Yesterday the NY Post raised a lot of eyebrows with a report suggesting that Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski approached Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes during Tuesday’s Mirror Awards and pitched the idea of moving the morning duo to CNN. This morning the report was addressed on Morning Joe and Scarborough provided about as strong a rebuke as one could imagine, claiming that the NY Post reporter Claire Atkinson “chose to lie.”

Jack Griffin is leaving his post as chief executive of Time Inc.’s magazine division after roughly six months on the job. According to an email sent out by Time Warner exec Jeffrey Bewkes, Griffin’s management style “did not mesh” with the atmosphere at Time Inc. and its parent company, Time Warner.

Some of Griffin’s decisions and suggestions which evidently did not sit well with others at the company included bringing in outside consultants, insisting that all Time Inc. magazines carry his name on their respective mastheads, and repeatedly referring to his Roman Catholic faith during meetings, even comparing Time Inc. to the Vatican.

CNN has consistently claimed all is well even as ratings have fallen off significantly.

But according to Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on yesterday’s first quarter conference call, CNN has declined financially as well as ad revenue is down – and he wants to “fix” the ratings problem.

Last week, the A.V. Club interviewed actress Chloe Sevignyy who plays one of the wives on the HBO program Big Love and she gave some shockingly honest responses. In this case, of course, “shockingly honest” should be read as “totally ripped apart the show she works on”. The interview instantly began burning up the blogosphere which is unsurprising considering the high profile nature of the program and the fact that Ms. Sevigny led off with a money quote as fantastic as “It was awful this season.” Ouch.

A colleague (who is handsome and wise) recently discovered an old Media Metrix report delineating “World Wide Web Audience Ratings” for December 1998. It’s a remarkable study, categorizing thousands of sites and conglomerated web companies. all of the component elements, but it’s unrecognizable. As though they’re all brands made up for movies.

I saw the Sport Illustrated demo video long before the iPad was released. It was everything the iPad should have been on Day One. A mind-blowing demonstration of what the future of the magazine could be. The problem is, the iPad cannot do what the demo shows and it should have. Flash is the only current technology that would make that possible.

Since Norman Pearlstine, former Editor-in-Chief of Time Inc., joined Bloomberg as Chief Content Officer, many of the staffers at Timehave slowly been trickling over to join him. First, it was Josh Tyrangiel, who now serves as BusinessWeek’s Editor in Chief. Then, it was Arthur Hochstein, Time’s “legendary” art director, who stepped down in 2009 and will now be consulting for both BusinessWeek and Time. Who else is planning to “reunite” with Pearlstine?

A new column in Newsweek by Daniel Gross examines the new wave of “old-school cable slugfests,” including, but not limited to “Rupert Murdoch vs. the bureaucrats of Time Warner; Scripps vs. the unpredictable Dolans of Cablevision; content vs. distribution.” They’re a sign of things to come, he writes, but they will also hurt consumers, who will be asked to pay more and more for products that are becoming free. Confusing, right?

In an appearance yesterday on CNBC, Jerry Levin, who led the historic $164 billion deal ten years ago, apologized for the colossal failure of the sale, putting himself on the line a decade later. “I presided over the worst deal of the century, apparently, and I guess it’s time for those who are involved in companies to stand up and say: you know what, I’m solely responsible for it,” said Levin. “I was in charge. I’m really very sorry about the pain and the suffering and loss that was caused. I take responsibility.”

Though we came very close to a television doomsday, Time Warner and Fox parent company News Corporation reached a last minute deal that prevented a blackout of Fox stations on the cable service, the New York Times is reporting. A breakthrough in negotiations prevented a blackout of Fox channels on Time Warner cable as the two companies battled over subscriber prices, setting the stage for television’s “economic template for the future.”

The impasse between FOX broadcast network and Time Warner Cable continues with less than a day remaining before the cable provider knocks the network and its cable outlets off the dial.

And as each side ratchets up the rhetoric, neither seem willing to show compromise. Could Fox really be gone from homes with Time Warner Cable tomorrow?

Fox’s scuff with Time Warner over renewal fees has gotten increasingly pitched over the course of the week. As we reported on Monday, Fox has appealed directly to viewers in the “Keep Fox On” campaign, which warns that the carrier could pull the plug on the network. Now, Time Warner is fighting back: they’re sending their subscribers a e-mail that looks like a ransom note and comparing Fox to hostage-takers.

Time, Inc.’s proposed tablet PC magazines. With some good reason – the demonstration video below, showcasing Sports Illustrated (and narrated with gusto by SI editor Terry McConnell) is pretty snazzy. Think of a Kindle that is in color. And can play video. And runs on a real computer. And that you probably shouldn’t take in the bathtub.

Ever since the NFL Network launched in 2003, there seemingly hasn’t been a moment it wasn’t embroiled in controversy involving its relationship with at least one major cable company. It ended a protracted standoff with Comcast earlier this year (though some Comcast subscribers already had the network), They’re still doing plenty of fighting, however, most prominently with Time Warner.

During a discussion at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, investor Gordon Crawford claimed that Time Warner would eventually sell-off their print unit Time Inc., renewing lots of speculation about the print giant’s future. The innocuous comment seemed like a throw away line to some; but it not only sent shock waves in media circles, it also forced many to predict a future that, frankly, no one really yet knows.

On Monday it was announced in a U.S. regulatory filing that Time Warner Inc paid $283 million for Google Inc’s 5 percent stake in AOL. This underscored Time Warner’s plans to spin off AOL by the end of the year and places AOL’s total value at roughly $5.7 billion in the eyes of both TW and Google.