• Meet your new action hero overlord: Chris Pine. Already fronting the rebooted Star Trek franchise, Pine has signed on to play the Jack Ryan role previously portrayed by Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin in a new go-around adapting Tom Clancy's series of espionage novels. [Variety]

• For those CBS and Viacom employees who feel each day the burden of the Redstone yoke, you can take heart today; Sumner is now less your owner than he was last week. The octillionaire mogul has been selling off the debt of his holding company, National Amusements. For now, however, NA still retains the controlling interest. [Variety]

• As the world waits for the final outcome of Vivendi/GE/Comcast talks over the fate of NBC Universal, Nikki Finke reports that Comcast wants the deal "done and announced in November." So there. [DHD]

• Curse be damned! ABC has won the competition to be the next network to fail with a sitcom by a former Friends star, locking up rights to the Matthew Perry project. [THR]

• The Wrap reports that Alex Young, Co-President of Production at 20th Century Fox is being moved out of the job and into a producing deal. Young was a Tom Rothman protege who has been in the job since 2007. [The Wrap]

• Always on the lookout for a feel good project, director Gus Van Sant and novelist Bret Easton Ellis have picked up the rights to "The Golden Suicides," Nancy Jo Sales' Vanity Fair article about the deaths of downtown artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. [Variety]

• The creator of the Gilmore Girls is coming to HBO. Exec-Producer Amy Sherman-Palladino has signed a deal to develop a dramedy for the cable network. She described the project as the "story of love, hate, family — and finding the perfect opening line," [THR]

• This is what it's come to in the strange, contorted career of Bill Murray; taking Joe Pesci's leftovers. For those who thought Murray's Zombieland cameo was just a little strange— that he was too big, or had been too big a star for the joke about Woody Harrelson being obsessed with him to completely click — you are right. In an interview with Hitfix, Murray revealed the walk on had been intended for Joe Pesci — with whom the joke would have made a lot more sense — but that Murray took the part after Pesci passed. [Hitfix]

• Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow were on Howard Stern's show and they took the opportunity to give Katherine Heigl a good trashing. You may recall that Heigl had some critical things to say about Knocked Up after the film made her a star, saying that it "paints women as shrews." Speaking about Heigl's new film, The Ugly Truth, Rogen said, "That [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way," while Apatow added, "I hear there's a scene where she's wearing underwear with a vibrator in it, so I'd have to see if that was uplifting for women." Everybody hates Katherine Heigl. [Us Weekly]
  
  
• Crazy old Joe Jackson has confirmed that the Norwegian man rumored to be Michael Jackson's biological son, Omer Bhatti, is indeed Michael Jackson's biological son. [Daily News]
  
  
• K-Fed is still packing on the pounds. Like, dude is large. And Britney, that trollop, is mocking him behind his back, going around calling him "K-Fatter-line" to all her friends. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Jessica Simpson employs the most expensive grooming handlers in the world and she will probably send Viacom into bankruptcy with her new VH1 reality show's outrageous hair and makeup budget. [Page Six]
  
  
• A new book on Robert Redford claims that he basically wanted to kill Scarlet Johansson when he directed her in The Horse Whisperer in the late 90s. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• Poor Sienna Miller. Her newest shag-buddy, Balthazar Getty, has run back into the arms of his wife, while she's drowning her sorrows at The Box on the Lower East Side. For shame. [Gatecrasher]
  
  
• The mother of Jude Law's latest child has been revealed to me Samantha Burke, an aspiring model and actress. [Mirror]
  
  
• Here is George Clooney's new "lapdance model" lady-friend dressed as a nun with her boob hanging out. [Sun]
  
  
• You have to admit, for a woman of any age, much less a woman of 40, Jennifer Aniston looks pretty damn good. Why can't poor Jenn find love?! [Daily Mail]

The Village Voice talks to recent Columbia J-school grads to figure out what the fuck they were thinking, going to J-school. "I might be crazy, but I'm optimistic," says one. That sums it all up.


