• 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]

The mom of Levi Johnston—first daughter candidate Bristol Palin's uncomfortable jock boyfriend—has been arrested on drug charges. Law and order Republicans now support Obama! Because this sounds vaguely like a meth lab:

Massive advertising/ PR/ marketing conglomerate Omnicom (the most appropriately sinister name in the industry, btw) leaked word yesterday that they're planning on laying off 5% of their workforce, about 3,500 people. And now the axe is swinging—we hear that 200 staffers were just laid off at ad agency BBDO. "They have till the end of the day to pack up," notes our tipster. Better hurry, guys! No word on whether the BBDO sex tape participants were counted against that 200.

Oh, the fun they have on Fox & Friends. Karl Rove is brandishing a shoe and screaming "DOOCY!" and then he makes a joke about when Bush met Putin, and everyone is just having a ball.

Stolid, competent NBC political director Chuck Todd just got his consolation prize for being passed over as host of Meet the Press: the network named him the new chief White House Correspondent.

Will the futurist gurus at the New York Times Op-Ed department ever stop blowing our minds? Their newest plan: launching an "Instant Op-Ed" section online. Fast access to opinions, online? Now we've heard everything.

• Chuck Todd has been named NBC's chief White House correspondent. [HP]
• The TV Guide channel has been sold for $300 million. [NYT]
• Both Doubleday and Crown's Broadway imprint laid off staff today. [NYT]
• More on the cost cuts planned at Random House. [NYO]
• Omnicom is cutting 5 percent of its work force, or about 3,000 people. [AP]
• Nominations for the 15th annual SAG Awards were announced today. [THR]

Remember back in the good old days of journalism, when reporters lived like veritable kings? Me neither. But we know those days existed, because now everyone who lived through them is getting nostalgic:

Newsday, the little Long Island paper that couldn't, just laid off 100 staffers. And they told the union: On the way out, take your damn holiday "food drive bins" with you. Bah humbug:

No reporters left to cover your city, no reporters left to cover your state, and no reporters left to cover Washington, DC. It's the new journalism.

Someone stole $6 from MSNBC's Mika Brzezinkski, outside her fancy Washington DC hotel. It was such a terrible mugging that Joe Scarborough complained about it, to the mayor, on the TV!

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!

Should the New York Times Co. sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox? Some people say yes. But this clever Monopoly metaphor says NO:

Woo, the feud between Conrad Black and Michael Wolff—an incarcerated media mogul fraudster and a self-absorbed media gossip—is heating up! Which of these two ridiculous men is more deserving of your scorn? Let's see:

How bleak is the situation at Doubledown Media, the company that publishes Trader? Try this on for size: "Two Doubledown employees recently took a box of Gevril watches to Manhattan's diamond district to have them appraised. Doubledown received the watches as barter payments for ad pages, and in the past has used them as sales incentives or giveaways." [Portfolio]

Spotted: World's fanciest former magazine editor Tina Brown in Tulsa, Oklahoma, spreading the gospel of microfocused Princess Diana gossip-rehashing to interested citizens of the Sooner State. The local paper relives the magical encounter:

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:

MTV has confirmed its wacky plans to give a TV show to the young men behind CollegHumor.com. What a good time to review all we know about CollegeHumor boss Ricky Van Veen!

Michael Sneed, Chicago's own Liz Smith, isn't letting the fact that she was revealed to be the preferred press mouthpiece of disgraced Guv Blagojevich stop her from continuing to weigh in.