Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. has just named named Charlotte Beers and Todd Slotkin to its board.

Beers is a former top advertising executive who joined the State Department briefly after 9/11 in order to help America's image abroad in the Muslim world. Previous to her work at the State Department, she was a Director on the MSO Board. And, according to the press release, Slotkin ''served as Managing Director and co-head of Natixis Capital Markets Leveraged Finance business from 2006 to 2007.''

Beers and Slotkin are replacing Jill A. Greenthal and Bradley E. Singer. At post time, shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. are down $0.21, or 2.89% at $7.05.

Last August, media insiders were stunned when MTV announced that it was going to spend half a billion dollars on gaming. At the time, Business Week noted PricewaterhouseCoopers' June 2007 analysis of global video game industry growth. PWC's ''Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2007-2011'' predicted that the video game market would continue to expand at, over the next five years, a compound annual rate of 9.1%. And just yesterday CBS News was all but predicting video gamers would be the next international athletes, with their own endorsement deals (like they already do in South Korea). Clearly, gaming is not just a game anymore for media companies, or any organization serious about future growth.

This week, BusinessWeek.com launched the Business Week Arcade. FishbowlNY asked BusinessWeek.com's editor John Byrne via email: How did the idea for the BusinessWeek Arcade come about?

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Delectable bits from around the web:

-- Don Imus traveled to Boston yesterday for his annual St. Patrick's Day "Kiss Me I'm Imus" show at the Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common. From The Boston Globe: ''Pulitzer-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin gave back to radio blabber Don Imus as good as she got yesterday. 'Why do I only get in trouble when I'm on your program?' ... The four-hour show, which usually airs from New York, was hosted by WTKK-FM (96.9) and included local Irish rockers Gobshites and a parade of local politicos and WTKK hosts. John Kerry didn't fare as well. During a soliloquy about Barack Obama's virtues, Imus shot the senator down. 'You're over-selling the guy,' Imus said but added that he's an Obama fan.''

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Join FishbowlNY on May 20-21 for the Mediabistro Circus, a two day summit designed to discuss publishing's transition from print to digital, online video, mobile and social media with speakers including: Wired Magazine Editor-In-Chief Chris Anderson, Anil Dash, Everything Bad is Good For You author Steven Johnson and Dina Kaplan, Co-founder of Blip.Tv. Full list of speakers and info here.

The Bear Stearns Collapse is affecting is affecting all aspects of the world's economy. Global financial markets reflected the alarm of top economic forecasters (''the crisis will leave many casualties,'' reflects Alan Greenspan in the FT). As Wall Street fought to stem losses, The New York Times Company made a deal to give hedge funds two seats on the board (by expanding the board, we cannot fail to note). From Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times:

''The agreement with Harbinger Capital Partners and Firebrand Partners marks the first time since the Times Company went public in 1967 that it has accepted directors nominated by outsiders, Times Company executives said.

''It also settles, for now, the most serious bid the company has faced to loosen the control of the chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and his family. The funds have amassed 19 percent of the company's common stock, which may be the largest stake any non-family shareholder has held in those four decades.''

The deal essentially negates the drama that was expected to unfold at the NYT Company's April 22 annual meeting.

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Media giant CBS, perhaps taking cues from the embattled print media, is looking to expand digitally and internationally. Broadband is the medium where both moves are possible simultaneously. CBS Radio, for instance, has been pushing against the terrestrial downtrend, embracing new technologies. And CBS Corp Chief Executive Les Moonves said yesterday at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York City that his company plans to expand the ten percent of the business that it does overseas. ''We're much more domestic,'' Moonves said at the conference, according to Reuters. ''We'd like to expand internationally.''

Last.fm, the CBS Corporation-owned social music web site, is trying to capture domestic market share. ''Conquering the U.S. market is a crucial step in growing Last.fm, and we are very heartened by the overwhelming response,'' said Martin Stiksel, co- founder of the site, in a press release today.

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Jeff Jarvis today blogs on the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York about the panel that was hosted by Business Week's Jon Fine titled ''The Changing Face of News: The Power, The Influence and the Challenge of the Technologies.'' The conference materials state that in this digital age, ''the role, the path of the future and the general understanding of how to structure a national news gathering and distribution organization is the ongoing question for our industry.'' This leads us to the question of The New York Times, simultaneously so respected and so reviled in equal measure by Americans. How can a national newspaper which is so vital and necessary to our democracy turn around the bad fortune that has visited it so recently? From Buzzmachine, on the discussion:

''Next, a panel with big, old media companies: Julia Wallace of The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jon Klein of CNN, Kinsey Wilson of USA Today, David Westin of ABC.

"... Asked about the Times, Raines says they need to decide whether to go head-to-head nationally with Murdoch and the Journal. I thought it was the other way around. Isn't the national report the high ground? Raines says no. He points to the Washington Post's contraction strategy, pulling back into inside the Beltway. He says that the Times may need to come up with a contraction as opposed to an expansion strategy. 'Common sense tells you that when your stock was at $54 in the mid 90s and it's now at, what, $18 and the son of an Alabama construction millionaire has bought 20 percent of your company ... your stock price cannot sit there.'''

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Mary Matalin appeared on the Imus in the Morning show this morning, wondering, heatedly, how Eliot Spitzer could subject his wife to the indignity of standing by his side at yesterday's press conference after he had already broken their marriage vows. It was a theme that many in the media are commenting upon. Matalin, before signing off, told the jocular Imus crew that her husband, Democratic strategist James Carville, would never commit a similar act because he would be ''too scared.''

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How fares the $1.2 billion media group formerly known as Primedia's enthusiast division? Will the ad recession and the industry downturn stymie growth at the seventy-plus magazines now called Source Interlink Media? We asked, but Steve Parr, the CEO of Source Interlink Media declined our invitation to discuss the recently completed acquisition.

Private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. sold the titles -- and websites -- to grocery magnate Ron Burkle's Yucaipa-backed Source Interlink after the controversial billionaire was rebuffed by The Tribune Company. Source Interlink shares initially fell fifteen percent on news of the agreement last year.

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Delectable bits from around the web:

-- Mel Karmazin has made innumerable visits to Capital Hill, delivered winning smiles, and done all manner of interviews boosting satellite radio, but it has all come to naught. The XM-Sirius merger is stalled. From the WSJ: ''If you missed the Bill Murray movie 'Groundhog Day,' in which the main character relives the same day over and over again, maybe you should check out the conference calls of Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin.

''That is because Karmazin has been engaging in a little re-enactment of his own ever since the merger with XM Satellite Radio Holdings was announced in February 2007. In each quarter's earnings conference call with analysts and investors, he has been as cheerful and on-message as a pageant queen: this deal is going to close soon. Any day now. (Even though it hasn't, for over a year, and the deal's termination deadline is Saturday).''

-- The tabloidal race for pictures of JLo and Mark Anthony's baby is on. From USA Today's Cindy Clark: ''(People) Managing editor Larry Hackett is 'confident' his magazine will be showcasing the infants, born Feb. 22. 'We're the biggest, we've been around the longest, we're the top in our field,' he says. 'If someone of equal wattage has been there, they (celebrities) want to be there too.'

''... 'Celebrities are in the business of making money,' says Janice Min, editor of Us Weekly. 'They have their image, which they use to make money on almost every aspect of their life ... This is just another revenue stream for them.'''

More after the jump ...

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