For retailers, the crucial season is on its way. Blow the Christmas rush, and next year starts off on a miserable foot. Success, of course, also delivers a healthy dose of momentum -- and a little bit of wiggle room, important in what will continue to be a tough economy through at least the first half of next year. For booksellers, now contending with a new variable in the form of digital readers, e-readers will play a major role in defining the winners and losers. So far, it looks like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is off to a great start, and it will take some genuine innovation for the competition to chip away at its market share.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), once the leading names in literary retail, is expected to release its own e-reader this week. It will look a bit like Amazon's Kindle, according to Reuters, but with a touch screen intended to make the reader's experience easier. The price hasn't been disclosed yet, but rumor has it that it'll be higher than the Kindle's $259. BKS is staying mum on its plans in this space. There are others in the space, as well, including IREX Technologies, which is a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), Asutek (tk: tk) and a project called FirstPaper that has Hearst behind it.

The Congressional Oversight Panel announced in a report this morning that it feels more bank stress tests are needed, especially if unemployment rates continue to rise. The group believes that the stress tests should be repeated periodically as long as banks continue to hold toxic assets.

The panel used a risk-modeling approach that is described as "reasonable and conservative," but added that it is impossible for an outside party to mirror the loss projections that form the core of the stress tests. The group noted that the "more adverse scenario" assumption for the U.S. unemployment rate in the tests has nearly been met in 2009. The yearly average for the unemployment rate stands at 8.5%, which isn't far from the 8.9% assumed in the first round of stress tests. The group recommended that the "Treasury publicly track the status of its stress test macro-economic assumptions (unemployment, GDP, and housing prices) and repeat the stress test if the adverse scenario assumptions have been exceeded."

It looks like it is out with the old, in with the old at News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), as former executive Chase Carey is returning to the company in the role of deputy chairman and chief operating officer. Carey has served as the CEO of DirecTV Group (NYSE: DTV) for the past six years, but was the co-chief operating officer for NWS from 1996 through 2002. Carey will replace COO Peter Chernin, who announced in February that he would depart NWS when his contract runs out at the end of June.

It is no secret that NWS has struggled since the economic crisis started, as weakness in the company's catalog of DVDs have driven the stock lower. Carey helped the company become a "truly viable fourth broadcast network" by helping Fox land NFL games, and helping launch Fox News Channel, FX, and the National Geographic Channel.

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has made enemy after enemy in recent years after continuing to aggregate news and information sources to ensure customers can find the information they want, any time and on any device.

When Google News was launched, it became a target for publishers who believed that Google was somehow pilfering content. These folks still do not get it, especially media baron Rupert Murdoch. It's odd, since Murdoch seemingly gets new media.

Sumner Redstone, who is the de facto head of Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and CBS (NYSE: CBS), was supposed to be the media baron who could not keep his top management. Now Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), has joined the club. The president of his company, Peter Chernin, is leaving.

Murdoch may be gambling that he can keep his job for life and hand it to one of his children. Since he is 77 and none of his children may be qualified, that could be a bad gamble. At least Chernin could have kept the CEO's seat warm while one of Murdoch's offspring got some more on-the-job training.

The press has made the Chernin departure into a story about the earnings trouble at News Corp. In reality, its problems are not much worse than they are at most other big media companies. News Corp is burdened more than some of its peers because of its newspaper holdings. But, odds are that News Corp will make it out of the recession intact and in a position to take advantage of the eventual improvement in the ad markets.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch, at 77, has been around for a while. But it looks like that while may be too long after today's report on News Corp. earnings and outlook. That report suggests that Murdoch wildly overpaid for Dow Jones. But he wanted it and he got what he wanted. The questions for long-suffering shareholders is whether what Murdoch wants is good for them and whether he's the person to lead News Corp through the troubled waters ahead.

