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Sale Of Philadelphia Papers Is Completed (NYT / Media Decoder)
A consortium of the Philadelphia area's most powerful business and political leaders has bought the Philadelphia Media Network, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, the company said Monday. FishbowlNY Philadelphia Media Network, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009, will turn over operations to six investors who have formed the new parent company, Interstate General Media. Politico / AP The buyers, who include influential New Jersey Democrat George Norcross III, former New Jersey Nets owner Lewis Katz and cable TV mogul H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest, said they plan to keep the newspapers' tradition of strong journalism alive in the digital age. Forbes The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, which went for $515 million only six years ago, were sold after months of private haggling in the city of brotherly love.

Ratings Down For Eliot Spitzer's Current TV Debut (TVNewser)
The unexpected debut of Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer drew a disappointing 47,000 total viewers and 10,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo to Current TV on Friday night. TheWrap.com / Media Alley Current TV CEO Joel Hyatt told staffers in a company-wide email Monday that Current would not engage in a public spat with its former primetime host Keith Olbermann, while taking an indirect shot at the irascible anchor. Forbes / Mixed Media Anyone require the services of a perpetually aggrieved, occasionally brilliant basso profundo liberal firebrand?

Couric Wins Congeniality Prize But Oprah Makes News In Morning Show Battle (Washington Post / The TV Column)
"I'm Katie Couric -- Good Morning America!" the returning Queen of Morning Infotainment TV chirped early Monday morning as she began a week competing against NBC's Today, the show that made her famous. TVNewser Like a shark at a shipwreck, Good Morning America is moving in for the kill against Today. With only 137,000 viewers separating them, according to the latest Nielsen ratings, GMA is counting on a week of Couric to end her alma mater's 16-year dominance. NYT The Today show has recruited the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be a guest co-host on Tuesday. NBC wants Palin to be a channel changer in the same way Senator McCain's 2008 presidential campaign hoped Palin would be a game changer. HuffPost At the top of the 7 a.m. hour, the Today mystery guest sat in a dark shadow as co-hosts Matt Lauer and Ann Curry teased that a show legend was in studio 1A. At 7:30 a.m., the show returned from break with cameras scanning the crowd outside the studio in Rockefeller Plaza. Among the fans was former Today host Meredith Vieira, who was there to make a special announcement. Vieira was revealed as the Today legend. TVNewser As Good Morning America and the Today show each reached into their bag of tricks to bring in viewers, the biggest media news of the morning came on CBS This Morning during an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey opened up with Charlie Rose and Gayle King about the struggles of her network OWN. LA Times / Company Town "Had I known it was this difficult, I might have done something else," Winfrey said during an appearance on CBS This Morning with Charlie Rose and Gayle King, who is Winfrey's best friend.

Tabloid Tangle: Jim Dolan Accuses Mort Zuckerman Of Extortion (Forbes / Mixed Media)
Publishing a tabloid newspaper in New York is not for the timid, but the accusation Cablevision CEO Jim Dolan just leveled against New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman is strong stuff even by those standards.

WWOR Gets Exclusive Interview With Cissy Houston, First Time Speaking Since Whitney's Death (FishbowlNY)
WWOR/Channel 9 anchor Brenda Blackmon sat down with Cissy Houston Thursday evening at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark where Whitney sang in the choir as a child, and others sang at her funeral. The interview aired Monday night on the Ten O'Clock News, and Houston came out swinging when asked how the media handled coverage of her daughter’s death.

Oikos Shooting: Oakland Police Use Twitter To Alert Citizens Of Gunman (Yahoo! News / The Cutline)
In the aftermath of Monday's shooting at California's Oikos University, which left at least seven dead and several others wounded, Oakland police used Twitter to alert citizens of the shooting, encourage them stay away from the area and, eventually, offer a description of the suspected gunman.

MPA Levels Playing Field for Publishers' Tablet Data (Adweek)
Monday, to drive advertising dollars on tablets, the Association of Magazine Media announced voluntary guidelines to give magazines a better way of measuring their digital editions. NYT The guidelines will cover how magazines measure their tablet editions, the vocabulary used in those definitions and time frames for when reader data will be released. The measures include the total number of a publication's digital issues and the number of readers by issue. They will also count the number of times a reader opens a tablet issue (called a session), how much time that reader spends reading each issue and the average number of sessions per reader per issue. paidContent Hearst is following Condé Nast's lead and will start releasing metrics on its paid iPad editions, the company announced Monday.

Fairchild Fashion Media Sells Book Division To Bloomsbury (Folio:)
Fairchild Fashion Media, the trade group within Condé Nast that publishes Women's Wear Daily, Style.com and Footwear News, among others, has sold its book division, Fairchild Books, to the U.S. subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for $6.5 million. The cash deal will be paid in three annual installments.

Researcher: More Than 1 Million U.S. Cable Subscribers Cut Cord In 2011 (paidContent)
According to a Convergence Consulting Group report, "The Battle for the North American Couch Potato: Bundling, TV, Internet, Telephone, Wireless," 2.65 million Americans cut their cords between 2008 and 2011 and switched to over-the-top services like Netflix to get their video programming.

Yahoo Loses Associated Content's Luke Beatty, As Restructuring Looms (AllThingsD)
In yet another high-level executive departure, top-level content exec Luke Beatty, the founder of the Associated Content unit that the Silicon Valley Internet giant bought several years ago for $90 million, is departing.

Appeals Court Rejects Challenge To Cable Channel Bundling (THR / Hollywood, Esq.)
In a published decision on Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to overrule a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit that contended that NBC Universal, Fox, and other TV programmers are using their market power to force consumers to accept bundled packages of channels.

Many Magazines Racing To Capitalize On Pinterest (AdAge / MediaWorks)
Last month, digital executives from Hearst's 20 or so titles were summoned for an important meeting at the company's Manhattan headquarters. The pressing subject was Pinterest, how all Hearst's magazines are using it, and how they could leverage the platform. SocialTimes Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra has left the company, leaving co-founder Ben Silbermann to take his place as CEO.

HBO Releases First Trailer For The Newsroom (TVNewser)
We've been telling you about The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin's new series set behind the scenes of a cable news show. Ahead of the June 24 premiere, HBO has released the first full-length trailer for the series. Gawker What's it about? Well basically, it's a show about the evils of the Internet created by someone who believes the Internet is evil. It's also about the news, the current state of our country, politics, celeb culture, Web culture, the right, the left, the perils of capitalism, and how girls can make you act cuh-razy. HuffPost HBO has ordered 10 episodes of the hour-long series, which also stars Emily Mortimer as the show's executive producer, John Gallagher Jr., Allison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, Olivia Munn and Dev Patel, with Jane Fonda in a recurring guest spot.

Paul Goldberger Named Vanity Fair Contributing Editor (FishbowlNY)
Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger is joining Vanity Fair as a contributing editor. He will write about architecture and design for the magazine.

Springfield's WGGB Hires Local Radio Hosts To Anchor Morning Newscast (TVSpy)
Springfield's WGGB is revamping its morning show, bringing in two local radio hosts to anchor the newscast, the station announced Monday. Dan Williams and Kim Zachary, a husband-and-wife team who have been anchoring together on Springfield local radio since 1995, will take over at the anchor desk on April 23.