• Paramount chief Brad Grey has renewed his contract for 5 more years. [NYT]
• Meredith Corp. is shutting down Country Home magazine. [MW]
• The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet is ending this summer. [NYT]
• Barnes & Noble reports sales dropped off in 2008, not surprisingly. [WSJ]
• CBS slashed its Tel Aviv bureau just before war erupted in Gaza. [NYO]
• Oprah's weight-gain confessional scored big ratings for Monday's show. [NYP]

Skeletal oddity Ann Coulter was "BANNED BY NBC," but now she's making the rounds of the fair networks to bleat about her own victimhood:

Throwing a litigious lump of coal in its friend's stocking, Warner Bros. TV leveled a breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS seeking $49 million in unpaid license fees and production costs for Two and a Half Men.

• Katie Couric is still in third place, but her ratings are up considerably. [AP]
• CBS is the only network that has seen viewership rise this season. [Reuters]
• Portfolio's attempt to juice sales with a new cover strategy was a dud. [NYO]
• Ad revenue at the NYT fell 20% last month compared to a year ago. [AP]
• The Times has teamed with Riverhead to publish Obama: The Historic Journey, a book of with photos and essays, in February 2009. [Politico]

Sumner Redstone is so desperate for cash, he might not even be a billionaire any more. So he's decided his daughter will take the fall, and is embarrassing her with a huge public fight this morning.

• The bloodletting at CBS is underway. [THR]
• Macmillan Publishing and FSG are both trimming staff. [AP, NYO]
• Ad spending for the first nine months of this year fell 1.7 percent. [WWD]
• Katie Couric, Campbell Brown, and Rachel Maddow will appear in the next issue of Vogue. [TVN]
• Sean Hannity's Alan Colmes-less show begins January 12th. [NYT]
• The Disney Channel is taking its act to Russia next year. [NYT]
• The most amusing corrections published this year. [Regret the Error]

A holiday card just flung over the Defamer transom offers word that CBS has canceled its well-reviewed if modestly viewed comedy Worst Week.

CBS is laying people off at CNET — no surprise, since the entire media business is fitfully contracting, and after a merger, cuts are a given. But it signals the end of CNET's grandiose ambitions.

• Newsweek is planning to cut staff as well as give the mag a makeover. [WSJ]
• NPR is cutting 7 percent of its staff and dropping two shows. [NYT]
• Ad spending fell 2 percent during the third quarter, although online advertising continued to grow. [Adage]
• Les Moonves isn't too worried about Jay Leno's move to primetime. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Entertainment Weekly may go web-only. [Gawker]
• Reed Elsevier, which has been trying to sell trade titles like Variety and Publishers Weekly, is pulling them off the market. [NYP]
• Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning. [HFPA]

As Jeff Zucker foists his last hopes for NBC on Leno and his arsenal of funny newspaper-clipping typos, his arch nemesis—future galactic despot Les Moonves—couldn't help but engage in a favorite pastime:

♦ No official confirmation yet, but media insiders say David Gregory has been tapped to take over as host of Meet the Press. [Politico]
♦ It's rumored Carine Roitfeld is replacing Anna Wintour at Vogue. [Gawker]
♦ A former employee of Charles Kushner is accusing him of funneling cash from his real estate empire to prop up Jared Kushner's Observer. [Daily Intel]
♦ Harvey Weinstein owes Cindy Adams $10,000. [NYP]
♦ Condé Nast has shuttered its social networking site Flip.com. [Gawker]
♦ CBS is producing a new hidden camera show with Ashton Kutcher. [NYT]
♦ Katie Couric has a new haircut, in case you haven't noticed. [HuffPo]
♦ Arianna Huffington's how-to book for aspiring bloggers. [Jossip]
♦ Ever fantasized about having lunch with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel? You can—for $2,500. [NYO]

· Arrested Development: The Motion Picture holdout Michael Cera has a secret movie—Paper Hearts, a part-doc, part-scripted movie chronicling his relationship with Charlyne Yi, which will hopefully shed some light on their WTF? romance. Sundance buyers: start your engines! [THR] · CBS and Barry Sonnenfeld are developing Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30, a series based on the book of the same name. Example: Write little blurbs about the star of Twilight getting baked. This show is so made for us! [THR] · Studios and networks opt out of the over-the-top, Emmy-style campaigning when it comes to seeking a Golden Globe, leaving Hollywood Foreign Press Association members despondent that they didn't also receive a mid-century Brazilian rosewood desk bearing Mad Men Season 2 DVD in its drawer. [Variety] After the jump: Harvey Levin still sleeping with Satan! Ask us how we know!· Eddie Izzard and Brian Dennehy join Liev Schreiber, Helen Hunt and Carla Gugino in indie feature Every Day. [Variety] · Harvey Levin continues to leave steaming little diarrhea puddles on our TV sets, as the truly unwatchable TMZ show gets a two-season pickup. On the upside, we've become slightly less passive in our couch-potato-ness, as we leap for the remote whenever it comes on. That's sort of an ab crunch! [THR]

