• These late days of print media bring some strange potential owners out of the woods to poke around at the fire sale and see what kind of bargains they can land on unmatched, only-slightly-singed argyle socks. The Wrap reports that the venerable journals, the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard have been sold by their parent company Nielsen to James Finkelstein's News Communications Inc. publisher of Who's Who and The Hill. Also included in the sale, The Wrap reports, Backstage, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek and Editor & Publisher. [The Wrap]

• After a strong debut, the ratings for ABC's V took a tumble last night with 29 percent drop-off. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Carrie Underwood's hold on the music charts has not let up. "Play On", the former Idol star's third album easily took the top slot on Billboard's Hot 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week out, knocking the soundtrack to Michael Jackson's This Is It down to #2. [Billboard]

• There was an actual bidding war over content in Hollywood yesterday and in the end, Peter Chernin's New Regency walked away with the prize. Chernin beat out Universal and Warner Brothers to snatch up the rights for My Name is Memory, the first book of a trilogy about a college couple whose souls have been intertwined for hundreds of years. [Variety]

• Simon Cowell has topped primetime TV's top-earners list. According to Forbes, the Idol judge/America's Got Talent creator rakes in $75 million a year, soaring past Donald Trump in the #2 slot at $50 miilion. [Forbes]

• To promote its new film Nine, the Weinstein Company has signed a deal to annoy ABC viewers in unprecedented ways. According to the deal with the network, the film will be written into the plotlines of a variety of ABC shows including its daytime soap operas, will be featured on Dancing With the Stars. [Variety]

• And if you're keeping score, it hasn't been a great week to be Nikki Finke. Not only does she inform blog readers that she is down with the flu, but she gets beaten by Sharon Waxman on the Hollywood Reporter story (assuming it pans out) and her biggest scoop of the year, the news about Oprah's departure from her syndicated show, still has yet to be confirmed by anyone else, with all sources still, a week later, publicly saying that no decision has been made. It may yet turn out that Oprah will end up making the leap, but some are wondering is it possible Nikki jumped the gun claiming the deal was done?

On its Media Decoder blog, the NY Times raised the curtain on the Comcast war room, revealing the man pulling the levers is none other than mogul-on-the-loose Chernin himself. And now the media world is wondering, is Chernin about to rule Hollywood once more — and this time for keeps?

For Hollywood's reporting savants this is a day that will live in infamy. To learn after months of reporting on the pending sale, they missed this huge element of the wheeling-deadling. There will be no Toldjas on this shift of the tectonic plates.

Certainly, they can be excused for missing it. It seems, according to the NYT reporter that Comcast more or less, kept Chernin locked away under the tightest scrutiny, secreting him into the takeover bunker in phony moustache under the cover of darkness, to advise a select group of cable titans who would know the shadowy adviser only as "Our Friend From The Coast." Amazingly, Comcast was able to even keep the news from Machievelli's foremost disciple in showbiz, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, the man whose job would be most threatened if Chernin's quiet advisory role were to, as they say, become operational after a merger.

So if Zucker didn't know, you can't really blame Nikki Finke for not knowing. But when you make your name pathologically claiming to have known everything about everything that is happening in Hollywood before the players themselves knew it, to have not known about the biggest thing happening currently in entertainment must be regarded as a wee bit of a setback. (The Deadline blog has been notably, uncharacteristically quiet on the subject thus far.)

But even for the non-Toldja oriented press corps, this revelation kinda demonstrates how little our reporting teams often know about what's really happening in the business beyond what's spoon-fed them by various interests. The major outlets have been covering this story for months, none revealing any hint that the Big C had a finger in this pie.

Some other questions, and possible answers, raised by the speculation frenzy:

• The piece claims Jeff Zucker has been assured he would keep his job under a Comcast regime, even furnishing him with the specifics of what his reporting structure would be? Can we believe that? Does he believe that? How is that even possible?
• David Poland offers that this news supplies the missing link to Comcast's world-domination scheme, namely putting someone who understands what to do with content into the mix. By his calculations, this buyout, with Chernin aboard, would make the new company second only to NewsCorp in global integrated reach.
• And what about Vivendi? Don't they still have to figure out what to do with their stake before any of this can move forward? Do our French friends count for nothing?
• With all our blustering about Goldman Sachs and Wall St. greed in the face of economic collapse, where is the outrage for Hollywood salaries run amok in the face of the Death of Media? Especially salaries for former Studio Chiefs. According to the NYT piece, Chernin's goodbye package, in exchange for not running Fox included, "movie and television production deals with 20th Century Fox, and perks such as the use of a private jet and a car and driver. In 2008, he earned a $34 million pay package, according to a regulatory filing." AIG, you're not dreaming big enough!