The Food Network is doing great! Not doing so great: the restaurant industry. Soon all food will be consumed via television.


Media conglomerate news: the bankrupt Tribune Co. could exit bankruptcy as early as the end of this year! If, uh, all goes well; The AP got rid of 100 staffers, with buyouts; Media profits at McGraw-Hill and Time Warner were down significantly; and Viacom had a bad quarter, but they're "hopeful." Let's all be!


As predicted, the crazy saga of Daily News reporter Adam Rubin being accused of fishing for a job with the Mets has sparked a discussion about journalistic job-fishing! Everybody does it, says D. Carr. Kelly McBride offers some incredibly easy ethical guidelines. And every sports reporter in New York is on Rubin's side, because they could be next.

Our tipster sends this photo of "Invoice Rejection Letters" sent by MTV, saying 22 submitted invoices were not accepted (which can happen for reasons ranging from blurry printing to allegedly bad P.O. boxes to, oh, anything):

These pictures illustrate 22 - Yeah....twenty fucking two - of these such letters sent out for each invoice they decided they didn't want. THESE ALL CAME IN THE MAIL. TODAY. AT ONCE.

These invoices being rejected are from FEBRUARY!! In this case, it was for lacking a number (called a VIN) they didn't even start insisting be on invoices until APRIL.

Congratulations to Viacom on its cost-cutting efficiency.

This morning, Zucker stuck up for Cramer, dismissing Stewart's critique as scapegoating and saying that "just because someone who mocks authority says something doesn't make it so."

Oh no he didn't! Daumann refused to let the insult stand, taking the stage to defend Stewart: "Jon Stewart is a great person and he's very smart and has a connection with the zeitgeist which makes him successful. It got so much attention because Jon Stewart was one of the few people on air that spoke to what people are thinking out there. He did a great job and we're proud to have to have him as part of our family."

Please, please let them settle this with fists. Zucker is rumored to keep a roll of quarters on hand at all times in case he needs to throw down.

Our tipster says that he's been doing production work for Viacom for years, but was just recently introduced to the joy of the new and improved vendor-screwing system:

Around 1/9 of this year, I got a letter about Viacom switching over to Invoiceworks, saying that you could no longer submit invoices to an employee, everything had to be done electronically. The letter also stated that you had to submit your vendor info online by 1/5 (these dates are from memory, I don't have the letter in front of me. But basically, the deadline for submitting your info was about 4 days before the letter arrived.) And to make matters worse, they didn't have the electronic submission process functional until early February, by which time I was sitting on 5 weeks worth of invoices for the year. And Viacom constantly pitched this as a way to expedite processing and payment of invoices, not mentioning to vendors that the payment window was extended from 30 to 60 days. (I found this out from someone in Viacom accounting.) I don't recall ever having been paid within 30 days in the past either. And since the switchover, it's become impossible to actually talk to a human being about issues w/ payment. The one thing that did help in the past was when you could actually talk to someone who was sympathetic about your situation and would help push things through. Now I'm dealing with issues like invoices being declined because a contract wasn't signed on their end, which starts the process all over again - I'm guessing with a new 60 day payment period.

As a small business owner, I've been paying my vendors, many of whom charge late fees if you don't pay them in a timely manner. I know someone in a similar situation who tried the late fee thing with Viacom and they basically told him they'd find another production company if he had a problem w/ their payment process. It's infuriating because on paper I'm making a pretty comfortable living (I'm owed around $60K by Viacom so far this year) but in reality, I'm living like a college student, taking cash advances on my credit card to pay rent.

Sounds fun! Our tipster also corroborated our report last year that Viacom had just frozen its invoice payments for the last three months of 2008, just because it felt like it. And this is separate from, you know, the hundreds of layoffs last December and the canceled holiday party and the company ban on holiday cheer.

Any other Viacom employees having fun with this new payment system? Email us.

