At the Business Insider Ignite media summit in New York, New York Times editor Jill Abramson said that she “would love” to keep FiveThirtyEight blogger Nate Silver in the company through at least the next election.

“He got huge, huge readership. Half the people coming [to NYTimes.com] searched for Nate, they weren’t coming for the rest of the Times, they came for him,” Abramson said. “You hope they will be tantalized by other things on the buffet table.”

Abramson says that the Times could help Silver expand beyond the data-based political reporting for which he has become a household name:

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In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” we talk to legendary filmmaker Spike Lee.

While Lee is well-known for his movies, did you know that if it wasn’t for NBA superstar Michael Jordan and a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, Lee–and Nike–might not be the icons they have become today? It all came down to a risky commercial shoot.

“So Michael Jordan could easily have said, ‘I can’t take a chance on this young gun, this young boy, just give me the reels of the top guys on Madison Avenue.’ But Michael Jordan didn’t do that,” the Red Hook Summer director recalls. “For some reason, he decided to give me a shot. And the commercial I did with Michael Jordan ended up being some of the greatest campaigns ever in the history of advertising and Nike took off.”

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

Eliot Spitzer, Michael Buffer and Glenn Beck

At a bizarre press conference here in New York, the CEO of satellite TV company DISH Network said that there did not appear to be an end in sight regarding the ongoing carriage feud between DISH and AMC Networks.

The CEO, Joseph Clayton, was asked point blank whether AMC programming would be on DISH anytime soon. “Not that I am aware of,” was his brief retort.

Clayton was ostensibly there to promote a debate between Current TV host Eliot Spitzer and former Fox News host Glenn Beck, but DISH’s other PR incidents were also prominently featured. The other big controversy is over “Auto-hop,” a DISH DVR service that automatically skips commercials for viewers.

“Do you want someone telling you can’t skip commercials in the privacy of your own home? Are you kidding me? Come on,” Clayton said. “I don’t know how the courts will rule on this, but I know in the court of public opinion we have already won this one.”

Beck concurred with Clayton.

“[Commercials] are important, but they don’t work the way they did in 1955, it is not the 1950’s anymore, it isn’t even the same century anymore,” Beck said. “It has to be innovative.”

Credit: Dario Cantatore

The Huffington Post held a garden party to celebrate the launch of its new iPad magazine, “Huffington,” Last night. FishbowlNY was there at the Gramercy Park Hotel rooftop bar, along with a few hundred of Arianna Huffington‘s friends, staffers and a few famous faces.

We spotted Huffington Post Media Group editorial director Howard Fineman, Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff, HuffPost’s Pulitzer Prize winning reporter David Wood and NBC News president Steve Capus in the crowd, among other well-dressed and well-heeled guests.

Huffington and Tim O’Brien, who is overseeing the venture for the company, made brief remarks:

“You may be asking ‘why a magazine?’ well the answer is that now The Huffington Post has 1,500 stories a day, about 70 to 80 of them original, and we found that we needed to pull the best, and put them in a beautiful setting like jewels, so that you could enjoy them when you had time over the weekend,” Huffington said. “It is the difference between a one-night stand and a long getaway weekend where you really get to know someone.”

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As we have noted, former Fox News host and GBTV founder Glenn Beck recently moved his studio from New York to Dallas, Texas.

One of the biggest benefits of being in Texas is the space. There’s lots of it. GBTV is putting that space to effective use, building out its studio in ways that could not be done in New York. Among them is a new area where Beck will promote advertisers and sponsors, taking the formula that has worked on radio for 100 years and trying to make it transfer to video.

There is also a full-size replica of the Oval Office, featuring replicas of The Resolute Desk and the Oval Office rug. Some of the props even came from the set of Oliver Stone‘s film “JFK.”

Watch Beck show off his new studio in this exclusive video:

In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” we hear from radio personality, author, former Fox News host and GBTV founder Glenn Beck. While he has found tremendous success across many different forms of media, did you know that he almost left the business to go to cooking school? If it wasn’t for a heart-to-heart conversation with his father, he may never have found his professional voice.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

As you may have heard, on Friday Adam Yauch died. Yauch was one of the Beastie Boys, one of the musical voices of their generation.

Neal Brennan is a comedian, and the co-creator of the Comedy Central series “Chappelle’s Show.” To honor Yauch, Brennan posted an unreleased Beastie Boys performance on his YouTube page. The performance was supposed to be for season three of “Chappelle’s Show,” but when comedian Dave Chappelle left the program, it never had a chance to see the light of day.

Until today that is.

Unfortunately, lawyers for Viacom have sent a takedown notice to YouTube, and the video has been removed.

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Last night BBC America hosted its annual upfront presentation in New York. Upfronts, as most media buyers are acutely aware, are usually a rather staid affair. Network executives typically take the stage and plug their upcoming shows, spinning the Nielsen ratings numbers to their maximum benefit.

Not at BBC America.

The total length of the speeches by EVP of sales Mark Gall and BBC America GM Perry Simon were well under five minutes. The rest of the night was spent marveling at oddity after oddity, and spectacle after spectacle. Sure there was a portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (pictured right), and TVs rolled a loop of BBC America programming, but there were also women dangling from the ceiling on rings, and a ghostly Marie Antoinette-esque figure floating above the bar.

The food was served in a court designed to look like an outdoor street market, with stands for Indian, Chinese, barbeque and of course traditional English meat pies.

An old-fashioned band serenaded the crowd with hits straight out of the 1920′s, while burlesque dancers performed on stage. Around 9 PM, curtains on one side of the room dropped, and a team of fire-breathers performed, before opening up that floor to a dance party.

Given that one would expect the BBC to have a stiff upper lip, many media buyers in attendance were surprised by the display.

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In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “My First Big Break,” we hear from HollywoodLife.com editor Bonnie Fuller. Fuller gained international acclaim as the editor of magazines such as Marie Claire, US Weekly and Cosmopolitan, but did you know that she started out as a beat reporter writing about sports clothes? Or that a friendship with an upcoming fashion designer named Tommy Hilfiger led to a meeting that would change her professional career? Watch below, as Fuller explains how she went from a young cub reporter, to one of the most powerful women in publishing.

For more videos, check out our YouTube channel and follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

In the next installment of mediabistroTV‘s “My First Big Break,” we speak to Bonnie Fuller, the editor of HollywoodLife.com and former editor of magazines such as Marie Claire, Glamour and US Weekly. Below, Fuller shares some of the tribulations she faced when moving from Canada to New York.

Look for the full episode tomorrow afternoon.