• Respectable but not a bona fide hit is the verdict on sales for The Beatles: Rock Band video game. The release lifted the music game category out of the sales cellar, but failed to turn the world on its head. [USA Today]

• Sony has called in its biggest stationary guns for the premiere of its Michael Jackson film. The Wrap has pictures of the very fancy, engraved metal plate invitation. (Ours is no doubt in the mail.) [The Wrap]

• Hairspray director and So You Think You Can Dance judge Adam Shankman has signed a deal to bring the Broadway musical Rock of Ages to the big screen. [Variety]

• As the search begins for a replacement for Dan Glickman as head of the MPAA, some are saying the organization is due for an overhaul, that the ancient lobbying arm of the industry is due to be for a overhaul turn it into a spiffy modern lobbying firm. [Variety]

• Former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford meanwhile has emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Gickman. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Hollywood is eating itself up over the just leaked news that former Fox chief Peter Chernin is advising Comcast in their bid to buy GE/Universal. Implications abound. Defamer's fuller speculation to follow shortly. [The Hot Blog]

• Actor Seymour Cassel has been suspended from SAG's Board of Directors for allegedly sexually harassing three union staffers. Cassel will have to give up the board seat he has occupied for the past eight years. [The Wrap]

Nevertheless, the reports in The Wrap and Variety say it's true: Carey is apparently close to a deal to become vice chairman at News Corp., replacing longtime number two Peter Chernin, who left the media conglomerate back in February. Murdoch's son James had long been considered the odds-on favorite for Chernin's job.

Murdoch is still widely expected to pass control of News Corp. to one of his children, giving Carey a limited future at the company. His work is also likely to be constrained by the direct lines of control Murdoch has established at News Corp. in the wake of Chernin's departure. Murdoch's involvement is now sufficiently extensive that the chairman was expected to personally screen new shows for Fox TV this past spring.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.If things don't work out with Murdoch, Carey will can always fall back on his role as the Pringles mascot, as Seth Abrmovitch notes over at Movieline. After all, the tasty snacks can officially be called "chips" now, making the Procter & Gamble brand more respectable than ever.

A sign of how insular the world of big media is: Confirmation of Miller's job offer comes from Ross Levinsohn, who held much the same job before leaving News Corp. to start a venture-capital fund with Miller.

It's all a crazy waiting game until the aging mogul can install his wayward children in power. Most believe that's the reason why Chernin left, as it grew increasingly clear that Murdoch would never let the Hollywood hired hand become CEO of News Corp. But there are plenty of takers for the big jobs available in the meantime.

Miller replaces Fox Interactive Media chief Peter Levinsohn, who, as many inside News Corp. expected, is taking a job with the L.A.-based Fox TV and movie units. Miller, though, will have more power than Levinsohn, running pretty much everything with a URL attached and reporting directly to Murdoch. He'll need that authority to rein in wayward MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, who has long resisted reporting to the suits rotating through the executive suite of Fox Interactive Media.

If he takes the job, that is. Papers aren't signed yet, for reasons that are mostly legalese. Miller was ousted as AOL's CEO in 2006, replaced by the astoundingly awful Randy Falco. He's since been looking for a comeback, most recently through the VC firm Velocity Interactive Group — but he's been stymied by a noncompete agreement with AOL parent Time Warner, whose CEO, Jeff Bewkes, nastily decided to enforce after Yahoo invited Miller to join its board.

That noncompete ends in three days. Assuming Miller accepts the offer, and it seems like it would be enormously embarrassing for him not to, he'd be ending one long-running drama and joining another.

(Photo via LAT)

In a lengthy overview of Fox's new power structure after the elevation of Fox Searchlight chief Peter Rice and Fox Networks Group president Tony Vinciquerra to fill the vacuum left by Chernin, Variety drops this nugget:

If there's any question mark to the new setup, network execs wonder how active Murdoch plans to be in the pilot screenings this year. In recent years the mogul hasn't played much of a role in Fox's programming decisions, but with Chernin out of the picture, some wonder if Murdoch will feel the need to have more of a say this spring as the net plots its upfront presentation.