Prospects are for more pain. Analysts are estimating a 22% drop in News Corp.'s fiscal 2009 operating profit to almost $4 billion. And with its stock down 56% in the last year, what could Murdoch do to revive it? One possibility is to restructure the newspapers in a radical -- but obvious way -- put all the content online and sell search advertising to those who want access to all the readers. That would cut the cost of the newspapers tremendously.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), the big media conglomerate that competes with Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), CBS (NYSE: CBS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, reported not-so-good earnings for the fiscal second quarter on Thursday after the bell.

Of course, not many companies are reporting good earnings these days, are they? News Corp. lost $2.45 per share due to impairment charges for goodwill and intangible assets. Throwing that aside, the company earned 12 cents per share. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, that came up well short of estimates of 19 cents per share. Net sales dropped 8%.

Is Jim Cramer the "Grinch who stole Christmas?" That's what his rivals at Fox Business Network want the world to think.

According to Talking Biz News, the News Corp.-owned cable channel's holiday card features the head of the bombastic host of CNBC's "Mad Money" and chairman of my former employer TheStreet.com Inc. (NASDAQ: TSCM) on the body of the Dr. Seuss character. Cramer, also a blogger here, is dyed green for good measure.

There is even a bit of verse that begins: "You're a mean one, Mr. Cramer; You rant and rave every day; You told us all that Bear was fine, there's nothing more to say." The poem goes on from there. You can read the whole thing here.

The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) reported that its October revenue got beat up again. If anything, it was worse than some previous months this year, but it's papers are caught in the vortex of a failing industry. For the month, advertising revenue was down 16.2%. Internet revenue only rose in the single digits, so online sales are not going to save the company.

In an odd way, the drop in revenue was the relative good news because the company also cut its dividend by a very large amount. The payout was cut by 74% to $0.06 per share. To make matters worse, the stock sold off 10% to a 52-week low of $5.72.

NYT has debt that is due next year. Its papers in New England, led by the Boston Globe, are losing as much as 20% of their ad revenue each month.

The company is controlled by the Sulzberger family, which has been in charge for over a century. One of the reasons the brothers and sisters, aunt and cousins have supported management was for the rich payout they received each quarter. Now, that is going away.

With an unhappy family, the company may be in play. Perhaps Rupert Murdock might buy it. NYT would make a nice bookend for The Wall Street Journal.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

When News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) CEO and media baron Rupert Murdoch speaks, people in the media business should listen. The 77 year-old tycoon has built an impressive array of media properties and is one of the few who gets it when it comes to how media should be created, by whom it should be created, and how it's consumed by different consumer segments.

Recently, Murdoch indicated that the deeply troubled newspaper industry can survive only if editors and writers throw their egos out the window and regain the trust and loyalty of their readers. The once monopolistic newspaper industry now competes with the 24/7 internet news trade and its army of well-informed bloggers and citizen journalists. If the old guard doesn't believe this is the new competition, then I hope they have a second career all lined up.

Murdoch's words appear uncannily prescient: "My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it's not newspapers that might become obsolete. It's some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper's most precious asset: the bond with its readers." He goes on to say that the "paper on the porch" might go away, but daily news will not.

News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), whose competitors include CBS (NYSE: CBS), Disney (NYSE: DIS), Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, Sony (NYSE: SNE), and Viacom (NYSE: VIA), reported earnings for the fiscal first quarter on Wednesday after the market closed. The stock was down over 11% in the after-hours trading session.

What happened? Do you really need to ask? Hard times beget hard guidance, my friends. CEO Rupert Murdoch is trying to be honest with his shareholders. News Corp. is bracing for a slowdown in advertising and DVD sales. And as for the bottom line, the media conglomerate didn't beat estimates with its Q1 net income of $0.20 per share. Wall Street was looking for three more pennies.

Revenue increased 6%, at least. However, according to the press release, one of my favorite metrics dipped severely during Q1. Granted, this is only the first quarter, but net cash from operations took a hideous plunge of 70%. I'm sure Murdoch didn't like seeing that. One thing I hope he takes very seriously is the need to cut costs. He stated that this will be a priority.

Okay, here is an absolutely brilliant idea. And no, I'm not being sarcastic. According to this blurb at The Hollywood Reporter, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) is interested in doing a sequel to the classic 1987 film Wall Street.

