The figures for last week were truly bad, deeply bad - the worst for the news network in 20 years. CNN averaged just 395,000 viewers in prime time for the week of May 14, a figure lower than any week of prime-time programming on the network since September 1991. CNN has seen its competitive position erode for several years without instituting significant changes in its overall approach. The network's management has kept to its course of emphasizing news coverage and not the views of its prime-time personalities.

Falling stock prices? Who cares? Facebook has partnered with TBS in a partnership where the network will bundle Facebook ads with its own TV and online ads. This marks the first time the social media company has partnered with a network to sell its own content.

The high-end fashion book that died in the early '90s recession is due for a comback. Peter Kaplan, editorial director of Conde's Fairchild Fashion Media group, will oversee the quarterly's relaunch. The first issue is due out in September. "It will be a big, beautiful magazine with a circulation of about 100,000," said Kaplan. "It will be for guys in their 30s and 40s who are Web-savvy but want to hold onto print." Kaplan wrote for the original M, edited by the late Clay Felker and Jane Lane.

Media General is a chain of small-ish newspapers across America. Not a particularly prestigious or savvy chain of newspapers, and the company's value has been nosediving off a cliff for the past five years along with most of the rest of the newspaper industry. But! Media General has now been purchased by Mr. Warren Buffett. And just like that, this mediocre little newspaper chain becomes the embodiment of the industry's future.

Big-six publisher Hachette Book Group is making free chapters of upcoming books from bestselling authors like James Patterson and Michael Connelly available through a new Facebook app. The app, ChapterShare, lets Hachette publishing divisions, authors and retail partners post free chapters of books on their Facebook pages. Readers can preorder the books directly from the page and share links to sample chapters with their Facebook friends.

Scripps is producing two programs that will debut Sept. 17 in seven of the company's 13 TV markets. One is a game show, "Let's Ask America" and the other a news magazine "The List" that replaces "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" in access and early fringe. By producing it's own content, Scripps cuts back on syndie costs. Partnered with Cox and Raycom, it is putting together the daily show "Right This Minute." The series will be made available outside of the Scripps markets through Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. All are scheduled for a fall 2013 national launch.

Information Week’s Byte has landed a new columnist who starts out by biting the hand that feeds him. The columnist, magazine publishing wunderkind turned digital media neo-Luddite Bob Guccione Jr., kicks things off by kicking Facebook where it hurts – right in its relevancy. Importantly, this column was conceived and written before the recent Facebook pile-on, and from what I know about Guccione’s views on the subject, this is a column that’s been in the making for some time. (MediaPost readers may recall the piece he did in the issue of MEDIA magazine that he guest edited in which he …

"The Dark And The Wacky Share Space On The Schedule." That's how a New York Times headline writer aims to categorize the 21 new broadcast TV shows set for prime time, as well as midseason replacements, shown at the upfronts last week. "On one hand, shows with apocalyptic themes, among them 'Last Resort' on ABC and 'Revolution' on NBC, are joining returning series with supernatural and fantastical plot lines like 'Fringe,' 'Grimm,' 'Once Upon a Time' and 'The Vampire Diaries,'" writes Stuart Elliott. On the funny side of the street are nine new sitcoms. …

A U.S. District Court Judge dismissed an unfair competition suit brought by Fox against Aereo, the Barry Diller-backed service that has been streaming local TV content online to New York City users since March. That still leaves a copyright infringement claim by the major broadcast networks against Aereo, with a hearing scheduled on the matter next week.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes sees a "hunger out there for big-idea journalism" that he aims to fulfill now that he's editor in chief and publisher of The New Republic. "My goal for the publication is to be the magazine New York and D.C. and L.A. people read on the weekends," he tells Lucia Moses. "It’s sort of for the crème de la crème." As a member of digital royalty, so to speak, now moving to the "old-media establishment," Hughes defends print, noting, "as a technology [it's] pretty amazing—it’s light, disposable, you can share it easily, it’s colorful. I read more …