More fuckery at Viacom? Not hard to believe! We've heard two new Viacom rumors today: First, we hear that another round of staff layoffs at Viacom is happening this week [Email us if you know more]. Second, a tipster tells us that MTV has created a fun new way to stick it to vendors:

MTV Networks is currently withholding millions of dollars from vendors after a debacle with "InvoiceWorks," their new method for third party vendors to invoice. It's a giant mess. They've changed their standard net payment from 30 days to 60 days without giving notice to vendors. All sorts of companies are owed money by MTV. Edit facilities, production companies, on-air talent, office supply companies, caterers, you name it.

Portfolio.com finance blogger Felix Salmon, a recession winner, is leaving the leaky Conde Nast ship for a new gig as some sort of opinion blogger for Reuters. Anybody who can get a job these days must know something about something!


Jay Carney, former Time Washington guy-turned Joe Biden flack, claims in a new interview that he wasn't "swept up in Obamamania." YEA RIGHT CARNEY. Just admit it. Other than that the interview is total fluff.


Success: Kid goes to school, gets a degree in journalism, and finds a job in the journalism field! He's delivering newspapers. Cannot believe we left 'paperboy' off our list.

Heartbreaking rumor of the day: a tipster tells us that Sesame Workshop, "the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street and so much more," is laying off a fifth of its workforce, something like five dozen people. Among the departed are Grover and the "Big" in "Bird." [Not really. Email us with details or denials on this.]
UPDATE: My mistake, this wasn't a "rumor" after all: "The company said Wednesday that it's eliminating 67 of 355 staff positions."

Cramer, the relentlessly incorrect host of CNBC's Mad Money, discussed his ongoing war of words with Stewart this morning on sister NBC shows Today (on the flagship network) and Morning Joe (on MSNBC). Even he seemed to think the feud was being inflated beyond all reason. "I think you ought to lighten up," he told Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough as Scarborough ranted against the Daily Show.

Stewart apparently feels likewise. So while he made fun of some of Cramer's statements from the NBC morning-show tour on the Daily Show tonight, as promised, he also made light of the clash itself. As it turned out, those were the show's funniest moments (see latter half of the clip above).

Why is it so much fun to watch these two entertainers fight? Cramer's been taken down a peg before, after all. There are plenty of serious examinations of the state of the economy out there. But that's all so depressing, especially when you realize there will be no Jon Stewart-supplied punchline at the end.

We can't say we're familiar with Tosh. A comedy-world buddy says he's "alright," has been doing stand-up basically since he was a fetus and is "funnier than Nick Thune," at least. A quick YouTube sampling turned up some pedestrian regional humor (midwesterners are fat and vaguely sad, LOL!); the most popular clip is embedded above.

But even if Tosh is everything Viacom suits say he is ("biting, hilarious and so quick"), it remains to be seen if there's room for a dedicated internet humor show amid the fast-proliferating geek jokes on mainstream programs like the Daily Show, 30 Rock and Jimmy Fallon's nerdy iteration of Late Night.

No need to tune in to find out: if "Tosh.0" is halfway decent, its video will be embedded all over the place online.

A tipster tells us that more layoffs are coming down at Viacom today: "They are cleaning house at VH1/MTV Linked Group right now. Like more than half the people involved with the website and the video just got laid off. HR is making appointments to call every freelancer this afternoon." Skeery. If you have more info, email us.
UPDATE: Another tipster adds: "Freelancers are being called in because when they hit their 9 mon point they have to leave. They can come back 3 mon later and be considered a new hire. They're trying to get rid of the perma-lancer thing that went down Dec. 07 but still not hire anyone as staff."

Some freelancers were given a 3 mon extension on their contract but they can only be given it once before HR gives them the axe.


An analyst thinks the New York Times Co. could raise $1.2 billion by selling the Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, its new headquarters building, and its stake in the Red Sox. On one hand it would mean taking a huge loss on those assets, but on the other hand $1.2 billion is not that bad, considering that it's more than the market cap of the NYT Co.

Keith Kelly confirms our rumor from yesterday about Newsweek closing its London bureau. He also says that Newsweek staffers are pissed they had to read about their magazine's big redesign in a New York Times story. Which is understandable. Is that how the Historical Jesus would act?


Five large NY/ NJ newspapers including the New York Daily News and the Newark Star-Ledger are all going to share content with each other, probably so that some of them can lay off some reporters.

Playboy had an atrocious fourth quarter, losing $145 million, and now says that it's "open" to discussion of selling its flagship magazine. They should really have to change the company name if they do that.

Instead, Stewart went forward with a few good-natured jibes at his corporate cousin's $150 million Oscar behemoth The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button — if you can call two narcolepsy jokes and extended plot mockery "good-natured." Worse yet, it came while introducing Slumdog's Dev Patel, who was welcomed shortly afterward as the equivalent of Oscar 2009's homecoming king. Worse yet, Stewart's smirking laughter at his own jokes led both his live and viewing audiences to believe they are actually fresher, funnier and/or more influential than they actually are.

So! That does it, right? 0-for-13? Watch your nuts, Jon; Brad Grey just stepped out for lunch. [The Daily Show via LAT]

Oh, there's plenty of handwringing over sexual double standards. Willamette Week, the Portland alternative paper which broke the story and forced Adams to confess, felt the need to preempt accusations of homophobia:

Voters have handed Adams the keys to America’s 30th largest city. Most Portlanders may not care whom he sleeps with so long as it’s legal. But they expect a mayor who is smart enough to level with the public—and who is not beholden to anyone to protect his secrets. The puzzling relationship of Portland’s new mayor with a young man less than half his age is not a story about sexual preference. Instead, it is a story about candor and the need for the public to be able to trust its leaders.

It's not the crime, it's the under-the-covers coverup! Right.

Though Adams and Breedlove both denied it in 2007 as the mayoral race heated up, they both now admit they had sex in 2005 when Adams was 42 and Breedlove was 18. A shocking age gap, some Internet commenters say. Unfair, others retort: What about Jerry Seinfeld and Shoshanna Lonstein, or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?

What about them? The media feasted on those stories, too. This is where we are now as a society: A sex scandal is a sex scandal, no matter the genders involved. And, as with any sex scandal, it doesn't hurt that Adams and Breedlove are both easy on the eyes.

The only thing queer about this story is the edge that gay and lesbian outlets seem to have in breaking it. Adams has given an interview to Out magazine; Breedlove spoke to 365 Gay News, a Viacom-owned news service which is already teasing an interview to air Thursday on the conglomerate's all-gay Logo channel. A good old he-said/she-said — except this one is he-said/he-said.

Gays once complained about their lack of representation in the media. A watchdog group, GLAAD, still patrols the airwaves looking for bias. At last, we have mainstream gay outlets, splashing a made-for-TV scandal on a 24-hour cable channel. Shouldn't we count this as progress?

Here's Breedlove's breathy confession to an "inappropriate" relationship:

The terms of the deal weren't disclosed — Viacom initially sought a 23 cent-per-subscriber boost, amounting to about $39 million — though the LAT confirms that the consumer-fueled, call-center fury influenced a swift resolution to keep SpongeBob SquarePants, South Park and Dora the Explorer on the air. The bad news: A new episode of The City airs Sunday night at 10. Call Viacom with your complaints this time around — it's only fair.

• Viacom, Time Warner Cable settle contract dispute [LAT]

Viacom wanted TW to pay higher fees to get stations like Nickelodeon, VH1, MTV, and Comedy Central. TW was like "no, we'll just take your stations off the air starting January 1, so there." Of course there was no chance that this would last any real length of time, because Viacom really needs all that sweet Time Warner cash and Time Warner is not about to listen to the millions of you who would be placing angry calls to their customer support line whining about Jon Stewart and Spongebob and the visible holes their absence leaves in our sad, media simulacra of lives. So of course they have now caved and come to an agreement without any interruption of these particular stations of flickering pictures.

