• Sundance was a lower-key affair this year thanks to the economy. [WWD]
• Layoffs: Rumor has it The Weinstein Co. cut as many as 30 staffers today. And a big round of layoffs could come to CBS next week. [Gawker, LAT]
• The Vancouver Olympics could cost NBC as much as $250 million. [THR]
• Keith Olbermann's ratings are down. Guess there are only so many times you can call Bill O'Reilly the worst person in the world before it gets old. [DF]
• BusinessWeek continues to staff up. Eric Pooley (formerly of Fortune) and New York's Hugo Lindgren are joining the Bloomberg-owned mag. [TW, TBM]
• Could a Catcher in the Rye be coming soon? Don't hold your breath. [LAT]
• Does Rudy Giuliani make stuff up every time he appears on TV? Yes. [NYT]
• Mort Zuckerman says Rupert Murdoch's plan to launch a local edition of the Journal is a "brilliant move." Translation: Extra competition for the New York Times is a good thing, especially when someone else is paying for it. [Forbes]
• The Grammy Awards go down on CBS on Sunday night. [NYT]
• George Stephanopoulos and Hillary Clinton are related? Apparently so. [AP]

• Musician David Byrne has picked up a new condo in Chelsea. The former frontman of the Talking Heads paid $3.875 million for a four-bedroom penthouse at 231 Tenth Avenue, which first went on the market for $5.2 million back in 2008. [Cityfile]
• After more than a year and a half of price cuts, Karen and David Fleiss have finally unloaded their apartment at 1030 Fifth Avenue. Part of it, at least. The couple first listed the duplex for $47.5 million in June of 2008 before deciding to list the lower floor on its own for $15 million. The price was reduced to $9.95 million back in June. Now they've managed to find a buyer for it. The third-floor apartment was sold for $8.898 million to Richard Duke Buchan III and his wife, Hannah. [NYC Co-op]

George Stephanopoulos acknowledges that he should've pressed Rudy Giuliani on his insane comments this morning.

• The epic mess at NBC continues: The last-place network is now thinking above moving Jay Leno to a 11:35pm-12:05am time slot and then having Conan O'Brien follow him for a full hour. But no deal has been reached, and there's still a possibility that Conan will abandon ship. [NYT, LAT, BN, NYT]
• Rudy Giuliani is under fire for idiotic comments he made on Good Morning America today. George Stephanopoulos: He isn't looking so hot either. [NYT]
• Changes at the Times: Star reporter Sewell Chan is headed to the paper's D.C. bureau; and the NYT's City Room blog has a new editor. [Politico, NYT]
• If you love Jersey Shore, maybe you'll be interested in Jersey Couture? [THR]
• Bad news for tweens, pervs: Hannah Montana is coming to an end. [MTV]
• Ben Silverman's studio/glorified ad agency is teaming up with Yahoo! [NYT]
• President Obama's State of the Union address will not—repeat not—conflict with Lost's season opener on February 2. So you can relax now. [WSJ]
• Did Reuters kill a story so as to not offend billionaire Steve Cohen? [Gawker]
• If you work at Condé Nast and you go get a boob job, you probably shouldn't show your new assets to your colleagues when your return to the office. (Even if you're behind closed doors and you keep your sports bra on.) [NYP]

You can watch the entire miserable segment here, if you are in too good a mood this morning! George just lets Rudy babble on and on and on, without bothering to correct or challenge him, on anything. Like, for example, in addition to 9/11, some other guy did the exact same thing as this underwear bomber did, in December of 2001, only with a shoe, instead of underwear. And everyone knows and remembers this. George remembers this! But why bother to bring it up?

• Is NBC shutting down Jay Leno's 10pm show and moving him back to late night? Is Conan O'Brien out of a job? NBC isn't denying that a schedule change has been discussed, but it's not saying much more than that for now. [NYT]
• ABC News is reportedly in negotiations with Ted Koppel to bring him back to the network as the anchor of This Week on Sunday mornings. [Politico]
• CNN is handing over the 1-3pm slot to Ali Velshi starting on Jan. 18. [NYT]
• Forbes has sold off its landmark building on lower Fifth Ave. to NYU. [NYO]
• Despite the standoff between Cablevision and Scripps, ratings for the company's two cable outlets, HGTV and Food Network, are up. [AdAge]
• Tucker Carlson's new website, The Daily Caller, launches next week. [WI]
• Avatar's streak continues: It's now the No. 2 biggest movie ever. [THR]
• A Blockbuster video kiosk is coming to a Duane Reade near you. [NYCTB]
• Fox is delaying the start of its sketchy new reality show. [THR]
• Break out a tissue: The Hof is leaving America's Got Talent. [People]
• Lady Gaga was the special guest on Launch My Line last night. [Gawker]
• Did ABC News buy George Stephanopoulos a booster seat when he joined the Good Morning America team? That's the rumor, at least. [Popeater]

It took 20 hours to get Kate's hair to a socially acceptable state. LiLo gets kicked off a private jet and a commercial airplane. Gary Coleman has a seizure. Political relevance infiltrates Page Six, and it's not okay: Thursday gossip.

• Closures: Design magazine I.D. is shutting down. And while Editor & Publisher revealed last week it's folding, there's now a small chance it'll survive. [E&P]
• More bad news: The New Republic laid off some staff today. [Politico]
• Diane Sawyer's farewell to GMA last week and George Stephanopoulos's debut on Monday both did okay, but neither one topped Today. [NYO, NYT]
• More TV news: CNN's ratings continue to suck; Oprah's Obama special scored big ratings; and Oprah pal Nate Berkus is getting his own show, as rumored.
• Golf Digest says it has no regrets about its new Tiger Woods cover. Which is a tad convenient since it went to press before the scandal broke. [Us]
• Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko got snubbed by his bosses today. [DF]
• Paramount plans to start selling movie clips on the Web next week. [NYT]
• As for plans to create the "Hulu of magazines," it isn't going to be easy. [PC]
• The guy who stalked ESPN's Erin Andrews pleaded guilty today. [AP]
• Advertisers are totally loving Lady Gaga right now. Her "Bad Romance" video managed to squeeze in ten product placements in under five minutes. [LAT]
• Golden Globe noms were announced today. Just in case you missed it. [NYM]

Today was George Stephanopoulos' first day as Good Morning America's new co-anchor. Let's take a look at Georgie's best moments replacing the slurring, World News Tonight-bound Diane Sawyer!

• Nielsen has concluded a deal to sell handful of trade titles like The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard to a consortium of investors that includes Jimmy Finkelstein and Guggenheim Partners. Rupert Murdoch's son Lachlan was once part of the investor group, but ended up dropping out. [AdWeek, NYP, LAT]
• Nielsen also said today that it's shuttering two titles: Editor & Publisher, which dates back to 1884, and book pub Kirkus Reviews. [E&P, NYT]
• AOL and Time Warner are officially separate companies now. [WSJ, AP]
• George Stephanopoulos starts his new job of GMA anchor on Monday. [LAT]
• The controversy over MTV's latest series, Jersey Shore, rages on. [THR]
• Hollywood PR powerhouse PMK/HBH has pretty much imploded. [Wrap]
• The 30 worst women's magazine covers of the aughts. [Buzzfeed]
• The city's laziest magazine editor: Dave Zinczenko of Men's Health. [Gawker]

George Stephanopoulos is reinventing himself for the third time. He's been a smug political hack, a penitent political memoirist, an earnest political journalist, and now he's going to host ABC News' wacky morning show. Let's look at his past transformations.

Taylor² (Lautner and Swift) are awesome, and even Kings of Leon say so. Amy Adams: having a baby, and this too, is awesome. Naomi Campbell, Julia Roberts, and George Stephanopoulos give me 90s nostalgia. Presenting your Saturday Morning Gossip Roundup.

