Ellen Degeneres is working with NBC and openly gay writer Liz Feldman to develop a half-hour sitcom featuring a lesbian woman "who gets pregnant with her straight male best friend just as he meets his soul mate and gets married," writes Jessica Gelt. This would be the first lesbian protagonist on a sitcom since Degeneres finally came out on her show "Ellen" 16 years ago, we believe.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went outside the media and retail biz for its new CEO -- former metals-industry executive Daniel Diensta -- a move that will almost definitely mean cost-cutting, write Bloomberg reporters. Diensta is described by one analyst as "a restructuring kind of guy. He has a history of coming into companies, fixing them up and selling them.”

Unlike those TV shows that annoyingly promote "the episode that changes everything" and then don't deliver, Sunday night's "The Good Wife" really did reboot the series creatively, and has garnered a ton of media coverage accordingly. Critics -- including MediaPost's own Ed Martin, and Alan Sepinwall -- heaped praise on the CBS show, some calling this episode, in which law-firm partners Will and Diane discovered their mentees were taking clients and starting a new law firm, the most memorable one of the show's five seasons.Interviews with showrunners Michelle and Robert King extended the coverage (did …

The Richmond [Va.] Times-Dispatch is erecting a pay wall for its digital content starting tomorrow.  Readers are allowed 20 free articles a month before they must pay for access to content from the paper, which was sold to Warren Buffett last year.

"A battle of the binge is brewing," writes Josef Adalian, with FX and Turner fighting the industry standard in which "networks only have rights to stream the last five episodes of their series on their websites and VOD." The two cable networks want to be able "to keep streaming every episode in a current season until it ends." Netflix is opposed, saying that "if studios give into these demands, the service could dramatically cut the price it pays for streaming rights, potentially denying producers millions of dollars in revenue."

Cable network Fusion, a joint venture between ABC and Spanish-language media company Univision, will launch tonight with a distinctive blend of "hard news, satire and pop culture" aimed at Millennial viewers, 18 to 34 years old, an audience other cable news networks have failed to reach, according to Reuters reporters. The network initially meant to target only Hispanics under 35, an idea that was scrapped "after focus groups showed young Hispanics were put off by the idea of a television channel centered on their ethnicity," writes Douglas Hanks in the Miami Herald.

It's possible that CNN will launch a comedy news show starring its latest hire, Bill Weir, according to anonymous sources quoted by Richard Johnson. Still, considering that it would be a "big gamble," as one source says, to extend its brand into waters so ably navigated by the likes of Comedy Central's much-lauded Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert -- and that "Weir is a news guy... not a comedian” -- it doesn't sound very likely. We do kind of believe the rumor that CNN wanted to hire John Oliver, who filled in for Stewart over the summer.  But turning a …

Condé Nast named a new Epicurious editor in chief, Nilou Motamed, formerly of  Time Inc.'s Travel + Leisure, in a move "to help [the site] broaden its content from food to lifestyle," write Emma Bazilian. Former editor in chief Tanya Steel will remain as a special projects contributor, also involved in licensing deals. New plans also include mobile and video extensions, with a video channel set for launch in Q1 2014.

In a first-time promotion, the New York Times is giving free four-week digital subscriptions to newsstand buyers of the Sunday, Nov. 3 Times. The deal is "designed to rope in people who don’t care enough about the paper to pay for home delivery — but, the NYT hopes, could be enticed to shell out for digital once they’ve tried it," writes Laura Hazard Owen.

Boston businessman John Henry bought the Boston Globe on Thursday afternoon from The New York Times Co., days after a labor dispute seemed to put a hitch in the sale.