CNBC's Becky Quick had unprotected sex and got pregnant

CNBCer Becky Quick is said to be with child. Our friends in our heads over at Dealbreaker (Yo Carney) dropped the news on us with the accompanying photoshop effort (below) and it brought us to tears after laughing our asses off. Finally, Becky Quick Expecting? [Those fucking kids at DealBreaker]

Question: Did Liz Spiers kill the "Super Mogul"?

-NEIL YOSHIDA We're big fans of Elizabeth Spiers and like to cruise through her blogs daily. But when we attempted to visit Supermogul.com, we were forwarded to Dealbreaker.com. Did Liz kill the SuperMogul, or is it down for some kind of revamp? Whatever the situation, we're sure it was a business move. This could only mean a bigger and better Dealbreaker, Fashionista and Abovethelaw. UPDATE2: Elizabeth Spiers Leaves Dead Horse Media UPDATE: DealBreaker Acquires SuperMogul: Hostile In A Friendly Way Supermogul.com

Yet another review of Conde Nast's Portfolio

-NEIL YOSHIDA Finally some people who know business share their thoughts on Conde Nast's new business magazine Portfolio. First, a word about the cover: Only a company as fat and complacent as Conde Nast would be arrogant enough to launch a new business magazine with a cover that gives the reader no idea that it's a business magazine. There are two possibilities here. (1) Portfolio thinks that newsstand readers will look closely enough to see the subtitle "business intelligence" just below the title, despite all available research indicating that they generally don't read anything in fonts smaller than GIGANTIC, or (2) Portfolio imagines everyone everywhere already knows what they are because they've gotten quite a bit of media trade press and people who work in media tend to think that everyone everywhere pays attention to media news when, in fact, they don’t. (Other things most print media consumers don't pay attention to: bylines. But more on that later.) We know Conde Nast does cover testing for some of their magazines—Vogue, Vanity Fair, etc. We can only assume the $15,000 or so it would have cost to do that for the "Premier" issue was used to pay people to pick lint from Tom Wolfe's trademark white suit. Or maybe to pay for the first 15 words of his piece, which are as follows: "Not bam bam bam bam bam bam but bama bampa barama bam bamity bam bam…" (Here Wolfe exhibits the typical mentality of a Conde Nast freelancer who is paid by the word: why not insert a few extra bams?) It kinda looks like some kind of art magazine or something at first glance doesn't it? Wonder who or what they have lined up for the next cover? Our Big, Fat Portfolio Review: Even Our Pessimism Was Optimistic [Dealbreaker]

DealBreaker Media Blitz: DealBreaker Editor John Carney does CNBC

-Shomari Hines John Carney back to work after some dumb ass hit him with a car and broke his leg wasted no time getting back into the swing of things. He along with his beard were guests on CNBC's On The Money last night talking about all the crazy stuff that has been happening on Wall Street, you know that thing where some kind of glitch contributed to the nose dive of stocks earlier this week. Really good to see you back up and running John. DealBreaker Is So On The Money [DealBreaker]

HearSay: Viacom continues game of catch up with yet another web buy?

Our friends at DealBreaker are reporting that Viacom agents are in London negotiating the purchase of LastFM, the London based "online social music network" These poor bastards still making up for their biggest Internet slip up. Viacom has been reportedly looking to expand its online presence. Reports have claimed that Viacom executives were disappointed that they did not pickup YouTube. LastFM recently signed a deal with Warner Music Group giving the internet radio station the rights to play WMG's entire music catalog. Shortly before YouTube signed its deal to be acquired by Google, the video sharing network signed several rights deals with video content owners. There has been some speculation that LastFM's recent dealmaking might have cleared the way for an acquisition by a larger media or internet company. Things just keep slipping through Viacom's fingers. They regret missing out on Youtube huh? So that explains their recent bitching that the website remove Viacom content. The Rumor Mill: LastFM Being Picked Up By Viacom [DealBreaker]

Is there more to Ross Levinsohn's sudden departure from News Corp?