Murdoch has reason to believe that he has the programming touch in his blood. The last time he intervened into the affairs of Fox Broadcasting, it was to force then-TV chiefs Sandy Grushow and Gail Berman to put American Idol on the air at the recommendation of his daughter Elizabeth. That decision has to inspire confidence in his meddling abilities. And since, as we pointed out last week, Rice is a Murdoch loyalist whose father was an old friend of Rupert's—not to mention that he has no television experience—he's unlikely to stand up to the boss' suggestions about the lead-in to House.

As always with Murdoch, personal loyalty trumps business. The biggest loser in the reshuffle is Peter Liguori, who's been pushed out as the entertainment chairman of Fox Broadcasting, overseeing the Fox prime time schedule. It was Chernin who put Liguori in the job in 2005, promoting him from the job overseeing the FX cable network.

Replacing him is the Brit ex-pat Rice (on the left with Danny Boyle), and currently the head of specialty film label Fox Searchlight. For a studio exec, Rice is well-liked and affable enough. Also, Searchlight has been one of the only companies to consistently profitably play the Oscar game, backing this year's Slumdog Millionaire and last year's Juno.

But he struggled to succeed outside that boutique business. When Rice was approached in 2006 to take over Paramount's specialty business, Murdoch was so set on keeping him that he let him launch a whole new film division, Fox Atomic, which was meant to court young men. But the venture quickly proved to be a bust; its first film, a remake of Revenge of the Nerds was cancelled in the middle of production. Last year, the unit was scaled back dramatically, and today's memo doesn't bother mentioning it.

What Murdoch's memo also doesn't mention is that Rice's father was a friend and business partner of Murdoch's back in England and it was that connection that landed Rice his first Fox job back in 1989. Murdoch writes in his memo, "Peter has the vision, creativity and determination to grow and remodel our television network." Rice has never worked in TV, so who knows? But Murdoch has always been more comfortable running News Corp. as a family business than the conglomerate that it is. Apparently, he still is.

Keep in mind—both stories relied on anonymous sources, but logic would dictate that the WSJ spoke directly to Rupert Murdoch (their boss), while the NYT probably spoke to Peter Chernin.

NYT:

After deciding over the weekend to leave the company after 20 years, Mr. Chernin attended the Academy Awards Sunday night, where "Slumdog Millionaire," a film released by a unit of the News Corporation that he oversees, won best picture.

WSJ:

The company has been planning for Mr. Chernin's departure... Mr. Chernin's departure was finalized over the weekend while both he and Mr. Murdoch were in Los Angeles, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Chernin attended the Academy Awards, where "Slumdog Millionaire," a film from News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight Pictures, won the award for best picture of the year.

NYT:

The company said that when Mr. Chernin leaves upon the expiration of his contract on June 30, those Los Angeles-based units of the company will report to Mr. Murdoch.

WSJ:

News Corp. plans to streamline the management structure, and Mr. Chernin's exit is expected to give more responsibility to well-regarded entertainment executives, including James Gianopulos, Tom Rothman and Peter Rice. Mr. Murdoch is also expected to spend more time in Los Angeles, though he is already involved in the entertainment businesses and keeps an office down the hall from Mr. Chernin's on the Fox studio lot. ... Mr. Chernin tended to be the public face of key businesses, including News Corp.'s entertainment and digital-media businesses, and analysts had fretted about the effects of his possible departure. Mr. Murdoch said in his statement that News Corp. is "fortunate to have such a strong and seasoned group of leaders at our Fox companies, and we are confident that our success will continue.

NYT:

Mr. Chernin, who has been the News Corporation's president and chief operating officer since 1996, mainly oversaw the company's Los Angeles-based businesses, like the 20th Century Fox film studio and the Fox broadcast network. Mr. Chernin joined the company in 1989 as president of entertainment at the Fox Broadcasting Company, overseeing the production of shows like "The Simpsons" and "Beverly Hills 90210." In 1992, he moved to the film side and became chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment; the studio released "Titanic" under his watch. ... In Hollywood, Mr. Chernin has generally been regarded as one of a very small handful of executives - Robert A. Iger of the Walt Disney Company and Barry Meyer of Warner Brothers are two others - who excelled at both the internal dynamics and the rapidly changing economic prospects of the entertainment industry.

WSJ:

Mr. Chernin joined News Corp. in 1989 as president of entertainment at Fox Broadcasting and in 1992 became president and CEO of the Fox movie studio, a post he held until his promotion to his current position in 1996.

