TV

Meredith Corp., the publisher of magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies' Home Journal, is joining forces with WE tv network, pairing the company's major magazine brands with WE original series.

The two companies have reached an agreement which will cross-promote Meredith and WE brands through both the print and television mediums. The initiative will kick off next month as Fitness magazine and fitnessmagazine.com team up with WE tv series "I Want to Save Your Life," an intervention/weight loss show. There will be a special promotion of the series in Fitness and on its Web site, and the magazine will feature a Q&A with Charles Stuart, the "diet detective" and star of "I Want to Save Your Life."

Other promotional pairings include Parents magazine and the WE series "Raising Sextuplets" and Ladies' Home Journal and WE's missing person show "The Locator."

Meredith currently reaches 75 million women each month through its various brands, while WE tv reaches 73 million homes. Nancy Weber, Meredith's chief marketing officer, said the cross-promotional agreement will allow the companies "to build out potential opportunities for marketers seeking to leverage the unprecedented scale of this cross platform relationship."

Full release after the jump

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Rapper, fashion designer, and music mogul P. Diddy is looking for a personal assistant and he turned to mediabistro for help. Diddy posted an ad on our job board seeking applicants with a "big personality" who can be "available and on-call 24/7." His search for a right hand man (or woman) is going to be televised on VH1 for the second season of the reality show "I Want To Work For Diddy."

On Saturday, FishbowlNY joined mediabistro's education team and TV reporting instructor Manoush Zomorodi to get a sneak peak at the candidate pool for Diddy's new assistant position and to offer hopeful job seekers some on-the-spot interviewing tips.

And it may have been a brisk weekend in New York, but things got a little heated inside...

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In the latest issue of GQ, Jay Leno talks about his decision to stay at NBC, moving to the 10 p.m. time slot and his relationship with David Letterman. Some highlights:

Q [deputy editor Michael Hainey]: There's a scene in The Late Shift where Jack Welch of GE gives you the edge over Dave [Letterman] for The Tonight Show because of your "loyalty." You're being loyal again to NBC."
A: Yeah, it's a gamble.
Q: Do you worry loyalty this time could be taking you to a not good place?
A: It's worked fine up until this point. I've never argued about money. Dave makes a lot more than I do. Way more. And I'm number one. But that's okaaaay. How much pie can you eat?

And then there's the whole dust up with Letterman:

Q: I heard that you wrote Dave a letter, after he had his open-heart surgery.
A: Mmm-hmm.
Q: What was in the letter?
A: Oh, just how funny I thought he was and how I owed him a lot. How important he was to me and all that.
Q: Did he respond?
A: Uh, no.
Q: Really?
A: But that's okay. Where'd you hear that?
Q: That's not okay.
A: Well, it's not okay, but fine. What do you do, you know? I don't know if he ever got it.
Q: It's weirdly heartless.
A. I don't know if he ever got it. He might not ever have gotten it. A middling might've said, "I don't want to show this to Dave. It'll upset him," and thrown it away, so I don't know. Ever talk to Dave?
Q: Ah, no.
A: Dave's a great guy.
Q: Your relationship is a movie.
A: Well, it was a bad movie. That stupid Late Shift movie.
Q: Do you think you two will ever come around?
A: I hope so!

If you want our opinion, the best take on Leno's 10 p.m. can be found on Bill Simmons' March 19th podcast with former Rolling Stone executive editor and GQ features editor Jason Gay. Simmons, who wrote for the Jimmy Kimmel Show offers an interesting take on why Leno will be back on late night soon. Just listen.

Fresh off of CBS Sports' March Madness success comes news that coverage of last week's The Masters (that's golf, people) scored the highest ratings for the tournament in eight years.

An estimated 42 million people saw at least some portion of Saturday and Sunday's coverage. Interestingly, viewership was down on the latter day, most likely because Tiger Woods -- a ratings draws -- was perceived to be out of the hunt when the day started. Huge ratings on Saturday, however, helped push the numbers up six percent over last year.

In 2001, 47.9 million saw Woods win his second green jacket.

Author and mediabistro.com instructor Tom Zoellner stopped by The Daily Show Thursday night to talk with Jon Stewart about his new book Uranium.

In another sea change involving New York television, (this one causing a pretty big wave) WNBC sportscaster Len Berman is leaving the station after 24 years.

No mention was made during or after his 6pm sportscast but the NYDaily News' Richard Huff reports Berman sent a note to staff earlier today: "I've had a great run here at WNBC and will miss the talented people I've worked with over the years both on and off the air. I'm looking forward to the various media projects I'll be involved with."

Huff reports news director Vickie Burns sent an email to staff saying Berman had an "interest in pursuing different opportunities within the local sports arena. To that end, we have mutually agreed that the time is right for Len to take advantage of those opportunities."

Berman joined WNBC in 1985.

Yesterday, Gawker reported on a "pervasive rumor" that the two main anchors at NBC's two largest stations, WNBC and KNBC-Los Angeles, may be the next to depart.

The BBC might be cutting back to the tune of $583 million over three years, but that won't stop the channel from coming to Gotham.

"BBC World News" returns to the New York airwaves later today — 4 p.m. to be exact — with an exclusive one-on-one interview between Washington-based correspondent Philippa Thomas and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"The diversity in our streets and businesses is one of our City's greatest strengths," Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. "Bringing BBC World News back to New York City exemplifies that diversity and will give NYCTV's viewers in the world's most international city a greater number of options."

Missed the Cramer vs Stewart showdown last night? Well if you get your news from MSNBC you might never have known it'd happened at all! Cramer was a no-show on Morning Joe this morning and according to a tipster TVNewser spoke to it seems the entire network was encouraged to remain mum on the topic.

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So last night, in the most hotly anticipated interview of the week(!) Jim Cramer came out with his tail between his legs and Jon Stewart, who took a mostly serious tone, was actually far tougher than (we, for one) anticipated. And despite Cramer's acquiescing, sometimes apologetic, sometimes squirming tone -- he was clearly nervous and not looking for a fight -- Stewart was fairly relentless with his criticism and clips.

Says Stewart: "It feels like we are capitalizing your adventure, by our pension and our hard-earned...and it is a game that you know, that you know is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn't happening." Part two and three after the jump.

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