Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• 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

• Controversial right-wing columnist Robert Novak is dead at 78. [NYT]
• Sunday's hyped-up premiere of Mad Men attracted lots more viewers, as expected. Some 2.8 million people tuned in, up 33% from last year. [Reuters]
• Struggling studio MGM has dumped its CEO and hired a new one. [WSJ]
• Is Sam Zell going to walk away from Tribune? That's the rumor. [NYP]
• The president will speak at next month's Walter Cronkite memorial. [NYT]
• Steven Spielberg's new movie studio now has $825 million in the bank. The company says it plans to make 21 movies over the next four years. [WSJ]
• It looks like MySpace is buying the site iLike for "around $20 million." [DB]
• Newsday is under fire after rejecting an ad by the Tennis Channel that happened to be critical of the newspaper's parent company, Cablevision. [NYT]
• Irony alert: BusinessWeek, the struggling business mag desperately seeking a buyer, just launched a new website called "The Case for Optimism." [BW]

• 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

• The bleak outlook for network news is getting bleaker: Both the CBS Evening News and ABC's World News suffered all-time ratings lows last week. [HuffPo]
• CBS chief Les Moonves's compensation was slashed by 76 percent last year. He still earned $13.6 million, though, so don't feel too bad for him. [Crain's]
• Depressing: Monday's breakup episode of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 was the most-watched episode of the show ever with 10.6 million viewers. [THR]
• MySpace is closing four of its international offices and cutting two-thirds of its staff abroad advertising falls and Facebook and Twitter take over. [NYT]
• A woman in Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Elisabeth Hasselbeck for allegedly ripping off her self-published book on celiac disease. [BH]
• Bravo honcho Andy Cohen is going to be hosting a live show once a week called Watch What Happens. You can watch what happens on July 16. [LAT]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

• Dark days at the Times: The newspaper's in "advanced discussions" to sell a "substantial portion" of its Renzo Piano-designed headquarters. [NYT]
• Disney is merging its ABC TV network with ABC Studios. [WSJ]
• WNET-Thirteen is cutting budgets and laying off staff. [NYO]
• In Style publisher Lynette Harrison Brubaker is leaving the company. [WWD]
• Katie Couric will go primetime next Wednesday. [NYT]
• The final inauguration ratings are in. [AdAge]
• Is Condé Nast just publishing the same story in its various magazines? [FB]
• The Tribune Co. has sold off the Cubs for $900 million. [Chicago Trib]

♦ The Tribune Co. is now hovering dangerously close to bankruptcy. [NYT]
♦ Media companies have let 30,000 people go thus far this year. [AdAge]
♦ Christie Hefner is stepping down as CEO of Playboy. [Bloomberg]
♦ It's now official: David Gregory is the new host of Meet the Press. [NYT]
♦ The New York Times Co. says it plans to borrow $225 million against the value of its new office building to "ease a potential cash flow squeeze." [NYT]
♦ More on the changes to NBC's executive ranks last week. [Variety]
♦ Ad agencies are bracing for a round of deep cost cuts. [NYP]
♦ Wowowow.com, the site featuring writing by the likes of Liz Smith and Lesley Stahl, has raised $1.5 million from Bob Pittman, among others. [NYP]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office this weekend for a second week in a row. [Reuters]

♦ Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is tangling with the bank's board over a $10 million annual bonus he says he deserves for "saving" the firm and selling it to Bank of America. [Reuters]
♦ Ken Griffin's Citadel is closing up shop in Tokyo. [Bloomberg]
♦ UBS may be planning to shed another 4,500 jobs. [DB]
♦ Sam Zell's Tribune Co. has retained Lazard to assist the company with a possible bankruptcy filing. [WSJ]
♦ The outlook is increasingly grim for Wesley Edens' Fortress Investment Group: Shares have gone down more than 90 percent this year. [NYP]
♦ Plenty of problems also face Leon Black and his Apollo Management. [NYT]
♦ But it's been a good year for hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, despite the whole Ashley Dupre thing. [NYM]
♦ Stocks are expected to gain big today with the news of an auto bailout. [CNN]

♦  Following a small incident yesterday, MSNBC is reportedly planning to institute a tape-delay on Morning Joe beginning on Monday. [TVNewser]
♦  Vivian Schiller, the head of NYTimes.com, is leaving to join NPR as its new CEO. [Gawker]
♦  NBC political director Chuck Todd is co-authoring a book called How Obama Won that will be published by Knopf before the inauguration in January. [NYO]
♦  Ted Turner doesn't have too many good things to say about Time Warner as he hits the trail to promote his new book. [Portfolio, Gawker]
♦  Why was Cindy Adams so furious about her Wikipedia entry a few weeks ago? It says she's 83 when she's actually 78. [HuffPo] More

♦  More pain at 4 Times Square: Condé Nast is shuttering Elegant Bride. [Jossip]
♦  Despite the fact Portfolio fired 32 staffers last week, a spokesperson confirms the mag is going ahead with a soirée at the 21 Club later this month. [Page Six]
♦  Not surprisingly, Fox News has landed the first post-election interview with Sarah Palin. Greta van Susteren will sit down with her in Alaska over the weekend; the interview will be broadcast on Monday. [THR] More

• Investors generally reacted positively yesterday to the news of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. [WSJ]
• Andrew Ross Sorkin takes a closer look at what motivated Hank Paulson to seize Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac when he did. [NYT]
• Lehman's discussions with potential buyers of its Neuberger Berman asset management unit continue. [Dealbook]
• Hedge funds are hunkering down, in case you hadn't already heard the news. They're also cutting fees to keep investors happy. [NYP, WSJ]

• Yet another miserable day for people whose livelihoods depend on ink and paper: Gannett is cutting 1,000 jobs, McClatchy is freezing wages, Cox has put 29 of its papers up for sale, and Tribune is a mess as usual.  [Gawker]
• David Carr's new book is now on the Times' bestseller list. [Portfolio]
• The Huffington Post's Chicago edition launched today. Yawn. [FBNY]
• Simon & Schuster wants a bigger cut from books that are turned into movies. [NYT]
• Katie Couric will anchor a live webcast for CBS News during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. [THR]

• Anheuser-Busch will reject InBev's $46.4 billion takeover bid. [Reuters]
• Even after consuming Bear Stearns, Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan are still acquisition-hungry. [NYP]
• Citigroup may take as much as $8.9 billion in writedowns in the second quarter. [Bloomberg]
• Father-and-son Adelphia fraudsters John and Timothy Rigas had their jail sentences knocked down three years apiece. [NYT]
• Bidders aren't biting at GE's $30 billion credit card business. [Reuters]
• Sam Zell's Tribune Co. may sell the Tribune Tower in Chicago and the Times Mirror Square complex in LA to reduce debt. [Newsday]