All is well. [Pic via]

Ensnared in a vicious battle over 23 cents per customer, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Daily Show, South Park and the rest of Viacom's cable offerings may vanish tonight for 13 million Time Warner subscribers.

When the ball drops at midnight in Times Square, so has Viacom pledged to yank the plug on 19 channels along the TWC system if the cable provider doesn't re-up its contract with a $35.9 million increase in its carriage fee. The bump amounts to 23 cents per Time Warner subscriber, which Viacom says is a long-overdue remedy to the carrier undervaluing its content.

We'll say! We've long considered Spike's mind-numbing cocktail of UFC tilts and Late Night Strip to be one of television's finest narcotic bargains, but TWC isn't convinced. Nevertheless, Team Redstone clearly intends to win its battle for your quarter, waving fierce numbers at the AP ("Americans spend a fifth of their TV time watching Viacom shows but its fees make up less than 2.5 percent of the Time Warner cable bill") and, according to the Wall Street Journal, launching a media campaign featuring a despondent SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer.

Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, CMT, TV Land and their knock-off subsidiaries would be looped into the strike, with each channel's respective Web site interrupting visitors today with a pop-up ad encouraging them to lobby TWC with an appeal. And why not? New Colbert episodes start next week, and really, who among us has the fortitude to miss the next installment of Bromance on Sunday? Oh. OK, well besides you..

• 'Colbert,' 'SpongeBob' may go dark on Time Warner [AP]

Apparently Viacom and Time Warner Cable have been negotiating over fees for months, and haven't been able to reach a deal. Viacom said it wants an increase of somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 cents per month, per subscriber across all channels, including Nickelodeon, VH1 and MTV. That's pretty bold given the state of the economy, and given that Viacom this year moved more of its content onto the internet, where it can be watched for free, arguably undermining cable subscriptions.

But Time Warner is still jacking up rates in some areas, despite the economy. And Viacom overlord Redstone holds company stock as collateral for personal loans he is desperately trying to renegotiate. Staring down the longest advertising decline since the Great Depression, he's got to be eager to wrangle (for Viacom) whatever revenue increases he can get his hands on.

As Nikki Finke points out, these sorts of disputes are usually resolved within hours of cable systems yanking the channels. They should be especially eager to do so this year: The longer channels stay off cable boxes, the longer subscribers have to find their favorite shows online. The Daily Show is on Hulu now, after all.

UPDATE: Viacom is taking off the gloves with awesome/evil ads like the one up top, involving "SpongeBob Squarepants," and a similar one involving a crying "Dora the Explorer." The Wall Street Journal writes, "While programmers and operators often battle fiercely over contract renewals, Viacom's campaign is notable in its willingness to pull children into the debate."

Eh, maybe. The two Street Team members we heard from were certainly happy about the money. One called it "a nice gesture on MTV's behalf." Another called an MTV executive a "class act" in the comments section of last week's story on Viacom's apologies. (There are several new comments there from Street Team members.)

But it's a safe bet that MTV is planning to seek more money from the philanthropic foundation that sponsored its 2008 election "Street Team" of citizen journalists, the Knight Foundation. Paying bonuses could help mitigate the fallout from how it handled the last $700,000 grant, unapologetically (until the end) withholding paychecks for weeks or even months.

Plus there's the PR benefit of doing right by screwed-over charity workers.

We'll grant that the $500 was a praiseworthy act of decency. But we also won't begrudge anyone who refers to the payments as "interest" rather than "bonus."

And, hey, is MTV paying any of the non-Street-Team freelancers we were hearing from as recently as ten days ago? If you have any news, email us.

The Times, Wall Street Journal, Post — everyone has some kind of story about the infighting, because basically Americans love to watch the rich lose all their money, and then claw at yell viciously at one another, just like people in trailer parks and shacks, and everywhere else really. And also because, oh yeah, crazy Sumner Redstone controls Viacom and CBS.

The story is, Redstone blew his money on crazy investments like Midway Games, which just absolutely hemorrhages money making videogames you've mostly never heard of, plus Mortal Kombat. He also last year donated $105 million to three hospitals, suddenly, after giving no charity, to anyone, ever. And now he has to pay for it all, by selling stocks, because his lenders are literally forcing him to.

Redstone is a stubborn old bastard bastard and refused to sell any Viacom or CBS shares to meet these obligations. Except then eventually he got desperate and was all, "OK, maybe I'll sell a little CBS, fine."

Redstone is still desperate. He can't raise enough money just selling a little CBS stock. So he's going to sell off huge chunks of the company his daughter Shari runs, a movie theater chain, which is basically innocent in this whole mess. Shari, obviously, it totally pissed, and voted against the plan in a meeting of a board committee, but lost.

So now Sumner Redstone might vote his daughter off the board, according to the Times, and presumably out of her job running the movie theater chain, because his lenders are nervous having the CEO of the movie theater chain OPPOSED to the plan to sell off chunks of said movie theater chain. And also if he dies, she becomes chairman of Viacom and CBS, which would make the lenders even more nervous.

In the meantime, Redstone doesn't have to pay $800 million due today, because his lenders are sufficiently impressed with his plan to screw over his own daughter that they're extending his deadline indefinitely while negotiations continue. Or so says the Post.

It's a beautiful Christmas fairytale, really, staged for the whole world in newspaper and tabloid columns.

The Knight Foundation, a philanthropic journalism nonprofit, gave MTV $700,000 to "make possible" a "Street Team" of 51 "citizen journalists" to cover the 2008 election. We've already heard from three of them. They aren't getting paid!

The citizen journalists were supposed to each receive a stipend below $1,000 per month for the 11-month duration of the "Choose or Lose Street Team" experiment.

One wrote that paychecks used to be paid promptly, but got cut later and later as 2008 wore on. Then, "I wasn't paid for two months. Anytime I contacted payroll, they always gave me a run around response that blamed ME for being impatient." Contracts stipulated payment every four weeks.

This matches the stories we heard from other MTV freelancers, including at least two not involved with the Street Team experiment. It looks like MTV is treating workers on its Knight Foundation-supported project the same as people it hired entirely with its own money.

Another Street Team source said MTV was more than two months behind on pay by the fall, and confirmed that MTV accountants were uncommunicative and unfriendly about the delays.

A third Street Team member also reported being stiffed by MTV.

The most painful slight? Though the website where Street Team published, think.mtv.com, just won a Public & Community Service Emmy, members are not invited to MTV's upcoming Barack Obama party in Washington, DC. The reason? Community service and involvement is required for an invitation.

One would logically presume, then, that MTV brass won't be able to get in the door, either.

(Disclaimer: I submitted an application to the 2007 Knight Foundation News Challenge which was ultimately not selected. But I don't blame MTV!)

Invoices reportedly have been taking longer and longer to get paid, with checks cut only once per month in 2008. But supposedly things have gotten worse lately, per word from on high that October invoices shouldn't be paid until 2009. That's an awful holiday gift for the many freelancers who have formed their own paper companies (like LLCs) — people like editors, freelancers producers, camera operators, sound recordists and others.

Our tipster even claims that production accountants are told "to be 'wishy washy' when it comes to answering questions from disgruntled workers who have been waiting more than two months to get paid."

The greedy television executive played by Bill Murray in Scrooged would be proud. If you're affected or have any other information, send it our way.

UPDATE: A freelancer editor on an MTV show wrote in to say "my last few paychecks have been s-l-o-w. I still haven't received my paycheck from a bit more than a month ago. They used to be prompt, as in, less than a week after submitting an timesheet."