Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Keith Olbermann: Indignant and Repetitive | Ever watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and wonder if you were watching a rerun? You weren't. But given Olbermann's tendency to use the same phrases over and over again, you're officially excused for thinking so! [Jossip]

♦  Keith Olbermann has signed a new, four-year contract with MSNBC. He'll earn $7.5 million a year, which is 25 percent less than what his arch-nemesis Bill O'Reilly is collecting from Fox News. [TVDecoder]
♦  MSNBC's new slogan—"Experience the power of change"—has absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama's victory, naturally. [NYT]
♦  The job cuts at Time Inc. are underway. People is looking for 18 people to take buyout packages. Time is looking for 20 volunteers. [WWD]
♦  Jared Kushner says revenues at the Observer are up 40 percent, although the paper is still losing $2 million a year. [Guardian]
♦  Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, from DreamWorks/Paramount, reeled in $63.5 million in its first weekend. [NYT]More

♦  Michelle Obama may end up on the cover of Vogue in the next few months: "It's been a long-standing tradition to photograph the new first lady. So needless to say, we are very interested in working with Mrs. Obama." But Ebony may get there first. [WWD]
♦  Shares of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. plunged today following the company's announcement it's revising its 2009 forecast. [Bloomberg]
♦  New York television critic John Leonard has died. [Vulture]
♦  A round of layoffs have hit Hearst, although the exact numbers haven't been released. [Folio]More

The list of election '08 losers is a long one: There's John McCain, of course, who will die angry and bitter, notwithstanding his rather gracious concession speech last night. Steve Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, will probably have trouble finding a Little League team to advise, unless he manages to redeem himself somehow. From Republicans on the Hill to GOP strategists to snowmobile and hunting enthusiasts, plenty of people will feel the cold wind of electoral defeat for a long time to come. After the jump, a roundup of New York City's nine biggest losers. More

Last week we offered to send you a Halloween mask free of charge. We ran through the supply pretty quickly and a number of you were left out in the cold. (Sorry about that!) For those of you who missed your chance—and provided you have access to a color printer—we've posted the masks online. So you can print them out yourselves in the event you still don't have a Halloween costume lined up. After the jump, our very special collection of seven masks, in case you feel like dressing up as Anderson Cooper, Mario Batali, Nina Garcia, Anne Hathaway, Keith Olbermann, Vikram Pandit, or Al Sharpton.More

♦  Not only is Rachel Maddow more popular than Keith Olbermann, she's now ahead of CNN's Larry King, too. [HuffPo]
♦  Sunday night's Emmy Awards generated the lowest ratings in history. [THR]
♦  MTV missed out on its chance to buy MySpace, but they have no plans to give up on their sixth-tier social network, Flux. [AdAge]
♦  Life magazine is back. For the third time. Time Inc. and Getty Images will use life.com to offer up "free, downloadable photos from world-renowned photographers." [NYP]
♦  Jeffrey Toobin, who says he "owes his TV career to [O.J.] Simpson," has no interest in covering him again, thank you very much. [TV Newser]
♦  Starbucks and ad agency Wieden & Kennedy are parting ways. [AdAge]
♦  Kanye West is teaming up with Comedy Central on a new series described as "hip-hop meets the Muppets." [THR]
♦  The Times recaps the service held on Monday night in memory of Clay Felker, the founding editor of New York magazine who died on July 1. [NYT]

♦  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]

• Felix Gillette surveys the recent drama at MSNBC and chats with network president Phil Griffin about the decision to drop Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring the presidential campaign. [NYO]
• CBS has demanded that YouTube remove an attack ad by the McCain/Palin campaign that features a clip of Katie Couric talking about sexism. [Politico]
• A book on Sarah Palin is being rushed to market and will be on store shelves by October 10th. [NYO]
• Kevin Smith says he'd love to be the guy who "saves" Harvey Weinstein's film studio. [BusinessSheet]
• Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che has been sold to IFC Films. [NYM/Vulture]
• CBS honcho Les Moonves says he's "proud" of Katie Couric's performance at the conventions. [B&C]
• David Duchovny's treatment for sex addiction sorta screwed up the ad campaign for the Showtime series Californication. [AdFreak]
• NBC News's Natalie Morales gave birth to a son named Luke. [People]

