There's no two ways about it: it's been a shitty, shitty year for the media industry. We'd like to tell you that all those newly unemployed journalists, editors, producers, and television executives can look forward to a happier 2009, but with ad sales still dropping, it's unlikely.

Nevertheless, amid the bloody carnage and chaos, there were some media winners this year. After the jump, the precious few who not only survived, but thrived in 2008. Whether your cheer them or await their downfall is all up to you.

Katie Couric

Was it just back in August that we were predicting Couric's departure from CBS, citing a giant network misstep that allowed the 51-year old anchor to move from NBC to HD television? CBS Evening News ratings were down, and Couric getting bumped from NBC wasn't a good sign of things to come. Everyone was putting their money on her going the way of Kathie Lee.

Of course, that was all pre-Sarah Palin interview, when Couric put the Alaskan governor through the ringer and humiliated the vice presidential hopeful without ever losing her signature perk. Couric handled the interview deftly without ever seeming patronizing, exposing McCain's veep's ignorance on both foreign policy (like how far Russia was from her house) and um, newspapers. Now? The CBS anchor is still in third place in the ratings, but more people are watching her show than ever, and she's received tons of critical applause from bloggers and journos, who have put her in the triumvirate of Campbell Brown and Rachel Maddow for 2008's Year of the Women Anchors.

The Beijing Olympics

Michael Phelps may have brought home the gold during the 2008 Olympics in China, but it was NBC who brought in the green: 35 million viewers during the opening ceremonies, 40 million to watch Phelps swim the 200-meter butterfly for his 10th gold medal…all of these Nielsen numbers translated into cold hard cash for Jeff Zucker, providing perhaps the last big advertising boon before the recession officially hit. And it wasn't an accident — NBC held the reigns for the Beijing Olympics well before the first starter pistol was ever fired. First they strong-armed the Olympics committee to move the start-date of the ceremonies up so they wouldn't conflict with NBC's other prime time premieres, then they signed Phelps and other pro-athletes to shill for the station, for free, before any other networks had a chance to make more lucrative arrangements. Thus, the media sensation that was the 2008 Summer Olympics was born in a marriage of NBC's crafty planning and international media acquiescence.

Hulu

In Mandarin, Hulu means "holder of precious things," which is an apt title as any for the video website co-owned by NBC and Murdoch's News Corp. When announced in 2007 as a corporate-sponsored online video partnership that wouldn't allow any kind of user-generated content, Hulu presented itself as a sort of anti-YouTube for television clips. The naysayers scoffed. Why would people watch online what they could already see on television or DVD? And the original content was so limited; how did Hulu CEO Jason Kilar expect to get his corporate-hosted video site recognized when all the alternatives were so DIY?

Hulu's track record has proved the critics wrong: Although at 23 million unique visitors, Hulu's base remains smaller than the Google-owned YouTube's 83 million, research shows that the ad revenue might be equal between the two Internet giants by as early as 2009. Hulu's success can be quantified to the amount of archived television that Viacom and other networks are cracking down on for sites like YouTube. Perfect example: Saturday Night Live's Lazy Sunday digital video, which was pulled from YouTube after it aired in 2006. With no other outlet for the NBC show to trade its clips, pirated footage kept appearing and being taken down from video hosting sites. With Hulu, you can watch, embed, and share your favorite SNL clips, or even an entire programs, and only have to deal with perhaps one commercial every 10 minutes. The only problem now is Hulu's accessibility makes viewers wonder why they should even bother owning a television in the first place.

The National Enquirer and Rielle Hunter

The biggest story in August may have been Michael Phelps and his gold medals, but it was neck and neck with another media victory: this time, the biggest politician scandal since Monica Lewinsky. And how apropos, it was also discovered by David Pecker's staff over at The National Enquirer.

For months, NE had been claiming that the one-time VP candidate had secretly fathered a love-child with an unidentified woman, but it wasn't till the AMI-owned paper splashed some non-Photoshopped pics all over the front of their tabloid in August that people sat up and paid attention. Who was the woman that John was meeting in a hotel room? And who was that young baby he was holding? Especially salacious was the hypocrisy involved: Edwards had run on a platform of family values, and his own wife Elizabeth was dying of terminal cancer. Not the prettiest story in the world, what a boon for The Enquirer, which got to proudly announce "I told you so!" while the rest of the media scrambled to play catch-up. And then the reveal that Rielle Hunter wasn't just some woman, but a crazy ex-party girl turned super-spiritual New Age hippie that had made documentary videos about Edwards during his 2004 campaign? It was no semen on a blue dress or cigar under the table, but it was damn close.

Rupert Murdoch Not Running Wall Street Journal Into the Ground

Normally, we don't consider accomplishments to mean people didn't do something, but in the case of News Corp's acquisition of the Wall Street Journal, we feel an exception could be made. Because honestly, Murdoch didn't have a thing going for him when he bought WSJ publisher Dow Jones last year. Circulation at the company was down, the Bancroft family which owned the controlling stake in Dow Jones rejected the original News Corp. offer, and the first thing Murdoch did when he took over the paper was immediately break agreements that the editorial and Op-Ed sections would not be under the News Corp. agenda.

Yet somehow the media giant managed to not turn the Wall Street Journal into another Post, and even JackShaf over at Slate (the most liberal of liberal blogs) says that WSJ is improving. They even got up to speed with online commenting and their own fancy supplement magazine!

And while another over-eager newspaper buyer, Sam Zell, managed to run the Tribune Company into bankruptcy, Murdoch's business savvy has allowed him several prominent synergies with other publications that has kept WSJ afloat during the industry-wide dark age.

CBS

Who knew that a station known for its throwback reality shows (Survivor, Big Brother) and canned-laughter sitcoms would blow all the other networks out of the water in 2008? Yet that's exactly what "The Eye" has done over at CBS, where Two and a Half Men remains the number one sitcom in America, and the network is the only one to show year-to-year growth in the last several months. Though we may not always agree with the content choices that Americans like to shove in their eyeballs, you have to give credit to a station that isn't using any flashy Ben Silverman's to create sensationalist programming that either hits the mark or doesn't (and ends up costing the network millions). Instead, CBS found that traditional programming is still a hit in the country, and even the corniest of canned laughter can still elicit a chuckle that beats 30 Rock ratings by a mile.

Tina Fey

So what if CBS is getting all the ratings? At least Tina Fey will be able to melt down the gold from all the Emmys she's won for 30 Rock in order to pay for that small island nation she's been eying. And don't tell him we said this, but it may have actually been a smart move on NBC's Ben Silverman's part to delay the season premiere of the show until after Fey had done several cameos on her alma mater, Saturday Night Live. Her portrayal of Sarah Palin gave the show 10 million viewers at one point, a 42% increase from the same show a year before. Which was great publicity for Palin and Fey, both of whom are going on to write books about their experiences.