The question of why Ross Levinsohn resigned his post as head of News Corp's Fox Interactive unit is floating around again and some believe that he may have been canned by News Corp lifer, Peter Chernin for raising cash on the side. What did Chernin want a taste or something? Our friends at Dealbreaker.com came across an interview with Red Herring's Tony Perkins, which they say shines new light on the Levisohn departure. Here’s what Perkins tells the D7TV interviewer: “He got raising money for another deal. So the chief operating officer Peter Chernin, who works for Rupert as his right hand man—when his kids aren’t running the place, called Ross into his office and said, ‘Is this true, that you’re raising this half a billion dollar roll-up fund?...And he [Chernin] goes, ‘Are you either in or your out?’ And he [Levinsohn] said, ‘Well, I guess I’m out.” Was Ross Levinsohn Fired For Raising His Own Fund? [DealBreaker]

The Dead Horse has left the building

Dealbreaker.com is all grown up now and living in it's own space and we know Liz Spiers couldn't be more happy. Apparently the space they were occupying got so cluttered that Spiers started to smell John Carney smelling her. The new digs looks sweet though. Goodbye Tribeca, Hello Nolita! [Elizabeth Spiers]

Five Questions: We asked, Elizabeth Spiers answered

Welcome to our new monthly feature titled "5 Questions" where every month we will ask someone we find interesting to answer 5 random questions. Like we mentioned last week, Dealbreaker.com's Elizabth Spiers agreed to be our first feature and the following is the result. Continue>> Dealbreaker launched back in March of this year, then soon after came Above The Law. Is Dead Horse Media's strategy to throw as many blogs out there and hope they hit? This seems to be the formula used by many blog publishers Actually, I don’t think it is the formula used by many blog publishers, but then the sample size is pretty small. (How many blog networks are there?) The only blog network that I’m materially familiar with besides my own is Gawker Media and I know they’re not just throwing stuff against the wall to see if it sticks, casual appearances to the contrary. There’s a lot of discussion about where to go next and they beta blog until they’re comfortable enough to launch. If it were a matter of throwing out as many blogs as possible, we’d have 20 out there by now and gawker would probably have a hundred. I don’t feel comfortable launching a site until we have to have some evidence that there’s an ad market for the product, that it fits in with what we’re doing overall, and that we have an editorial team I trust to maintain and improve the site without heavy oversight. Then we launch and see if they work. If they don’t, after a reasonable period of time, we shut them down. And if they do, we expand and try to improve the quality over time. I'm sure Dead Horse has a few more projects on the table. Can you elaborate without revealing too much? I can tell you we’re doing a fashion site because that’s already been reported and there are a lot of fashion sites out there as it is. In that case it’s not so much a matter of finding an underserved category, but executing a specific editorial product. There’s some other stuff in the pipeline, but I haven’t set launch dates yet. Do you answer to Justin Smith and Carter Burden on any issues at all? They’re my investors, so I answer to them as an entrepreneur. My company is expected to meet traffic and revenue targets we all agree upon beforehand. So far we’ve exceeded both, which should continue (knock on wood), so they’re pretty happy. We meet about twice a month to update them on where we are and discuss strategy, etc. And they’re great partners to have because Justin’s very smart about PR and ad sales and Carter’s a tech guy. They’re excellent advisors. Why didn't Dealbreaker follow-up on the Mika Salmi scoop? Or were you leaving that up to the media addicts like Us? I followed up as much as I could. Sometimes you just hit a wall with an item and have to wait for something to happen. My sources were still telling me the same thing right up until Gawker got the memo, so I was basically waiting for an announcement of some sort, which finally arrived, but with salmi in a different slot than where I thought he’d be. (So yes, I was leaving that up to the media addicts like you. Why do the work myself when you can do the work for me?) Is your book, a book we would care to read? It’s not out till next Fall, but if you like dark comedy, you’d probably like it. I’m not sure it’s what people are expecting, though. I think the assumption is that if you’re a first-time novelist without an MFA or a pile of literary journal credits, you’re probably doing some sort of roman-a-clef or thinly-veiled autobiography. As a result, I get a lot of questions about whether the book is about a twentysomething woman who works in media. (It’s not.) The lead character is a 36-year-old guy who manages a hedge fund in Greenwich and we don’t have a lot in common. That said, I don’t dislike autobiographical fiction. One of my favorite dark comedies in recent history was Mother’s Milk, by an English writer named Edward St. Aubyn. (It was published here by Open City.) It’s a nasty, brilliant novel and viciously funny. The main character’s experiences are based in part on things that happened to the writer and it’s very well done.

