Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke has always been cagey about her Web traffic. But having sold her website, the stabby gossipmonger can't keep her numbers private any longer. All she can do is try and push them up. Which we'd recommend.

• More on Condé Nast's decision to shut down four magazines, including Gourmet, Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride: An estimated 180 people will likely lose their jobs as part of the move, although CEO Chuck Townsend says the company has no plans to shutter any other titles. [NYO, AdAge]
• If Comcast goes ahead with a deal to take a controlling stake in NBC, Jeff Zucker, NBC Universal's CEO, may need to find a new job. [NYP]
• Don Imus' radio show debuted on Fox Business today. [WP]
• Rich Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide, is taking over Walt Disney Studios; he's succeeding Dick Cook, who was ousted on Sept. 16. [NYT]
• Universal Pictures has fired chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde. [LAT]
• CBS has been busy ridding YouTube of David Letterman's mea culpa. [NYT]
• Zombieland was No. 1 at the box office this weekend with a $25 million take. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs dropped to second place. [Variety]
• It wasn't all bad news at Condé Nast today: The New Yorker landed its biggest ad buy since 2005 with a $1 million deal with HSBC. [Folio]

At least we've got a new Nikki Finke picture to look at. We were sick of that black-and-white portrait—the only photo of the Hollywood gossip available online—so we're glad the New Yorker added an illustration to the mix.

BOOM! goes the dynamite, or or in this case, Nikki Finke's New Yorker "profile" that dropped today. It's an insubstantial but fairly fun read with a few juicy anecdotes. Nikki's already reacted. Family friendly journalism, right here. Bring the kids:

Nikki Finke is an industrious and relentless blogger. But she's not a reliable one. As her readers know, she's given to frequent unexpected absences from her blog. Now that she's making $400,000, we're going to start keeping track.

In a move that took all of Hollywood by surprise, Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook announced late yesterday that he was stepping down.

Nothing that excites Hollywood more than the thought of a studio changing hands; the implications spilling down over a generation of executives and deals might be completely incomprehensible from this distance, but they are darn exciting.

Hollywood's screaming shut-in Nikki Finke is making waves in her own bathtub this morning with a fresh new look — which bears a striking resemblance to the old look — and promises of the imminent roll-out of a worldwide network.

Just asking: Is it odd that deposed car czar Steve Rattner poured $35 million into Jay Penske's dubious internet adventure Mail.com in October, and then arranged for Jay's father Roger Penske to buy Saturn from General Motors nine months later?

We finally know how much aspiring Hollywood mogul Jay Penske has agreed to pay industry blogger Nikki Finke: according to the NYT's David Carr: $400,000 a year for the next eight years. Pretty good money, but not $14 million.

• Bad news for NBC Universal: second-quarter profits dropped by 41%. [MW]
• Good news for NBC News: Susan Boyle's first in-depth TV interview will take place with Meredith Vieira on the Today show next Wednesday. [NYT]
• Alpha Media, the company that owns Maxim (and used to own Blender and Stuff)—and which was sold to Steve Rattner's Quadrangle Group in 2007—has changed hands again: Steve Feinberg's Cerberus now runs the show. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Pamela Fiori may be leaving Town & Country. [P6]
• Bonnie Fuller is taking over Hollywood Life, the website controlled by Jay Penske, who owns Movieline and recently bought out Nikki Finke. [NYT]
• More Finke: Days after the LA Times ran an article on Hollywood's most powerful blogger comes pretty much the same piece in the NY Times. [NYT]
• All that bad press for CNBC a few months ago must have refocused the network on the things that matter, right? Nope. [Gawker, Zero Hedge]

In your early Friday media column: Laurel Touby is officially chillin like a villain, the Boston Globe gets another contract vote, Nikki Finke is mysterious, and CNN's creative accounting of what it means to be "number one."

News broke earlier today that Nikki Finke had sold her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog to Jay Penske's Mail.com Media Corp. Now, fantastical numbers are being floated around about how much she got. Who would do a thing like that?

As the L.A. media otherwise disappers, Jay Penske is in empire-building mode. His hitherto low-profile Mail.com Media Corporation acquired Nikki Finke's showbiz blog and he backed Movieline in April. From what we've gleaned, the guy's a true Tinseltown dreamer.

Nikke Finke has sold her web site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, to Jay Penske's Mail.com, and will be hiring a reporter in New York to expand the site's coverage. So get those résumés ready, kids.

Mail.com, which launched Movieline.com with the ex-Defamer crew, has purchased Nikki Finke's Deadlinehollywooddaily.com. [AllThingsD]

Things at the House of Harvey haven't been going well, and now it's reported that they've brought in a financing firm to restructure their debt, and figure out how to cover the boat's holes before it fills with water.

Fresh from their latest round of conniptions and hissy-fits over Obama saying that "empathy" would be an ideal characteristic for his upcoming nomination to the Supreme Court, because Jesus hates empathy you see, conservatives are predictably aghast at Sykes' jokes and that Obama dared to enjoy them. Here's a sampling of commentary:

Revolution is inevitably followed by a period of chaos. Maybe that's why a highbrow New York Observer story about the evolution of Hollywood news media devolved into a glorious, shit-throwing media shitstorm.

The more reserved of the two Hollywood watchdogs, Sharon Waxman hit out against her competitor Nikki Finke this week.