NBC, in the middle of a complete revamp after being acquired by Comcast, has named Jennifer Salke president of NBC Entertainment. She will "oversee all aspects of prime-time and daytime programming, including comedy and drama development," according to the L.A. Times As a longtime executive at 20th Century Fox Television, Salke helped develop "Glee" and "Modern Family."

Newspapers offering their own daily deals could help save the industry, writes blogger Ilya Vedrashko, whose day job is doing R&D at ad agency Hill Holliday. Vedrashko notes that newspapers already have two things coveted by other Groupon wanna-bes: local audiences and local sales relationships.   We also learn -- in the very first sentence -- that the daily deals business is big enough to have spawned its own trade publication!

To promote the off-network run of CBS' "The Big Bang Theory," which starts Sept. 18 nationally over TBS and locally via Fox-owned and other stations, Warner Bros. has released a new two-minute music video of the show's theme song by the Barenaked Ladies. Featuring the show's cast members as well as the band, the video -- titled "5 Nights a Week," will also serve as an extra on a fourth season DVD out on Sept. 13. A full-length version of the song is promised for a new Barenaked Ladies greatest hits album.

"You've crafted a cogent, concise statement about your company. It's ready to go -- until, of course, you get 'help' from other departments. Hang on tight; this will NOT be pretty."So begins Clare Lynch's witty, instructional piece on the "bizarrely evasive style" standard to business English -- like substituting "right-sized" for "downsized." This post is on ragan.com, which provides "news and ideas for communicators" -- which could mean anybody who has to do any business writing at all, though it's targeted mostly toward marketing/PR folks. Lots of good stuff here, including a timely piece on how "Netflix botches …

Today marks the final day for New York City's only contemporary rock radio station, WRXP. David Hinckley writes that the station, in the process of being sold by Emmis to Merlin Media, is expected to become an FM news outlet targeting "soccer moms" -- women in their 30s and 40s.

Starz Entertainment's pay cable channel Encore, as its name suggests, has long focused on, well, showing encores of theatrical movies. Now, reports Lacey Rose, Encore is entering the original programming business. Well, sort of. Two of the first three announced projects, as Starz exec Stephan Shelanski "suggests" to Lacey, are small investments in international co-productions. A four-part miniseries thriller called "The Take," for example, has already aired in the U.K., where it was produced by ITV. And a three-hour retelling of "Moby Dick," with William Hurt and Ethan Hawke, was co-produced by RHI, Tele Munchen and Gate Filmproduktion (and a …

Danielle Wright reacts to the news that Michael Bullerdick, a white male, has been appointed managing editor of Essence by noting that reporters get to write about experiences they have not been a part of all the time: "Though [they] may not have had a near-death experience or ever been unemployed, through research, [they] can accurately tell a story." Still, she asks "if the hat of an African-American woman is one that you can 'put-on.' Are you able to suggest topics that have been affecting the community for years? Can you reminisce or relate to the stories of historic Black …

Apparently PBS' "Pioneers of Television" series was so successful that the pubcaster is now edging into the modern era with its TV history docs. Coming to prime time this fall: "America in Primetime," a four-part look at the shows and characters that have "both reflected and shaped our national character." The themes of the four episodes, writes John Klesewetter, will be "Man of the House" (interviewees including Dick Van Dyke and "Breaking Bad's" Bryan Cranston); "The Crusader" (from Alan Alda of "M*A*S*H" to Hugh Laurie of "House"); "Independent Woman" (including Mary Tyler Moore, Roseanne Barr, Candice Bergen and "Grey's Anatomy's" …

Now that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has dropped its bid to buy BSkyB (here's one of a thousand stories on that subject), let's travel to Ireland for an analysis from Boston Globe writer Kevin Cullen on how Murdoch's U.K. woes may spread to the U.S. "like a contagion and ruin his empire."  This post is worth a look if only for Cullen's personal memories of his Brit editors at the Boston Herald 30 years ago, plus a tidy history of Rupert in the U.S. from The New York Post to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, and a …

Frank Rich's first article in New York Magazine, "Obama's Original Sin," was "a Ruthian home run," notes Charlie Warner, who goes on to analyze the veteran writer's move from the New York Times. Warner concludes his thoughtful piece noting that the "stupid inequity in pay and dumb management at the Times," could have played a part in Rich's exodus. Going back to the baseball metaphor, he writes, "Maybe it's the same reason Babe Ruth left the Red Sox for the Yankees to hit gargantuan home runs."