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ESPN Gets Monday Night Football (Variety)
The Monday night move, which includes an earlier start time of 8:40 p.m. eastern, is expected to cost the cable network $1.1 billion over eight years. NYT: NBC, which bowed out of broadcasting the National Football League after the 1997 season, will replace ESPN on the Sunday night games.

LAT Fires Reporter for Chico State Story (LAT)
The Los Angeles Times published an editor's note today regarding reporter Eric Slater, who has drawn criticism for several weeks following a poorly reported story he wrote about the death of a college student. The note says the article "fell far short of Times standards."

AP to Impose Online Licensing Fees (AP via Yahoo!)
The Associated Press will begin charging newspapers and broadcasters to post its stories, photos, and other content online, a pricing shift that reflects the growing power of the Internet to lure audiences and advertisers from more established media.

Sirius Deal for Domestic Diva (NYT)
Martha Stewart, six weeks out of federal prison and still largely restricted to her home, signed another major deal yesterday, this time with Sirius Satellite Radio to broadcast a 24-hour channel featuring lifestyle reports aimed at women. NYDN: Omnimedia to get $30 million over four years.

Tom Snyder Diagnosed With Leukemia (Reuters via WaPo)
The veteran late-night talk show host says doctors assure him his condition is treatable with "pills or chemotherapy or both."

Coulter Peeved at Time Pic (Page Six)
"Why can't they just photograph conservatives straight?" Coulter moaned to cybergossip Matt Drudge. "My own mother would not even recognize me."

GMA Threatens Today (AP via USAT)
For 487 weeks, viewers have made NBC's Today show team of Katie Couric and Matt Lauer their favorites in the morning, but the steady rise of ABC's Good Morning America is threatening that dominance.

Retiring NBC News Exec: One Anchor's Plenty (Philly Inky)
Gail Shister: Bill Wheatley, 60, one of the most respected—and liked—executives in network news, announced his retirement yesterday after 30 years at the Peacock. He'll leave in June.

Eisner's Genius (Slate)
Edward Jay Epstein: Michael Eisner turned a faltering animation-and-amusement-park company into one of the world's most successful purveyors of home entertainment. If you look at the numbers, Disney boomed under Eisner. LAT: Disney to sign deal with Scott Rudin, who will move from Paramount, probably to help reinvent Miramax.

The Report on Drudge (Times U.K.)
Cosmo Landesman: Whether Matt Drudge goes to London or Budapest he spends his time doing exactly what he does back in America—sitting alone in his room before computer screens: "My home, my hotel room, my car—they're all like a mobile news room."

In Praise of Romenesko (Slate)
Jack Shafer: Thanks to Jim Romenesko's influential readership, every journalistic sin—venal or cardinal—that's published and gets billboarded on his blog becomes a national story.

Viacom Falters as CBS Ad Sales Slip (Bloomberg)
Viacom Inc., which plans to split its MTV Networks and CBS Television units into separate companies, said first-quarter net income fell 18 percent as advertising sales slipped at CBS.

NAB Chief Suggests Indecency Regs for Cable, Satellite (Mediaweek)
The leader of the National Association of Broadcasters, Eddie Fritts, said broadcasters prefer "responsible industry self-regulation" to government regulation.

Indian TV Channel Finds Little Appetite for Naked Truth (WaPo)
A new Indian TV channel has been airing hidden-camera footage of politicians having sex with call girls, Hindu holy men abusing female devotees, and film actors propositioning an undercover journo, sparking outrage from the Indian public at the upstart channel.

Iran Shutters Al-Jazeera (Guardian)
The Iranian authorities have shut down the Tehran offices of al-Jazeera, accusing the broadcaster of inflaming ethnic riots in the south of the country.

Gemstar Ready to Launch TV Fanzine (NYP)
Inside TV, a new magazine aimed at young women, hits newsstands Thursday with a cover interview with hot Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria.

Why NYC J-Grad Quit Plain Dealer (WSJ)
Adelle Waldman: When you set your sights on a newspaper career, you pretty much have to accept that you are going to have to relocate a number of times, but I never really tried to make Cleveland my home.

Fox's Sandstorm (WaPo)
William Raspberry: The in-your-face right-wing partisanship that marks Fox News Channel's news broadcasts is having two dangerous effects. The first is that the popularity of the approach leads other cable broadcasters to mimic it, which in turn debases the quality of the news available to that segment of the TV audience. The second, far more dangerous, effect is that it threatens to destroy public confidence in all news.

Soldier Blogs Bring Front Line Home (CSM)
Countless soldiers—some recently returned from the war, others still there—have set up their own Web logs or "blogs" and chat rooms, communicating their day-to-day war experience, complaining about the brass (as all soldiers do), and looking for support.

—David S. Hirschman