Elizabeth Spiers to pop our cherry

We will be launching a new feature here on Mediawire come next week titled "5 Questions". Each month we will ask someone we find interesting within the media business old or new, to answer five questions assuming that the individual agrees to waste some time with us. The questions will be related to whatever it is they're involved in as far as business. Yesterday we realized that we would love to have Dealbreaker's Elizabeth Spiers be the first in this feature because well, we just find her interesting, and we think she is kinda cute. Anyway we built up the courage to send her an email to ask if she would pop the cherry of our new "5 Questions" feature and to our surprise she said yes, after telling us that she actually does read our blog from time to time and that she read what we said about Dealbreaker's new design. However we explained to her that we only said those things because we missed the Dealbreaker super hero guy. Anyway We sent over the questions via email and Liz hit us back in less than an hour with her answers. The interview will be posted on Monday afternoon and we couldn't have done it without you Liz. See our email begging Liz to participate as well as her reply. God we're some desperate bastards Email To Liz Spiers and her response>>

DealBreaker Media Blitz: Its DealBreaker Friday again with John Carney

DealBreaker's John Carney takes another go round on Wallstrip discussing the week's top business news with the sexy Lindsay Campbell. We can't keep our eyes off of her!

Music Wire: Jermaine Dupri may already have another gig lined up...maybe....we think...it looks that way....kinda

We're no Dealbreaker, so we're not going to say that Jermaine Dupri may be in talks with music biz legend Clive Davis to lets say, run J Records, or we're not going to say that Janet may end up there too because we wouldn't want this shit to come back and bite us in our asses. All we can say is that at yesterday's Songs of Hope IV at Esquire House 360 in Beverly Hills, Mr. Dupri and Mr. Davis spent quite some time together. Please don't hold it over our heads if this shit doesn't fly cause you didn't here shit from us. -Questionable Sources

Of course the Post had to get their two cents in

What would a high profile hire by a high profile company be without the New York Post throwing in their two cents. Though this is now yesterday's news or then again last week's news when Dealbreaker broke it...........kinda, we still find ourselves waiting the read the Post's version. In an interview with The Post, Salmi conceded that MTV Networks' 100 Web sites - which include such diverse properties as vh1.com, neopets.com and xfire.com and are lumped into the three broad categories of kids/family, music, and entertainment - operate in a very decentralized manner and said his chief responsibility will be to "get everyone moving in the right direction." Also can someone please tell us what Shakira has to do with this guy getting hired? SALMI TO TRY WEAVING MTV SITES INTO WEB [NYP]

Yeeeaah! For Elizabeth Spiers. She doesn't have to eat her blog

Ok so we have been some impatient bastards since Liz Spiers announced last week that she got word that Mika Salmi who is CEO of Atom Films was going to be named President of MTV. That part was wrong, but it doesn't matter at this point. The announcement finally came in that Mika Salmi has been named President,Global Digital Media, to Lead Company's MultiPlatform Efforts. These titles are getting more and more complicated every day. But we are kinda wondering how come Gawker is the one breaking the official announcement when Dealbreaker broke the scoop? Salmi to MTV, Spiers to Supper Table [Gawker]

Any day now

Three posting days after Liz Spiers got us rock hard with info that MTV is about to name a president of god knows what, we have now gone soft. As a matter of fact we may have blue balls. Yeah we won't dog Liz too much, at least not yet because an announcement can still be in the works but Jeez if MTV is hiring that Atom Films guy what the hell is taking them so long to announce it already? Is Sumner Redstone writing the press release himself? We live for shit like this you know!! BREAKING(ish): And the Tom Freston Replacement Is... [DealBreaker]

Since no one else will, we'll ask: Did Liz Spiers take the bait?

Ok so it has been almost forever now since Dealbreaker Liz Spiers claimed to have gotten some inside juice about a possible new hire at MTV in the Presidential suite. However we have kept close watch on this alleged scoop and searched high and low for any other sites talking about this possible hire without referring to Dealbreaker and we couldn't find one. Not saying Liz is pulling our legs but unless this announcement is coming later on today or tomorrow nothing is moving at MTVN. Is MTV hiring Mika Salmi or is it just what Dealbreaker called it, "vicious unconfirmed rumors"? From DealBreaker: UPDATE: In the "more passable" vein (fun!) Now we're told Salmi's promotion is a bit further down the chain. Salmi's heading MTV (the channel) but not MTV (the entire division). [Ed.--Less interesting! Boooooo!] ** If we're wrong, we'll eat our blog. Or something.

