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Side show
By SHARON FINK THE TALK ABOUT 'TALK': Magazine diva Tina Brown, the feisty, gossip-loving, celebrity-worshipping, self-promoting Briton who made her reputation in this country at Vanity Fair, is firing back at the New York Times for beginning to bury her baby, Talk magazine. Brown calls "misleading and damaging" a story Monday in which the newspaper said financial partner Hearst Magazines looks more and more likely to walk away from the 2-year-old publication because it's losing money. The story also said that another financial partner, Miramax Films, could be wavering in its commitment despite public statements of support by Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein. The New York Times cited sources it would not name as providing the basis of the story and advertising figures it said indicated Talk was having mixed success. Brown, who started the magazine, and her publisher, Ronald Galotti, would not comment for the story, the newspaper said. But they sent a letter Tuesday to Jim Romenesko's MediaNews Web site. Brown also said the story was written with a "negative bias," ignoring positive financial and editorial developments; selectively used advertising figures to "mislead readers"; and was disappointing in the "reliance" on unnamed sources. All in all, Brown crafted a pointed, reasoned response to a story held together mostly by anecdotal pieces. She let business sense rule in a situation that must have had her aching to go straight to bravado and skewer the New York Times with a passage from the story itself to illustrate why she will survive in the end: "Several weeks ago, she was host for a party for Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister. Under a tent that billowed over the garden behind her Manhattan apartment building, Ms. Brown welcomed former President Bill Clinton, (journalist and Washington Post heir) Lally Weymouth, Robert De Niro, Barbara Walters, (former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) Richard Holbrooke, Kathleen Turner, Paula Zahn and (Disney chairman) Michael D. Eisner. " "Everybody,' said one person who attended, "was there.' " * * * MINI QUOTE QUIZ: "Our dream is that Lex has a rich, brooding friend from Gotham who comes to visit him." a) Survivor producer Mark Burnett hinting at the next twist in the game in Africa, something that will involve the quickly becoming loathed Lex van den Berghe. b) Alfred Gough, executive producer of the WB's teen Superman saga, Smallville, about using the teenage Lex Luthor's connections to spice things up. c) A disoriented General Hospital writer talking about the show's character Alexis Davis. * * * TRY RETHINKING THE SHOWS: ABC says it's considering getting rid of its ads with the obnoxious yellow backgrounds now that it has descended into the ratings basement. "We're analyzing if what we have is correct for the times," Lloyd Braun, co-chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, told Reuters. During the November sweeps, one of the year's key ratings periods, ABC finished last in total viewers and in every major demographic, Nielsen Media Research says. So what does a network profit if it loses the yellow but keeps Dharma & Greg? MINI QUOTE QUIZ: b
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From the wire |
