• As earning seasons reporting continued, NewsCorp came out on the winning side of the ledger, with profits up 11 percent in the past quarter with the picture for broadcast turning around. "The best results we've seen in seven quarters," is how Rupert Murdoch described the broadcast numbers. The company's dark cloud in the cheer: MySpace, which is failing to meet the deliverables in its deal with Google. "With MySpace, we are in a state of transition," was how NewsCorp's CEO described the once mighty social networking site's search for a new raison d'etre. And you know how those states of transition go online...[Variety]

• Taking those numbers with others from this earnings season, The Wrap is ready to call it a "media rebound." [The Wrap]

• Just when he seemed to be getting a head of steam on a good post-Oscar win bout of paralysis and indecision, one of Hollywood's finest traditions, director Danny Boyle has cut the party short by announcing his next film. And what could be a more obvious story to tell than 127 Hours, the true tale of a hiker trapped under a boulder who eventually cuts his arm off to escape? [Variety]

• The troubled pre-season of The Tourist may now have a A list team attached. Johnny Depp is in talks to star opposite Angelina Jolie in the film. Earlier star Sam Worthington and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck both removed themselves from the project over "creative differences." [Variety]

• Continuing the Jackson watch, the movie has thus far brought in $125 million internationally. [The Wrap
]

• Disney has settled the lawsuit brought against it by the makers of the Luxo Jr. lamp that has become the Pixar trademark. Rather than celebrating the celebrity brought to it by its high profile association, the Swedish company that manufactures Luxo sued for trademark infringement after Pixar included copies of the lamp in special editions of the Up dvd's, saying Pixar's unauthorized use of their product would "cause devastating damage to Luxo and dilute the goodwill which Luxo has built up." [Hollywood Reporter]

The father of Rubina (age 9) reportedly tried to sell her for $300,000 to an undercover reporter, because his family didn't make any cash from the film:

[The father] reportedly raised an asking price of £50,000 for Rubina to £200,000 at a later meeting.

Justifying the increase, his brother Mohiuddin was quoted as saying: "The child is special now. This is not an ordinary child. This is an Oscar child."

Jesus, that is truly horrible. Add in the tidal wave of poverty porn the movie started, and Slumdog is actually a net loss for the human race! Unless you're a News Corp. shareholder: Rubina Ali has now served Fox Searchlight in the film, and also Murdoch-owned News of the World for the original child sale story, and Murdoch's Times UK and New York Post for follow-ups. Good work!

Perhaps the only thing worse than a terribly impoverished dad trying to sell his own daughter is this:

[The British filmmakers behind Slumdog] said that they decided not to shower the child actors from Mumbai's shantytowns with cash for fear of having "a transformative impact on their lives".

Again: absolutely nothing good came out of this feel-good movie, unless you're Rupert Murdoch.
[Times UK]

As Fox called in the FBI to find out who had leaked the film onto the Internet, Friedman posted a column last Thursday marveling at how easy it was to find a copy of the purloined Hugh Jackman comic book film online. The column was quickly removed and over the weekend, reports emerged that he had been fired. News Corp.'s corporate P.R. even released a statement on Sunday saying that the columnist was toast.

But that was a bit premature, and Ailes gave Friedman the chance to come in and tell him and Fox News executive vice president John Moody why he shouldn't be fired. That meeting was supposed to take place this morning, but got pushed back to the afternoon.

Why go through all the bother? Our guess is that, as ridiculous as it might sound, corporate politics were to blame. Power at News Corp. is in flux now that Ruper Murdoch's deputy Peter Chernin has announced his exit. And some of the big winners in the corporate restructurings so far have been the heads of the Fox movie studio, Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopoulos. No matter how inevitable Friedman's exit may have been, it wouldn't be surprising if Ailes bristled at the idea of movie studio people making hiring-and-firing decisions in his cable news outfit.

So, Friedman got his day in kangaroo court. And lost. Here's the official statement from Fox News:

Fox News representatives and Roger Friedman met today and mutually agreed to part ways immediately. Fox News appreciates Mr. Friedman's ten years of contributions to building foxnews.com and wishes him success in his future endeavors. Mr. Friedman is grateful to his colleagues for their friendship and support over the past decade.

Update: Friedman asks that we clarify one thing: He did not not download Wolverine per se. He explains:

I did not download anything. I found Wolverine on the internet by accident on Wednesday night. I was looking for something else—info on another movie, which had a link to this site. I simply pressed "play" and when I realized it really was Wolverine, I skipped watching Lost and watched this instead. Afterwards I discovered that the Times had written about it earlier that evening. I guess what I did was called streaming. But there was no downloading. I am fervently anti-piracy, have written extensively about this, and spent too much money at amazon's mp3 site. Please let's clear up this misconception.

Okay then.

In a lengthy overview of Fox's new power structure after the elevation of Fox Searchlight chief Peter Rice and Fox Networks Group president Tony Vinciquerra to fill the vacuum left by Chernin, Variety drops this nugget:

If there's any question mark to the new setup, network execs wonder how active Murdoch plans to be in the pilot screenings this year. In recent years the mogul hasn't played much of a role in Fox's programming decisions, but with Chernin out of the picture, some wonder if Murdoch will feel the need to have more of a say this spring as the net plots its upfront presentation.

