Mediagazer: China Starts 24-Hour English Channel (Fern Siegel/MediaPost)

Joseph Plambeck / New York Times:

Big Paydays for Chiefs of Top Media Companies — The media industry may be going through some rough times, with the landscape changing day to day, but at least one aspect is business as usual: big paydays for the people at the top. — Top executives at the country's largest media companies continued …

Discussion: The Wire, New York Observer, New York Magazine, Big Journalism and Romenesko

Lloyd Grove / The Daily Beast:

Obama Trounces Leno — Hungry Beast Giving Beast Women in the World — Blogs and Stories — The returns from the White House Correspondents' Dinner are in. Lloyd Grove on how the president thoroughly upstaged the king of late-night comedy at Washington's media prom. Plus, watch the nine best moments.

Discussion: New York Observer, Mediaite, Chickaboomer, Reliable Source, FishbowlDC, Gawker and Vanity Fair

CBS News:

Conan Breaks Silence on “Tonight Show,” NBC Exit — O'Brien Tells “60 Minutes” Not Possible Show Lost Money Under His Watch; Says Six Months Was Too Soon To Judge His Potential — (CBS) Very few things in this country galvanize public opinion like someone trying to mess around with people's preferences in the bedroom.

Discussion: New York Magazine and Hollywood Reporter

Speakeasy:
Conan O'Brien on ‘60 Minutes’: The Comedian Talks Jay Leno, NBC, His Beard

Discussion: rbr.com, Multichannel, New York Observer, The Huffington Post, PopWatch, The Biz Blog, Z on TV, blogs.tampabay.com, Mediaite, The Wrap and Media Decoder

Bill Carter / New York Times:

NBC Changes Strategy of Cutting Prime-Time TV Costs — LOS ANGELES — For Jeff Gaspin, handed the task of pulling NBC's prime-time schedule out of a long, precipitous slide, the first priority is reality — as a concept, not a program genre. — “This is the first year in quite …

Discussion: Broadcasting & Cable, TVWeek.com, New York Magazine and BLTv

Fern Siegel / MediaPost:

China Starts 24-Hour English Channel — China's biggest national news agency is set to launch its global, English-language television news network, part of efforts to expand the government's media influence abroad. Starting Saturday, May 1, China Xinhua News Network Corp. (CNC) …

Discussion: Media News

Norman Gomlak / Washington Post:

AOL seeks to fill need for local news with online news site Patch — AOL Inc. is apparently gearing up to launch dozens of community news sites in the Washington-Baltimore area, part of an aggressive push to fill the void left by newspaper cutbacks and to tap the region's local online ad spending.

Andrew Adam Newman / New York Times:

Advertising: Pregnancy Test Maker Finds Opportunity in Personal Stories — IN a new Web-only reality series on TLC.com, “A Conception Story,” Mary, 34, sits in the living room of her home in Virginia and explains why she and Mike, her husband of 10 years, put off having children.

Discussion: Jezebel

Joseph Plambeck / New York Times:

Washington Times Seeks Buyer or Partner — The months-long upheaval at The Washington Times is continuing, as the owners of the conservative newspaper have put it up for sale. — The struggling paper is owned by News World Communications, a wing of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

Discussion: New York Observer and New York Magazine

Ed Pilkington / Guardian:

Apple v Gizmodo: Gawker's Nick Denton on the battle over the lost iPhone — Row between giant technology company and website network highlights legal issues about bloggers — It is late morning in the New York headquarters of Gawker Media, the network of 10 savvy and gossipy websites …

Connie Bruck / New Yorker:

The Influencer — An entertainment mogul sets his sights on foreign policy. — One afternoon in late October, Haim Saban, seated in his wood-panelled library, contemplated the results of a fourteen-month renovation of his estate. It consists of a main house and two smaller buildings …

Discussion: Company Town and The Wrap

TheAustralian:

WSJ takes no prisoners in home-turf tussle with Times — WHEN ace pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was forced to ditch his US Airways jet in the Hudson River in New York, heroically saving the lives of all on board, it was a big story. — But that January 15, 2009, is remembered at the Wall Street Journal for other reasons too.

Times of London:

40 bloggers who really count — Meet the online writers, stars and commentators that everybody's talking about — CELEBRITY — Few professionals in the arts maintain a blog as lovingly as David Byrne, or post at such length about topics of genuine interest (one recent entry …

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

Audiences, and Hollywood, Flock to Smartphones — It might be hard to imagine watching “The Office” on a screen no bigger than a business card. But tens of thousands of people — by the most conservative estimate — are already doing just that. — As Hollywood shrinks its films …