See, when you talk to the paper, your side gets better coverage, which is the only reason anyone ever talks to the paper about anything. [Reporters involved care to object? Email us]

Chernin's contract expires in June, and he has a clause that allows him to become a well-paid producer on movies for the Fox studio he currently oversees. (The company now confirms his exit, as well as his plans to start a production company.) A convenient out for an untenable situation: Murdoch has always made it clear that he wanted to put one of his children in charge.

Why settle things now, with June some months away? It might have something to do with a story in today's New York Times questioning Murdoch's devotion to the newspaper business. News Corp.'s print holdings have weighed down results even as Chernin's Hollywood empire have steadily produced cash. It's not too difficult to read the story as an argument for why the Chernin (profitable) half of News Corp. is being dragged down by the Murdoch (sentimental) part.

Also, pointing out the dodgy performance of News Corp.'s newspapers is a veiled dig at the current dynastic frontrunner, James Murdoch. The 35-year-old executive oversees News Corp's businesses in Asia and Europe, including a large collection of newspapers, where he's been cutting costs in the name of "editorial efficiency."

Could the elder Murdoch have taken offense? If a squabble over the story was a factor, it can't have been the only one. But in a family business, work is always personal. And no media company inspires speculation about palace intrigue like News Corp.

So come the whispers from inside, including this today to Jeffrey Wells: "Agents all say they're the studio of last resort, they don't pay money, and Rupert Murdoch has said they're all on a lifeboat and there are going to be radical changes there. He's unhappy, and when he gets this way he fires people. [Chernin's contract] "has been up for weeks and he still hasn't renewed it. I think he and Tom Rothman might leave." Brutal! Now Rothman will never get his Emmy. [Hollywood Elswehere]

There are, nevertheless, some possibilities.

One is former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who has been toying with entering politics. eBay and Yahoo have long flirted with a merger, so she's reasonably familiar with the company, and with the challenges of running a large Internet company.

A similar candidate: Jon Miller, the former CEO of AOL, who is now a partner at Velocity Interactive Group, a venture-capital firm. Money is tight in venture capital, and Velocity has yet to raise a promised new fund in the multiple hundreds of millions of dollars it had planned for when he joined it. Yet Miller has a problem: Time Warner, the parent of AOL, used his noncompete agreement to prevent him from joining Yahoo's board; it's not clear why they would waive it to let him become CEO. The agreement does not expire until next spring.

News Corp. COO Peter Chernin does not seem to have much hope of succeeding Rupert Murdoch as CEO, who is expected to hand the media conglomerate over to one of his children instead. But he does not have a credible claim for having much online experience — overseeing MySpace is the best he can do there.

And lastly, as a courtesy, Yahoo's president, Sue Decker, is under consideration. Some say Decker's Machiavellian maneuverings helped out former Hollywood studio boss Terry Semel as CEO last summer. But she's seen inside and outside the company as a bad manager who lacks a vision for what Yahoo should be.

More:

• 5 reasons why Jerry Yang is done at Yahoo
• Jerry Yang's goodbye letter to Yahoo
• Yahoos quietly cheer Yang's exit
• Newsweek reporter: Yahoo PR "lying sacks of s—-"

• Ads are banners, not text — either 728×90 or 300×250.
• The ads must link to another MySpace page, rather than offsite.
• Minimum campaign buy: $25
• The ad system seems tied to the pending launch of MySpace Music, a venture with the Big Four record labels.

• Though MySpace has worked hard to improve its overall site design, its been plagued by spam-happy advertisers and banner-ad schemesters from its very beginning. Because of that and the site's junky-looking past (and we think present), MySpace remains a "tarnished" brand. Brand managers don't want to soil their own through association.
• Ad buyers tend to buy ads from people they know. MySpace's ad sales force has had a lot of turnover and its been hard to form relationships with them, says our guy.
• Though our guy doesn't use it, the people in his agency who do tell him MySpace's vaunted ad-targeting technology called "Hypertargeting" doesn't work. Sure, its good enough at telling an ad buyer who are the users who would visit the page on which the ad would appear, but it doesn't help to make sure the ad fits within the page's context. "Are [users] seeing the ad? Or are they trained to ignore it?" Also, our guy has some branding advice for MySpace. Get rid of the "hyper" in "hypertargeting." Like as if it were called Xtreme Targeting, the "hyper" makes it sound like News Corp is trying to dress up the technology as more than it is. Which, of course, it probably is.

