Rupert Murdoch got things going by pledging one million from News Corporation. “Newscorp giving $1million to help families in NY and NJ badly hurt by Sandy,” Murdoch tweeted. “Hope other companies will do same.”

Viacom is donating $1 million, half to the Mayor’s Fund for NYC and half to local organizations that are helping Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey and Westchester County get back on their feet. Disney is also splitting its $2 million donation; half will go to the Red Cross and the other million to assorted charities.

NBC Universal is taking a slightly different route, as it plans to air a fundraising special Friday night at 8 p.m. Matt Lauer will host the program, which will feature performances by Jon Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Sting.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Check out what he does say after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Odds and ends you might have missed from the weekend:

• Count Level 3, an Internet services company, as another bump in Comcast’s bid to take over NBC Universal.
• Do you feel bad enough to pay for the online version of The New York Times?
• Bloomberg Businessweek has style.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New York Post: As Comcast CEO Brian Roberts prepares to take over NBC Universal, he’s been meeting with ex-NBC exec Randy Falco to learn which execs he should keep and who he should dump. Is Jeff Zucker‘s job safe?

Advertising Age: Is radio making a comeback?

Daily Intel: Steve Jobs holds secret iPad meeting with New York Times execs.

E&P In Exile: Looks like the resurrected Editor & Publisher is still using ex-editor Greg Mitchell‘s name to sell renewals.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

BayNewser: The Bay Area News Project, which is providing content for The New York Times‘ Bay Area section, has named a CEO and editor-in-chief.

Wall Street Journal: The Apple tablet is coming next week and Steve Jobs is looking at ways to “make money in old media.” Well, if anyone can do it…

Mediaweek: Congressional hearings on the antitrust implications of the Comcast-NBC Universal deal are set to begin February 4.

WWD: Celeb weekly InTouch is still on the hunt for a new editor, and Colleen Curtis from AOL, Rob Shuter of Popeater.com and Life & Style‘s Dan Wakeford are the reported frontrunners for the job.

Mediaite: The case of the missing $1.5 million Conan O’Brien “Tonight Show” sketch.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker made an appearance last night on “Charlie Rose,” for a 30-minute interview that mainly focused on the company’s late night network TV debacle.

Opening the interview, Charlie Rose described NBC as “in shambles” five years after Zucker was promoted from executive producer at NBC News. Zucker took issue with that description:

“I think that’s a little unfair to the fantastic folks who work at NBC. The fact is, NBC Entertainment has had a rough run the last five years. There’s no question about it. We haven’t done well enough…And we have to do better. And we have to find bigger, broader, better shows. And the truth is, that really has defined NBC and NBC Universal and I think that’s what so unfortunate for the 30,000 employees who work at NBC Universal…the fact that our failure to do better at NBC Entertainment has unfortunately defined us.”

Zucker went on to say that while NBC Entertainment is only responsible for about five percent of NBC Universal’s bottom line, it is also responsible for about “95 percent of our perception.”

Still, although he admitted NBC Entertainment could have done better programming in recent years, Zucker said he had no regrets about the whole Conan O’Brien-Jay Leno situation. He explained that had NBC not offered O’Brien the chance to take over the “Tonight Show” in 2004, he would have left the network then. And the same holds true for Leno last year, when they developed the plan to move him to prime time.

Zucker even described the idea of moving Leno to a half-hour show at 11:35 p.m. as a way to help O’Brien boost his own ratings, clearly not agreeing with O’Brien’s belief that such a move would mean certain death for the “Tonight Show” franchise.

“Leadership is about taking chances and taking risks,” he told Rose. “And also leadership is about acknowledging when they don’t work.”

Admitting the half-hour Leno show was “not perfect for anyone,” Zucker said he also had hoped that O’Brien would agree. “Not everything is going to work,” he concluded. “If we don’t try to do things differently, if we don’t try to take chances, then we know what the results of the status quo will be. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don’t.”

Watch the whole interview here.

Previously: Jay Leno: NBC Fired Me Twice”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jennifer Mirsky is joining the lifestyle site from Meredith Interactive, where she served as editor-in-chief of women’s lifestyle, overseeing content for LadiesHomeJournal.com, More.com and FitnessMagazine.com. Through her career, which has spanned more than two decades, Mirsky has also worked as vice president of editorial programming for NBC Universal‘s iVillage.com and vice president of the Hearst Magazine group for iVillage.

In her newly created position, Mirsky will be reporting to Real Simple managing editor Kristin van Ogtrop, who said, “Jennifer inherits an exceedingly strong realsimple.com team and a Web site that is growing robustly by the month. Her industry knowledge and expertise make Jennifer the ideal leader for taking realsimple.com to a whole new level.”

Full release after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The new deal keeps Burke at Comcast for five more years, and he’ll oversee NBCU once the deal is completed. Burke, who is said to have helped orchestrate the NBCU deal, is earning $2.2 million a year plus a $3 million signing bonus, and he’ll “be eligible for two cash bonuses of $3 million each during the course of the contract,” Variety reported. He also earned $6 million in stock at the time of signing and will get $6 million more when the NBCU deal closes.

Not too shabby.