• More on NBC's decision to drop Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from covering the election on MSNBC: Olbermann got a raise out of the deal, Matthews didn't, and NBC chief Jeff Immelt may or may not have be behind the move. [P6]
• Howard Stern will auction off a 22-year-old woman's virginity to the highest bidder next week. In the meantime, Beth Ostrosky says she hasn't had had any time to worry about their upcoming wedding because she's jogging 18 miles a day. [R&M, AP]
• Ellen DeGeneres has landed a contract with CoverGirl cosmetics. [P6]
• Jennifer Lopez will be the celebrity judge on the season finale of Project Runway. [Us]
• Scary news: Naomi Campbell says that now that she's had surgery, she can finally have the kids she's always wanted. [People]

Gregory In, Olbermann and Matthews Out | Following accusations that the network had veered too far to the left and after months of internal tension, MSNBC has decided to drop Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann from anchoring coverage of the election. David Gregory of NBC News will anchor the debates and election night coverage instead. [NYT]

• Cable news ignored the Republican convention (and Sarah Palin controversy) over the weekend in favor of Hurricane Gustav. [THR]
• Some of the marketing schemes that the networks have in store to promote the fall season. [TVDecoder]
• Bad news for drug companies: prescription drug ads have a "negligible impact" on sales, according to a team from Harvard Medical School. [WSJ]
• Better news for magazine editors: "well-off" readers read print publications just as much now as they did five years ago. [AdAge]
• Keith Olbermann will not be heading to the Republican convention. [TVNewser]
• Xana Antunes, the former editor of the Post, is the new editor of Crain's. [FBNY]
• Dr. Phil is cursed? According to TMZ, two employees of the show have died and two others suffered medical emergencies in recent days. [TMZ]
• Don LaFontaine, the voiceover king who recorded the trailer for just about ever movie you've ever seen, is dead at 68. [CNN]

• The war between News Corp. and NBC rages on. Today Page Six reports that Keith Olbermann is so concerned about being "assassinated," he's refusing to cover the Republican National Convention unless MSNBC springs for a more secure location. They also claim none of Luke Russert's new colleagues at NBC News like him, especially since he got to ride around the convention in golf carts while they had to walk. [P6, P6]
• Lindsay Lohan had a busy day yesterday: Her dad Michael bashed her in the press and called her girlfriend Samantha Ronson "toxic," her uncle was sentenced to prison for stealing 9/11 relief funds, and her grandfather died. [Access Hollywood, NYP, OK!]
  
• In terribly important political news, Sean Penn says he's only "reluctantly" voting for Obama. [P6]
• Dick Cheney lost 40 pounds and went shopping at Nordstrom. [P6]
  
• And, even more importantly, Obama's speech last night changed Oprah's life and made her cry. [ET]

• Michael Lohan is is convinced his daughter is drinking again, and that Lindsay's relationship with Samantha Ronson is to blame. In other Lohan family news, Samantha may be writing a book about her relationship with Lindsay—whose 48-year-old father recently popped the question to his 24-year-old girlfriend, Erin Muller. [MSNBC, E!, OK]
• MSNBC personalities Joe Scarborough, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews and David Shuster don't get along much, in case you haven't heard the news. [P6]
• Tragic news: More than two years after they first got engaged, Michael Bolton and Nicolette Sheridan have called it quits. [NYDN]

• Jay-Z is in talks to sell a stake in his 40/40 club to the owners of Las Vegas' Venetian and Palazzo hotels for $44 million. The deal would also allow the club to expand to Europe, a continent clamoring for overpriced Cristal. [Page Six]
• The Olbermann-Page Six kerfuffle: apparently Olbermann doesn't want his network's new "citizen journalists" to appear on his show because they were picked as part of a contest with MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. [Page Six]
• Adrian Grenier has dumped girlfriend Isabel Lucas, possibly because he didn't like that she was with Shia LaBeouf during his drunken car crash three weeks ago. [People]

• The controversy over the Obama New Yorker cover rages on. The mag says it's received a flood of angry letters, although we're pretty sure  David Remnick is the happiest he's been in months. [WWD]
• Harvey Weinstein's Weinstein Co. has agreed to a seven-year deal to air its movies on Showtime. [WSJ]
• Weinstein's publishing company has acquired the rights to publish Larry King's "definitive autobiography," What Am I Doing Here? [Marketwatch]
• The Olbermann-Page Six (or News Corp-NBC) feud rages on. [NYP]
• Another lawsuit for blogger Perez Hilton. [TSG]
• AOL launched two new sites today. [SAR]
  
• Sarah Jessica Parker, Halle Berry, Jennifer Garner: The celebs who turned down tabloid cash for pics of their babies. [Gawker]