Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• Condé Nast is now swinging into damage control mode: It's retained Michael Sheehan, a "crisis manager and media coach" who's faced some steep PR challenges in the past having worked with President Clinton and AIG. [NYP]
• So is Oprah moving to cable? The discussions continue, reportedly. [AdAge]
• Kyle Pope doesn't seem to have been Jared Kushner's first choice to serve as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer. Times star business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin turned Kushner down twice over the past year. [NYM]
• More than 100 people were laid off at Lifetime and A&E today. [Variety]
• Philip Gourevitch is stepping down as editor of The Paris Review. [NYO]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes discusses the future of the media biz. [TDB]
• MTV did not rebuild the Berlin Wall for U2, in case you were worried. [UPI]

Time Warner started cutting costs across its Time Inc. publishing division this week and is hoping to save as much as $100 million by paring back expenses and slashing several hundred jobs. One way the company could have made up the difference without sacrificing any of its employees? By selling off the three Gulfstream jets it owns! More

• The cuts continue at Time Inc. Fortune Small Business was shuttered today. And as many as 500 employees may lose their jobs when all is said and done. Meanwhile, parent company Time Warner reported a drop in revenues and earnings in the third quarter, as expected. [NYT, WWD, AdAge, NYP]
• Profits were up at News Corp. thanks to its film, cable, and book units. [BN]
• The publisher of Marie Claire has jumped over to Vogue. [NYO]
• Fox News came out on top in the ratings with its election night coverage. CNN performed miserably, dropping down to fourth place. [NYT, Politico]
• WNET is giving employees off between Christmas and New Year's. It's not to be nice; it's designed to cut costs since the days off are unpaid. [Crain's]
• A theory as to why Tom McGeveran quit the Observer. [Daily Intel]
• Highlights from last weekend's Tribeca Film Festival, Doha edition. [Vulture] More

• There may be other suitors for NBC in addition to Comcast. Like News Corp. And Liberty Media. And Time Warner. Or maybe not. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, for one, says he isn't interested. [THR, DHD, Gawker, AdAge]
• More on the sale of BusinessWeek: "Knowledgeable sources" say Bloomberg is paying $2-$5 million in cash for the mag. And another source reports the mag will be changing its name to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Naturally. [BW, NYT]
• The war between the White House and Fox News goes on. [NYDN, ABC, CJR]
• If you notice TV commercials seem more upbeat than usual, it's because the advertising world has decided to be cheerful and optimistic again. [NYT]
• The Atlantic has determined that NBC CEO Jeff Zucker and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. are "Brave Thinkers," for some reason. [NYO]More

• Time Inc. is "not for sale," says Time Warner boss Jeff Bewkes. [DF]
• Meanwhile, Time Inc., Condé Nast, and Hearst are looking to team up and create a "Hulu for magazines." Another winning idea, clearly. [FT, ATD]
• Miramax is fast approaching non-existence. Disney, Miramax's parent, is cutting 50 jobs at the company, leaving it with just 20 employees. [NYT]
• The pros and cons to a marriage between Comcast and NBC. [AdAge]
• The Washington Post and Bloomberg are launching a joint news service. [AP]
• TV Guide dismissed several execs yesterday, including its publisher. [NYP]
• Former Warner Bros. and Yahoo! chief Terry Semel was interested in buying the Nets, but he couldn't compete with Russian mogul Mikhail Prokhorov. [P6]
• Will the David Letterman drama ultimately hurt the show's ratings or send skittish advertisers running for the exits? That's unlikely, say observers. [THR]
• The cover of Sarah Palin's forthcoming (and already best-selling) memoir, Going Rogue, has been revealed. Try to contain your excitement. [AP]

• Is Time Warner planning to shed its Time Inc. magazine division? [Crain's]
• Condé Nast is hunkering down for a big round of budget cuts, as you've probably heard. One Condé title that happens to be doing quite well: Vanity Fair's Italian edition, which having its best year ever, apparently.
• Saturday Night Live's Jenny Slate won't be punished for cursing on the air. But it's looking like Darrell Hammond may have been dropped from the show.
• Tina Brown's Daily Beast is planning to get into book publishing. [NYT]
• Former Times film critic (and Turner Classic Movies host) Elvis Mitchell is in financial trouble again: He reportedly owes $500,000 in back taxes. [P6]
• How much the cast of The Hills makes might make you nauseous. [TDB]
• Can Twitter ever earn enough in advertising revenue to justify its recent valuation of $1 billion? It's highly unlikely, say some observers. [AdAge]
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was No. 1 again this weekend. [LAT] More

• Don Hewitt, the man who invented 60 Minutes, is dead at 86. [CBS, NYT]
• Those McKinsey consultants at Condé Nast have commenced their work. The first order of business: a review of Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler. [NYO]
• Related: Anna Wintour is "said to have told" Condé boss Si Newhouse that "she would welcome McKinsey to her offices." So welcome, guys! [WWD]
• Nine companies are said to be eyeing BusinessWeek, the struggling title owned by McGraw-Hill. The front-runner, according to the Post's Keith Kelly: financier Bruce Wasserstein, who also owns New York magazine. [NYP]
• Is Fox News going to fire Glenn Beck given all his insane comments and all the advertisers who have since abandoned the show? Alas, no. [DailyFinance] More