Afternoon Wire: And now the afternoon's worthy media news

Even though Liz Spiers at Dealbreaker.com got scooped in that MTV may and then later on did hire a new president of something, the only news we could find related MTV so far has nothing to do with the scoop. Did Liz and company take a bait or will they come through? [Yahoo! News] Speaking of MTV, it seems like MTV co-founder Bob Pittman is interested in buying everything. Now there is word that he could be a potential bidder for the Hard Rock Cafe. [YorkShire Post] Producer Jermaine Dupri who left Virgin Records as President of Black Music because he mixed business with pleasure is said to be in talks with EMI about running a new label. Just what the music industry needs! Oh yeah and who told Rush & Malloy that Both Jay Z and Jermaine Dupri had the same jobs? [R&M] Its good that after you get canned you can make fun of yourself [NYT]

Wait a minute now.....

Our friends over at Dealbreaker broke that they heard that some new guy who runs Atom Films is going to be announced as the new President of MTV. We were kinda confused however with the headline they chose which read " And the Tom Freston Replacement Is...." As far as we know Tom Freston's replacement is Philippe Dauman who is now CEO of all of Viacom which is what Tom Freston was when he got canned. However, being that MTV's current president is Christina Norman, If this is true, should we expect some kind of shuffling in Judy's house this coming week? Is Christina Norman leaving the company or is Judy McGrath pulling her up? We hate having to wait to hear what is what? BREAKING(ish): And the Tom Freston Replacement Is... [DealBreaker]

Dealbreaker media blitz

Dealbreaker editor John Carney has been making the media rounds this week. First he made an appearance on CNBC's "On The Money" and now today on the newly launched Wallstrip.com chatting it up with host Lindsay Campbell. The pair discussed recent headline worthy items like Wesley Snipes' tax problems and of course the burned out "GoogTube" Dealbreaker

Youtubers actually feel OK about being eaten by Google

The video below which we came across via our usual stroll over at Dealbreaker.com shows that Youtube users not only welcome Sergey and Larry into their lives but they are optimistic about the great possibilities. YouTubers React to YouTube Purchase [Dealbreaker]

Morning Wire: Your Morning Cup

It's the 5th Anniversary of 9/11. Our hearts and prayers will forever be with the families of those who lost their lives and those who are oversees risking their lives for us. On that note, the morning's media business news according to us: Elizabeth Spiers' Dealbreaker may have some print competition via Double Down Media. A new mag called Dealmaker [Reuters] Every media analyst and/or overpaid mouthpiece thinks they can fix Viacom [NYP] There is a war between the morning news shows? Really? [NYT] Its the 5th Anniversary of 9/11. How could we forget [9/11]

Liz Spiers should stick to writing and writing only!

Since no one else did we thought we would talk a bit about the new design of former Gawker Editrix, Elizabeth Spiers's Dealbreaker.com and her latest launch Abovethelaw.com which is edited by that former Wonkette Asian guy. So everyone including us is jumping on that widescreen more, content bigger images tip. But we think Liz's site kinda looks like those sites you come across by mistake that gives you free HTML codes and stuff like that. One of the biggest mistakes we think she made with the redesign of the Dealbreaker logo is that she killed the Dealbreaker superhero we so loved. Yes Ms. Spiers isn't just the publisher of this cool blog but she designed the new logo for both Dealbreaker and Abovethelaw. The above the law logo is very amateur looking, we could have done a better job hooking that up for you Liz. Also we would have redesigned the Dealbreaker logo but we would have still incorporated the Dealbreaker guy because he made the Dealbreaker brand. Hey if you're interested our creative team can help just give us a holla!!. God we hope this doesn't kill our blogroll privileges!!! [DB] [ATL]

Elizabeth Spiers finally unwraps Dealbreaker

The latest blog in the blogesphere is Elizabeth Spiers' Dealbreaker which went live just under 1 hour ago. We like the site so far and would love to have coffee with Liz and the gang some day, but the dudes over at Jossip don't seem to be digging the site too much....we think. [Jossip]

Elizabeth Spiers can we be your friend?

Former Media Bistro Editor Elizabeth Spiers will deliver her new blog to the masses tomorrow, and for some reason we are extremely excited. Why you ask? Well we have been a fan and we really want to become good buddies with Liz and her DealBreaker team. We can shoot her media business scoops and she can link back to us. That would be really great for our traffic!!!! Anyway we can't wait to read all that Liz has to offer and more. [Dealbreaker]