Mothers, you wouldn't let your sons grow up to be cowboys, would you? That's how the song goes, anyway.

So why would you let your daughters grow up to be Hannah Montana? Apparently, it's too late for that. Now there's a song that should be on the top of the charts these days.

Given the tween-beat frenzy around the fictional Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) star, it probably should come as no surprise that "Hannah Montana costume" ranks at the top of the ten most searched-for Halloween costumes for the week ended Oct. 20, according to Hitwise.

Did these fools learn nothing from Cop Rock? Viva Laughlin, the universally panned musical/mystery/drama/casino-intrigue series has been canceled after just two airings. What's worse, the show has been pulled after just one try in its regular Sunday-night time slot.

While the CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) show was rife with talent, including star Melanie Griffith and executive producer/star Hugh Jackman, it suffered from pitifully low ratings and even worse reviews. On Sunday, the program scored a 1.2 rating and a 3 share among adults 18-49. Last Thursday's premiere, helped by a CSI lead-in, turned in ratings that were also disappointing. The show was based on a successful BBC series, Viva Blackpool. This strategy has certainly been hit (The Office) and miss (Coupling) when it comes to stateside programming.

Filling the Sunday 8 p.m. time slot will be reruns of CSI until the new season of Emmy-winning reality show The Amazing Race begins November 4.

The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) is expected to announce some pretty big news today. Several sources have reported today that the entertainment giant is going to be investing some big bucks into an overhaul of one of its major theme parks.

The company is expected to announce that it will be pumping $1.1 billion into its California Adventure theme park. Located in Anaheim, California, California Adventure has long played second fiddle to the company's other California destination, Disneyland.

The preliminary reports are suggesting that the $1.1 billion renovation will take place over 5 years, once the company officially announces its plans we will update you with some more concrete timetables for the project.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer

MAJOR PAPERS:

• GMAC's Residential Capital, which is owned in part by General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM), is today expected to announce the cutting of 25% of its 12,000 employees, reported the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
  
• Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) struggling California Adventure theme park is about to get a $1.1B makeover over five years, reported the Wall Street Journal.

OTHER PAPERS:

• General Motors said today that it will lay off 767 workers at its HamTramck assembly plant and cut one of the two shifts, reported the Detroit News.
• Chrysler may eliminate as many as five vehicle models this month, according to the Detroit Free Press, citing a source.
• Brazilian authorities raided Cisco Systems' (NASDAQ: CSCO) vehicles and seized merchandise, following a two-year investigation into alleged tax avoidance on products shipped from offshore havens, reported the U.K. Times.

WEBSITES:

• According to a totally unsubstantiated rumor, News Corporation's (NYSE: NWS) MySpace is going to acquire RockYou, a top Facebook application developer, for $800M, reported ValleyWag.com.

A slew of earnings just came out:

• United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) reported a 20% increase in profit for the third quarter, earning $1.21 per share, and beating estimates of $1.16 per share. Shares are currently nearly flat.
• Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO) reported third-quarter profit fell 8.4%, but income from continuing operations rose 18.1%. The company also raised its full-year earnings guidance. The company beat per share earnings by reporting $1.21 EPS higher than the $1.14 expected. Shares are up over 0.9% in premarket trading.
• The Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) reported a 13% increase in third-quarter profit on a double-digit increase in sales, beating Wall Street expectations.
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) shares are rising over 3% in premarket action after the nation's third-largest bank managed to turn out a 2% profit rise in the third quarter despite rocky market conditions and a rough lending climate. Earnings per share came to 97 cents, up 5% from 92 cents last year and handily beating the 90 cents per share analysts had expected.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) shares are up over 2% in premarket trading to $173.00. Yesterday the company announced the release date -- October 26 -- of its new Leopard operating system. The new version will cost $129 for a single user and $199 for a family pack, a price many users have voiced their dismay on the blogosphere, especially what seems for now a lack of price point for students.