♦ CBS is expected to win November sweeps for the eighth straight year. [AP]
♦ Another victim of the recession: publishing industry lunches. [NYO]
♦ The Super Bowl isn't looking up for NBC. Sales of 30-second ads have slowed and there are rumors some companies are now asking for discounts. [AP]
♦ In an attempt to ride Barack Obama's coattails to relevancy, MTV is planning a "Rock 'N Roll Inaugural Ball" for January 20. [AdAge]
♦ Life & Style is on life support and is laying off staff. [NYP]
♦ Contenders to take over Meet the Press include David Gregory, Gwen Ifill, Andrea Mitchell, and NBC political director Chuck Todd. The news may be announced December 7th. [LAT]

Ted Koppel, the impressively-haired former ABC newsman, is parting ways with the Discovery network six months before his contract is up. You may or may not have been aware that he's been working with them since 2006. Not the greatest tragedy in history, but it does point to the sad plight of the former big-time news anchor. There's nowhere to go but down from the heights of the network news desk. Where are all those famous former anchors today?

If Sumner Redstone had just sold his CBS stock back when it looked like he was in trouble, he might have gotten $10, even $15 per share. Instead he sold only what he was forced to, then wasted a lot of time huffing and puffing in the press about how he would never ever sell another CBS or Viacom share, even though $800 million was due in December. In the meantime CBS shares plummeted to less than $5, and only now is Redstone admitting the obvious: He may have to sell some of that stock. Reports the Times:

Or a serial-killing Jackie Rogers Junior? To be honest, we have no idea what he was doing. But it was pretty awful—and in that sense, fit right in with this terrible CBS crime show we had no idea existed! Still, we're happy to see Ray Romano working. Or Joe Mantegna? We're so confused. Video after the jump. (Thanks to Lisanti Quarterly for the tip!)Click to view
[Criminal Minds]

Desperate mogul Sumner Redstone may be able pay off some of his $1.6 billion in debt before half of it comes due in December. The solution: Sell off Midway Games, money-bleeding maker of classic arcade hits like Rampage, Spy Hunter and Mortal Kombat. Some $800 million in cash infusions for Midway were a major contributor to Redstone's debt and pissed off daughter Shari, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported Monday morning that Shari just resigned as chairwoman to Midway, signaling a sale may be in the works.In addition to Midway, the Redstones are said looking to unload their slot machine company. What the hell is divorced ole Sumner supposed to do for fun??

Sumner Redstone was the first major media mogul to get slammed by the economic downturn, and the Viacom chief's troubles continue. His pending divorce and the comical failure of his video game business are mere distractions. His bigger problem is that his company has $1.6 billion in debt to deal with, and Redstone is squabbling with his daughter about how to do it. For some, it's already too late; we hear that layoffs are coming down at Viacom tomorrow. But for the Redstones, there seem to be only three real options:

♦ John McCain's appearance on Saturday Night Live didn't generate Sarah Palin-like ratings, but it was still an impressive showing nonetheless. [THR]
♦ No word yet on who will take over NBC's Meet the Press. Chuck Todd, David Gregory, Gwen Ifill, and even Katie Couric all remain possibilities. [NYT]
♦ CBS is on a primetime ratings roll, although Sumner Redstone is still screwed, apparently. [NYT, NYT]
♦ Another profile of Rachel Maddow, just in case the 237 other pieces on MSNBC's rising star in recent weeks have yet to whet your appetite. [NYM]
♦ In case you missed it, the clip of Sarah Palin getting punked by a couple of Montreal radio personalities, who explain how they managed to get through to her. [ABC]

When times are tough, Americans don't want television that makes you "think." They want television that's predictable, television that reruns the same god damn stories week after week with absolutely no sense of drama or uncertainty. Because who wants more uncertainty, in these uncertain days? This is why CBS—old, stuffy, worthless CBS—is now the best-rated television network of the fall season, may god have mercy on our souls. Too bad Sumner Redstone can't make any money off it, though! CBS hasn't done this well any time since 1987, before reality TV was invented.