Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• It's been two days since Condé Nast announced plans to shut down four of its magazines, but the bad news continues to trickle in. According to some number-crunching by Newsweek, the magazine giant could see ad revenue drop by $1 billion in 2009; rumor has it additional layoffs went down today; and the decision to shutter Gourmet is still generating controversy.
• CBS execs must be breathing a sigh of relief. Despite the insane media attention focused on David Letterman's sex scandal over the past week, Late Show advertisers appear to be sticking by him. [NYT]
• TV news: NBC has canceled the cop drama Southland. And ABC is picking up three show for the full season: Modern Family, Cougar Town, and The Middle.
• A Project Runway videogame is coming to the Wii next spring. [Variety] More

• NBC is pulling out all the stops to promote Jay Leno's new show. Don't believe it? Try this out for size: "In early September, NBC will even adopt a portion of Interstate 10 in California to reiterate Mr. Leno's time slot." [NYT]
• Notwithstanding the Leno blitz, NBC is still looking to cut its budget. [NYT]
• No one cares about CNBC these days, in case you haven't noticed. [Slate]
• More on troubles at Condé Nast (revenues may fall by as much as $350 million this year), and the recent round of receptionist-purging. [NYP, NYO]
• The lobbyist scandal goes on. A couple of days after it was revealed that MSNBC's Richard Wolffe is now working for a lobbying firm comes the news that CNN's Bill Schneider has signed up with a D.C. think tank. [HuffPo]
• Related: Wolffe has another Obama-related book in the works. [TNR]
• Experts say the prognosis for BusinessWeek is not good. [DailyFinance]
• As you might expect, the mood has been very upbeat at CurrentTV today now that Laura Ling and Euna Lee have returned from North Korea. [NYT]More

• The Barneys display featuring mannequins being attacked and blood spatter on the windows has been dismantled. Barneys creative director Simon Doonan says they had been put up while he was out of town, but they "clearly crossed the line," and so he ordered them taken down. [NYDN]
• Fashion Week kicks off in just seven weeks. The good news is that it probably won't be quite as gloomy this time around. [Cut, WWD]
• Anna Wintour didn't produce or direct The September Issue, the new documentary about Vogue. But that doesn't seem to be stopping her from being "completely controlling" about publicity for the movie. [NYDN]
• Breaking! Michelle Obama unveiled a totally new hairdo today. [Cut] More

• The New York Times Co. is selling its classical radio station WQXR to WNYC Radio and Univision as part of a "complex deal." One thing that isn't complex: The sale will pump a much-needed $45 million into the paper's coffers. [NYT]
• Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy the Daily News from Mort Zuckerman? That's what some are suggesting, although Mort is denying it. [DailyFinance]
• McGraw-Hill shouldn't expect to make much from the sale of BusinessWeek. In fact, the company may be forced to give the magazine away. [FT]
• Neil Patrick Harris has signed on to host this year's Emmy Awards. [NYDN]
• Russell Brand will be the host of the MTV Video Music Awards. [Vulture] More

We knew Michael Gross's exposé of the Metropolitan Museum of Art would ruffle feathers. It's juicy stuff, clearly. But we didn't expect it would be banned. But that's what seems to be happening. The Independent reports that Amazon's British arm has stopped selling Gross's Rogues' Gallery "for fear of action from a libel tourist," namely Annette de la Renta, the museum vice chair and wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, who has threatened Gross with a libel suit. The ban isn't limited to foreign retail outlets, however.More

• Walt Disney reported that profits plunged 46% last quarter. [Variety, WSJ]
• Mort Zuckerman's plan to save newspapers involves bingo. Really! [NYM]
• The New York Times Co. has reached a deal with the unions at the Boston Globe, although it may take a few weeks to vote on the compromise. [E&P]
• NBC's Washington headquarters is contaminated with asbestos! [NYO]
• Tricky Dylan Ratigan isn't joining ABC after all. He's going to MSNBC. [Gawker]
• Michael Wolff may hate the New York Times, but if it weren't for the Times, he'd  probably have nothing to rant about on his unknown website. [HP]
• Amazon unveiled its fancy, new Kindle reader today. [NYT, E&P]More

