SNOOZE LIVES UP TO NAME
The Daily Snooze had what looked like a nice scoop plastered on its front business page last Monday.
Headlined “Battle heats up again for Apollo TV Rights” and stamped with “Daily News Exclusive,” the paper took a look at the negotiations over the rights to produce the show “Showtime at the Apollo.”
But for readers of The Post, it was nothing new.
The Post had the real exclusive – almost a month before the News’ article – in which it disclosed that NBC was the leading contender to nab the rights to the show.
Trivia Question: What AOL Time Warner employee recently agreed to a one-year, $14.5 million employment contract?
Answer: Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddux.
Otherwise, the company’s post-merger body count is impressive.
Time Warner boss Gerald Levin jumped ship as things got hairy and AOL’s number two executive, Bob Pittman, got ridden out on a rail last summer.
Then there’s Steve Case, who is meandering through his final three months as company chairman and Ted Turner, who resigned and then started unloading company stock faster than a Randy Johnson fastball. We won’t even talk about regular-Joe investors, who rode the AOL optimism all the way to coupon-clipping.
Meantime, Maddux has signed on for one more season with AOL Time Warner’s baseball team.
There’s little doubt that Maddux deserves the money. The crafty Texan set a new standard last year when he won at least 15 games in a season for the fifteenth consecutive year.
In 10 seasons with the Braves he’s compiled a remarkable 178-77 record, led the team to a division pennant in every season (except the strike shortened 1994 campaign) and brought home three Cy Young Awards.
The new contract is the largest one-year deal ever in baseball and it also means that Maddux’s career salary take home from the Braves will break the $100 million mark.
Compare that to his old boss, Turner, who says he’s lost an estimated $7 billion to $8 billion since the AOL – Time Warner merger.
Luckily for Maddux he gets paid in cash, not stock.
Guaranteed talk of town
If art’s supposed to say many things to many people, then The New Yorker’s new cover illustration could be a real wakeup for the Big Apple.
Whimsical and also alarming, the magazine’s cover this week paints Osama Bin Laden as just another befuddled tourist trying to navigate the city’s subway rush-hour crowds and make sense of the subway car’s map.
The “Tourist” by Ed Sorel also shows just how jaded and nonchalant straphangers can be, even when face-to-face with the world’s most reviled terrorist.
One fellow passenger sits snoozing. Another’s face is buried in her copy of The Post. Other passengers, their backs to Osama, just stare blankly in the swaying underground ride.
Despite duct tape debacles, war ranting and a global political chess game, New Yorkers appear to be anything but jittery. Osama on the subway? Maybe.
How out of Time is ex-editor?
Norman Pearlstine is adding music critic to his resume.
The highly regarded editor-in-chief of Time Inc. quietly debuted as Fortune magazine’s new music reviewer last week.
Pearlstine was travelling and unreachable, but his assistant said it will be a regular gig and that he is very excited.
His music tastes? “Norman’s a blues man,” the assistant says.
His first piece praised Aretha Franklin and took to taskthe current crop of divas – including as Ashanti, Brandy and Mariah Carey – for a variety of offenses such as being “devoid of discipline.”
He doesn’t have much nice to say about hip-hop or MTV either. He says hip-hop has a “reverence for rhythm at the expense of melody,” and criticizes MTV for altering music from a medium that is supposed to heard to one that is expected to be seen.
THE WEEK’S WINNERS & LOSERS
Winners:
Us Weekly’s Bonnie Fuller signed a new contract worth more than $3 million to run the magazine.
Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, who has been head of BMG for two years, is a top candidate to run Bertelsmann’s television unit RTL.
Jamie Kellner will leave his post as chairman of AOL Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting division, only about a month after getting a $128 million payout for his stake in the WB television network. [L]
Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, formerly known as “Puff Daddy,” settled a highly publicized spat with (Def Jam) Lyor Cohen’s Island Def Jam label.
Losers
Tom Glocer, Reuters’ CEO, unveiled a restructuring program that includes 3,000 job cuts, ending certain joint ventures and streamlining its distribution.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell was outvoted in backing long-distance operators against the Baby Bells on telecom deregulation.
Paul Charron , chairman and CEO of Liz Claiborne, will cut about 200 jobs and close its U.S. stores despite posting a 40 percent jump in quarterly earnings.
Matthew Winkler editor-in-chief at Bloomberg news, is said to have shot down two $80,000 fellowships that the company funded last year because Winkler was personally upset over an NYU professor’s remarks.