Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Scribner won the non-race to publish Laura Bush's memoir. [AP]
• The Times is now selling ads on the front page of the paper. [NYT]
• Movie ticket sales totaled $9.6 bil. in 2008, down 1 percent from '07. [NYT]
• Is HuffPo worth $200 million? Not so much, says Simon Dumenco. [AdAge]
• Publishing companies are cutting perks, in case you haven't heard. [NYT]
• Howard Kurtz profiles Liz Claman, who left CNBC for Fox. [WaPo]
• Michael Phelps will now be pitching Mazdas in China. [Bloomberg]
• Marley & Me was No. 1 at the box office for a second week. [THR]

• More cuts at Condé Nast could come when Si Newhouse returns from his European vacation next week. Among the possible victims: Domino, Details, and staffers in the company's web division. [NYP]
• Berkley Books has cancelled plans to publish Angel at the Fence, a Holocaust memoir that the author admitted contains fabrications. [NYT]
• NBC is producing more webisodes to make up for programming gaps. [NYT]
• Ad spending in '09 is expected to drop to its lowest point since '03. [AdAge]
• CNBC's Conversations with Michael Eisner is no more. [NYP]
• An interview with CNN prez Jon Klein, who scored big ratings this year with AC360 and Campbell Brown's new show, but will also go down as the genius responsible for giving D.L. Hughley his own cable news program. [HuffPo]

• Tough times for Sumner Redstone: His debt issues haven't been resolved, he's feuding with his daughter, and he's a lot poorer, too. Once worth $8 billion, "today it is questionable as to whether he is worth even $1 billion." [NYT]
• It's about five years too late, but the music industry has finally decided to stop wasting its time suing people who download music illegally. [WSJ]
• A few predictions of what's in store for the movie biz in 2009. [THR]
• Fox Business is mocking CNBC again; this time it's via a TV ad. [HP]
• Further evidence that Malcolm Gladwell has reached his tipping point. [BG]
• Mark Felt, the man better known as Deep Throat, is dead at 95. [WaPo]

So nice to see CNBC and Fox Business setting aside their differences and making a special effort to get along this holiday season! Fox Business sent out an amusing Christmas card yesterday depicting CNBC's (ridiculous, unreliable) Jim Cramer as the Grinch and mocking him for recommending Bear Stearns and Wachovia just before both companies tanked. (Click here for a larger pic of the card.) Naturally, CNBC was quick to fire back, telling the Post today that "if Fox Business News sends a card to every viewer, advertiser and individual who has ever seen or even heard of FBN it would be the smallest holiday card print run in history." You wouldn't expect that quote to go unanswered, would you? Replies a Fox insider: "Perhaps the humorless, out of touch folks at CNBC should pull their heads out of Englewood Cliffs and embrace the reality of a viable competitor." Looks like it's your turn, CNBC! In the meantime, we'll take some comfort in knowing that while the financial markets are thoroughly depressing these days, the feuds between financial news networks are as entertaining as ever!

♦ 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. [HuffPo]
♦ Oprah Winfrey was named the most powerful woman in entertainment as part of the Hollywood Reporter's "Power 100" issue. [THR]
♦ Neal Boulton, the attention-seeking former editor of Men's Fitness, is writing a book about life as a bisexual. [P6]
♦ Lauren Zalaznick says that NBC is not interesting in selling iVillage. [WWD]
♦ George Rush and Joanna Molloy are stepping down as daily gossips for the Daily News, but they'll stay on with the paper with a Sunday column. [NYDN]

Donny Deutsch, Victim of His Own Success | "Our show hits a nerve," Donnie Deutsch explained to a reporter from Success magazine when he asked to account for the appeal of his nightly CNBC talk show, The Big Idea. Apparently whatever nerve it was hitting wasn't the right one. TVNewser reports that the network has put Deutsch's show on hiatus, since "the idea of a 'success show' is not right in this economic climate." [TVNewser]

♦  Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦  The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦  Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦  Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR] More

Looks like the stress of the economy is taking a toll on the financial news media. CNBC's Charlie Gasparino had a bit of a meltdown on the air earlier this afternoon, as you'll see in this video clip. It starts off playfully enough, but wait for the end to see Charlie's colleagues have that classic WTF moment as Gasparino starts to say something totally incoherent about "shooting the capitalist system." [YouTube via Dealbreaker]

