Wednesday morning headlines

Credit crisis worsening?: That's the prevailing drumbeat - and it's one reason stocks keep sagging (though the Dow is recovering a bit this morning). BlackRock investment advisor Bob Doll tells CNBC that the big financial stocks will only hit bottom after more consolidation and layoffs, and no more need to keep raising capital. There's been a lot of speculation that Lehman Brothers would have to sell its Neuberger Berman unit to offset billions of dollars of additional writedowns from bad debt.

Is oil going back up?: Global demand is expected to rise by 0.9 percent this year - in spite of the U.S. cutbacks - and that could mean higher crude prices (and with it gasoline prices). This morning oil was back up over $116 a barrel, roughly $5 higher than its most recent low, though it’s settled back in the last few minutes. (WSJ)

FBI looking at Rocky's wife: One of the questions, the LAT reports, is whether Michelle Delgadillo paid taxes on the income earned from two businesses - California Litho-Arts, a printing company based in Los Angeles, and Diane Castano-Sallee & Associates. The president of California Litho-Arts said her firm had received a subpoena. The Times advances the story, but there’s way too much tap dancing on why it didn't break the news of the fed's investigation (the SF Chronicle had the scoop on Tuesday). Amazingly, Tim Rutten devotes an entire column to why the Times didn't get the story, as if anyone outside the two newsrooms gives a hoot. This is exactly the kind of inter-mural nonsense that Alan Mutter discusses further down.

NBC cleaning up: To give you an idea of how the primetime Olympics coverage crushed the competition last week: In the 18-49 age bracket, NBC had 12.6 million viewers, which was more than the next 12 networks combined (Univision, CBS, Fox, ABC, USA, TBS, CW, TNT, ABC Family, Lifetime, Sci Fi and ESPN). The Olympics on the various NBC networks have reached 200 million viewers, or more than 83 percent of television homes in the country. (Variety)

ESPN goes after games: The Disney-owned sports network is interested in the television rights for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia and the 2016 Summer Olympics (location TBD) - and unlike NBC, it would carry more of them live, regardless of the time zone. From the NYT:

“Our DNA is different than theirs,” John Skipper, ESPN’s executive vice president for content said by telephone on Tuesday. “We serve sports fans. It’s hard in our culture to fathom tape-delaying in the same way they have. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t the smart thing for them to do, but it’s not our culture. We did Euro 2008 in the afternoon. We’ve done the World Cup in the middle of the morning. We have different audiences.”

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In 2003, the Disney-owned ESPN and ABC bid jointly for the 2010 and 2012 Games against Fox and NBC. NBC won the bidding at $2.2 billion, which included a worldwide I.O.C. sponsorship for General Electric, NBC’s parent company. Fox bid an estimated $1.3 billion and ESPN/ABC offered a revenue share, without any upfront money. “I don’t think there’s a sense of regret about that,” Skipper said. “Maybe the timing wasn’t right, and maybe we weren’t ready for it. The I.O.C. made a sensible decision and NBC was more aggressive with a different calculation.”

FTC limits prerecorded calls: Telemarkerters won't be able to bombard us with those annoying taped sales pitches - unless a consumer agrees to receive such calls. The FTC also will require all recorded sales calls to allow consumers to place themselves on a do-not-call list. This does not include informational calls, such as recorded calls that alert consumers to flight cancellations. (WSJ)

Age-bias suit settled: International Creative Management has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle an age-discrimination suit brought by television writers. ICM is one 12 talent agencies sued by screenwriters aged 40 and over who claimed they were squeezed out of jobs (networks and studios have also been sued). A lawyer representing the writers said other settlement discussions are underway. From Reuters:

The litigation, initially filed in U.S. court but now pending in California state court, covers 150 named plaintiffs and extends to a class of roughly 10,000 writers who were aged 40 and older as of October 1996. Besides the $4.5 million monetary settlement, ICM agreed to establish an independent panel to examine its representation practices. The agency also agreed to take part in a "job relief" program designed to promote the top 25 percent of older TV writers based on script evaluations by neutral experts.

Advice for Hartenstein: Not having been in the newspaper business could work to the advantage of the new LAT publisher, says media watcher Alan Mutter. "He is under no professional or personal obligation to preserve, protect and defend his track record or the practices of an industry whose business model has not changed materially since Benjamin Franklin was a lad," Mutter blogs. Among the unsolicited advice he offers:

Listen to readers and non-readers, not journalists. With all due respect to the newspaper’s distinguished news staff, most reporters and editors have lost touch with what modern readers – and non-readers – want. If they could bring themselves to having sincere, open-minded and no-holds-barred discussions with the consumers (and non-consumers) of their product, this talented group could respond by producing any number of innovative print and interactive products. But most journalists are wedded to preserving the “Father Knows Best” approach to journalism, wherein they decide what is important; they do the reporting and writing, and they decide what the reader gets to read and when she gets to read it. One-way journalism doesn’t fly with most younger readers – and it is barely clearing the runway with older ones, either.