Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Prospects for ghost writers have suddenly improved as publishers scramble to sign up Olympic champions to write books about, presumably, focusing on your dreams and never giving up, no matter what. Michael Phelps' eight gold medals were topped off by a $1.6 million deal from Simon & Schuster for Built to Succeed, in which he'll "reveal the secrets of his success." Let's hope he can write as fast as he swims: according to the Post, the book is due on shelves in December. Meanwhile 18-year-old Russian gymnastics champion Anastasia "Nastia" Liukin (left) is in talks to write two books including, natch, an "inspirational memoir," for which she can draw on the journals she's sensibly been keeping in preparation for this very day.More

Who's that sleeping man, you ask? Why it's Mark Kingdon, founder of the $6 billion hedge fund Kingdon Capital Management, who took home $200 million in pay last year according to Alpha magazine. Kingdon has a rep for his philanthropic work (unlike many of his peers), but you'll be happy to hear that he's spending some of his riches, too. Kingdon, wife Anla, and their two kids Jessica and Jason just got back from a family vacation to Beijing for the Olympics. From the looks of it, it was a rather exhausting vacation for the demi-billionaire and his wife. But just look at the culinary delights they had the opportunity to feast on. Bet you Phil Falcone and Dan Loeb didn't eat that dish for dinner last week! The Kingdon family vacation after the jump.More

• NBC says 211 million Americans tuned in to the Beijing Olympics, making it the most widely-viewed Games in television history. And merchandise sales were way up, too. [TV Decoder, TV Week]
• Journalists have spent the last couple of days trekking to Denver for the Democratic convention. David Carr will be one of the many Times reporters on hand, and he seems to have already located the free yoga facilities. [NYT, HuffPo]
• CJR dissects the Joe Biden announcement that went out over the weekend. [CJR]
• Remember Steve Stoute, the guy who hooks up corporate sponsors with big-name celebs? Stoute chats with AdWeek about some of his upcoming tie-ins, including a State Farm campaign with LeBron James. [AdWeek]
• When editors and publishers come together: This week's issue of New York features an article on the Gossip Girl ad campaign as well as an ad for—naturally—Gossip Girl. [Portfolio]
• The Wall Street Journal's new glossy magazine debuts September 6. [Gawker]
• Lifetime seems to be determined to give Bravo a run for its money with fashionistas and gays: It's set to air Blush: The Search for America's Greatest Makeup Artist right after Project Runway beginning in November. [Variety]

The Olympics are officially over. So what will happen to all those fancy buildings in Beijing that were built specifically for the event? Chinese officials won't be letting them go to waste: A series of massive renovation projects are planned. The swimming venue will be transformed into a water theme park, the basketball gymnasium will morph into a shopping mall/ice skating rink, and as for the Bird's Nest stadium, which was designed by Herzog & de Meuron and took nearly 5 years to build, it will be used for soccer games and concerts and will also be turned into a hotel. Now there's an idea for the baseball fans and preservationists who have been mourning the fact that Yankee stadium is set to be demolished at the end of this season. Maybe some developer could, say, turn the stadium into the lobby of a giant Ramada? The people who want to save the stadium just need to convince a developer that out-of-towners would be happy to stay in the south Bronx.

• Hachette is shuttering Home magazine. [Mediaweek]
• A redesigned Interview will be unveiled next week. [Folio]
  
• ABC's Supernanny is switching genders in a new spinoff called (naturally!) Supermanny. [THR]
• NBC is witnessing its highest ratings in years, while competitors like Fox, CBS, and ABC have been at all-time lows. [THR/Live Feed]
• Kent Brownridge is stepping down as CEO of Alpha Media Group, the parent company of Maxim and Blender. He'll hang around as chairman. [MinOnline]
• News outlets like CBS News and the New York Times reported today that congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones had died when in fact she's still alive. [E&P]

• Addiction sells: now in its fifth season, Intervention is A&E's highest rated show. [NYT]
• Less than a week after he departed his radio show alongside Mike Francesa, Chris Russo has announced he signed a five-year, $15 million contract with Sirius XM. [MediaWeek]
• Bloggers attending the Democratic and Republican conventions will be treated to massages, smoothies and a candy buffet courtesy of Google; the search giant will also be co-sponsoring a party with Vanity Fair. [WSJ]
• NBC's monster Olympics ratings have spurred ESPN to jump into the bidding war for the 2014 and 2016 games. [THR]
• Marjorie Braman will be the new editor-in-chief of Henry Holt. [NYT]
• Robbie Myers is firing back at New York over the magazine's piece on the ongoing drama at Elle. [WWD]

• Bob Costas and Meredith Vieira are among the many NBC anchors who haven't been pronouncing "Beijing" correctly. (It's Bay-jing, not Bay-zhing.) Bonus points to Brian Williams for getting it right. [AP]
  