Along with Apple, and following Intel and Yahoo!'s strong results yesterday, many other tech stocks are trading higher in premarket action including Google, which reports tomorrow an is up over 2%, eBay, which reports after the close today and is up over 3%, and Amazon which is up over 2%. Barring any surprises, expect today to be a strong one for tech and the Nasdaq to lead gains. Many analysts have been raising target prices on Intel and Yahoo! this morning.

The Walt Disney Co (NYSE: DIS) is planning to spend $1.1 billion over five years to overhaul its California Adventure theme park, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Bear Stearns downgraded General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) to Underperform from Peer Perform after news it would pay $46.7 billion in retiree health care liability. The analyst, Peter Nesvold, said he preferes Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) as an investment since it still has most of the restructuring news ahead of it. Bear Sterns expects a year-over-year decline in industry-wide auto sales in 2008 and further market share erosion for GM due to fewer product launches than in 2006-2007.

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) just reported financial results for its third-quarter. Profit fell, hurt by restructuring charges, but Johnson & Johnson slightly raised its earnings forecast for full-year 2007. The company said it earned $2.5 billion, or 88 cents per share, in the quarter, compared with $2.76 billion, or 94 cents per share, in the year-earlier period.

Goldman Sachs added Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) to the Americas conviction buy list, ahead of first-quarter earnings with a $37 target price. Near-term catalysts such as the aQuantive acquisition, Halo 3, Windows Server 2008 launch and Christmas Xbox 360 sales will help drive the price of Microsoft's shares higher, including an expected strong first-quarter results.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube has rolled out long-awaited technology to automatically remove copyrighted clips. After Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) sued it for $1 billion for showing copyrighted videos, the company hopes to placate movie and television studios from Disney and Time Warner.

Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) was upgraded by JPMorgan from Neutral to Overweight.

According to Ars Technica, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) plans to expand iTunes Plus -- its version of DRM-free tracks -- to include certain indie music labels, but still not to other larger labels. Apple also plans to drop the price of all iTunes Plus tracks from $1.29 to 99 cents.

Following Ericsson's (NASDAQ: ERIC) warning, Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) shares are down over 1.2% in premarket trading, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) shares are down 2.77% in premarket trading and Alcaltel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) shares down over 5.6% in premarket trading.

More profit warnings:

• International Paper Co. (NYSE: IP) shares are down over 2.5% in premarket trading after yesterday it lowered its third-quarter land-sales earnings outlook due to lower-than-expected land sales during the quarter.
• PetSmart Inc. (NASDAQ: PETM) this morning trimmed its sales and profit forecast for the rest of the year due to weak consumer spending and warmer-than-usual weather. PetSmart now expects 17 cents to 20 cents per share for the third quarter, from a previous forecast of 21 cents to 23 cents earnings per share.

ConAgra Foods Inc. (NYSE: CAG) "voluntarily stopped production at the Missouri plant that makes its Banquet pot pies after health officials said the pies may be linked to 139 cases of salmonella in 30 states, including Wisconsin."

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) yesterday announced it has agreed to acquire LogicalApps, a provider of automated Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) controls management solutions.

While many schools ban and confiscate Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPods, some found a good use for them, The New York Times Reports -- to help bilingual kids with some difficulty understanding English. As for the iPhone, Piper Jaffray conducted a survey and found that 3% of teens already own an iPhone.

Walt-Disney (NYSE: DIS) company has kicked off the holiday shopping season with its 10 most wanted gifts list.

Hoping to capitalize on the social networking craze, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has launched its own version of a social networking service today, Neighborhoods, and is promising other customer-friendly features by year's end.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has bought Jaiku, an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones.

There was much news on Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: XMSR) yesterday and the shares surged after a Citigroup analyst Eileen Furukawa estimated the transaction's likelihood of closing at greater than 60%. The merger, she said, could produce up to $7 billion in cost savings. She has upped XM's price target to $19.50 from $15. The market, however, still gives the deal only a 24% chance of passing regulatory muster. SIRI shares closed up 3.77% and XMSR shares up 6.87%.