Some of you younger investors out there might not be familiar with the movie, but perhaps you're familiar with the now-famous quote "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." It was uttered by the loathsome Gordon Gekko, whose alliterative name almost oozes corporate scandal and villainy. That character was played by Michael Douglas. Wall Street was directed by Oliver Stone and it portrayed the evil side of capitalism, replete with insider trading and share-price manipulation. It's considered a classic, iconic fictional snapshot of the current zeitgeist at the time: the only thing that mattered was upward mobility and accumulation of as much net worth as conceivable without consideration for the little guy. It came out around the time of the '87 market crash, so it had that going for it.

This is why News Corp. needs to fast-track the project. According to this source from May of last year, a sequel to Wall Street was already in the works. Obviously, the fact that The Hollywood Reporter mentioned the project this week means that execs at Fox feel that the timing for a sequel is approaching an optimal point. In fact, they really should try to get it out into the marketplace as quickly as they can, and hopefully with Michael Douglas reprising his role as Gekko (Douglas' return is not set in stone at this point). Not only could the movie gross a decent amount at the box office, but think of the synergy potential here.

News Corp. is fighting a battle with General Electric's (NYSE: GE) CNBC as we speak. The Fox Business Channel wants to take away as many viewers as possible from the stock-market network. Problem is, CNBC is a very powerful brand in its arena. Of course, that doesn't deter the pit bulls at Fox. If you had to describe the media company with only one word, that word would, by necessity, be a hyphenate: ultra-competitive. In fact, Fox Business Channel recently slammed BloggingStocks' own Jim Cramer in a recent promo (see a piece on this subject by Zac Bissonnette).

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is about to enter the "No Spin Zone."

The Illinois senator is due to be interviewed by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, host of the "The O'Reilly Factor," on Thursday, the final night of The Republican National Convention, according to TVNewser.com. I am sure executives at Fox parent company News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) were high-fiving each other when that interview was secured. The clash between the suave Obama and the bellicose O'Reilly will make for interesting television. It will be like a car accident on the highway that people can't help themselves from gawking at.

Maybe Obama views it as a chance to show his supporters that he is not afraid of O'Reilly, who is a pussy cat compared with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It's also quite a contrast to the strategy of Republican John McCain, who is keeping the media at an arm's length. His campaign even canceled an interview the candidate had scheduled with CNN's Larry King because it did not like the tough questions anchor Campbell Brown asked its spokesman about the qualifiicaitons of his running-mate Sarah Palin.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions have been a dream come true for the cable news channels. More people tuned into CNN, which is owned by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), for Obama's acceptance than for Fox, MSNBC and the broadcast networks. The address got more viewers than the American Idol final, the Oscars, or the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Fox, though, continues to attract more viewers overall, especially during the Republican get-together in St. Paul. General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) MSNBC is gaining viewers too, though some may be curious to see if its feuding on-air personalities will break into a fist fight. All three of the cable news networks are raking in major bucks from those annoying 30-second TV spots that are an unfortunate part of American political life.

A winner has already emerged from the Obama-O'Reilly confrontation before a single punch has been thrown: News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch. The media baron lusts for the power to set the nation's political agenda. Come Thursday night, that's exactly what he will be able to do.

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and king of all he surveys, wants to buy The New York Times. At least that is what he told Vanity Fair according to a Reuters report.

It is hard to see why Murdoch would even bother to dream that dream. Based on the most recent quarterly earnings report and monthly figures reported by The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), the paper probably loses money when the results of its online business are backed out. If ad lineage at the print product keeps falling, and it will, even NYTimes.com will not be able to save the bottom line.

While The New York Times is a trophy, it would almost certainly be an expensive one. The parent company has a market cap of about $2 billion, and the paper might go for more than that because of its unique position as the most respected news outlet in the US.

Murdoch is probably already struggling with The Wall Street Journal. He has to be. Newspaper ad revenue is simply dropping too fast for the Journal to be immune.

Owning another paper is just asking for more losses which would need to be offset by other businesses at News Corp.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.