• Nearly 40 million viewers tuned in to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal on Saturday night, making it NBC's most viewed Saturday night program in 18 years. [TV Decoder]
• Elle's Anne Slowey and Nina Garcia don't get along. As if you couldn't have guessed. [NYM]
• Former Bush advisor Dan Bartlett is joining CBS as an analyst. [MB] 
• Wendy Williams's television talk show is going national. [MediaWeek]

• Analysts are steeling themselves for a loss of as much as $1.8 billion when Lehman closes out the third quarter in a few weeks. [WSJ]
• Leon Black's Apollo is raising up to $2 billion to buy non-performing loans in Europe. [Telegraph] 
• The situation at WaMu is so dire, analysts say, that the bank may be forced to sell assets or merge with a competitor. [NYP]
• Ben Bernanke is "still trying" to decide which financial institutions to save and which ones are "safe to let fail." [Bloomberg]
• Citigroup has announced a reorganization of its Asia Pacific unit. [Dealbook]
• Thanks to better-than-expected ratings, NBC may clear as much as $100 million in profit from the Olympic games. [NYT]
• Advertisers are now scrambling to line up endorsement deals with Michael Phelps. [WSJ]
• Bidding for the publishing assets of Reed Elsevier is entering a second round; a handful of private equity firms are the contenders. [Reuters]

• News about Warner Music's Lyor Cohen's stock sales and compensation has sent the stock down nearly 10 percent. [Forbes]
• ABC is hoping to bring Jennifer Lopez's 2002 flick Maid in Manhattan to primetime, with Lopez producing. [THR]
• The upcoming season of America's Next Top Model will feature the its first-ever transgender contestant. [Us]
• Is NBC censoring out anything that might offend the Chinese government? [WaPo]
• After rocking the same blue blazers for the last 10 years, NBC's pages have gotten new uniforms designed by Brooks Brothers. [NYP]

So about those Olympic opening ceremonies everyone has been talking about since Friday: Sorry to disappoint you but they were, like, totally fake. Okay, not all of it. Some of the fireworks were real. But some of them were filmed earlier in the day and other clips were digitally placed into the broadcast, and still others some were completely computer generated. Oh, and that super-cute little girl who sang Ode to the Motherland? She was actually just lip-synching, since Chinese officials decided the actual 7-year-old singer who had been slated to perform wasn't quite cute enough for prime time. Video of the events in question after the jump. More

• Nightline's exclusive interview with John Edwards on Friday night? It didn't pose much competition to the Olympics on NBC. [THR]
• Some 15,000 journalists are expected to cover the upcoming conventions. [Forbes]
• The economic picture at the New York Times Co. isn't very encouraging. [Bloomberg]
• Former Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell got caught bringing $12,000 back into the U.S. from Canada inside a cigar box. [Gawker]
• Are all those Olympic sponsorships worth the cash? AdAge reports. [AdAge]
• Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation is now No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. [Politico]

Former Olympian? Time to Cash In! | It's pretty sweet to be a famous ex-athlete when the Olympics roll around: Apparently, it's when companies eagerly offer lucrative sponsorship deals to sports personalities, even if they're long retired. Mark Spitz, for example, is making seven figures this year from endorsing Botox; manufacturers Allergan think that the 58-year-old will appeal to their target demo. Also, if a presumably health-conscious former swimmer is willing to inject his face with deadly poison, it must be OK!

• Showbiz spawn Elettra Wiedemann Rossellini (left) and Dakota Johnson, along with nightlifer Leigh Lezark, are the new faces of Italian leather company Hogan. [Teen Vogue]
• Donna Karan isn't getting sued by Cartier anymore! After the French company accused her of using their copyrighted "Tank" name for her watches, they've now "resolved their differences" and Cartier has dropped the suit. [Marketwatch]
• The Times' Eric Wilson fashion-commentates the Olympic Games' Opening Ceremony: He's underwhelmed by Ralph Lauren's outfits for the US, and "most startled by the looks worn by the Canadian team." [NYT]

• Most amusing bits from the lengthy Times piece this past weekend on succession at Condé Nast: That overlord Si Newhouse still "personally hand-counts ad pages in his magazines and their competitors." And that he goes to work every day in "chinos and an old sweatshirt." [NYT]
• The Sarah Jessica Parker-produced show American Artist was picked up by Bravo. It's a "Project Runway-style competition series that takes on the art world. Aspiring artists compete to produce various styles of artwork (painting, sculpting, etc.), which is then judged by a panel of experts." [HR]
• Just in case Jimmy Fallon hosting Late Night wasn't bad enough, he'll be hosting an online version of the show beginning this fall. [NYT] 
• Jeff Zucker would like you to know that NBC has sold 90% of its Olympic ads [HR]
• Conservative blowhard Sean Hannity has signed a new distribution deal with both ABC Networks and Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks. [WSJ]
• A rivalry between CNBC's Erin Burnett and Maria Bartiromo? Perish the thought! "She is smart, beautiful and hard-working," says Bartiromo. Guess that settles that. [NYT]