Last week Jim Cramer set off a firestorm when he appeared on the Today show and recommended that investors take every penny they'd need for the next five years out of the market at once. If you were foolish enough to heed Cramer's advice and you sold your holdings late last week, you would have missed out of yesterday's historic rally, of course, proving once again that Cramer's track record predicting the markets is about as distinguished as George Bush's record charting the war in Iraq. But it gets better. Instead of owning up to his mistakes or simply suggesting his advice may have been a bit rash, he's changed his tune once again. According to Cramer, we've reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." Video after the jump.More

A few weeks ago, a rumor surfaced that disgraced Lehman CEO Dick Fuld had been punched in the face and "knocked out cold" in the company gym just after it was announced that the firm would file for bankruptcy. Yesterday Vanity Fair's Vicki Ward said she had two very reliable sources confirming the events. Today, Lehman denied the rumor, calling it "completely absurd and completely untrue." CNBC's Charlie Gasparino thinks they're all full of shit, as he explains in the video below.More

♦  Rachael Ray's mammogram is scheduled for tomorrow. And you'll be able to watch it go down if you tune into her show. [NYDN]
♦  The New Yorker just issued its endorsement of Barack Obama. Bet you're really surprised. [NYer]
♦  CNBC hit an all-time record the day the Dow dropped 777 points. [MCN]
♦  ABC's lineup of new shows isn't off to a very good start this season. [THR]
♦  Why Microsoft's ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld was a flop and Apple's "I'm a PC" ad has been a success. [AdAge]
♦  Newark's Star-Ledger is hanging on, but barely. [AP]
♦  As the economy turns south, marketers are turning up the volume and going after their competitors. [WSJ]
♦  Donna Tartt is leaving Knopf for Little, Brown. [Galleycat]
♦  The new, ad-covered subway cars... revealed! [NYT]

Remember when Jim Cramer recommended buying stock in Wachovia a couple of weeks ago? Yea, neither do we. But just in case the dozen or so examples of how embarrassingly misguided Jim Cramer usually is don't suffice (remember his enthusiastic support for Bear Stearns just before its collapse?) and you need further proof that taking financial advice from a cable news show isn't such a hot idea, feel free to take a moment to watch Cramer's overly dramatic apology from last night's broadcast of Mad Money. Two weeks ago Cramer welcomed Wachovia CEO Robert Steel to the show, who told the manic talk show host that his bank was doing great, prompting Cramer to describe Wachovia a "winner." We all now how that "winner" turned out, although Cramer seems to have already formulated his defense. He claims that Steel, a longtime pal, took "advantage" of him. Funny, that sounds familiar!

♦  Financial news outlets are performing well, not surprisingly. CNBC's Closing Bell saw ratings increase 70% last week. [AdAge]
♦  HBO has optioned the Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons with Tina Brown producing. [Variety via NYO]
♦  Furniture mogul Eric Villency is teaming up with Cotton (yes, the industry trade group) on a web-based reality TV show. [AdAge]
♦  Sarah Palin got cozy with Rupert Murdoch last night. [Politico]
♦  Thanks to hefty tax breaks, a record 19 primetime series will be filmed in NYC in 2008-9, compared to 12 last year. [NYT]
♦  David Letterman ripped into John McCain last night after the senator cancelled his scheduled appearance. [Gawker]
♦  Should Andrea Mitchell really be covering the financial crisis given her husband is former Fed chair Alan Greenspan? [CJR]

♦  She's only been on the air a week but Rachel Maddow has already usurped Keith Olbermann in the ratings. [HuffPo]
♦  The New York Times Co. reported today that ad revenue in August dropped 14 percent compared to the same period a year ago and total revenue declined 8.8 percent for the month. [E&P]
♦  A libel lawsuit against author John Grisham has been dismissed. [AP]
♦  Is Al Gore buying a magazine? [Portfolio]
♦  The Atlantic's website has witnessed a surge of traffic thanks to those gross pics of John McCain drinking blood. [Portfolio]
♦  CNBC's Erin Burnett suggests that short-selling is unpatriotic; Jim Cramer says it may be terrorism. [CJR]

You Lose, CNBC Wins | CNBC execs haven't been this happy since Osama bin Laden came along: According to the Journal, the cable network has seen ratings soar in the last few days, the sort of bump they haven't witnessed "since the 2001 terror attacks." Glad this is working out so nicely for you guys! [WSJ]