As Silicon Alley Insider discovered, some 14 of the site's top 20 most popular movie clips are basically soft-core porn (well, maybe not that Reno 911! clip). The reigning champ? That would the scene "Topless Pillow Fight" from legendary party flick Animal House. There's a (obviously NSFW) clip below, but be prepared to sit through a couple of ads, because that's how NBC and Fox make their money. REVOLUTIONARY!

[Silicon Alley Insider]

We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you'll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought.

Because we're told that the paragons of feminism at CAA, less than a month removed from throwing a birthday party for ex-con Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, attempted to sweep the contretemps under the rug after their $15 million man Aloni apparently lied about and then offered a "token apology" for his outburst. Meanwhile, other female execs at Fox (including Fox 2000 president Liz Gabler) corroborated the agent's abusive tradition, driving Chernin to act.

It was only last fall that Chernin's thinly veiled CAA wariness showed up in a Fortune profile of the agency ("They have put themselves in a place where they just have so much control over the business. ... Of course, that's not always to the good of companies like mine, but certainly as an outside admirer you have to admire their strategic thinking"), and everyone in town knows there's more where that came from. The scope and length of this Cold War has yet to be determined, meanwhile, but don't hesitate to send us your educated guesses.

• Chernin: MySpace users click around so much and create so many pageviews that ad inventory supply outweighs advertiser demand. Ad buyer:

  Not unique to them. Networks have tons of inventory, search has tons of inventory. Untargeted or contextualized inventory is hard to sell. Targeted, contextualized inventory is in demand and should continue to be. My Space has enough professional content to be attractive for big brands. Their "hyper-targeting" is effective.

• Chernin: It's hard to tell why a particular user is using MySpace, so targeting ads are difficult. Ad buyer:

  True. And social networks may not provide the diversity and revenue potential as other segments like search or networks which have specific high value content and audiences like upscale travel or mortgage buyers. Social networks still offer the hard to reach young audience and entertainment and telecommunications advertisers are among the biggest online. There is room for social networks to learn how to be more effective with their target audiences as regards advertising reception and impact. It is a very new channel, fair to need more time to learn. I do firmly believe in the long term viability and value of social networks for marketing.

• Chernin: FIM is having a hard time coming up with convincing metrics to sell advertisers on the value of a friend's recommendation. Ad buyer:

  Well we do believe that word of mouth and peer pass along and influencing is genuinely valuable, but again hard to quantify. MySpace did do a good study with a third party called 'Never Ending Friending'that was a step in the right direction.

Finally, we asked what News Corp. ought to be doing to boost its sales. Our source responded:

We do use MySpace. Our clients are interested. We like their hyper-targeting and expanded content channels like TV and music. I think for MySpace it's about the novelty of their channel and the need to figure out how to position the product and deliver value to clients in a tangible way.

"I think it's insanity that we're not able to finish our negotiations and that the unions are being pitted against each other," [Allen] told Daily Variety. "We ought to be able to figure out a way to do this together, particularly since we've done so much of the heavy lifting. It's in the best interests of the memberships." ...

Allen warned the majors at the end of Tuesday's talks that it would become more difficult to make a deal with SAG if the guild were pushed aside in favor of AFTRA. "We'll lose the momentum we have at negotiations, and members' positions will become more entrenched," he explained Wednesday.

Dragging your cross from the prop department to the conference room isn't quite what we'd call "heavy lifting," but we admire Allen's dramatic protestations nonetheless. Especially when Fox chief Peter Chernin was on his first-quarter earnings call across town, spinning himself into a lather over the "de facto actors strike" such SAG uncertainty implies:

"It is difficult for anyone to start a movie now," because a formal strike would interrupt it, he said on his company's earnings call following improved fiscal third-quarter earnings driven by strong TV results. "It's a really bad thing for the industry," especially after an "extremely devastating" writers strike, Chernin said.

Asked about producers' strategy in their AFTRA talks compared with SAG talks, he said they are not looking for quick deals with anyone group over another. Instead, "we seek fair deals for everyone," he added.

And failing that? Get ready for American Idol: The Movie, we guess.

• AFTRA nixes SAG request for delay [Variety]

• MySpace users click around so much and create so many pageviews that ad inventory supply outweighs advertiser demand.
• It's hard to tell why a particular user is using MySpace, so targeting ads are difficult.
• FIM is having a hard time coming up with convincing metrics to sell advertisers on the value of a friend's recommendation.