As I told you on Friday, there’s apparently no truth to the rumors that NBC Universal (GE) exec Lauren Zalaznick, who built Bravo and oversees Oxygen and more there, has been negotiating for a top job at MTV (VIAB).

After the Postcard ran, Jim Citrin, the prominent Spencer Stuart recruiter who was spotted lunching with Zalaznick at Michael’s (and thus fed the rumor mill, unintentionally) popped me an email. “Too funny,” he wrote about the speculation. At their lunch, he and Zalaznick, who hadn’t known each other and simply wanted to meet, discovered a family tie. Says Citrin: “Her older sister Barbara was my high school classmate!”–Patricia Sellers

Chester Higgins Jr. - The New York Times/Redux

Rumors are spreading across the Internet that NBC Universal executive Lauren Zalaznick is headed to MTV.

“There is absolutely no truth to these rumors,” says Cameron Blanchard, SVP of communications for NBCU’s Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks–the unit, including the Bravo network, that Zalaznick oversees.

The response from Viacom (VIAB), MTV’s owner: “There’s no truth to the rumors,” Carole Robinson, EVP of communications for MTV Networks, told me this morning.

How did the rumors spread? They popped yesterday morning on the West coast and moved east like wildfire. Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke fanned the flames with a post saying that Zalaznick is in “advanced talks” to take over Brian Graden’s job as MTV President of Entertainment, heading up MTV and VH1–a job that’s been vacant since June.

Meanwhile, media insiders started believing, since in the wake of General Electric’s (GE) just-closed deal to sell 51% of NBCU to Comcast (CMCSA), a key question is: Will the new owner be able to hold on to NBCU’s best talent?

Then there is the fact that Zalaznick had lunch with Spencer Stuart recruiter Jim Citrin at Michael’s, Manhattan midtown cafeteria for the media elite. One media honcho told me that the lunch took place this week–and “you don’t go to Michael’s” with a headhunter unless you want to broadcast that you’re on the market, looking for a new gig.

Alas, the lunch at Michael’s (where I’ve had lunch with both Citrin and Zalanick, separately) took place last week and apparently was an innocent affair. Citrin, who is viewed by some as the media industry’s premiere headhunter, had never met Zalaznick and wanted to get to know her. Simple as that. He is not working for Viacom, at least not now.

As for Zalaznick, she is one of the industry’s most-admired executives because she built Bravo into a buzzy cable network that targets upscale viewers–whom she and her team call “affluencers.” She also oversees NBCU’s Oxygen and iVillage properties. Her clout exceeds the limits of her clumsy title: President of NBC Universal Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks. Zalaznick, who is No. 48 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list, created Women@NBCU to market the company’s full lineup of networks–including USA, Syfy, and Telemundo–to female-focused advertisers. NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker, a major Zalaznick fan, also put her in charge of the company’s “Green is Universal” eco-campaign.

Post-merger, Zucker will report to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. If Zalaznick ends up restless inside the new regime, Viacom would actiually be a natural place for her to go. Her first job in TV was at VH1, which is part of the MTV Network empire. While she was at Viacom, her boss was Jeff Gaspin, now chairman of NBCU Television Entertainment and the guy she reports to.

At MTV Networks, meanwhile, CEO Judy McGrath, a lifer there who ranks No. 20 in Fortune’s Most Powerful Women rankings, has had a tough slog. Like most other cable behemoths, MTV Networks has healthy margins, but she has struggled to lift ratings and profits and morale since Viacom’s hard-to-please octogenarian chairman, Sumner Redstone, fired her mentor, Tom Freston, from the top job three years ago.

Many people inside MTV Networks, including McGrath, view Zalaznick as a terrific brand builder and have fond memories of working with her. So, consider this: Zalaznick is 46. McGrath is 57. If NBCU proves not to be the ideal home for Zalaznick, she could succeed McGrath…if not soon, someday.

With Comcast (CMCSA) finalizing its deal to buy 51% of NBC Universal from General Electric (GE), skeptics are asking: Why would Comcast CEO Brian Roberts put his faith in Jeff Zucker, the NBCU chief who has dragged the NBC broadcast network from first to fourth place?

Because Jeff Zucker is one of the most determined, driven, ambitious, ingenious, competitive, compelling, resilient people you will ever meet.

Read “Life imitates TV,” a Fortune profile I wrote two years ago.

This is a guy who battled cancer twice. The first time, he was 31. Zucker, who is now 44, used to schedule his chemotherapy sessions at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Friday afternoons and then sleep all weekend, so he could work like a maniac at NBC starting on Monday morning.

His cancer recurred two years later. His wife, Caryn, was four months pregnant with their second child. Doctors removed 90% of his colon. Beating cancer, Zucker told me, “prepared me for almost anything.”

When Jack Welch was running GE, he was a Zucker fan. Dick Ebersol, the  influential head of NBC Universal Sports, has long been Zucker’s cheerleader–and his sway endures in this Comcast deal. Most critically, Jeff Immelt, GE’s current chief, has backed Zucker through good times and bad.

Two years ago, when I asked him about Zucker’s failure to prop up the NBC broadcast network, Immelt said: “I really don’t blame Jeff. I don’t accept it, but I don’t blame him.” He noted that Zucker, who has been at NBC for 23 years, inherited aging shows.

