Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

The Weinsteins Part Ways With aSmallWorld | Struggling movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob are selling off their controlling stake in the struggling social network aSmallWorld, according to the LA Times. (The buyer is Patrick Liotard-Vogt, an heir to the family that founded Nestle.) Clearly the site and Weinstein boys have both seen better days, and with the Weinstein Co. now focused on getting out from under a mountain of debt, presumably even a hundred-dollar bill for a site that hasn't been relevant in half a decade is better than nothing. But the saddest footnote to the story? In the three years that Harv owned part of the social networking site, he never found time to set up a profile, it seems:More

• More on the financial difficulty facing Harvey and Bob Weinstein: The studio has blown through $1.2 billion to date and now needs to come up with another $50 million. Or magically produce a string of hits at the box office. [WSJ, LAT]
• Despite rumors to the contrary, Condé Nast may shut down several of its magazines as part of its latest—and steepest—round of budget cuts. [WWD]
• Ebony magazine is struggling and now hunting for a buyer. [Newsweek]
• NBC is "under assault from all sides," opines Jon Friedman. [Marketwatch]
• A series of cast changes are planned for the various Law & Orders. [THR]
• Is the new TV season really buzzy, or it just the Twitter effect? [NYT]
• Warner Music will be putting its music videos back on YouTube. [AdAge]
• Holly Madison of E!'s Girls Next Door is getting her own reality show. And socialite Tinsley Mortimer's CW show is moving ahead. [NYDN, THR]
• Jerry Seinfeld's new reality show is casting neurotic couples in Brooklyn. [DI]
• Jenna Bush's new Today show gig is pretty cushy, apparently. [Page2Live]

• Condé Nast editors and publishers may be forced to cut their budgets by as much as 25% now that the consultants reviewing operations are completing their tour of duty. Not surprisingly, "significant layoffs" are expected. [NYO]
• More trouble for Harvey: The Weinstein Co. says it plans to cut 35 additional positions at the film company over the next month or so. [THR]
• A new bidder for beleaguered BusinessWeek appears to have emerged in ex-BMG chief Strauss Zelnick and former WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz. [BW]
• WSJ, the glossy owned by the Wall Street Journal, is expanding [WWD]
• The CW is planning a reality show about what it's like to be a Virgin flight attendant in search of "good times, great parties, adventure and love." [Wrap]
• Mark Consuelos (or Mr. Kelly Ripa) has been given the boot by Oprah. [NYP]
• The Observer is moving from the Flatiron district to a Jared Kushner-owned building in Midtown: "If I'm paying rent, I'd rather pay it to myself." [NYO]
• Eight out of ten Americans say they would oppose any plan to spend tax dollars to bail out failing newspapers. You're shocked by that, we're sure. [E&P]

• So how did Jay Leno's new show do? He hit it out of the park ratings-wise, roping in an estimated 18 million viewers. The reviews were all pretty lousy, though, so don't be surprised if it's all downhill from here. [AdAge, LAT, THR]
• The sale of BusinessWeek: Bruce Wasserstein has dropped out as a potential acquirer of the struggling mag. And it's cutting 20% of its staff. [BW, NYT]
• ABC News has apologized to the White House for Nightline anchor Terry Moran's tweet about Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass." [LAT]
• Speaking of the White House, Barack Obama will be David Letterman's guest on Monday night; it's the first time a sitting president has done the show. [NYT]
• Oprah's season premiere scored big thanks to Whitney Houston. [Wrap]
• The House of Harvey has sustained another blow: Harvey Weinstein's 70 percent stake in the home-video distributor Genius Products, once worth as much as $400 million, is now pretty much worthless. [NYP]
• Speaking of the film mogul, The Weinstein Co. picked up the rights to A Single Man, designer Tom Ford's debut film, at the Toronto Film Festival. [THR] More

• Harvey and Bob Weinstein are breathing a sigh of relief today. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds did better than expected at the box office this weekend, raking in $37.6 million in sales. Not that one good weekend will be enough to lift the studio out of the financial mess it is in. [NYT, THR, WSJ]
• Related: In what may be a first for a movie opening, Inglourious Basterds seems to have benefited by a "crest of tweeting goodwill." [THR]
• Some 48 years after it was first published, Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is now No. 1 on the New York Times' best-seller list. [NYT]
• Has the Glenn Beck brouhaha made advertisers skittish about buying commercial time during political shows in general? [AdAge, Politico]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer is launching a new paper called The Commercial Observer. It's about commercial real estate, naturally. [NYT]
• Magazine newsstand sales continue to suffer, not surprisingly. [AdAge]More

An Ominous Sign For the Weinsteins | Reader's Digest reported yesterday that it plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection any day now. The firm that Reader's Digest retained back in June to try and restructure the company's debt so it could prevent a bankruptcy filing? Miller Buckfire, the same financial advisory firm now counseling Harvey and Bob Weinstein on how to prevent their media company from going under. [Forbes]

