Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Just when it looked as though viewers were going to be cruelly deprived of their weekly life-affirming glimpse into the lives of three mistresses of the universe who always drop everything to be supportive to one other (or to engage in the most idealized cougar-cub relationship ever likely to grace our screens), Lipstick Jungle has won an eleventh-hour reprieve. More

♦  The battle over Project Runway rages on: Harvey Weinstein is now claiming that Bravo intentionally undermined the success of Season 5 by changing the show's airtime, running "mundane and unappealing" ads, and "revealing spoilers about future episodes." [THR]
♦  Barack Obama will appear on The Daily Show tomorrow night. [AP]
♦  The New York Times is not running out of money, say execs at the paper. [NYO]
♦  MSNBC moved into second place in the primetime cable news race, beating CNN for the month of October. [THR]More

♦  NBC's Ben Silverman says he hasn't managed the "unrelenting press attention" as well as he could have, and he's doing better than most people assme, a sentiment echoed by his close pal, Donny Deutsch. [TVDecoder]
♦  Harbinger's Phil Falcone says he has no plans to dump his investment in the New York Times.  [Reuters]
♦  MTV is pulling the plug on TRL. [WSJ]
♦  Mark your calendars: Jeanine Pirro's court show debuts next week. [HuffPo]
♦  Current and former staffers at the LA Times are planning to file suit against owner Sam Zell. [LA Observed]
♦  How writers in Hollywood are dealing with the "new comedic landscape." [NYO]
♦  Product placements have earned less airtime on network TV compared with the same period last year, according to Nielsen.  [AdAge]
♦  How the financial meltdown will affect Hollywood. [THR]
♦  Jeff Zucker, Mel Karmazin and Steven Rattner weigh in on the state of the media biz. [Portfolio]

The End of Silverman? | Is NBC programming whiz Ben Silverman hooked on drugs? And is Jeff Zucker hoping he quits before he has to fire him? That's what Nikki Finke has to say: "Last Thursday was Ben's first day in the office all month after attending the Beijing Olympics and guesting aboard Elisabeth Murdoch's yacht... But a pressing issue has been Silverman's partying ways, especially his excessive off-hours drinking and drug-taking, which has not only been visible to but also prompted complaints from Hollywood's TV community." [Deadline Hollywood]

• Chris Matthews has been missing from Hardball this week because he has pneumonia. [TVNewser]
• NBC's Olympics ratings took a slight dip on Wednesday night. But it's unlikely anyone was watching it on the web: More than 99.7% of the viewing has been on TV.  [THR, TVWeek]
• Cameos on the next season of Entourage? NBC's Ben Silverman, Fox's Tom Rothman, film critics Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips, and the ladies from The View. [Deadline Hollywood]
• Salman Rushdie is furious at Random House for censoring Sherry Jones' book. [Galleycat]
• Chris Russo has departed the morning radio show he co-anchored with Mike Francesa, possibly for a better paying gig on satellite radio. [NYP]

• New revelations from the legal battle between The Weinstein Co. and NBC over Project Runway: It turns out that Tim Gunn didn't get paid a dime for his participation during the show's first season (he got paid just $2,500 per episode for the second), Harvey Weinstein hates Bravo chief Lauren Zalaznick, and Bravo didn't send Heidi Klum a respectable thank-you gift, even after the show became a major hit. [R&M]
• What's financier Jeffrey Epstein doing now that he's behind bars? He's using his free time in a Florida jail to email models back in New York and send them chocolates. [Page Six]
• The bartender who was serving Shia LaBeouf the night of his DUI arrest says the actor was pounding shots and acting a bit crazy. But now cops are suggesting he may not have actually caused the car crash, because the other driver ran a red light. [Page Six, People]

Just who are the city's biggest media titans supporting this November? Below, details on the campaign contributions of Jeff Bewkes, Dick Parsons, Barry Diller, Jann Wenner, Bob Wright, Mel Karmazin, Robert F.X. Sillerman, Ben Silverman, and a handful of others.