• Tough times for Sumner Redstone: His debt issues haven't been resolved, he's feuding with his daughter, and he's a lot poorer, too. Once worth $8 billion, "today it is questionable as to whether he is worth even $1 billion." [NYT]
• It's about five years too late, but the music industry has finally decided to stop wasting its time suing people who download music illegally. [WSJ]
• A few predictions of what's in store for the movie biz in 2009. [THR]
• Fox Business is mocking CNBC again; this time it's via a TV ad. [HP]
• Further evidence that Malcolm Gladwell has reached his tipping point. [BG]
• Mark Felt, the man better known as Deep Throat, is dead at 95. [WaPo]

Fox News is famous for its pathologically agressive flackery—hiring the meanest flacks in the business, and smearing reporters, detractors, and competitors. But rival CNBC is learning to be just as bitchy as Fox itself!

So nice to see CNBC and Fox Business setting aside their differences and making a special effort to get along this holiday season! Fox Business sent out an amusing Christmas card yesterday depicting CNBC's (ridiculous, unreliable) Jim Cramer as the Grinch and mocking him for recommending Bear Stearns and Wachovia just before both companies tanked. (Click here for a larger pic of the card.) Naturally, CNBC was quick to fire back, telling the Post today that "if Fox Business News sends a card to every viewer, advertiser and individual who has ever seen or even heard of FBN it would be the smallest holiday card print run in history." You wouldn't expect that quote to go unanswered, would you? Replies a Fox insider: "Perhaps the humorless, out of touch folks at CNBC should pull their heads out of Englewood Cliffs and embrace the reality of a viable competitor." Looks like it's your turn, CNBC! In the meantime, we'll take some comfort in knowing that while the financial markets are thoroughly depressing these days, the feuds between financial news networks are as entertaining as ever!

Fox Business Network's Christmas card is here! And their nemesis, CNBC screamer Jim Cramer, appears as the Grinch. They hate him because he works at a network people actually watch. Click for big pic:

Donny Deutsch, the recently-fired insufferable CNBC host and official Gawker Douchebag, has been photographed in an affair with another man's wife, and it's all over Page Six.

♦ Newsday is slashing 100 jobs. [Newsday]
♦ More on the cutbacks at CNBC and some cost-cutting measures at OK! [NYP]
♦ Bill O'Reilly is giving up his syndicated radio show. [NYDN]
♦ The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg was ambushed by Bill O'Reilly operatives outside his apartment building. Confusion and hilarity ensues. [HuffPo]
♦ Oprah Winfrey was named the most powerful woman in entertainment as part of the Hollywood Reporter's "Power 100" issue. [THR]
♦ Neal Boulton, the attention-seeking former editor of Men's Fitness, is writing a book about life as a bisexual. [P6]
♦ Lauren Zalaznick says that NBC is not interesting in selling iVillage. [WWD]
♦ George Rush and Joanna Molloy are stepping down as daily gossips for the Daily News, but they'll stay on with the paper with a Sunday column. [NYDN]

Yesterday's 500 layoffs at NBC Universal would have been a bigger story if not for the 850 layoffs at Viacom on the same day. CNBC—which is currently the go-to media outlet for the economic story of a generation—may have talked its way out of trouble (a bit). The Post says CNBC had 55 layouts yesterday, rather than the 80 that were predicted. And they've wisely shut down their most superfluous show:

"Our show hits a nerve," Donnie Deutsch explained to a reporter from Success magazine when he asked to account for the appeal of his nightly CNBC talk show, The Big Idea. Apparently whatever nerve it was hitting wasn't the right one. TVNewser reports that the network has put Deutsch's show on hiatus, since "the idea of a 'success show' is not right in this economic climate." [TVNewser]

• RealNetworks and Viacom subsidiary MTV closed down the entire New York office of their joint Rhapsody America online music venture, a tipster tells us, sending the roughly 25 staffers packing, albeit with severance. A lone Rhapsody staffer transferred to RealNetworks' New York office. The service will continue operating, via Real's west coast offices.

♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]

Looks like the stress of the economy is taking a toll on the financial news media. CNBC's Charlie Gasparino had a bit of a meltdown on the air earlier this afternoon, as you'll see in this video clip. It starts off playfully enough, but wait for the end to see Charlie's colleagues have that classic WTF moment as Gasparino starts to say something totally incoherent about "shooting the capitalist system." [YouTube via Dealbreaker]

Back when Jim Cramer was an active hedge-fund trader, rather than an on-air fit-thrower for CNBC, he kept his distance from TheStreet.com, lest the site be accused of advancing his portfolio. No such distance now: He's replacing Thomas Clarke as chairman. Clarke remains CEO. [Silicon Alley Insider]

Jim Cramer, CNBC's chief stock shouter and generally erratic personality, has at least one thing going for him: he owns up to his mistakes. Which are legion! It makes him a more sympathetic figure than he would be if he gave equally bad advice without appearing close to tears so often. But Cramer also stands by his advice that may yet prove to be wrong. Earlier this month he told everyone to yank all their money for the next five years out of the market. “It was one of the greatest calls of my life,” he told the NYT today. “And I’ve been pilloried for it.” Really? So far, Cramer's been "pilloried" more for the calls that he definitively got wrong, and for being a huge bull in general right up until the bottom fell out of the market. The reaction to his "pull your money out" rant was more slack-jawed amazement at how he could totally flip his entire investment philosophy without blinking. And, you know, at how he was about to cry. He may turn out to be right! We'll see in five years. I guess you can't expect him to know what the public thinks:

Suze Orman is, essentially, a hustler. It's not that she necessarily gives bad advice—it's that she sells the idea that anyone needs Suze Orman to give them advice in the first place. Here's an example: the strongly-haired CNBC personality wrote a book called Women and Money. You know what women need to know about money? The exact same stuff that men need to know. Stuff which is primarily available for free, on the internet. Like "don't spend money on books full of facts available for free elsewhere." Unfortunately, Americans are more seduced than ever before by Suze Orman's steely gaze. She's not your friend! During the total economic meltdown of our nation's financial system, who do people turn to? Suze freaking Orman. She's now the face of FDIC, for god's sake. She may not be as dangerous as her closest competitor, mad man Jim Cramer, who actually gives specific advice that will cause you to lose your life savings. But she's insidious nonetheless; if people want financial advice, they definitely shouldn't turn to someone who's really an ad pitchwoman.

Although the business media can't sell any ads during an economic meltdown like the one we're having now, it sure is a great chance for reporters to make names for themselves. Business reporters absolutely live for the periodic destruction of the American economy. This is their Normandy! After the jump, we survey the media landscape and pick out the winners and losers—all your favorites, from Paul Krugman to Jim Cramer, ranked on a merciless 10-point scale! [Ratings are on a 1-10 scale—with 10 being the best—and are based on how much the media person or outlet has benefited from the crisis, how right they've been, and how much influence they've had.] WINNERS

The radical ups and downs afflicting the stock market would be enough to make anyone curse a blue streak — especially Dennis Kneale, the Media and Technology Editor at CNBC. One of our eagle-eyed tipsters was kind enough to pass along this priceless (silent) moment where a split-screened Kneale reads a note that's been passed to him and drops an f-bomb that he visibly regrets, then tries to cover up with the dorkiest "Wait, am I still on camera? Nothing to see here!" face imaginable. Oliver Stone, you can thank us later.

Jim Cramer has changed his mind! Just last week, you may recall, the shouty CNBC stock picker appeared close to tears as he begged Americans to pull all the cash they'd need for the next five years out of the crippled stock market. Well, whatever, that was last week. Now he says that we've already reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." That sure was fast! This, of course, is in line with his (physical and intellectual) penchant for wild gesticulation. Let's take a brief look back at Mr. Cramer's unpredictable recent past, shall we?

Last week Jim Cramer set off a firestorm when he appeared on the Today show and recommended that investors take every penny they'd need for the next five years out of the market at once. If you were foolish enough to heed Cramer's advice and you sold your holdings late last week, you would have missed out of yesterday's historic rally, of course, proving once again that Cramer's track record predicting the markets is about as distinguished as George Bush's record charting the war in Iraq. But it gets better. Instead of owning up to his mistakes or simply suggesting his advice may have been a bit rash, he's changed his tune once again. According to Cramer, we've reached "the beginning of the end of the crisis." Video after the jump.

Fox Business Network is so happy for this whole Wall Street meltdown thing. Why just recently they finally got an audience that's actually big enough to measure! But even if you agree with many economic experts that Fox Business Network is the financial news equivalent of The Learning Annex, you have to admire their plucky use of ads to snipe at CNBC. They have a new one about how wrong Jim Cramer has been about everything involving money! Which is factually true. Here it is:

A few weeks ago, a rumor surfaced that disgraced Lehman CEO Dick Fuld had been punched in the face and "knocked out cold" in the company gym just after it was announced that the firm would file for bankruptcy. Yesterday Vanity Fair's Vicki Ward said she had two very reliable sources confirming the events. Today, Lehman denied the rumor, calling it "completely absurd and completely untrue." CNBC's Charlie Gasparino thinks they're all full of shit, as he explains in the video below.