Simon and Schuster, publisher of Mark Whitaker’s Cosby: His Life and Times—much maligned for glossing over Bill Cosby’s long history of sexual assault allegations—has pulled all the celebrity blurbs from the book’s listings on Amazon and elsewhere, the AP reports. In some cases, the celebrities themselves asked to have their endorsements scrubbed from the internet.

Jeff Zucker, the flesh egg whose destruction of NBC earned him a job running CNN, has launched his reign of terror over the network: James Carville and Mary Matalin — gone! Erick Erickson — gone! Managing editor Mark Whitaker — gone! And lo: Chris Cuomo's silhouette appears on the horizon, ready to take on "a major role in a new CNN morning show and across the network."

In your venturesome Friday media column: Jeff Zucker's rumored to have big plans, People StyleWatch is insanely successful, Demand Media's coming to buy your blog, and Mark Whitaker heads to CNN.

Ego was at play, to be sure, in Mark Whitaker's pronouncement that "it's a grim time in New York... down here [in DC], there's a great sense of excitement." But power is shifting.

"I have big shoes to fill." Meet The Press hosting gig still unsettled. [TV Decoder]

• Remember back when News Corp.'s Roger Ailes promised that Fox Business would crush CNBC? It turns out the upstart network is attracting 8,000 viewers during daytime hours, compared to CNBC's average of 250,000 or more. [NYO]

• Don Imus' contract with CBS said: "Services to be rendered are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial, and personal character." Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks that makes Imus's $40 million lawsuit against CBS a bit more plausible. [CNN]
  

• Plan to sex up National Magazine Awards event includes performance by Wynton Marsalis, an award presentation by Anderson Cooper, and maybe — if we're really lucky — an award presentation by Heidi Klum. And for the big finish, ASME president Mark Whitaker, Newsweek's editor, will join Time's Jim Kelly for a choreographed performance of Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better. [NYP]
• Rolling Stone reality show moving along nicely and set to start taping in July. But there's bad news, too: "[C]ast members will be selected based largely on merit as opposed to, say, sex appeal and a penchant for sociopathic behavior," which sounds no fun at all. [WWD]
• Times reporters continue to write books, continue to be confused — to the union's chagrin — about the rules under which they are or are not allowed to write them. [NYO]
• Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Britney Spears, and Tom Cruise moved the most mags in 2005. [MIN]
• Time Inc. reaches $4.5M settlement in subscription-renewal investigation. Now if they'd just do something about those fucking subscription-renewal cards. [Reuters]

• Judy Miller is a real piece of work, says Wash Postis Gene Robinson. Not that there's anything wrong with that. [WP]
• Jim Cramer TV is a "surreal nightly call-in show on CNBC that is perhaps best described as Louis Rukeyser meets televangelism meets Pee-wee's Playhouse." [BizWeek]
• At D.C. awards dinner, Roger Ailes picks up Freedom of Speech award — and proceeds to exercise that right with wild abandon. [B&C]
• At Puerto Rico confab, magworld learns, among other things, that Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker does laps in a Speedo. Oddly enough, we knew that already, and we have no idea of how or why. [WWD]