Afternoon Briefing:
Koppel advises caution: Ted Koppel, speaking at a Hollywood Radio and Television Society luncheon the other day, warned that when networks go for younger audiences they sometimes forget the line between their news and entertainment divisions. "When we began taking our journalism more lightly, people began taking us less seriously," he said. (Hollywood Reporter via Yahoo News)
Cannes do: The nine-member jury at the Cannes Film Festival next month will be headed by Quentin Tarantino and include Kathleen Turner, Emmanuelle Beart and Tilda Swinton. (Reuters)
Targeting the Times: New York magazine editor (and former New York Times man) Adam Moss has assigned a story on Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been accused of falling for the Bush administration line on WMD. This after Times public editor Daniel Okrent declined to look into Miller's WMD reporting since it ran in the paper before he took his job. (N.Y. Observer)
Music matters: The Warner Music Group, Madonna's partner in her Maverick label, says the pop star has lost a cool $66 million since 1999 and that she would have to pay them at least $92.5 million to end their partnership. Madonna counterpunched by suing Warner for $200 million, claiming fraud and breach of contract. (Hollywood Reporter via Reuters)
-- Karen Croft
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Turn On
Let the reunions begin: "Larry King Live" (Wednesday 9 p.m. ET; CNN) hosts the first, but surely not the last, reunion of the cast of "The Apprentice," featuring Bill, Kwame, Omarosa and others -- and yes, the Donald himself. Similar in scope and subject to Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's book "Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx," Wednesday's "P.O.V.: Love & Diane" (PBS; check local listings) is a documentary that follows a family through 10 years of struggle against poverty and addiction.
-- Scott Lamb
Morning Briefing:
Off the Air America? As a result of its financial dispute with Multicultural News Radio, three-week-old talk-radio network Air America will go off the air in Chicago at the end of the month and will remain off the air in Los Angeles until it finds new stations to carry it in those markets. Though it means the network will, at least for a time, not be heard in the nation's second- and third-largest markets, Air America executive vice president and general counsel David Goodfriend put a positive spin on the announcement. "We are pleased that we reached a negotiated settlement," he said. (Chicago Tribune)
Press press: Sen. Hillary Clinton told journalists gathered at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention that they needed to be more persistent in getting information out of the Bush administration. "This administration, to an extent I haven't seen before, tells the press to go away -- and they do, like most people do when told that more than once," she said in an interview taped by C-SPAN. "Many in this administration are quite expert at saying nothing despite your best efforts to get them to say something." Sen. Clinton also said that her husband's successor had made "stunning mistakes," adding that it was "insulting that Osama bin Laden is still around to taunt us." She insisted that she herself had no intention of making a run for the White House. (Editor and Publisher)
Kelley fallout: USA Today editor Karen Jurgensen has resigned in the wake of the discovery that one of the paper's star reporters, Jack Kelley, had fabricated and plagiarized many stories during his long career at the paper. In publisher Craig Moon's memo to staffers announcing the resignation, Jurgensen, editor of the paper since 1999, commented, "Like all of us who worked with Jack Kelley, I wish we had caught him far sooner than we did ... The sad lessons learned by all in this dreadful situation will make USA Today a stronger, better newspaper." (USA Today)
More media shakeups: The Walt Disney Company has announced big changes in management at troubled ABC. Susan Lyne, the top programmer, and chairman Lloyd Brawn are out. Disney Channel honcho Anne Sweeney and ESPN and ABC Sports head George Bodenheimer will now serve as co-chairs of Disney's Media Networks unit, in addition to their current duties, and will report directly to Disney president Robert Iger. (Financial Times)
Jackson case disclosures: ABC News says it has been given an exclusive peek at a police report outlining allegations Michael Jackson's young accuser and his little brother made to a psychologist. They claim that Jackson served them so much alcohol that on at least two occasions the alleged victim passed out, at which time the younger brother says he saw Jackson touching his brother inappropriately. They also said Jackson once appeared before them nude while they were watching TV. (ABC News)
First-class scene: "Apprentice" troublemaker Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth reportedly lit into an American Airlines ticket agent who refused to upgrade her coach ticket to first class on Sunday. "It was the 8:15 flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and there Omarosa was screaming at this poor woman, 'Don't you know who I am? I was on "The Apprentice!"'" a witness reports. Meanwhile, Herbal Essences, having been flooded with angry calls, appears to be backing away from its decision to use Omarosa in an ad campaign for its shampoo. Clairol, which makes Herbal Essences, issued the following statement, "[Omarosa] is not a spokesperson for the brand nor have any decisions been made on whether or not we will use any of her filmed segments." (Page Six)
New View? New York-based Hurricane Entertainment has taped a pilot for a show being described as "'Queer Eye' meets 'The View'" in which Michael Musto, Simon Doonan, Patrick Riley, Frank DeCaro, James Aguiar and T.R. Pescod will dish the dirt on a regular basis. (Page Six)
-- Amy Reiter
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