• Get ready for the Spider-Man ride at Disney World: Walt Disney has agreed to pay $4 billion in cash and stock to acquire Marvel Entertainment. [NYT, WSJ]
• Because she was clearly the very best person for the job, Jenna Bush has signed on with the Today show. The daughter of the former president will be contributing…
Cablevision, which foolishly bought Newsday for $650 million and promptly began running it into the ground (more so), is now setting money alight by rejecting newspaper ads from Cablevision competitor Verizon. Cablevision is unskilled at newspaper management. [NYT]
• Controversial right-wing columnist Robert Novak is dead at 78. [NYT]
• Sunday's hyped-up premiere of Mad Men attracted lots more viewers, as expected. Some 2.8 million people tuned in, up 33% from last year. [Reuters]
• Struggling studio MGM has dumped its CEO and hired a new one. [WSJ]
• Is Sam Zell going to walk…
The LA Times has a new website! So does Newsday! And you know both these papers are in some serious trouble, so these redesigns better work. What's their secret success formula? Not so much boring "news."
• Jim Dolan's Cablevision says that Newsday is not for sale, which is good since there isn't a company on the planet that wants to buy it. [E&P]
• David Geffen made an offer to acquire the stake in the New York Times Co. controlled by Phil Falcone's Harbinger fund; Harbinger passed. [Fortune]
• The mood isn't too…
New York's tabloids are in high dudgeon over yesterday's Air Force One flyby. Who got the best headline and front-page out of it?
A newspaper's most basic function, one could argue, is to keep tabs on crime. For decades, New York newspapers have done this out of the "police shack," but the NYPD is now kicking them out.
• Fox News remains in first place in the cable news ratings race. MSNBC is showing modest gains, while CNN is dropping like a lead balloon. [NYT, MM]
• Cablevision says it plans to charge readers to access to Newsday.com. [NYP]
• Hearst is launching an e-reader for magazines and newspapers. [Fortune]
• The Times is…
Pundits will say Newsday's desperate plan to charge for the Long Island newspaper's website is some kind of bellwether for the industry. What it really means: Newsday and its owner, Cablevision, have nothing to lose.
Look: It's a glorious, bona fide press brawl! Caroline Kennedy's withdrawal from senate consideration touched off the rivalry between New York and D.C. news desks. New York won.
Mailing it in for Hamilton Nolan, who's, er, on assignment, I'm here with your post-inaugural, Nobama media column.
• The broadcast of yesterday's inauguration earned the highest ratings since Reagan took the oath in 1981. Early numbers from Nielsen indicate 29% of US households tuned in. That figure doesn't factor in the people who viewed it online, and the big event in DC yesterday set web traffic records, too. [THR, NYT]
• The …
• Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helù has pumped $250 million into the beleaguered New York Times Co. [NYT]
• Newsday's editor-in-chief and managing editor have been absent from the office the past few days and it's still unclear what exactly happened. [NYP]
• Matt Cooper has joined Talking Points Memo as…
The top editors of Newsday: they're missing! From work. Or are they? Rumors say they've been fired! Other rumors say they haven't. One thing is for sure: Cablevision sucks a big one, managerially speaking.
Did you know that when the stock market goes down, media bosses get poorer like magic? It's true — and the fact that it's a totally obvious point doesn't make it any less fun!
Newsday, the little Long Island paper that couldn't, just laid off 100 staffers. And they told the union: On the way out, take your damn holiday "food drive bins" with you. Bah humbug:
Newsday, the Long Island paper that was bought by Cablevision for $680 million earlier this year in one of the worst-timed (and most unpopular) media purchases in recent memory, is unsurprisingly being forced to lay people off. The paper is cutting 100 jobs, about 5% of its total workforce. Details of the cuts, in…
♦ Newsday is slashing 100 jobs. [Newsday]
♦ More on the cutbacks at CNBC and some cost-cutting measures at OK! [NYP]
♦ Bill O'Reilly is giving up his syndicated radio show. [NYDN]
♦ The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg was ambushed by Bill O'Reilly operatives outside his apartment building. Confusion and hilarity ensues.…
♦ Gordon Gekko will live again: A sequel to Wall Street is in the works, although Michael Douglas has yet to sign on to the pic. [Variety]
♦ The downturn has been good for financial news sites: CNNMoney.com and BusinessWeek.com have both experience record growth. [WWD]
♦ The new issue of Rolling Stone is shorter…
Newsday reporter Rocco Parascandola either drew the short straw at the assignment desk yesterday, or he sincerely believes that a five-year-old's opinion on the graffiti menace is worth 700 words. A mouthy little law-and-order kindergartener on Long Island got so worked up by an earlier Newsday story on taggers that…