Disney (NYSE: DIS) is planning to open a resort in Hawaii [subscription required]. While its 21 acres of hotels and villas seem large by most standards, it is no where near the scale of the company's big theme parks. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Disney's theme-park operation has been hatching plans to expand its reach by building smaller attractions and resorts."

Disney already has a cruise ship business. Building its large theme parks has been expensive, although they bring in huge sums of money. According to the company 10-Q, the theme park business did $2.9 billion in revenue during the June quarter.

And, that is Disney's dilemma. A big theme park is expensive to build and operate, but the revenue potential clearly reaches into the billions of dollars. Projects like the one in Hawaii may be less expensive to open, but how much money can they bring the company? Even if the company has a dozen of them, the impact is likely to be fairly modest.

Management resources end up being an issue as well. Taking top talent to oversee a large park location that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars probably is a good use of executive time. Going to Hawaii to supervise a small location may be fun, but it also may be a waste of precious manpower.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

By the end of the year, Disney (NYSE: DIS) is going to ditch its mobile phone service. Basically, the company wants to rethink things.

Despite its mega brand, Disney realized that the competitive environment is extremely tough. Interestingly enough, it was last year that the company closed its ESPN mobile service (and took a charge for $30 million).

I talked to Daniel Neal, CEO and Founder of kajeet. His company has a popular cell service for kids. So how can this company succeed whereas mighty Disney has failed?

"At kajeet, we've set out to prove that there is a formula for success in focusing on a cell phone service for kids. Our singular focus is to super-serve our tween and teen customers with a totally customizable pay-as-you-go wireless service that addresses their unique mobile technology needs. Instead of building our own handsets, content or stores, We purposefully developed strong relationships with established partners that greatly appeal to our customers."

Or, perhaps a better approach for Disney is just to buy kajeet.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc's (NYSE: BBW) stock has been in a nose dive for most of the year, failing to reach sales targets. If there's no bid soon, reported the Wall Street Journal, this holiday season will be a miserable one for same store sales. Mattel Inc (NYSE: MAT) and Children's Place Retail Stores Inc (NASDAQ: PLCE) are considered possible buyers, as well as private equity firms.
• Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Haier Group, China's largest manufacturer of appliances, have agreed to work together on home networking in China and international markets, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• "Disney (NYSE: DIS) inspired" homes will be offered by KB Home (NYSE: KBH) beginning in 2008, following their successful collaboration with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (NYSE: MSO) homes two years ago, reported the Wall Street Journal.

OTHER PAPERS:

• Credit Suisse Group (NYSE: CS) is laying off about 150 workers from its mortgage-backed securities unit, a source told the New York Times.
• The EE Times reported that Chinese silicon foundry provider Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (NYSE: SMI) has delayed the opening of its 300-mm wafer fab in Wuhan, China, according to an analyst.
• India's Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) has received a five year, $130M contract from British utility Thames Water to provide integrated IT services, reported the Economic Times.

This summer was a very profitable one for box offices nationwide, with four movies grossing over $300M, and at least another nine grossing over $100M -- signaling in a big way the resurgence of the movie industry, which had been struggling for the last few years.

The four big $300M+ winners of the summer were Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE: SNE) 'sSpider-Man 3, which grossed $336M in the U.S., Viacom, Inc (NYSE: VIA)'s Paramount's Shrek the Third, which grossed $320M, Transformers, also from Paramount, which grossed $311M, and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS)'s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which grossed $308M.

Three of the four were third installments of well established big-budget franchises, so their success is hardly shocking, but the Transformers success clearly marks the start of a new blockbuster franchise (the release date of the sequel has been announced -- June 26, 2009). The robot-action extravaganza, which was directed by Michael Bay, was definitely a surprise, as I remarked in my summer movie preview that Transformers "has flop written all over it... there cannot possibly be enough substance in a story about alien robots that transform into vehicles to make this a hit with the general public." I was wrong -- very wrong. The movie killed at the box office, grossing over $330M on a $150M budget, and prompting a re-release on IMAX, which opened last week.

CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) is in need of a solid new hit. While CBS has consistently been America's "most-watched network" for several years, the trend may be in danger. Perennial ratings powerhouses such as the CSI franchise, Two and a Half Men and Survivor are getting a little long in the tooth and may only have a few years left before fickle viewers tire of them.

Meanwhile, fall season has started off slowly for the venerable network, as two of its returning drams ... the two-year-old James Woods vehicle Shark and the procedural drama Cold Case -- beginning its fifth season -- saw sagging ratings. At 10:00 p.m. Eastern, Shark attracted an all-time low of 11.5 million viewers, roughly 6 million less than Without a Trace drew when it premiered in the same time slot last year.

12.3 million viewers tuned in to Cold Case, airing at 9:00 p.m., down from the fourth-season premiere, which drew 17.6 million households. Next week, the competition builds as Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Network premieres Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters.

For the night, CBS took second place, behind General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Network, which won the night easily with Sunday Night Football.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) has a unit called the Disney Institute. It trains workers and management from other companies and government agencies. Recent customers include Miami International Airport, General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), IBM (NYSE: IBM), and the IRS.

The corporate culture at Disney of emphasizing customer service and attention to detail "are transferable across industries, across cultures, and across different sizes and shapes of organizations," the head of the Institute told The New York Times. A typical trainer at the organization has averaged 10 years with Disney.

But, operating the training company may be be in Disney's best interests.

Disney's revenue in the June quarter was over $9 billion. The parks and resorts segment brought in $2.9 billion. Most of the company's "trainers" for consumer services undoubtedly come from this unit. Does it really benefit the company to move managers from such an important business so that they can train people at other companies.

The revenue from Disney Institute is not material enough to show up in the Disney 10-Q.

Why is Disney training management at other companies? There probably is not a good answer for that. And, it is a bad idea. It takes resources away from a critically important part of the company.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Disney-ABC Television Group, a division of Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), and AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) have announced the availability of full-length episodes of popular primetime shows on AOL Video. The shows will be available via a co-branded version of ABC.com's broadband player and starting next week will feature ABC's new fall lineup of programming.

Additionally, the two companies will team to offer select short-form programming from ABC through an embedded short-form player, which will debut on AOL later this year and will include both original and derivative content from ABC. Here is part of the programming that will be offered the day after their broadcast premieres:

MOST NOTEWORTHY: The U.S. media sector, oil services, MercadoLibre and Horsehead Holdings were today's noteworthy initiations:

• Credit Suisse initiated coverage of the U.S. media sector with a Market Weight rating, shares of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) with an Outperform rating and shares of Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX) and Viacom Inc (NYSE: VIA.B) with Neutral ratings.
  
• Bernstein initiated coverage of the oil services sector with a Positive Bias rating. The firm initiated Weatherford International Ltd (NYSE: WFT) with an Outperform rating and $84 target and Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL), Baker Hughes Incorporated (NYSE: BHI) and Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB) with Market Perform ratings and a $44 target, $103 target and $96 target, respectively.
  
• MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ: MELI) was initiated by American Technology with a Buy rating and $45 target, as the firm believes the e-commerce growth opportunity in Latin America is still in its infancy. Shares were also started at Pacific Crest with an Outperform rating and $37 target, as the firm believes the company should benefit from strong secular growth and company-specific drivers. MercadoLibre was also initiated at JP Morgan with an Overweight rating and at Merrill Lynch with a Buy rating and $35 target.
  
• Friedman Billings expects Horsehead Holding Corp's (NASDAQ: ZINC) EBITDA to increase even in a declining commodity environment and believes the company is well positioned to gain market share. Shares were started with an Outperform rating and $27 target also added to the firm's Top Pick List.

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• Citigroup started shares of Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (NYSE: RIO) with a Buy rating and shares of StealthGas Inc (NASDAQ: GASS) with a Hold rating and $20 target.
  
• Roth Capital started shares of Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP) with a Buy rating and $19 target.
  
• Raymond James initiated Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) with an Outperform rating and Argo Group Internaional Holdings Ltd (NASDAQ: AGII) with a Strong Buy rating.