Comcast seals exec deal –Variety

Previously: It’s Official: Comcast Acquires NBCU Stake

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This year, those companies were imperiled, struggling to survive like many other companies around the world. But as print media disputed declarations that its days were numbered, these once-great companies that made their money from print pubs were fighting hard to keep their heads above water. In order to do that they made some decisions — like bringing in new investors, closing publications and selling them off. It was in no way a big year for media deals, but there were a few. Below, our list of the biggest business stories to come out of the New York media world this year.

Bloomberg LP Buys BusinessWeek

After seeking a buyer for BusinessWeek for most of the fall, publisher McGraw-Hill finally cut a deal with Bloomberg LP, which snapped up the magazine in October. The result? Bloomberg BusinessWeek, a new vision of the mag that has a new editor and a smaller staff.

After the jump, Carlos Slim invests in the Times, classical music and the Comcast-NBCU deal.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TVNewser: Time magazine’s Person of the Year will be unveiled Wednesday on the “Today” show.

WebNewser: Who said print is dying? Web-only alternative newspaper Jersey City Independent has purchased lifestyle print magazine NEW.

minOnline: Time.com and CNNMoney.com have cleaned up their article pages to look cleaner and less cluttered.

Deadline Hollywood: Nikki Finke reports that NBC Universal‘s Lauren Zalaznick is in talks to become president of entertainment for MTV and VH1.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

TVNewser: If George Stephanopoulos takes the job as co-anchor of “Good Morning America,” who should take his post as host of “This Week”?

WebNewser: PBS‘ “NewsHour” has relaunched its Web site.

Politico: In a memo to staffers, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller calls cutback process “excruciating” and confirms that there will be layoffs.

Gawker: Freelancers take note: some media companies, including Time Inc. and NBC Universal, want you to give up a portion of your pay in order to get your payment faster.

Financial Times: Magazine publishers including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith as well as News Corp. are planning to announce their digital publishing joint venture as soon as Monday.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We confirmed that market editors in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle and Washington, D.C. had been let go. Miami is also losing its editor, Brooke Siegel, who is moving back to New York to work from DailyCandy HQ, along with promotions editor Dan Murphy. But that doesn’t mean the company is discontinuing distribution of its newsletters in those cities.

Starting next year, subscribers in these markets will receive “DailyCandy Everywhere” newsletters four times a week along with city-specific events-focused newsletters on Thursday — called “The Weekend Guide” — and Sunday. The Sunday letter will be a new addition to the DailyCandy family that we hear the company is close to announcing soon. To maintain this popular events coverage, DailyCandy will be maintaining contributing editors in these markets, which may end up being the editors who were just let go.

Meanwhile, newsletters in DailyCandy’s five other markets, New York, Chicago, London, Los Angeles and San Francisco, will continue to get city-focused newsletters five days a week as well as, presumably, the Sunday edition when it launches.

Read more: DailyCandy Sours on Most of Its Cities –Gawker

DailyCandy Cutting Back Local Editions

Previously: DailyCandy Tries E-Commerce With Swirl

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This morning, Comcast and General Electric announced that they are entering a joint venture that will include NBC Universal — valued at $30 billion — as well as Comcast’s cable nets, including E!, Versus and the Golf Channel, and its regional sports networks, among other Comcast assets — with a value of $7.25 billion. Comcast will now own 51 percent of the new venture, after paying $6.5 billion to GE in cash.

Now, the deal heads to the regulators for approval, and all media watchers are looking forward to see how the government handles the first big media deal under the Obama administration. The New York Times has gotten its hands on a memo sent today from NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker to his staff. Zucker has been put in charge of the new venture, and he will be reporting to Comcast’s COO. Said Zucker:

“We expect regulatory approvals to take 9 to 12 months. So, for now, it remains business as usual. And in fact, I expect this will be the case for the vast majority of you even after the deal closes. NBC Universal will continue to be, first and foremost, a world-class content company.”

After the jump, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts in their first post-deal interview on CNBC this morning, in which they talk about their reasons behind seeking the deal, the future of their joint venture and what they think about the upcoming regulator approval process.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Our sister blog TVNewser has a run down of some of the coverage on the deal. Among the highlights:

- GE will reportedly buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBCU for about $5.8 billion.

- An agreement was reached after its GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt went to Paris for face-to-face negotiations with Vivendi’s CEO Jean-Bernard Levy last week.

- The 51 percent stake in NBCU that Comcast has been eying is valued at about $30 billion

- If the GE-Comcast deal doesn’t close by the end of next year, GE has agreed to pay Vivendi an additional $2 billion.

Read more: General Electric, Vivendi Agree On NBCU Stake, Paving Way for Comcast Deal –TVNewser

Previously: Zucker To Lead Comcast-NBCU Venture

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New York Post: The New York Daily News has lost two top editors, executive editor, David Ng and the deputy city editor Marilyn Matlick.

Connecticut Post: The Fairfield University independent student paper that published an offensive column earlier this year now faces harassment charges before the Connecticut school’s Student Conduct Board.

Talking Biz News: CNBC‘s Maria Bartiromo‘s BusinessWeek column will not be making the move to the Bloomberg-owned version of the magazine.

paidContent: Forbes Media bought photo publishing and online distribution platform FlipGloss.

New York Times: A profile of Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts, who is currently negotiating a deal to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.