• The bleak outlook for network news is getting bleaker: Both the CBS Evening News and ABC's World News suffered all-time ratings lows last week. [HuffPo]
• CBS chief Les Moonves's compensation was slashed by 76 percent last year. He still earned $13.6 million, though, so don't feel too bad for him. [Crain's]
• Depressing: Monday's breakup episode of TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 was the most-watched episode of the show ever with 10.6 million viewers. [THR]
• MySpace is closing four of its international offices and cutting two-thirds of its staff abroad advertising falls and Facebook and Twitter take over. [NYT]
• A woman in Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Elisabeth Hasselbeck for allegedly ripping off her self-published book on celiac disease. [BH]
• Bravo honcho Andy Cohen is going to be hosting a live show once a week called Watch What Happens. You can watch what happens on July 16. [LAT]

• Advertisers are asking (demanding) that TV broadcasters cut prices by as much as 15 percent. The networks? They're not so happy about it. [LAT]
• Jared Kushner's Observer is launching a supplement for "stroller-wheeling New York City moms." The glossy is set to debut in September and "will address family-friendly topics for the society set and celebrity parents." [WWD]
• Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has sold off The Weekly Standard magazine to Denver-based media mogul (and fellow conservative) Phil Anschutz. [AP]
• ABC is changing up its executive management structure. [THR]
• Conan O'Brien was victorious in his second week up against Letterman. [NYT]
• Speaking of Letterman, Olive Garden—the "Italian" chain restaurant that you should never eat at even if you're dying of starvation—is canceling all of its spots on Letterman's show in solidarity with Sarah Palin. [Politico]

• The curse of Gisele: Both Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar put supermodel Gisele Bundchen on the covers of their mags this year, and both have turned out to be their worst-selling issues thus far in 2009. [NYO]
• Can Forbes survive the downturn? The Forbes family thinks so. [NYT]
• Jared Kushner's New York Observer has acquired Very Short List, the struggling email newsletter owned by Barry Diller's IAC. [Gawker, NYP]
• The Huffington Post has a new CEO, ex-Ziff-Davis CEO Eric Hippeau. [PC]
• BusinessWeek is the latest mag to test a paid online subscriptions. [MW]
• Barack Obama's half-brother landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster. [AP]
• The Hangover and Up were the top-grossing films this past weekend. [LAT]
• The Boston Globe is up for sale—and a handful of people appear to be interested—although just how much they'll pay is anybody's guess. [NYT]
• ABC's Lost is the most watched TV show on the Internet. [Variety]

In your all wet Friday media column: Hachette figures out how to get money, ABC figures out how to save money, the NYT Co. vows not to lose money, and a website that will not make money:

ABC News' Jake Tapper, seemingly bored silly on a flight to Riyadh, or maybe just experimenting to see how many links he could get from wingnut websites, published perhaps the most imbecilic article in the history of journalism on ABC.com.

Finally video footage of late night host Jimmy Kimmel's evisceration of ABC at their own goddamned upfronts has surfaced. And, surprise surprise? It's really not all that controversial—mostly funny jokes and inside-baseball industry hoo-haw, thrown in because it was supposed to be a closed audience. So what's the fuss?

ABC's marketing department is so hardcore that they will get Mickey Mouse to hand out cigarettes to children if that's what it takes to get people to watch their crappy shows!

Gawker's old pal Jimmy Kimmel had what the Times' Dave Itzkoff termed as a "'Jerry Maguire'-like moment" while delivering an address to potential advertisers at ABC's upfront presentation on Tuesday, and it was simply awesome.

• How are things going at the Cannes Film Festival? It depends on who you talk to. The Journal says it's been "conspicuously less frenzied" and business has been "slow." The Hollywood Reporter says it's beating expectations and "doomsayers" have been "proven wrong." Take your pick. [WSJ, THR]
• NBC is dropping Medium and My Name Is Earl for the fall, but bringing back Chuck. It's also renewed Law & Order for a 20th season. [NYT, AP, NYT]
• What can you expect on ABC this fall? More Dancing With the Stars. [THR]
• CBS is ditching Without A Trace, but has renewed Numb3rs. [EW]
• Time Warner Cable is dropping HDNet and HDNet Movies as May 31. [MC]

Just kidding. Today we have more news from the TV upfronts, plus movie word from sunny, splashy, ridiculous Cannes.

• Execs at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox are supposedly "seething" that the president's three news conferences have cost them $30 million in ad revenue. [THR]
• Is the New York Times Co. heading towards bankruptcy? [E&P]
• More budget cuts at the Star Ledger and San Francisco Chronicle. [E&P, HP]
• The LA Times introduces a new weekly magazine this Sunday. [Folio]
• Star Trek is off to a fast start. The pic grossed $7 million last night alone. [EW]
• It looks like television and radio advertising is rebounding a bit. [MLM]
• Former Radar editor Maer Roshan is now the editor of TheWeek.com. [NYP]
• The Simpsons got its own series of postage stamps yesterday. [Reuters]

ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross got suckered into a 2007 story about the effectiveness of waterboarding, that turned out to be false. ABC's newest defense sounds just like...Dick Cheney, defending waterboarding:

The extraterrestrials at Hulu have staged another coup in their bid to take over television. Disney has struck up a deal with the online video site, meaning we get ABC shows now.

• The New York Times Co. has reached a "tentative agreement" with its union to impose a 5 percent pay cut on employees through the end of the year. [NYP]
• Disney's ABC is joining Fox and NBC and taking a stake in Hulu. [AdAge]
• As expected, Time Warner said it may spin off AOL. But it may end up selling it, too. Either way, Gerald Levin, Dick Parsons and Steve Case will still be responsible for the worst merger in American corporate history. [NYT]
• Viacom reported that first quarter profit dropped 34 percent amid falling revenue at both its film and TV networks businesses. [AP]
• Related: Viacom boss Sumner Redstone is as senile as ever. At the Milken conference in Beverly Hills, he said he wouldn't comment on his competitors before lashing out at Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Jay Leno. [THR]

One BusinessWeek scribe fussed over his beard, an Ars Technica blogger griped over her ride, and an ABC News reporter got dissed in makeup! The Twitterati's complaints were endless today:

• Chris DeWolfe is out as the CEO of News Corp.-owned MySpace. [CNN]
• More on Peter Kaplan's split from Jared Kushner's Observer, and the rumor Kaplan is now heading to Condé Nast Traveler. [NYT, WWD, DHD]
• ABC has renewed 12 series, including Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives. [THR]
• Viacom, the parent company BET, is planning to start up a new cable TV channel for middle-aged African-Americans. [NYT]
• Barry Diller is looking to shed his email newsletter Very Short List. Bob Pittman and Jared Kushner have taken a look; co-founders Kurt Andersen and Michael Jackson are considering a management buyout. [NYP]
• The New York Times Co. foundation is suspending its grants and no longer matching employees' charitable donations. [Gawker]

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro gave ABC News White House correspondent Jake "The Octogon" Tapper a shout-out in his unreadable column in some state-controlled newspaper.

Finally, some intrepid journalists have infiltrated the Somali pirates'...dusty hangout area, with video cameras! 20/20 pals around with pirates tonight, on television. Watch this clip of America's new enemy, with guns, on a little boat!

Looks like we have some competition for tracking the media elite's bleat-replete tweets! Our competitive edge: We bring you the very worst of the Twitterati. Today's targets:

Twitter is the ideal medium to express your own idiocy. Dan Abrams denounces the mainstream media which gave birth to his career, a Google-enriched entrepreneur eats its free lunch, and Alan Meckler discovers Twitter: