

Orange is launching itself into the internet radio market. The communications provider will sell a new LiveRadio device, which connects to home broadband and allows consumers to listen to up to 4,000 internet radio stations. - The Guardian, 19 May

Several thousand jobs are expected to go at Thomson Reuters following the £8.7bn merger of the two news groups. An e-mail sent out to all 50,000 global staff confirms that details of the proposed headcount reductions will be outlined in the next few weeks. - The Independent, 16 May

The chief executive of Independent News & Media, Sir Anthony O'Reilly, is heading for a fresh clash with minority stakeholder Denis O'Brien. O'Brien, who has a 22% stake in the company, is likely to raise objections to the composition of INM's board at the company's annual general meeting next month. - The Guardian, 14 May.

This article was first published on Media Week