Contradicting their earlier statements that they would never work together again, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie have combined their elusive talents for another season of "The Simple Life," which has been picked up by E! Entertainment Television. Fox premiered the series in 2003 and carried it for three successful seasons. The apparent twist in season four of the lowbrow franchise, which will begin showing on E! next spring, is that the co-stars, who are still feuding in real life, will not talk to one another. They are, in fact, filming their segments separately. E! will also soon begin airing the …

The vibrancy of the magazine industry is illustrated by a list of launches set for late 2005 and early 2006 in various countries. These are detailed in the MagazineWorld Web site. Among the more notable titles coming to market: Good Food (Romania); Total Kakuro (a magazine devoted to puzzles, for the British market); Joy Russia; Eureka (a young-adult magazine for the French); and Dive e Donna (for Italian women).

Relying on a dozen dramatic graphs, Terry Heaton illustrates the unhealthful condition of the broadcasting business in the U.S. Each graph plots the 12-month stock price of public companies that own and operate TV stations. Among them: Emmis, Gannett, Hearst-Argyle, Media General, Sinclair, and Tribune. Every one of the graphs shows a steady decline in share price through the year. "It's a sad state that the broadcasting industry ... is so wed to incumbent practices that they have been all but left behind. The proliferation of channels makes network television anachronistic," says Heaton in his blog. "Television companies have been …

Business Week's Jon Fine is impressed by a "very smart piece" by Jack Shafer that recently ran at Slate.com. Shafer, writing a "future autopsy" on Google, describes a world in which the search company was vanquished not by Microsoft or Yahoo! or even Time Warner, but rather by the recently "Web-ified" Rupert Murdoch. Shafer builds a case for the dismantling of Google by the world's most clever newspaperman. Writes Fine, in summing up: "It's true that Murdoch, the consummate big-city newspaperman, has soured on dailies. But what's neat about the Shafer scenario is that it puts newspapers in the context …

Now that SBC has fattened itself by absorbing AT&T and assuming its corporate name, and with Verizon continuing on its spend-and-stomp tear, the next big war over delivery of content will be fought between the hard-charging Baby Bells and the big cable companies. So says Ken Belson of The New York Times, whose lengthy piece in yesterday's paper established the parameters of the coming contretemps. AT&T and Verizon are intent on buying and creating content, reported Belson, and they firmly believe that based on their long-standing relationship with customers, they can muscle in on territory that Comcast, Time Warner and …

Say what you want about CNN's Anderson Cooper, the current shooting star of TV news, the fact of the matter is that he's produced only mixed results for his network since last month when his nightly show, AC 360, was given a prime slot in the nightly schedule. Eleven days into its new time slot, reports Mediaweek, the show "averaged 568,000 total viewers, with the balance tuning in for the program's first hour (685,000). Cooper's average audience is down 19 percent relative to [Aaron] Brown's final week" at CNN. Moreover, Cooper isn't retaining Larry King's lead-in (losing 32 percent of …

Citing the recent turbulence in the TV universe, what with more and more programs becoming available in various free and inexpensive on-demand formats, the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan says, "Don't weep for Nielsen Media Research just yet." Ratings still matter, she says, and Nielsen "already has plans in the works to count viewers who watch prime-time programs via DVRs.... And soon enough, no doubt, Nielsen or some other company will be able to give media companies daily snapshots of who watched or bought what in a variety of mediums: On TV in real time, via DVRs, via on-demand platforms, …

To celebrate Rolling Stone's 1000th issue, which it will publish next May, founder Jann Wenner has come up with an idea that is both eye-catching and hugely expensive. The entire domestic run of the oversize magazine will carry a 3-D cover. "If a magazine spends $100,000 to do a cover, that would be a huge, astronomical amount," Steve DeLuca, the magazine's publisher, told The New York Times. "This cover will be far, far, far in excess of that amount." Wenner Media is raising the rate base for RS' 1000th ish, from 1.4 to 1.5 million copies. The newsstand price has …

Noting that advertising for lawyers and legal services got its start with a local case nearly 30 years ago, leading eventually to national ads both in print and on television, the Arizona Republic has published an assessment of the business in its current state. Conclusion: The ads can be informative and useful, but a tight watch must be maintained over ethical guidelines, which vary from state to state. Most major law firms remain averse to advertising, especially in consumer periodicals and on TV, but those that directly approach potential litigants, says the Arizona paper, generally do so within the bounds …

The Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein, an entertainment reporter who takes every opportunity to question the honesty and integrity of Hollywood's honchos, began a wonderful, lengthy piece, published right before the Thanksgiving holiday, like this: "Showbiz people are prone to exaggeration, but when everybody is exaggerating about the same thing, you know something bad is happening." The "something bad" Goldstein was referring to is, for the entertainment industry, conceivably very awful indeed. "The era of moviegoing as a mass audience ritual is slowly but inexorably drawing to a close, eroded by many of the same forces that have eviscerated the …