• Hachette is cutting salaries and asking staff to work overtime. Fun! [Gawker] 
• Amazon is blaming an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" for the dropping the sales rankings of thousands of gay and lesbian books. [AFP]
• Bravo has picked up four new shows, including one produced by Sarah Jessica Parker and another by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. [THR, THR]
• NBC's Boston affiliate, WHDH, has backed down from its threat to skip Jay Leno's new 10pm show when it debuts this fall. [B&C]
• Marriott will no longer automatically provide guests with a free copy of USA Today or the Journal. You're gonna have to ask for it from now on. [E&P]

• Amazon.com is in the hot seat for stripping gay and lesbian books of their sales rankings, something the bookseller is now calling a "glitch." [EW, WSJ]
• MSNBC is reportedly in the process of developing a weekend political show to be moderated by chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd. [NYO]
• More bad news for barely-living BlackBook: its longtime fashion director is out. And Jann Wenner's marketing chief is leaving Wenner Media. [WWD]
• Alpha Media has laid off a handful of employees at Maxim, including deputy editor Chris Wilson and editor-at-large Steve Garbarino. [NYO]
• Magazines are looking to raise subscription rates to save themselves. [NYT] More

• NBC chief Jeff Zucker says that despite the fact Jim Cramer got his ass handed to him last week by Jon Stewart, it's had absolutely no impact on CNBC. Believe that and you may also be willing to buy that everything's perfect at MSNBC and NBC, and Zucker has a perfect head of hair, too. [Portfolio, B&C]
• Crain Communications has cut 150 staffers and sliced salaries by 10%. [PC]
• Don Hewitt, the creator of 60 Minutes, is in the hospital with cancer. [Wow]
• Media advertising fell 2.6% in 2008, according to Nielsen. [B&C]
• Interview seems to be having financial difficulties. [Gawker]
• Discovery has filed a patent suit against Amazon over the Kindle. [WSJ]
• The Hills's Audrina Patridge has a reality show of her own in the works. [THR]
• CNN's Lou Dobbs is a racist. But you probably knew that already. [Gawker]

• The Wall Street Journal's new glossy mag, WSJ, will remain a quarterly and will not be going monthly as planned due to "market conditions." [WWD]
• Amazon is launching a program to let you read books by iPhone. [WSJ]
• Fox is ahead in the ratings with 18 to 49-year-olds thanks to the success of Idol, but CBS is gaining ground and is now No. 1 among total viewers. [LAT]
• As expected, Julius Genachowski has been nominated as FCC head. [AP]
• Cablevision will soon start targeting TV ads based on "income, ethnicity, gender or whether the homeowner has children or pets." [NYT]
• WNBC's new digital channel, New York Nonstop, launched Monday. [NYDN]
• David Carr's Carpetbagger blog will not be a year-round thing. [NYT]
• Good news, unemployed TV journalists: Dan Rather is hiring. [NYO]

♦  Details on the layoffs and management changes at Time Inc. [NYP]
♦  More on the demise of Maer Roshan's Radar and its God-awful TMZ-like reincarnation. [NYO, HuffPo]
♦  Fox News has apologized for putting a racist and anti-Semite on the air. [MM]
♦  Noted media expert (and former basketball player) Charles Barkley thinks Fox News is "corrupt." [B&C]
♦  Barack Obama's 30-minute infomercial airs tonight. [AdAge, Politico]
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Wine, Online | Amazon.com plans to start selling wine later this year, now that the bans on out-of-state wine shipments to New York and Michigan have been struck down. Amazon will only be selling selections from California, so if you're into French or Italian varieties, you're out of luck. Oh, and no hard stuff. Just wine. You'll still have to head to your local liquor store for your vodka in plastic jugs. [WSJ]

• Temasek, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, has "great confidence" in Merrill CEO John Thain. [Bloomberg]
• Henry Kravis's KKR, Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital are all in the running to acquire Neuberger Berman from an ailing Lehman Brothers. [Dealbook]
  
• Who is financing big real estate deals now that the banks are pulling back? Hedge funds, of course. [WSJ]
• Ricoh will buy Ikon for $1.6 billion. [Reuters]
• Mattel was awarded $100 mil. in a suit over the Bratz line of dolls. [NYP]
• Amazon is buying Shelfari, the social network for book lovers. [NYT]
• David Pecker is hoping a refinancing at AMI will allow him to keep the company under his control. [NYP]
• Some data suggests the U.S. housing market may be edging towards a rebound. [FT]