Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Two years after he was booted from MSNBC and CBS Radio for making racist comments, Fox Business is now in talks to team up with Don Imus. [LAT]
• Is Hachette selling Elle? The company seems to be hedging. [AdAge]
• Magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to slap their ads just about any place they want these days. They're also planning to keep printing those annoying subscription cards until the end of time. [NYT, AdAge]
• ABC is planning a big programming push for the fall with seven new series set to debut, which is roughly double what NBC and CBS have planned. [USAT]
• CNBC's ratings are down big, in case you haven't heard. [Guardian]
• G.I. Joe was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $56 million. Julie and Julia came in second place with $20.1 million. [Variety] More

• News Corp. posted a hefty loss for the most recent quarter, reporting that profits were down by 30 percent, although things would have been worse if weren't for Roger Ailes's cash machine, Fox News. In related news, Rupert Murdoch seems to think he can get people to pay for content on the Internet and plans to give it a shot over the next year. [NYT, BN, NYT, Guardian]
• Not to be outdone by Keith Olbermann's anti-Fox News rant on Monday night, Bill O'Reilly took aim at NBC's parent company, GE, on his show last night. This truce thing sure is working out beautifully, isn't it? [Gawker]
• Time Inc. is shutting down Southern Accents, a luxury lifestyle title. [NYP]
• Twitter was crippled by a big denial-of-service attack today, which you know full well if you happened to try and log into Twitter today. [CNET]
• If you don't watch Charlie Rose's self-indulgent talk show on PBS, now you can not watch it on Bloomberg TV, too. How convenient. [NYT]
• The Post's Page Six may be hiring Emily Smith, formerly Britain's Sun and Life & Style, to replace the recently-departed Paula Froelich. [Gawker] More

• How's the New York Times Co. planning to lift itself out of the financial mess it's been in? Times Co. chief Janet Robinson says more cuts are on the way and the company is planning to sell off more assets. Also, there's some sort of paid membership model in the works, apparently. [WSJ, Gawker]
• Related: The paper says it will sell its stake in the Red Sox by January. [BG]
• What you missed at Walter Cronkite's funeral yesterday. [NYT, WaPo]
• Best-selling author E. Lynn Harris has died. He was 54. [NYT]
• More magazine is teaming up with Candace Bushnell on a new Web series starring 90210's Jennie Garth and Talia Balsam from Mad Men. [MW]
• After a ten-year run, today is Paula Froelich's last day at Page Six. [NYM] More

Paula Froelich Moves On | Fashion Week Daily is reporting that gossip queen (and, as of a few weeks ago, bestselling author) Paula Froelich is leaving her perch at the New York Post's Page Six "to focus on freelance writing and television projects." Godspeed! [Fashion Week Daily]

• Say it ain't so, Sue: WNBC may be planning to drop the 5 o'clock newscast, Live at Five, in favor of a "lifestyle show" of some sort. [NYO]
• Richard Branson does not want to buy Playboy. Sorry, Hugh. [Reuters]
• NBC ratings hit a new low last week. [AP/HuffPo]
• Naturally, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker painted a much rosier picture when he appeared on stage at the D7 conference yesterday. [ATD]
• Were you aware that some magazines Photoshop their pics? It's true! [NYT]
• If MGM doesn't come up with some cash quick, it could go bankrupt. [THR]
• Page Six's Paula Froelich took time from promoting her new novel, Mercury in Retrograde, to kick Michael Wolff's ass across the room. [BlackBook]More

• 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]

Is someone is out to get Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob? Yesterday Gawker posted an "exclusive" conversation between Weinstein and Joe Roth; today Page Six reveals it got the same tape and that a former Miramax employee "is writing an 'explosive' book about their management of Miramax, based on files and tapes compiled over a period of 15 years." The author of the book is anonymous, but Page Six misses what may be the clearest sign that whoever is behind the spectacle isn't playing with a full deck: "Many of the files and tapes we are working from were given to us by the late Stuart Meltzer, who worked directly for Bob as his assistant before he was killed in the World Trade Center attack in 2001. Stuart was extremely paranoid and saved and recorded everything." Except Stuart wasn't employed by Miramax. He was a 32-year-old energy broker at Cantor Fitzgerald when he died on Sept. 11. So that raises a big flag.More

The silly feud between MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the Post's Page Six continues. Today the paper reported that Olbermann threw a hissy fit because he didn't get first class transportation to Washington for Tim Russert's funeral last week and then blew a gasket because there was no ketchup at the reception at the Kennedy Center. Nevermind that the Olbermann didn't have lunch at the Kennedy Center and there isn't even a first-class option on the train, the move delivered the predictable result: yet another Page Six staffer--Corynne Steindler--ended up on Olby's "Worst Person in the World" segment last night. As was the case last week, the Post called Olbermann for comment before the paper went to press and before Keith went on the air. Perhaps the next trick should be to call him for comment on some typically insane item before airtime and then not run the item the next day? He might start to look paranoid!

Relentless self-promoter and former model agency owner Paolo Zampolli was kind enough to check with his friends at the Post today, recounting how his Rolls-Royce (plug 1) was smashed up outside 1OAK (plug 2) a few nights ago, but that—thank God!—Chubb Insurance  (plug 3) was kind enough to hand over a check for $515,000 so he could buy a new car. We'll set aside for a moment the fact that Paolo managed to squeeze three plugs and it isn't entirely clear which of the three he's shilling for. (We'll go with 1OAK.) Let's also aside the the fact that just about every obscenely expensive item in Zampolli's possession seems to have earned ink in the Post as of late. (A few months ago, it was his $30,000 Rolex.) We're just wondering about the Post's description of him as a "UN employee." Is it possible that the sleazy night creature, who's partied with Bill Clinton and billionaire playboy Ron Burkle, is really affiliated with the global force of peace and humanity? And what ever happened to the 17 other ventures he's been involved with over the years? Like that force of "supermodel real estate brokers" he promised?More

Faux Ecuadorian socialite Fabian Basabe has an explanation for that arrest a few weeks ago in Los Angeles for unzipping his pants in a dark alley. As you may recall, the former New York resident was arrested for peeing behind an alley outside LA's Crown Club, which his lawyer at the time attributed to Basabe's "bladder problem." The story has changed, it seems! "I was NOT peeing against a wall, and most importantly, I did NOT have my pants down at any time," Basabe tells Paper. Oh, and don't expect him to be sending any roses to Richard Johnson any time soon: "Gossip columns lack so much integrity today," he tells the downtown mag. No, integrity is getting ejected from a club in the Hamptons for using the N-word, lying about just about every detail from your past, making regular appearances at gay clubs while claiming to be straight, and trying to pass yourself off as rich when your dad is, in fact, a bankrupt motel manager.