Today New York Women in Communications held their annual Matrix Awards, and Vicki Salemi, editor of MediaJobsDaily and host of MediabistroTV series “Score that Job” was there. Salemi caught up with “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski as well as comedienne Joan Rivers and Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles among other attendees, who shared their best advice for those trying to make it in the media business.

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Tonight at 10 PM, USA launches its first major unscripted series, “The Moment,” hosted by former Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner. The series takes people who gave up pursuing their dream jobs years ago, and gives them a second chance.

For Warner, the show is personal. He knows what the participants are going through.

“I came back to try and get an opportunity in the NFL, and I had someone call 13 NFL teams, and 12 of them said, ‘no, we’re not interested,’ but fortunately one of them said, ‘we’ll give this guy a tryout,’ and it was the St Louis Rams, they gave me a second shot,” Warner told FishbowlNY over dinner at A Voce Columbus Circle earlier this week.

Unlike most “reality” shows, “The Moment” does not offer a fake position with a lucrative salary. The jobs the cast members train for is a real one, and may even come with paychecks lower than the ones they currently hold.

“This show is people who legitimately have the skill, but life knocked them down,” creator and executive producer Charlie Ebersol says. “It may not be the best thing for everybody, if you have your moment, and you get to the other side, you may realize that the grass isn’t really greener. Not everyone gets the job, but also  not everyone took the job.”
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Bravo, the cable channel owned by NBCUniversal, has ordered 17 new series and renewed 18 current series, as part of a push to dramatically increase the network’s programming.

While New York and the surrounding area still plays a starring role in many Bravo shows, the channel is also branching out across the country and the world in its new programming.

Many of Bravo’s original hit shows were based in and around New York, and indeed many of the new shows will be too, like “City Sisters,” which follows a handful of single up and coming women in the New York fashion, media and real estate scene, and “Princesses: Long Island about some young women from Long Island,” who are, well you probably get the idea.

Two of Bravo’s three scripted series in development are also New York-based, “Heiresses,” about a wealthy family that made their fortune in diamonds in New York’s Upper East Side, and “High and Low,” from “The Sopranos” Michael Imperioli, about 1980′s Wall Street.

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New York sports talk-radio icon Mike Francesa has inked a new, long-term deal with CBS Radio. As part of the deal he will continue on as a host at WFAN (660AM/101.9FM) in the PM drive slot (1:30-6:30PM), and will also bring his WFAN Sunday program “The NFL Now” to more than 250 CBS Sports Radio affiliates.

Francesa has been a staple on WFAN and in the sports radio world for more than 25 years. His show is also simulcast on YES Network.

“Mike has earned his place in radio history as a great broadcaster and we’re thrilled to continue our relationship with sports radio’s most celebrated host,” said Dan Mason, president and CEO of CBS Radio in a statement.  “WFAN and Mike Francesa are synonymous with the absolute best in sports programming excellence.  These two powerful brands have endured the test of time, and remain a very relevant force in the industry nearly three decades after they first went on the air.”

More information below.
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It has been rumored for months, but now it is a done deal: NBCUniversal will rebrand its G4 cable channel as “The Esquire Network” in partnership with Hearst magazines. The new channel will launch in April, and will expand beyond G4′s gaming and technology focus to include programming that will appeal to broader range of male viewers.

The goal, the company says, is to create a network “aimed at the full, multi-faceted lives of today’s modern men.”

Some programming will remain, like “American Ninja Warrior,” which has broken out on NBC as well as G4, but most programming will be new and original. Among the shows in development are a cooking competition show “Knife Fight” from producer Drew Barrymore, and “The Getaway,” a travel show from producer Anthony Bourdain, which will see well-known people take viewers to their favorite city on the planet. The network has also acquired rights to comedies “Parks & Recreation” and “Party Down.”

“There is a vastly under-served audience in cable TV – today’s modern man – and by joining forces with Esquire, we will deliver a multi-platform experience to this upscale, engaged, passionate audience, one that widens the aperture beyond G4’s technology and gaming base,” said the channel’s GM, Adam Stotsky, in a statement. “Esquire magazine brings 80 years of unparalleled insight into what makes men tick, and we will incorporate the best of this iconic brand to produce original shows that build the network for growth and success.”

More information, below.
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“The Job,” a new reality-competition series that debuts tonight on CBS, attempts to take a serious part of life that everyone has been through–the job interview–and turn it into compelling television.

Of course, with unemployment still high, and reports of layoffs at large companies nearly every week, it is not a subject to take lightly.

