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TVLine.com Parent Company Sues Hollywood Reporter For Copyright Infringement (FishbowlLA)
If you thought the gloves were off last Friday between Penske Media and The Hollywood Reporter, you ain't read nothing yet. Wednesday, Jay Penske's evolving media empire filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Prometheus Global Media, overseer of THR. FishbowlLA: The strongest aspect of the lawsuit involves the alleged Web programming similarities between respective parent company properties TVLine.com and HollywoodReporter.com. However, for many Hollywood watchers who take the time to read the full legal complaint, it is section 34 that will fascinate most. In this particular passage, attorneys for PMC detail 30 different instances of what they deem to be THR's illicit reproduction of Deadline.com original news reporting. THR / Hollywood, Esq.: In March, THR responded to an allegation by Deadline.com of so-called stolen stories by asking Deadline.com to provide specifics. We got no response, and today we know why. Deadline.com's parent company, PMC, has just sued THR for copyright infringement based on allegations of "stolen" stories. An initial review of the complaint shows that it is replete with examples of stories that originated from widely released press releases from publicists, or widespread confirmations from publicists to numerous outlets, including both THR and Deadline.com. It is not copyright infringement to report these stories, even if on occasion Deadline.com posts them first. TheWrap.com: THR removed the homepage carousel design cited by Deadline parent PMC in its lawsuit alleging copyright infringement. The homepage now has a more standard blog-style presentation, with stories stacked on top of each other more or less chronologically. TheWrap.com / Media Alley: In the Internet age of aggregation, where the lifespan of an "exclusive" can be measured in seconds, attorneys say Penske Media, Deadline's parent, faces an uphill fight to make its lawsuit stick. Gawker: Enter 24 pages of immaterial carping that rehearses every bilious complaint Nikki Finke has made about THR and its editor, Janice Min, in the past two years. For instance: "THR tried to poach [Penske's] key employees, by urging each employee to breach their existing and exclusive contractual obligations to [Penske]." Heavens! The complaint trots out some previously known details about THR's attempt to hire Finke herself, including "a $450,000 base salary, plus a $1 million Malibu home…plus a percentage of the cable TV revenue THR was expecting (which [an investor] specifically estimated at $650,000 annually)." THR also allegedly made runs at Deadline's TV reporter, Nellie Andreeva, and senior sales director Nic Paul. And it successfully lured away Deadline publisher Lynn Segal. What's interesting about all this is that Penske isn't suing THR over any of it. There are no counts in the complaint alleging anything about the poaching attempts. They just threw it in there to get a little Nikki in the mix. TheWrap.com / Wax Word: For what seems like forever, Finke has accused all and sundry -- including this site -- of stealing her content. By "stealing," she apparently meant "writing" about things about which she or her reporters have written. That's what makes this case interesting. Finke has obviously decided to take her crusade to the court, although there is not a single case cited in the complaint to support the argument of intellectual property theft.

Glenn Beck: GBTV 'Has Got To Be Bigger Than Me' (TVNewser)
"I argued that the network shouldn't be called GBTV," Glenn Beck said. "I don't want it about me, I want it bigger than me, it has got to be bigger than me." Business Insider / The Wire: "We view GBTV as Netflix in a way, as HBO in a way," Beck said. "People know that when you go to HBO, it's good quality. My audience is loyal because they don't necessarily know what I'm going to do, but they know it will be worth their time. I try not to waste their time, and it will be good quality."

Johann Hari Apologizes For Plagiarism, Takes Leave From Independent (HuffPost)
After being accused of repeated acts of plagiarism and stripped of a major prize, columnist Johann Hari apologized for his journalistic misconduct in a column Wednesday. Hari was a top columnist at The Independent (and a frequent blogger for The Huffington Post) when, in July, he was suddenly charged with lifting large chunks of material from Afghan activist Malalai Joya's book and passing them off as portions of his interview with Joya.

Facebook Suggests Subscribing To Profiles (AllFacebook)
Facebook is suggesting that you subscribe to people's public status updates and customize how much of their feeds you receive. The site is rolling out a new subscribe button that will enable you to receive in your news feed publicly visible status updates from people who aren't yet on your friend list. Inside Facebook: The subscribe button also appears on the profile of friends, and gives users options to control the volume and types of updates they see from someone in their news feed. This will allow users to select to only receive or hide from their news feed a friend's major life events, status updates, photos and videos, and games content. TechCrunch: Buried in its documentation on the subscribe feature is something else interesting: Soon, you'll be able to update Twitter from Facebook. TechCrunch: So why launch these features now? Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Facebook: "We've been working on lots of iterations of friend lists and the subscription metaphor for a while. No one wants to spend their afternoon dragging and dropping." Wired / Epicenter: Companies can only compete with each other by matching the other's features for so long. This is especially true when, like Google and Facebook, both are already giving away their product for free. With their latest updates to their social media portals, each company is playing to its strengths: Facebook has eyeballs, and Google has software. GigaOM: Should Twitter be concerned about this Twitter-fication of Facebook? I don't think so.

