New Republic, the almost-100-year-old magazine that "helped define modern American liberalism," has a new young owner: 28-year-old Chris Hughes, "a new-media guru who co-founded Facebook" and was once Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at Harvard, write Brian Stelter and Michael J. De La Merced. Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the sale could be a case of new-media money (and ideas) coming in to rescue a less-than-profitable old-media pub.  As the mag's publisher and editor in chief, Hughes says he will continue its focus on "high-quality long-form journalism," hire more writers and editors, and invest more heavily in tablet distribution.

TLC will not be showing a second season of "All-American Muslim" because of its "relatively meager "ratings, Brian Stelter reports. The show, which "received praise last fall for reflecting the average lives of Muslims in the United States," also briefly courted controversy when two advertisers pulled out after "a conservative man in Florida condemned the show as a whitewash of Islamic extremism," writes Stelter.

Netflix has "expressed interest" in picking up  the Australian-shot time-travel drama "Terra Nova," from its studio, 20th Television. Fox canceled the show, executive-produced by Steven Spielberg,  two days ago.

So how many covers have featured naked and pregnant celebs since the original, infamous Vanity Fair shot of Demi Moore some 21 years ago? Um, we lost count, but there's a whole bunch chronicled in this piece by Amy Wicks, illustrated by the latest in the trend (Jessica Simpson on April's Elle.) Wicks contends that magazines with such covers no longer attract the big newsstand sales of the original.

New owners have rescued Plum TV -- the small cable network targeted to the utra-rich -- from bankruptcy. Joseph Varet and Morgan Hertzan, who co-founded lifestyle entertainment content producer LXTV, bought Plum for $1.7 million. They plan to broaden the channel's audience "to include the wealthy along with the super rich," using content in upscale magazines like Architectural Digest as a model, writes Joe Flint.

Faster and with an improved screen, the new iPad, hitting the market March 16, will help marketers finally realize the potential of tablet advertising: "to run the kind of rich magazine or even TV-style ads that still command most of the advertising dollars spent," writes Robert Hof. ”For the first time, traditional magazine ads and TV ads suddenly become compelling on a computing device." "The tablet is the TV of this generation,”  Jason Baptiste, CEO of Onswipe, tells Hoff. “It’s the beauty of print married to the scale of the Web."

Is "The New Yorker... starting to take the web more seriously?" asks Joe Pompeo, analyzing reports that newyorker.com has a new editor:  Nicholas Thompson, formerly in charge of print features. Thompson, who already has digital chops -- he spent five years on staff at Wired, another pub in the Conde Nast stable --  tells Pompeo he'd like to foster "more online newsbreaks and original reporting; the latter is already a mainstay within the magazine's stable of writers, but the former still feels new," writes  Pompeo.

"This just in: The TV set-top box is on its deathbed," begins Claire Atkinson in her story reporting that Google is looking to sell the  set-top business it's set to acquire from Motorola Mobility, even before its acquisition deal closes. Atkinson provides more evidence of the set-top box's demise, from other companies also looking to dump this kind of business, to predictions that the device won't survive the launch of "a newer generation of software and devices capable of integrating TV and the Web."

"Mad Men" fans, you've got a bit more than two weeks to get yourself in shape for March 25, when that fascinating enigmathon premieres season five -- and New York mag is here to help, with a whole section in its latest issue devoted to the show. Looks like the handy-dandy chart summarizing all the plot points from seasons past is only in the print version (good, we say -- save something for subscribers, of which we are one). But online there's an excellent critical analysis, "What Makes Mad Men Great?,"  and a fun interview with Jon Hamm …

"At least one cable company could end up experimenting with offering Netflix by the end of the year," if the quiet meetings reported between Netflix CEO's Reed Hastings and several cable companies lead to partnerships, writes George Szalai. "A cable deal would increase Netflix's competition with Time Warner's HBO, but could allay fears among TV distributors that Netflix will lead to consumers' cutting the pay TV cord."