“All of us have been in competition for a job at some stage of our lives, and we have just taken that real competition that people are in, and present that opportunity to candidates who would not otherwise get the opportunity,” the show’s executive producer Michael Davies tells me. “We were very responsible, and we are very aware of how serious this is, and how much it meant to our candidates.”

Each week the show features a different business; for the first episode it is The Palm steakhouse, and for the second (as we reported a few weeks ago) Cosmopolitan magazine is the featured company. During the show, which is hosted by Lisa Ling, five candidates engage in a variety of tasks under the watchful eye of executives from the featured company, from field training to a quiz show-esque grilling. The grand prize is not a fake job with a big salary, but a real, normal, middle-class gig. At The Palm it is an assistant manager job, at Cosmo it is an editorial assistant position.

Davies says that of the 40 contestants that appeared on the program, 16 landed jobs.

“These applicants had no intention of becoming reality stars, their only objective was to try and secure their dream job,” Ling tells me. “They were all incredibly qualified, and in fact vetted by the various companies HR departments as well. These were all very qualified people, who have been working toward pursuing a job at this company or in the industry being featured.”

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So this is what today’s media job market has come to.

CBS has revealed some details about a new reality competition show that will debut next month, and there is a media twist. The show, “The Job,” features five contestants competing for–not surprisingly-a job at a high-profile company.

The grand prize for the second episode of the series? An editorial assistant position at Cosmopolitan magazine.

Five young contestants will compete in a series of elimination challenges in front of staffers from Cosmo (or whichever company is participating that week), as well as representatives from other guest companies.

The grand prize is the featured job, though judges that work for other, similar companies may offer an on-the-spot job as well, forcing contestants to decide whether to take it, or continue competing for the grand prize job. Got all that?

Cosmopolitan isn’t the only media company to be featured in the show. Future episodes will feature jobs at Major League Soccer, Zynga, Gilt and Epic Records. The first episode features as a grand prize an assistant manager job at the Palm Restaurant, so um, yeah.

More information on the show, including the Cosmo episode, below.
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The Daily is dead. Long Live The Daily.

Yes, after nearly two years, News Corp. has killed its tablet-only newspaper The Daily. It is hard to believe now, but at the time there was quite a bit of optimism around the product. As a public service, FishbowlNY looks back at the good, the bad and the ugly…

The Wrap: I’m a Mac obsessive. My iPhone goes everywhere I do, I’m typing this on a MacBook Air, and, full disclosure, I even have some stock in the company. But I never got the iPad, or had the slightest interest in owning one.

But I get it now. Thanks to The Daily.

Daily sister publication The Wall Street Journal:  Michael Gartenberg, an analyst a Gartner Inc., IT -1.48% said plus points are the low price and ability to share articles through other digital services, like Facebook, Twitter and email. He said such features have been lacking in earlier iPad versions of publications.

“The whole project is extremely challenging,” he said, although “it points the way to the future.”

Fox News Channel at the time broke into coverage of the uprising in Egypt to cover the announcement.

 The Guardian:  Read more

USA Today publisher Larry Kramer says that the company has no plans to institute a paywall at the national paper’s website, even as the company continues to examine future revenue models. Kramer made the comments during a conversation with Washington Post CEO Don Graham at the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York.

“I don’t want to charge [online] for USA Today right now, I don’t think it is the right thing to do, and there is so much national news out there,” Kramer said. “I think we would lose more than we would gain.”

Kramer also talked about efforts he has taken to change the business and culture of the Gannett paper since taking over as publisher in May.

“The best of our work had been in the newspaper, and I had to change the structure of the staff so they were producing for the digital platform first, and then the newspaper,” Kramer said.

He also mentioned the innovative strategy the paper was taken with its sports coverage.

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New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson says she and new Times CEO Mark Thompson have a strong relationship, and that in meetings, Thompson “seems full of energy and ideas.” She added that she has “every confidence [in Thompson] as CEO.” Abramson made the comments at the Business Insider Ignite conference in New York.

Thompson has only been at the helm of the Times for two weeks, but he is under intense scrutiny due to a scandal that erupted at his former employer, the BBC. Thompson was the director general of the BBC when an investigative report that would reveal a major pedophilia scandal at the company was quashed. Thompson maintained that he had no involvement in killing the story.

“The people who have been saying he perhaps isn’t the best choice for the best job are the public editor, who does not actually work in the newsroom, and one of our columnists, who work for the editorial page,” Abramson said, adding ” I don’t think the public editor looked at our coverage.

I certainly have had a team of reporters in New York and London reporting on this story, and we have done a number of lengthy enterprise pieces on the unfolding issues in the BBC investigation,” Abramson added.

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