Good! SHAKE IT UP! Do we need new blood in the mix, or should we care?FILE UNDER - mediabistro reports to the "insiders"
###
i need a martini, jerk! hurry up!
I am a PR Rep and PAO. (SEE: (blogs): highvizpr,abbebuckpr, abbebuckpublicaffairs); Twitter). YES, politics + info-tainment are ruling the day; W/ micro-blogging speeding the process of plow and share ten-fold, I share PR POV right here, welcoming all Q & A. To find out more about my line, "GOOGLE" (of course!)/ get in touch. (Still) TOPICAL QUOTE: "We are living in an age of Publicity" -Will Rogers (1924) ~~(Some things just never change!) # # #
Good! SHAKE IT UP! Do we need new blood in the mix, or should we care?

a HIGHVIZ
www.maureenorth.comBy JACQUES STEINBERG - Published: June 20, 2006
Those who caught a glimpse over the weekend — either on television, or later on the Internet — of the torch song that Connie Chung warbled to mark the end of her short-lived program with Maury Povich on MSNBC, take note: She says she meant her performance to be a gag. [It was a great gag!]
Video: Connie Chung's Farewell (youtube.com)
"I sing off tune so perfectly," she said yesterday, "I just find it's a great way to capture the audience."
Ms. Chung, in a shimmering evening gown and long white gloves, slithered atop and around a grand piano while singing a version of Bob Hope's signature song, "Thanks for the Memory," in a style best described as evoking a tipsy Marilyn Monroe. At one point Ms. Chung even shook her behind at the camera. The lyrics — written by Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show" and executive producer ofMs.Chung's program — mostly made fun of Ms. Chung and her husband, Mr. Povich, whose own long-running talk show tends toward seamier material than did "Weekends With Maury & Connie."
A sampling of the lyrics: "This half a year flew by/My Maury, what a guy/Instead of asking, 'Who's the daddy?'/He could talk Dubai."
Asked if she had required a drink beforehand to get through lines like that, Ms. Chung, a former co-anchor of the "CBS Evening News," laughed, then said, "I should have had a drink before I went on."
Thanks in part to the Web site Youtube.com, clips of Ms. Chung's rendition have been rocketing through cyberspace. Not everyone, it seems, got the joke.
The media-centric Web site Gawker.com was reminded of something Dave Barry once wrote about Richard M. Nixon's resignation remarks — "a semicoherent speech about his mother that may well rank as the single most embarrassing moment in American history." The site then added, "The 37th president can finally rest in peace."
Did such barbs sting? "I always have a hard time with them," Ms. Chung said. "I decided what the heck?"
"Weekends with Maury & Connie" — a half-hour program in which the two hosts sought to comment on the news through analysis, point-counter-point and humor — was at least partly intended to counter the conventional wisdom about each of them, she said. "It showed Maury was a thinker, a reader, an intelligent news person," Ms. Chung said. "It showed, on my side, that I can have as much fun as anyone."
The show, which was broadcast for six months, on Saturday mornings at 10 (and rebroadcast throughout the weekend), never caught on with viewers, drawing an average audience of slightly more than 200,000 on Saturday mornings. The cable channel quietly noted its demise earlier this month.
Throughout her career Ms. Chung, 59, has periodically sought to show that she has a sense of humor about herself and her work. She was a frequent guest on David Letterman's late-night talk show, particularly when it was on NBC.
And this is hardly the first time she has sung off-key, as a gag, publicly. She once did so on "The View," serenading Barbara Walters after she announced her retirement from "20/20." And about a decade ago, she said, she did so at an awards dinner, crooning to Dan Rather (with whom she had been briefly, awkwardly paired on the evening news).
Of her singing, she gloated, "It makes Maury cringe."
###
This is still our Diva, our media babe. Katie Couric is one of a kind. Diane Sawyer ditto. Ann Coulter may take cheap shots at the 9-1-1- widows dressed in Dana Buckman drinking Moet, but Connie Chung is a drunken singing swan dive! BOOM! She bombs! Ann will too in a couple of books from now. We all do.Checklist:
AP - Jerry Lewis Suffers 'Mild' Heart Attack - Jun 13 8:19 PM US/Eastern
LAS VEGAS- Comedian Jerry Lewis postponed a July engagement to perform live after suffering a heart attack Sunday that a casino spokeswoman described as "mild."
"At present, he is under hospital care and is expected to make a full recovery," said Candi Cazau, spokeswoman for the Orleans hotel-casino in Las Vegas, where Lewis was to perform July 13-16.
Lewis, 80, is also suffering from "a touch of pneumonia," Cazau said in a statement. A call to Lewis' manager, Claudia Marghilano, was not returned Tuesday.
Last week, a wise-cracking Lewis appeared healthy at a news conference in Las Vegas when he announced his first return to live performances in five years after a battle with pulmonary fibrosis, a crippling lung ailment.
He also appeared at a roasting as abbot of the Friars Club in New York on Friday, with fellow comedian Robert Klein and the Amazing Kreskin in attendance.
Lewis announced last week that he planned to direct a version of his hit 1963 comedy, "The Nutty Professor," as a musical on Broadway by October 2008.
Those plans have not changed, said executive producer Ned McLeod of The Michael Andrew Company, which bought the rights to develop the show in March.
"We support and will be by Jerry on any health issue that comes up for him as well as he would for me or Michael," McLeod said. "It's not going to affect us."
###
((((Life goes on. Jer is 80. I willl be 50 tomorrow. Geez. So much for the 'new 30'!)))
(AP) Jerry Lewis is used to making jokes. This summer, he'll bear the brunt of them.The legendary comedian will take his third turn suffering insults and slams _ all in good-natured fun, of course _ at a Friars Club celebrity roast on June 9, it was announced Thursday." Since I had nothing better to do, why not?" Lewis quipped.
[Approximately] 118 people Control the "Mainstream Media". A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests...