Last week,  it was all about authors and agents, and today it was television titans’ turn in the rotating cast of characters that is Wednesdays at Michael’s. Tonight when Liz Smith hosts her annual kick-off for her Literacy Partners’ initiative, the joint will be jumping with social types like Diane von Furstenberg (who, we hear, recently broke her shoulder skiing and is, no doubt, sporting a fashionable sling) and her Vespa loving hubby Barry Diller, Cynthia McFadden, Cornelia Guest, Calvin Trillin, Nan Talese and Gay Talese. We won’t be there to trade air kisses with the glitterati, because we’ll be chatting up our favorite Bravolebrities at their upfront party across town (Giggy, that means you!).

Today I was joined by Evan Shapiro, president of pivot (yes, with a lower case ‘p’) the new cable network targeting the all-important millennial audience  launched by Participant Media, the production company responsible for an impressive slate of projects, including An Inconvenient Truth, The Help and Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln. Participant chairman and founder Jeff Skoll and CEO Jim Berk tapped Evan to spearhead the company’s expansion into television in May of last year. Prior to that, he had served as president of IFC and Sundance Channel where we was responsible for award-winning program, like the buzzed about Portlandia.

I could barely keep up with Evan, whose passion for his latest gig was evident from the moment he sat down. The incredibly youthful 45-year-old father of two teenage girls told me running pivot is his “dream job,” because he’s doing more than creating what he considers groundbreaking television. “Ten years ago I would have said my dream job would have been at NBC or CBS.  Today, it’s this job because we’re doing something that’s going to have an impact on the world.” Evan dismisses the notion of millennials as spoiled and entitled and instead compares them to ‘the greatest generation’ saying, “Like ‘the greatest generation,’ they have been handed a series of events not of their own making, and, post 9/11 and the Great Recession, they have a real sense of their place in the world and want to make a difference.”

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The March “Hollywood Issue” for Vanity Fair contains a number of interesting things, including a piece about how it might be more trendy to be fat than buff (we said interesting, not correct!). The real meat of the issue, however, is in its list of the highest-earning people in the industry. Number one is James Cameron, who garnered a whopping $257 million last year, mostly because of that movie about blue people who aren’t really people but are controlled by people or whatever.

Cameron getting a lot of money is nothing surprising, but as FishbowlNY perused the list, a few things caught our eye.

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As if newspapers didn’t have enough to worry about already! Probably by now you’re at least somewhat aware of Bernie Madoff — he may have got a little lost in all the Blago of last week but some background here — he’s the Wall St. investor to billionaires whose recent arrest due to a “brazen” Ponzi scheme has shocked Wall Street (though, really, at this point one wonders at Wall Street being shockable). On a side note: here’s some background on who exactly Ponzi was to begin with. Anyway, looks like among the long list of people who are going to get screwed by Madoff, a list which tangentially includes Steven Spielberg and the New York Mets, is New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman (place your bets now on tomorrow’s NYP headline).Per today’s WSJ:

Mr. Zuckerman, the chairman of real-estate firm Boston Properties and owner of the New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, had significant exposure through a fund that invested substantially all of its assets with Mr. Madoff, according to a person familiar with his investments. A spokesman for Mr. Zuckerman declined to comment.

UPDATE: Looks like it was charity money and not Zuckerman’s personal fortune that was affected.