• WSJ readers like planes, not as interested in trains, automobiles.

• Thin is good! Thin is bad! Tabloids are passive-aggressive! Which is good! And bad!

• NFL tries, fails at gouging cable providers.

• Ousted Viacom exec Tom Freston finds a new hobby in Plum TV.

• Sure, Reader's Digest is getting bought for $1.6 billion by Ripplewood, but that pricetag is $150 million shy of what it could've been.

• If you say it fast enough, "B.M.I." sounds like the noise a purger makes while booting.

• Microsoft hands out free computers, bloggers everywhere post items from their new free computers questioning ethics of accepting free computers.

The News Corp. daddy, the YouTube dude, the LAT fella, the CBS News lass, the blogger lady, the "yum-o" chick, and the NBC lad are among the current offerings for I Want Media's "Media Person of the Year" contest. You've spent so much time agonizing over who will be Time's Person of the Year, surely you can spend a few moments deciding whether Jeff Zucker should be rewarded for cutting 700 jobs, Katie Couric should win for a waning newscast, or Tom Freston's your man for getting axed and then taking every opportunity to raise his middle finger to Sumner Redstone. You get where we're going with this.

While he feels no sorrow over firing Tom Freston, Viacom chieftan Sumner Redstone is picking out friendship bracelets for Les Moonves, who he's said to be very happy with how he's running things at CBS.

"I could not be any more pleased with everything that Les and his team have achieved," Redstone, who is chairman and controlling shareholder of both Viacom and CBS, gushed to Wall Street analysts yesterday on a conference call to discuss CBS' quarterly results. "In Les we have the best executive in the media industry."

Ah hah! So that's how one fawns over their top underlings at CBS. Because for a minute there, we thought throwing them under a moving bus, driven by a drunk Mel Gibson, was the way things were done.

• VanityFair.com quietly relaunches. Crickets heard. [WWD]

• Diane Von Furstenberg husband and InterActiveCorp chief Barry Diller reaped some $469.7 million in salary, bonuses, and stock options. Who knew there was so much money to be made investing in CollegeHumor.com? [NYT, DHD]

• Tom Freston .. funny? [P6]

• NBC cuts 700 jobs, which means it shouldn't be hard to find a couple people upset about it. [PI]

• Star publisher American Media Inc. misses, for the third time in a row, its deadline to report earnings. That's "earnings" on top of its $1 billion in debt. [NYP]

• Bravo greenlights Project Runway for your weave: Top Hair, where at least one episode will certainly consist of remaking Kirsten Dunst's Marie Antoinette do. [Variety]

• Members to MySpace: Revolucion! [WSJ]

• Dan Rather's new HDNet show isn't about gimmicks. Unless you count the three that he lists. [NYDN]

• News Corp. and Nielsen make nice. [NYP]

• Isn't everything in Williamsburg considered "street art?" Isn't that why all those people look like that? [Curbed]

• In New York, porn and fashion are totally synonymous. Especially when Marc Jacobs and Michael Lucas. [R&M, 485i]

• Well, Ralph Lauren staffers, it looks like things could be worse. You could have the bed bugs they get in Bed Stuy — the ones you can actually see. [NYT]

• Did Tom Freston really think a book party for Arianna Huffington would draw a small crowd? [Page Six]

Magazines aren't the only place where top-level shifts go down. Today, Viacom (owner of much-in-the-news Paramount) announced Tom Freston, its chief of 26 years, has stepped down and will be replaced Philippe Dauman. Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone's memo to staffers, after the jump. The real reason for Freston's departure, soon to come.

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