• You can rest easier now: Now that he's no longer planning to run for Senate, Chris Matthews has signed a new four-year contract with MSNBC. [NYT]
• Howard Dean has signed on to be a CNBC contributor. [HP]
• Major media companies are now looking for a bailout. From Google. [AdAge]
• Jay Leno's chat with Obama was his fourth most-watched show ever. [LAT]
• Some perks may be curtailed at Condé Nast. Like the one that allowed Portfolio editor Joanne Lipman to fly to Davos first-class, possibly. [NYP]
• Advance Publications is instituting mandatory 10-day furloughs and a pension freeze at nearly all of its daily papers, says Steve Newhouse. [E&P]
• Time publisher Don Fries is headed out the door. [NYP]
• NBC is very good at spinning the Times, in case you haven't noticed. [CJR]
• Knowing starring Nic Cage was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. [NYDN]

• Further evidence CNN's Jon Klein should start polishing his resume: The network continues to trail Fox News, MSNBC, and Headline News. [Portfolio]
• Obama's performance on The Tonight Show will keep people talking for awhile (and not in a good way, clearly), but the ratings were huge. [Time, THR]
• The April issue of Portfolio is the slimmest in Condé Nast's history. [NYP]
• Charla Lawhon is stepping down as managing editor of In Style. [WWD]
• Your prayers have been answered: VH1 is reviving Behind the Music. [NYP]
• Bob Pittman says the ad industry should get a bailout, too. [Fortune]
• Fox News's Greta Van Susteren is denying her husband is a paid adviser to Sarah Palin, but she admits that he gives her advice and "helps" her. [HP]
• SpiralFrog, the glitzy music site that launched in 2006, has gone bust. [PC]
• Broadway dimmed the lights last night in honor of Natasha Richardson. [THR]

In an otherwise agreeable appearance on the Tonight Show, the president compared his bowling to "like Special Olympics, or something." This is why presidents avoid late-night TV.

President Obama's motorcade arrives at the NBC's Burbank studios for the taping of tonight's Jay Leno. (Photo by jodante)

• Yet one more newspaper is folding. Hearst's Seattle Post-Intelligencer will shut down its print operations tomorrow, but its website will live on. [Seattle PI]
• The Sci Fi Channel is changing its name. To Syfy. This is not a joke. [NYT]
• CNN says it plans to "devote the bulk of its news effort this week" to covering the global financial meltdown. How timely! [NYT]
• Are CNN anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts secretly dating? [NYM]
• Book sales in the U.S. are down slightly, but they're up in Europe. [NYT]
• Andy Samberg will host the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. [THR]
• Barack Obama will appear on The Tonight Show on Thursday. [The Caucus]
• More on last week's management shakeup at Fox. [Variety]
• Sopranos creator David Chase is back at HBO with a new mini-series. [AB]
• Race to Witch Mountain was No. 1 at the box office this weekend. [AP]

• Is AIG officially the most despised company in America? Following the disclosure over the weekend that execs planned to go ahead with $165 million in bonuses to top execs comes word that a good deal of the billions in bailout money it received went to banks like Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion), Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), and Bank of America ($5.2 billion). [BN, NYT, WSJ]
• Larry Summers: "There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous." [BN]
• UBS plans to cut another 5,000 jobs. [Reuters]

Robert De Niro will be Jimmy Fallon's first guest—an unusually intimidating choice to ease first-night jitters, no matter how well their "Are you a pothead Fallon? Could you milk me?"-patter goes in rehearsal.

• CBS reports that profits plunged 52 percent last quarter. [Variety]
• The editor of the Post is defending the chimp cartoon in yesterday's paper; meanwhile, Al Sharpton led a protest outside News Corp. today. [E&P, WCBS]
• Despite the horrible reviews, the second-season premiere of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York City on Tuesday set a high for the series. [THR]
• Chris Mitchell has been named the publisher of Conde Nast Traveler. [MW]
• Conan O'Brien will conclude his 16-year Late Night run on Friday. Then it's off to LA to take over for Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show. [NYT]

Conan O'Brien's story seems more bitter each time he's asked about learning Jay Leno would precede his Tonight Show on NBC.

Way back in October, people were already saying that NBC's 30 Rock had exhausted its "Yes it's a product placement, but it's also a funny storyline!" justification. Oh, how wrong they were. Mmm, McFlurry!

A number of notable talk show hosts made the controversial choice to cross picket lines and not grow out a strike beard during last year's WGA strike, Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres among them.

It's one thing for Jay Leno to be mocked endlessly by rival David Letterman for moving to an earlier timeslot. Far more insulting: Being branded a scab by his own union .

David Letterman is reportedly in talks to extend his CBS contact beyond 2010. The idea is to take ratings from Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show; further taunting Jay Leno is a fringe benefit.

The inauguration was a dilemma for late-night shows, which had to joke about an event Americans tended to consider moving and joyous. Surprisingly, the Bush-bashing Daily Show had the most biting commentary.

Everyone is out to spite everyone: Jay Leno ruined 90 minutes of Conan O'Brien's life; Lindsay Lohan is refusing to eat and John McCain isn't letting his wife go on that fun TV program.

Though David Duchovny's publicist surely slapped a "no sex addiction questions" proviso on his public appearances, it's a hard subject to avoid when the show he's promoting is about, y'know, having sex a lot.

She writes, "Did you hear the one about the stockbroker who’s been sleeping like a baby? Every hour, he wakes up and cries." I can't imagine this is a McCain original — sounds like an old one — but see him tell it yourself at the beginning of this clip from his Nov. 12 appearance on The Tonight Show.

Actress Scarlett Johansson is sick with a cold and she is famous. Therefore she can go on the Tonight Show, blow boogies into a tissue, and then sell it on eBay for money.

Hey, you there! Think you can run a network? You may be able to do it better than NBC's boy-king Jeff Zucker, who Jay Leno has just exposed as a total space cadet.

Jay Leno has been saying his 10pm show will be hot, because going to bed early is suddenly hot, among the kids. Someone finally checked, and of course Leno is totally wrong.