Mediagazer: CNBC Takes a Hollywood Turn (Brian Stelter/Media Decoder)

1:00 PM ET, May 23, 2011

Top News:

The Elephant in the Green Room — The circus Roger Ailes created at Fox News made his network $900 million last year. But it may have lost him something more important: the next election. — On Monday afternoon, March 28, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes summoned Glenn Beck to a meeting …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Yahoo! News, Mediaite, Tuned In, On Media's Blog, The Wire, The Huffington Post, Most Recent Home Page Posts …, Poynter, Crikey, Firedoglake, TVNewser, The Atlantic Wire, The Daily Dish, Inside Cable News and ShortFormBlog

Lauren A. E. Schuker / Wall Street Journal:

Glenn Beck to Offer Discount Deals — As he prepares to leave his daily Fox News talk show later this year, conservative television host Glenn Beck is entering the e-commerce business. — On Monday, Mercury Radio Arts, Mr. Beck's production company, plans to announce a new website called Markdown.com …

Discussion: The Wire, New York Magazine, Mediaite, TVNewser, Gawker, WebProNews and Mashable!, more at Techmeme »

Jeremy W. Peters / New York Times:

Female Magazine Fans Flock to Nook Color — Even as the iPad remains the favorite son of the magazine business, publishers are discovering that the Barnes & Noble Nook Color is a very promising younger daughter. — The Nook Color has surprised publishers of women's magazines like O …

Discussion: FishbowlNY, Editors Weblog, Variety and USA Today

Nat Ives / AdAge:

Conde Nast's New Marketing-Services Division Aims at Non-Advertising Budgets — Ideactive Will Offer Services Such as App Development — Conde Nast, the publisher of magazines such as Glamour and The New Yorker, is trying to move further beyond its core business of ad-page sales with a new marketing services division.

Discussion: eMedia Vitals

Amy Wicks / WWD Media Headlines: Condé Nast Gets Digitally Active

The Independent:

30,000 Twitter users could face legal action over gag breaches — The attempt to use super-injunctions to gag the media in the internet age reached new levels of absurdity yesterday. — A Scottish newspaper became the first mainstream British publication to identify the Premier League footballer …

Discussion: The Awl, Guardian, SAI, Adweek, BBC and Forbes.com

Chris Hastings / Daily Mail:
An international TV star, a pop singer, an author and a comedian …

Discussion: New York Times and @pkafka

Russell Adams / Wall Street Journal:

Newsweek Adds Schama to Roster of Writers — If Tina Brown can't return Newsweek to profitability, it won't be for lack of ability to attract talent. — The magazine will Monday announce that the editor has grabbed another boldface name in Simon Schama, the U.K.-born historian …

Discussion: Adweek, FishbowlNY and Poynter

Brian Stelter / Media Decoder:

CNBC Takes a Hollywood Turn — Every few minutes in “Too Big to Fail,” the film about the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2008 that will have its premiere Monday on HBO, something happens that once seemed unbelievable. Banks collapse. Balance sheets crumble.

Discussion: TVNewser and DealBook

Wall Street Journal:

New Tools for Picking Hits TV Advertisers Consult Formulas That Weigh Social-Media Buzz, Economic Data — The animated series “South Park” on Viacom Inc.'s Comedy Central ranks 211 by number of TV viewers but, according to one ad firm's reckoning, it's really No. 4.

Discussion: Adweek

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Revealed: The Huffington Post Wanted To Buy TechCrunch Back In The Day — My boss, Michael Arrington, sat down with his boss (and my boss as well), Arianna Huffington for a brief chat at TechCrunch Disrupt, where Huffington revealed that she tried to ‘merge’ the Huffington Post' with TechCrunch before AOL bought us last September.

Discussion: VentureBeat and Betabeat

Sarah Maslin Nir / New York Times:

Tired, Testy, Even Rumpled: French Reporters on the Big Story — They're weary and disheveled, overworked, underrested and above all cranky — some say they haven't had a drop of red wine for days. — Legions of French journalists were imported at great haste last week to cover news …

Discussion: The Atlantic Wire, NY Daily News, CNN and New York Magazine

Frédéric Filloux / Monday Note:

Media & tech: Reconcilable Differences — Media and tech worlds must work together. There is not a shred of a doubt about it. The former have lost the dual battle for growth and economic performance; the latter are attracting eyeballs and endless funding. Still.

Discussion: Common Sense Journalism

Google Book Search Blog:

Google eBooks: By the Numbers, Then and Now — It's been about six months since we launched Google eBooks. Now, we're happy to report there are more than three million free Google eBooks available in the U.S. for your enjoyment and enlightenment (as compared to more than two million at launch).

Discussion: Publishing Perspectives and Softpedia News

Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:

By The Numbers: How Facebook Says Likes & Social Plugins Help Websites — Earlier this month, I wrote about how the promise of Facebook traffic has enticed millions of sites to use Facebook Like buttons and other Facebook social plugins. But does following Facebook's socialist agenda really pay off?

Discussion: Poynter, FishbowlNY and Bloggasm, more at Techmeme »

Nick Davies / Guardian:

Phone hacking: journalist's lawsuit against NoW revives ‘spying’ claims — Dennis Rice launches proceedings alleging that his voicemail messages were intercepted while working at the Mail on Sunday — A leading tabloid journalist has joined those suing the News of the World for allegedly hacking …

Discussion: The First Post

Jeremy W. Peters / Media Decoder:

One View of the News World — When Xinhua, the official government news agency of China, wanted to upgrade from its old office in Queens, it sought out a space that matched its ambitions. So it leased the top floor of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, one with commanding views of the headquarters …

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Jean-Louis Gassée / Guardian:

Shift happens: the new way to watch film and TV — The rise of online film rental and streaming services such as Netflix signals a broader shift in the way we consume television — Behold Netflix. This really is a special company, one that was long adored by its customers for its DVD rental service by mail.