• ABC has offered George Stephanopoulos the job of Good Morning America co-host and "intensive negotiations" are now reportedly underway. [WP]
• More on how the deal to hand over control of NBC to Comcast came together; and more on how the deal will be viewed by regulators in Washington.
• Oprah won't be hosting her own show when her cable network debuts in 2011, but she will have a "significant presence" on OWN, reportedly. [NYP]
• The magazine graveyard: National Geographic Adventure is no more. [NYT
• Cuts: Thomson Reuters is laying off 240; Daily Candy is shutting down seven of its 12 editions and laying off half a dozen; and ALM is shuttering four titles.
• Town & Country is planning to sex up the magazine, apparently. [WWD]
• An unnamed former Forbes staffer is writing a tell-all about the mag. [DF]
• Lou Dobbs is a nasty, evil man. But you probably knew that. [TDB]
• Someone is paying "at least $100 million" for Friendster? [Reuters]
• This year's Grammy nominations were announced this morning. [LAT]

Carrie Prejean is horrifed by Shauna Sand's attempt to inspire her; Bijou Phillips' incest movie was a lot less creepy before Mackenzie wrote that book; 50 Cent has some tattoos removed. Et voila, Wednesday's gossip!

• George Stephanopoulos will probably replace Diane Sawyer on GMA. [TDB]
• Now that Bloomberg LP is talking over BusinessWeek, columnists Maria Bartiromo and Jack Welch are both parting ways with the mag. [NYP]
• CNN is laying off four of its web anchors since it no longer plans to produce live video on CNN.com. The good news? With Lou Dobbs no longer on the payroll, it should save $9 million over the next few years. [NYT, [NYP]
• Euna Lee, one of the two CurrentTV reporters who was imprisoned in North Korea earlier this year, has scored herself a six-figure book deal. [NYT]
• Shares of Playboy jumped yesterday after it was reported the apparel conglomerate Iconix was in talks to acquire the (struggling) company. [NYP]
• Another senior Observer editor is bidding goodbye to the paper. [Politico]
• Fashion mags are expecting their fortunes to improve in 2010. [WWD]
• Is the Fox Business Channel a lost cause at this point? [VF]
• Television is more getting more and more obscene, supposedly. [NYT]

In your spirited Wednesday media column: George Stephanopoulos should listen to his kids, Conde Nast forswears frequency cuts, France has a wacky newspaper scheme, and we have the menu for GQ's dinner tonight.

• It's Tuesday, which means fresh job cuts at Condé Nast have been revealed. In addition to the dozen Glamour staffers laid off yesterday, Style.com will cut Candy Pratts Price. And 200+ more layoffs could be ahead. [WWD, NYP, FWD]
• Maybe Condé Nast's fancy iPhone application, which was announced today, will stem the red ink? Maybe not. But it certainly can't hurt either. [AdAge]
• BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Steve Adler says he will step down once the sale of the magazine to Bloomberg LP is completed in about a month. [BW]
• Sarah Palin will be Oprah's guest on November 16 as the former governor embarks on her book tour. Many of her fans aren't happy, unsurprisingly. [CT]
• The search for a Good Morning America co-host continues at ABC News. The front-runner at the moment seems to be George Stephanopoulos. [LAT]
• Malcolm Gladwell says journalists shouldn't go to journalism school. [Time]
• Harvey Weinstein's book publishing company is giving up its independence. It will be combined with Perseus Books starting December 1. [WSJ]

ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos scored higher ratings than NBC's Meet the Press for the first time since 1999 this past weekend. Stephanopoulos' guests on the show were Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. [Yahoo]

Probably thinking that no one in America would be watching television on the morning of July 5th, the Obama administration let Crazy Joe Biden out of his cage for an appearance on ABC's This Week.

Rumors of the Goldblum/Ford deaths were greatly exaggerated, David Gregory throws a hissy over Joe Scarborough, Kate Gosselin sports a bikini in the driveway, Kim Kardashian lusts for Megan Fox and Chris Brown and Rihanna want to touch.