Comcast Boss Burke Flip-Flops On Retransmission Fees (NY Post)
That's one wicked about-face for Steve Burke. The Comcast executive, after fiercely resisting for 12 years paying broadcasters any retransmission fees, appeared to find religion Wednesday, surprising a media conference audience by promising to doggedly pursue "millions of dollars" in -- wait for it -- retransmission fees for his NBC Universal unit.

No Signs Of Ad Slowdown At CBS, Moonves Says (B&C)
CBS is still not seeing any signs of an advertising slowdown, CEO Les Moonves told an investors' conference Wednesday.

Diller: Cash Keeps Hollywood Quiet On Net Neutrality (B&C)
IAC chairman Barry Diller said Hollywood wasn't making much noise over the issue of network neutrality because they are getting paid. TechCrunch: Diller on Michael Arrington and TechCrunch: "I'm amazed at it. Here you buy a company for whatever they paid for it, and you buy it because it is absolutely the voice of a single person primarily, with some other people working for him -- but it's Michael Arrington's voice, and you know when you buy it that the voice is biased and mean and capable of saying anything, and is playing a hundred different games. And you know that. And that's why you buy it -- because it's a good voice, and you like it. And then somebody calls you up and says, 'I'm the editor-in-chief, and you can't let him do that, because he’s now in a conflict of interest.' It's not a journalistic enterprise, TechCrunch. And so to have treated it as such is to destroy it. So now, he's gone, and now they own this thing, which has no voice. Congratulations. What a good piece of business."

Forget TechCrunch: Arrington Is Launching A New Blog (Business Insider / Silicon Alley Insider)
So what's Mike Arrington going to do now that he is no longer working with TechCrunch or AOL? Start a new blog, of course. He just announced it on Twitter. He's calling it a "personal" blog. A couple of minutes later, he tweeted, "Network effects will beat IP every time," which could be read as a challenge to his former employers -- they've got the TechCrunch brand, but he's got the network. Will it compete with TechCrunch? Will he be breaking news? Will he talk about his personal investments? Will people read it? Our bet would be yes to all four.

Facebook Puts Off IPO Until Late 2012 (Financial Times)
Facebook is preparing to launch its blockbuster initial public offering in the United States toward the end of next year, a later public debut by the social networking site than had been widely anticipated, say people familiar with the company.

AOL Asks Employees What They Think Of Tim And Arianna (Business Insider / Silicon Alley Insider)
Is AOL worried about morale? AOL just sent out an email asking employees to take a survey about "what the company can do to improve our employee communications and culture."

Top Five Group Pubs: First Half Puts Condé In Vogue (minOnline)
As we take a look at the group publishers' ad-page review for first-half 2011 versus 2010, we count 22 (with Hachette Filipacchi Media now fully nestled in Hearst Magazines) in the mix. Condé Nast (19 titles) is the ad-page-gain leader with 280.72 more ad pages in the first six months of 2011 than in the same period of 2010, with Vogue contributing 109.15 of them. Bonnier (18 titles) is second with +227.72, thanks to the now (as of September 2011) digital-only Motor Boating.

Marie Claire Editor Abigail Pesta Will Lead Tina Brown's Women's Initiative (NY Observer)
Newsweek and The Daily Beast have hired Abigail Pesta, Marie Claire editor-at-large, to serve as editorial director of Women in the World, the Newsweek/Beast-branded leadership summit.

New York's Design Director Moves To Vanity Fair (FishbowlNY)
Chris Dixon, the man responsible for the wonderful look of New York magazine, is moving on to Vanity Fair. NY Observer: Longtime VF design director David Harris is reducing his role at the magazine. WWD / Memo Pad: Graydon Carter has taken from Adam Moss' stable again. Just weeks after VF hired Chris Rovzar from New York to become its online editor, Carter has poached Moss' design director.

Univision Preps 'TV Everywhere' Launch For Trio Of Cable Nets In 2012 (Multichannel News)
Univision is aiming to launch a "TV Everywhere" service next year with the debut of three Hispanic cable networks geared around telenovelas, sports, and news, according to president of distribution, sales, and marketing Tania O'Connor.

Are Big Media's Partnerships With Seattle 'Indies' The Future Of Hyperlocal? (Street Fight)
In the furiously expanding, highly competitive, and often conflicted hyperlocal space, some pieces appear to be coming together. Just possibly, highly digital Seattle may be the birthplace for what has long eluded hyperlocal: a sustainable business model.