• Another media company falls: Reader's Digest Association, the publisher of Reader's Digest (duh) and a handful of other titles (like Every Day with Rachael Ray), says it will file for bankruptcy protection shortly. [Reuters]
• As you may have heard, things haven't been too well for Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob. So what will happen if they don't turn the mini-studio around? "I'll be... making cheap hamburgers, or selling trailers, or refrigerators, or something," says (a refreshingly honest) Harvey. [NYT] 
• Fashion mags are looking a bit thin this fall, in case you haven't heard. [WSJ]
• Don't expect the feud between Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann to dissipate: Ratings for both have been up since the war of words began anew. [LAT]
• Comedian Steve Harvey is joining Good Morning America. In related news, comedian Mo Rocca is hosting a web-based show for CBS News. [ABC, NYT]
• District 9 was No. 1 at the box office this past weekend. [ABC News] More

• Is Harvey and Bob Weinstein's film company headed for bankruptcy? That remains unclear, although the Weinstein Co's decision to hire Miller Buckfire to restructure its finances isn't a good sign, that's for sure. [NYT]
• Members of the Boston Newspaper Guild are voting today whether to accept the package of pay cuts proposed by the New York Times Co. [PC]
• Stephen Colbert is broadcasting from Iraq this week. In addition to an interview with the president, Colbert will get a military-style makeover. [NYT]
• Journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by a North Korean court late last night. The Obama administration has vowed to keep up its lobbying effort. And in the meantime, employees at Current TV—where both women work—continue to keep quiet about the matter, per instructions from network management. [NYT, AP, NYT]More

Trouble For the Weinsteins? | This can't be good news for Harvey and Bob: "The Weinstein Company, the studio behind Academy-Award winning film "The Reader," has hired financial adviser Miller Buckfire & Co., LLC to explore possible restructuring or refinancing, according to people familiar with the situation." [WSJ]

The situation at the Weinstein Co. is getting pretty dire: Poor Bob Weinstein was forced to fly home from Cannes on a commercial plane. In coach, no less. To make matters worse, he was seated at the rear of the plane, "leaving the mogul to stew in the back of the cabin while the minutes to his next plane ticked by, instead of in the front of the line, where he's more accustomed to stand." The gentle, generous demeanor he shares with his brother is unchanged, though. As he left the plane, a woman asked him to help her reach her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment. Weinstein's response: "That'll be ten bucks." Too bad he was kidding! Ever little bit helps when you've blown through $1.2 billion and you still haven't managed to come up with a winner at the box office. [The Wrap]

• Lionsgate and the Weinstein Co. filed lawsuits against each other yesterday over distribution rights to the Sundance hit film Push. [THR]
• Shake up at Condé Nast: New Yorker publisher Drew Schutte is out and will be replaced by Condé Nast Traveler publisher Lisa Hughes. [NYP]
• The New York Times Co. is cutting staff at its About.com unit. [Reuters]
• Walter Isaacson has a few thoughts on how to save newspapers. [Time]
• The House has voted to extend the deadline to switch to digital TV. [NYT]
• Katie Couric will be hitting the catwalk during Fashion Week. Yay. [WWD]

NBC Wins Latest Round of Runway Fight | There will be no Christmas miracle for Project Runway fans who have been hoping that season six, which has been in reality TV limbo due to an unseemly tussle between The Weinstein Company, NBC Universal, and Lifetime, will soon grace our screens. Yesterday a judge rejected as "untimely" Lifetime's attempt to move the fight from New York state court to federal court, a small victory for NBC, which is claiming producer Harvey Weinstein had no right to sell the show to Lifetime. If only the judge had exercised the power and wisdom of King Solomon, we'd know who truly deserved to own this particular multi-headed, campy, and colorful baby. [Variety]

Harvey Weinstein is the co-founder of the Weinstein Company, the struggling studio that has produced very few hits over the past year, has seen a handful of senior of execs flee for the exits in recent weeks, and has been immersed in a nasty legal spat with NBC over the fate of his one big hit, Project Runway, over the past few months. (Further evidence of his financial woes: He owes Cindy Adams $10,000 and has refused to pay up.) Lev Leviev might be a less familiar name to you. He's the Ubekistan-born, Orthodox Jewish diamond and real estate billionaire who lives in Israel and controls the Africa-Israel Group, which dominates the diamond mining industry in Angola and owns a good deal of real estate, too, including the former headquarters of the New York Times. More

The Post reports that Bob and Harvey Weinstein's film company announced plans to lay off 11 percent of its staff, or 24 people, at a company meeting moments ago. The news was apparently delivered shortly after 2 p.m. But the studio would like to make it clear that this does not mean that the Weinsteins are having any financial trouble, even if they have failed to come up with a hit in ages, longtime execs are fleeing, and the company embroiled in a messy lawsuit over Project Runway. "If this was a real financial emergency for the studio, I imagine the layoffs would be greater than 24 people," a source tells the paper. [NYP]

All those rumors that the Weinstein Company is in trouble? Not true, says Bob Weinstein, who took the stage yesterday at the "Media and Money" conference hosted by Dow Jones and Nielsen and reassured the crowd that the start-up studio was doing just fine. "We're not going anywhere—not willingly, at least," he joked, later adding that the company shouldn't have any problems remaining solvent: "We're fortified with enough cash to keep this business going." If this was just spin, props to Harvey for leaving it to his younger brother to mislead the crowd. Harvey was the one originally scheduled to give the talk, but bowed out at the last minute for "personal reasons."