"NBC Universal plans to announce Wednesday that it will start a 24-hour local news channel along the lines of cable's New York One... The reasons for the reshaping of WNBC are tied to the coming expansion in digital capacity for local broadcasters as well as the sharp decline in profitability for local stations." [Times]
Last Friday, when meeting with NBC News anchor Brian Williams to help launch his latest messianic charity endeavor, U2 frontling Bono was waiting for an elevator with Williams next to a lightboard ad of the anchorman's face. Bono asked the crowd of handlers for a Sharpie, and one was instantly produced from the rectum of an NBC page (each page contains a complete desk set at all times). Bono then scribbled on the face of the Williams ad, fashioning a bandit mask or a pair of his signature bubble shades, or something. As a last straw, he "signed" the lightboard with his initial, thereby turning it from a piece of crap corporate furniture into a $50,000 collectible piece of crap corporate furniture. Williams was politely amused for the crowd, but this can only increase his well-known distaste for the Irish.
• Details missed its rate base on eight of 10 issues in 2005. Fun. [Ad Age]
• Martha Stewart launches Blueprint today in a bid to reach younger readers. There should probably be a joke about Alexis here, but we can't think of one. [NYP]
• Daily Candy remains for sale. [NYM]
• Punch Sulzberger has allegedly said that he'll read the Times on the computer when he can take a computer into the bathroom with him. Now, apparently, he can. [NYT]
• Kurt Andersen thinks we're in a tech bubble again. How does he know? Because Michael Wolff wants in. [NYM]
• Simon Dumenco answers the questions you didn't ask, including whether he has a clothing line and what his jingle sounds like. [Ad Age]
• Existentially speaking, who is Brian Williams? [MW]
• NYT M.E. Jill Abramson's grandfather could have invested early in Paramount Pictures but didn't. [NYSun]
• Investor Carl Icahn signs on Bruce Wasserstein's Lazard to join in his crusade against Time Warner management. New York feature on Icahn's clever business strategy TK soon. [NYT]
• NYT Mag bigthinker Michael Ignatieff leaves magazine, Harvard gig, and the country to rescue his native Canada from its political crisis. NYU bigthinker Noah Feldman, recently signed up as Times Mag contributing writer, seems set to replace Ignatieff there. [NYP]
• Steve Capus named president of NBC News. [NYT]
• And Rome Hartman, 60 Minutes vet, named executive producer of the still-anchorless CBS Evening News. [NYT]
• Dear Les Moonves: For the love of God, please don't make Katie Couric the CBS anchor. Please. Love, Jon Friedman. [MW]
• Conde's standard Christmas directions aren't good enough for Anna. [WWD]
We haven't watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on television for probably a solid two decades, but when we glanced at this morning's papers we began to regret avoiding the broadcast this year. There was, it seems, a "Holi-Daze" "Lights Out" at the parade yesterday, a "narrowly avoided" disaster that was caused when a giant (and, apparently, angry) M&M careened into a lamppost in Times Square and sent a 30-pound lighting fixture falling onto two sisters watching the parade below.
• Despite Pentagon plea, newspapers realize that 2,000th Iraq death really is new. [NYT]
• Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports, is still the new president of CBS News. He's Jim McKay's son, and one day last week he thought that Harriet Miers was a bigger news story than the White Sox. [NYT]
• Meanwhile, in a CBS men's room, Mike Wallace and Dan Rather engage in a pissing match. [Radar]
• Tim Russert is a pivotal witness in Libby case while also being, well, Tim Russert. [NYT]
• New Teen People is already Majewski-fied, although the former Us Weekly resdesign doesn't technically hit till February.
• Biz magazines are in trou-ble. [Mediabweek]
• Martha Stewart wants a job at Martha Stewart. [NYP]
• Newsweek's Tom Masland obituary: "Then Tom stepped off that curb, and was hit by the offside mirror on a passing SUV; a freak collision on a rainy night that propelled him to the ground and caused massive brain damage. ... Thomas Wootton Masland died in intensive care at St. Luke's Hospital three days later, on Oct. 27, with his sons, Richard, Robert and James, his mother, brother and two sisters by his side, as Gina [his wife, a jazz singer] sang 'When the Saints Go Marching In.'" [Newsweek]
It's times like this that Dan Rather really misses his old life. A reader reports:
