Here & there
MNTV wrestles up record ratings
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jan 13, 2009 - 12:04:04 AM

MyNetwork TV wrestles record ratings for ‘Smackdown’
MyNetworkTV started off 2009 the way it ended 2008, with record ratings. The network, which has set weekly viewership highs several times already this season, drew 3.9 million total viewers for the two-hour “WWE Friday Night Smackdown” last week, the most ever for a telecast on the network. The 8 p.m. show also set an all-time high among viewers 18-34, bringing in 868,000 viewers in the demo. The episode averaged a 2.2 Nielsen household rating, tying it with two episodes in November for the highest-rated ever on MyNetworkTV. Meanwhile, in other ratings, both ABC and NBC started the year on higher notes two weeks ago with their New Year's Eve specials. ABC's "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest" averaged 17.61 million total viewers and 8.49 million viewers 18-49 from 11:30 p.m. to 12:33 a.m., up 4 percent versus the previous year in the demo. NBC's "New Year's Eve with Carson Daly," meanwhile, averaged 8.6 million total viewers from 11:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m., up 8 percent versus last year. It also posted a 3.0 rating among 18-49s, an 8 percent boost versus the previous year.

It’s not easy being green: Plenty magazine folds
Green magazine Plenty has folded for lack of, well, green. Last week the title had laid off a number of staff members with the intention of discontinuing its print product in favor of the web. But yesterday publisher Mark Spellun told several media outlets that Plenty will cease on the internet as well, after talks with a third-party backer last fall fell through. Plenty published 25 issues since launching in 2004 as an environmentally conscious magazine aimed at those who have a “passion and desire to re-invent, re-design and re-create a more sustainable future.” The site had long offered a digital version of the magazine, and the print edition came on 85 to 100 percent recycled paper. Plenty is hardly the old magazine, niche or otherwise, to fold in recent days. Last week Meredith’s Country Home shut down, days after 8020 Media, publishers of JPG and Everywhere magazines, went under.

TNT orders up new drama from ‘Raymond’s’ Romano
You’d probably expect “Everybody Loves Raymond’s” Ray Romano to show up on TBS, Turner’s comedy network, rather than TNT, its drama channel. But as part of the latter’s push to program three full nights a week, the comic is making a rare foray into drama, or at least dramedy. The network has picked up “Men of a Certain Age,” a show written, produced and co-starring Romano as one of a trio of college friends realizing that their lives didn’t quite live up to their early hopes. Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher will co-star in the show, which received a 10-episode pickup. The series probably won’t make it to air for at least a year, but TNT has a slew of other shows premiering in the meantime. In addition to “Leverage,” which launched last month, the ad agency show “Trust Me,” with Will McCormack and Tom Cavanagh, debuts next week, and TNT ordered two other new series, “Time Heals” and “The Line,” last week. The network has said it aims to compete with broadcasters within the next few years, offering several nights of all-original scripted series.

Showtime plastering ‘Tara’ premiere across the web
Even if you don’t subscribe to Showtime, you may not be able to avoid the series premiere of “The United States of Tara,” the new series written by “Juno’s” Diablo Cody and starring Toni Collette as a housewife with multiple personalities. The CBS-owned network made “Tara’s” pilot available via free streaming on more than a hundred web sites starting yesterday. Those sites include TV.com, Facebook, Gawker, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN, Fancast, Bebo, Veoh, EW.com, Blockbuster.com, CinemaNow, TVGuide.com and Netflix. The show will also be available via cell phone on Verizon's V-Cast Mobile TV and on AT&T Mobile TV through MediaFLO. It proves that the pay cable networks are increasingly embracing online availability, several years after broadcasters blazed the path. HBO recently began making some of its shows available on the net, and Showtime did the same with its hit show “The Tudors.” “Tara’s” actual premiere airs Sunday.

Financial Times cutting 80 jobs as it integrates web and print
There is still no end in sight to the newspaper layoffs that have defined the industry the past two years. The latest such news comes from the venerable Financial Times, which intends to axe up to 80 jobs, including 20 editorial staffers, from its global operations. The cuts come as the company reorganizes to deepen integration between its digital and online operations and streamline new acquisitions against the backdrop of a struggling economy, according to an internal memo seen by Media Life. Still, the most recent trading statement from its publisher, FT Group, which came in October, reported an 11 percent rise in revenue in the first nine months of 2008. Ad revenue was up 1 percent, and the paper’s global circulation for the six months ended in December was down just 1.11 percent year on year -- the smallest decline of any of the British quality daily papers. Nonetheless, the paper first began making cuts back in October when it announced it would cut 60 staffers. In early December another leak revealed that the paper was offering voluntary redundancy, freezing some salaries and giving staff the chance to shift to part time work.