The past six months or so haven't been much fun for Dick Parsons, the former chairman and CEO of Time Warner. Back in May, it was revealed that he'd had a child with his mistress, who also happened to be 29 years his junior. Since the beginning of the year, he's served as chairman of the board of Citigroup, and that hasn't gone all that well, has it? But you'll be happy to hear that Parsons' personal troubles are about to melt away very shortly. The grape harvesting season in Tuscany kicks off in few weeks, which means Parsons will soon be heading off to his winery in Montalcino, Italy! At least that's what he usually does every September when he turns up to lend a helping hand and pluck grapes off the vines personally. Parsons has called visits to Il Palazzone a form of "mental medicine." A few pics of the therapy that awaits him are below.More

• Time Warner sucked wind in the second quarter as profits fell 34%. Newly-independent Time Warner Cable, however, posted a profit. [AP, Reuters]
• McKinsey has set up shop at Condé Nast. What it is the consulting firm's actually doing (or recommending), however, remains a mystery. [NYO]
• Barry Diller's IAC posted a modest profit for the second quarter, but reported that revenues at the media conglomerate were down modestly, too. [AP]
• Michael Milken is backing some sort of new business website. Exciting! [NYT]
• Even more exciting: Sarah Palin is thinking about hosting a radio show. [HP] More

• It's not just TLC that is happy about the Jon & Kate nonsense. Putting them on the cover of Us six times in a row has been a "windfall" for Janice Min. [NYP]
• Get ready to pay for People.com: Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes says the company may begin charging for access to online magazine content. [AP]
• With book sales plunging and attendance down at BookExpo America, the mood in the publishing industry is kinda gloomy at the moment. [NYT]
• Keith Olbermann is in hot water again. The waterboarding video on his show last week was staged, it turns out, and MSNBC was made aware of that fact before the show, but they went ahead with it anyway. [Gawker]More

As expected, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced this morning that it plans to spin off AOL, a move that puts the final nail in the coffin of one of the most disastrous mergers in history. But if the mechanics of the deal strike you a little too complicated, The Times Bits blog has outlined it in easy-to-understand celebrity tabloid terms:More

• Rumor has it Richard Branson may be interested in buying Playboy. [ChiTrib]
• Two Boston Globe unions have agreed to concessions with the NYT Co. [E&P]
• Why did the Times pick Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to invest in the paper instead of David Geffen? It seems publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was "worried about Geffen's ambition to take over the company." [AllThingsD]
• Mayor Bloomberg plans to introduce legislation in Albany to extend the city's popular—but broke—film/TV tax credit program. [THR]
• Tom McGeveran has been named interim editor of the New York Observer. He'll take over for Peter Kaplan, whose last day will be this Friday. [NYO]More

• Following a similar move by Morgan Stanley last week, Citigroup and Bank of America are raising base salaries for bankers. It's designed to make up for the new limits on annual bonuses (and won't make up for the difference, by any means), so don't expect shouts of joy at either bank today. [WSJ]
• Bank of America has scraped together another $5.9 billion, which means it's now 76 percent of the way toward filling its $33.9 billion capital hole. [WSJ]
• New York State Controller Thomas DiNapoli is cutting ties with 10 hedge fund managers as part of the state's pension corruption investigation. [DB]More

• More trouble at Condé Nast: Ad pages at Vogue are down 31 percent this year and Vanity Fair experienced a 52 percent drop in May alone. The silver lining: Graydon Carter's lavish expense account remains unaffected. [NYP]
• The Sun really may be returning after all. As a website, that is. Seth Lipsky says "there's a business plan for the site in the formative stages." [Politico]
• This certainly isn't a good sign: It seems NBC is exploring the possibility of leasing out part of its headquarters in Washington D.C. [NYO]
• More desperate: NBC will air another season of Celebrity Apprentice. [THR]
• The Portfolio names/logos that never were (and more on its closing). [NYO]
• Al Roker will co-host a Weather Channel show called Wake Up With Al from 6 to 7 a.m. Because waking up with Al is what you've always dreamed of. [NYT]
• Oprah Winfrey's Twitter usage is way down. So much for that! [AdAge] More

• Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says he has no plans to take the New York Times Co. private, despite "brutal conditions" that threaten his paper's survival. [NYT]
• Meanwhile, Moody's has downgraded the NYT Co.'s credit rating. [E&P]
• A few theories on why Peter Kaplan departed Jared Kushner's Observer, and what's in store for Kaplan—and the paper—in the future. [WWD]
• Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta is the new CEO of MySpace. [WSJ]
• Is GE looking to sell NBC Universal to Time Warner? It's possible! [TDB]
• Ambushing the ambusher: Staking out the home of Jesse Watters, the Fox News producer who stalks liberals for Bill O'Reilly. [Gawker] More