Murdoch has reason to believe that he has the programming touch in his blood. The last time he intervened into the affairs of Fox Broadcasting, it was to force then-TV chiefs Sandy Grushow and Gail Berman to put American Idol on the air at the recommendation of his daughter Elizabeth. That decision has to inspire confidence in his meddling abilities. And since, as we pointed out last week, Rice is a Murdoch loyalist whose father was an old friend of Rupert's—not to mention that he has no television experience—he's unlikely to stand up to the boss' suggestions about the lead-in to House.

As always with Murdoch, personal loyalty trumps business. The biggest loser in the reshuffle is Peter Liguori, who's been pushed out as the entertainment chairman of Fox Broadcasting, overseeing the Fox prime time schedule. It was Chernin who put Liguori in the job in 2005, promoting him from the job overseeing the FX cable network.

Replacing him is the Brit ex-pat Rice (on the left with Danny Boyle), and currently the head of specialty film label Fox Searchlight. For a studio exec, Rice is well-liked and affable enough. Also, Searchlight has been one of the only companies to consistently profitably play the Oscar game, backing this year's Slumdog Millionaire and last year's Juno.

But he struggled to succeed outside that boutique business. When Rice was approached in 2006 to take over Paramount's specialty business, Murdoch was so set on keeping him that he let him launch a whole new film division, Fox Atomic, which was meant to court young men. But the venture quickly proved to be a bust; its first film, a remake of Revenge of the Nerds was cancelled in the middle of production. Last year, the unit was scaled back dramatically, and today's memo doesn't bother mentioning it.

What Murdoch's memo also doesn't mention is that Rice's father was a friend and business partner of Murdoch's back in England and it was that connection that landed Rice his first Fox job back in 1989. Murdoch writes in his memo, "Peter has the vision, creativity and determination to grow and remodel our television network." Rice has never worked in TV, so who knows? But Murdoch has always been more comfortable running News Corp. as a family business than the conglomerate that it is. Apparently, he still is.

Chernin's contract expires in June, and he has a clause that allows him to become a well-paid producer on movies for the Fox studio he currently oversees. (The company now confirms his exit, as well as his plans to start a production company.) A convenient out for an untenable situation: Murdoch has always made it clear that he wanted to put one of his children in charge.

Why settle things now, with June some months away? It might have something to do with a story in today's New York Times questioning Murdoch's devotion to the newspaper business. News Corp.'s print holdings have weighed down results even as Chernin's Hollywood empire have steadily produced cash. It's not too difficult to read the story as an argument for why the Chernin (profitable) half of News Corp. is being dragged down by the Murdoch (sentimental) part.

Also, pointing out the dodgy performance of News Corp.'s newspapers is a veiled dig at the current dynastic frontrunner, James Murdoch. The 35-year-old executive oversees News Corp's businesses in Asia and Europe, including a large collection of newspapers, where he's been cutting costs in the name of "editorial efficiency."

Could the elder Murdoch have taken offense? If a squabble over the story was a factor, it can't have been the only one. But in a family business, work is always personal. And no media company inspires speculation about palace intrigue like News Corp.

Aside from her unofficial role as her husband's consigliere, Deng is the chief strategist of MySpace China. So it's hardly unusual for her to show up at the office. Indeed, since MySpace China's CEO abruptly quit last September and still hasn't been replaced amid ongoing boardroom drama, she might as well be running the show.

Yet MySpace China is more or less a failure, with less than 10 million users at last count, against rival Chinese services with more than 100 million users in the country.

Meanwhile, there is what looks like an ongoing smear campaign suggesting that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and Deng, who both serve on MySpace China's board, had an affair — one that some claim is spread by Roger Ailes, a rival executive at News Corp. We have to wonder: If MySpace China had a business worth talking about, would anyone be dwelling on this rumor?

We're told Dudeck leaked Arrington not only the MySpace Music screenshots, but also tipped him to a story about MySpace friend-in-chief Tom Anderson's brush with the FBI as a hacker in the 1980s. The article served to burnish Anderson's rather questionable geek credentials.

MySpace has helped Arrington's business in other ways besides feeding him stories. The News Corp.-owned social network was a major sponsor of the recent TechCrunch50 conference.

Arrington has no issue bragging privately about his relationship with Dudeck. And Dudeck, our source says, has "no issues to sleeping with key influencers." Before Arrington, we hear, the rumor was Dudeck dated MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe.

But don't believe us — let's go to the tape. Check out this clip of DeWolfe and Dudeck together at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, caught by Kara Swisher for AllThingsD. The way Dudeck leans in to DeWolfe to stay warm tells you more than any of our anonymous sources.

Kara's quippy response — "You don't have to love me" — reminds me of an anecdote my boss once related about Dudeck. The flirtatious MySpace flack accosted him at a conference last year and said, "We really need to work on our relationship." Sorry, Dani — Owen doesn't swing that way.

Because we're told that the paragons of feminism at CAA, less than a month removed from throwing a birthday party for ex-con Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, attempted to sweep the contretemps under the rug after their $15 million man Aloni apparently lied about and then offered a "token apology" for his outburst. Meanwhile, other female execs at Fox (including Fox 2000 president Liz Gabler) corroborated the agent's abusive tradition, driving Chernin to act.

It was only last fall that Chernin's thinly veiled CAA wariness showed up in a Fortune profile of the agency ("They have put themselves in a place where they just have so much control over the business. ... Of course, that's not always to the good of companies like mine, but certainly as an outside admirer you have to admire their strategic thinking"), and everyone in town knows there's more where that came from. The scope and length of this Cold War has yet to be determined, meanwhile, but don't hesitate to send us your educated guesses.