Indeed, NBC’s primetime profits, which peaked at $650 million in 2003, have dried up. But what counts more is that Zucker has impressively built NBCU’s cable networks, including CNBC, MSNBC, USA Network, and Bravo. Cable, with its dual revenue stream, is the far superior business model and where the big money is today.

Zucker’s decisiveness matters too. Immelt explained to me that he evaluates all his executives on five “growth traits”: inclusiveness, imagination/courage, expertise, external focus, and clear thinking/decisiveness. He rates his execs green, yellow, or red on each trait. Zucker’s “green”–the top–rating? Decisiveness. “He’s cocky. I kind of like that,” Immelt told me, noting that Zucker is “not afraid to make tough calls.”

Zucker’s weakness, in Immelt’s view? “He still has to work on external focus,” he said. Zucker has worked on expanding his vision. Now, with a new guy, Comcast’s Roberts, overseeing NBCU, he’ll have to work on it even more.

“The hair is 75 percent of my performance.”

– Actor Robert Pattinson, who stars as vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen in the screen version of the literary sensation, Twilight. In a Q&A in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, Pattinson says that for New Moon, the franchise’s second installment, he told the filmmakers, “Listen, I need to tone down the hair. Let’s make it a little more real, a little bit more…Method.”

Pattison’s not the only one who understands the power of hair. Pattie has also written about the speculation over how business leaders part their tresses. You can check out Pattinson’s “do” when New Moon hits theaters next Friday. –Jessica Shambora

Remember Gordon Gekko, Hollywood’s incarnation of greed the last time Wall Street was roundly despised? Twenty-three years ago, Fortune cut a deal with 20th Century Fox to have a mock magazine, with Gekko on the cover, appear in the Oliver Stone firm, Wall Street.

To this day, I gaze at this cover daily because it’s tacked to my office wall–as I told Gekko himself when he sat behind me during lunch today at Michael’s restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Well, the guy dining behind me was actually Michael Douglas, who won a Best Actor Oscar for playing that dastardly investor. As he and his stunning wife, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and another couple rose from their table to leave, I leaned in and introduced myself. “I have to tell you,” I told Douglas, “I stare at you everyday because I have the Gordon Gekko Fortune cover on my wall right beside my computer.”

He laughed and said, “It’s on my wall too”–explaining that in the sequel to Wall Street, currently in production at 20th Century Fox (NWS), he’s reprising his role and the vintage Fortune cover hangs in Gekko’s apartment.

We can hardly wait. Andy Serwer, Fortune’s managing editor, makes a star turn–well, actually a cameo–too.

“The N.F.L. is more of a guarantee of success than if you got Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie to do an hour drama series for the network. You can’t guarantee that it will be a ratings success.”

– Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal (GE) Sports, today in a New York Times story about Sunday Night Football’s stellar ratings–one of the few bright spots for the woe-begotten broadcast network.

While Jay Leno was supposed to be NBC’s ratings savior, that role apparently is going to Ebersol, whom I profiled three years ago–in an exclusive story called “Playing With Pain,” about his recovery from a devastating plane crash (he lost his 14-year-old son, Teddy) and his bold $3.6 billion bid for NFL broadcast rights. Most people were skeptical of Ebersol’s big bet back then, and not even outlandish optimists predicted that Sunday Night Football, his grand concoction, would transform TV’s most popular night into a sports bonanza. “We should be in the top ten or 12 shows every week,” he told me cautiously back then, noting that Monday Night Football, then on ABC (DIS) and now on ESPN, had ranked tenth in total households the previous season.

Turns out, even Ebersol low-balled the opportunity. Last season, Sunday Night Football was No. 4 in households and, more importantly, No. 3 among adults ages 18-49. That’s the audience that advertisers–and NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker–care most about. Only American Idol on Fox (NWS) performed better. This season, Sunday Night Football’s viewership is way up, averaging over 20 million viewers. Nice for a guy who has been running NBC Sports for 20 years and never, ever gives up. –Patricia Sellers

Who’s more powerful–Oprah Winfrey or Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz? Disney (DIS) media boss Anne Sweeney or MTV Networks chief (VIAB) Judy McGrath? Who from Google (GOOG) made the 2009 Fortune Most Powerful Women list?

The new rankings are out. PepsiCo (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi is No. 1 for the fourth year in a row.

And yes, there is a science to deciding these rankings. Here I talk with CNNMoney anchor Poppy Harlow about how we do it:

“You can run, but you can’t hide.”

- Media Link President Wenda Millard, calling this afternoon from the Gulf of Trieste on the Adriatic Sea, to share a few thoughts about her new gig revamping sales and marketing at MySpace.

While News Corp. (NWSA), MySpace’s owner, and strategy firm Media Link, had been discussing some sort of partnership since the start of the year, Millard tells me that her new assignment came unexpectedly during her 10-day vacation. “We want to call you in right now,” MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta told her when he reached her on her cell on Tuesday afternoon, as Millard was eating air-dried proscuitto and drinking local wine on an organic farm in Croatia.

Prompting the MySpace boss’s urgent call to Millard–who was once Yahoo’s (YHOO) ad chief and later co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO)–was the exit of MySpace sales and marketing boss Jeff Berman. Van Natta, a former Facebook COO who joined MySpace this past spring, is expected by his News Corp. bosses to do whatever it takes to improve the flagging social network’s relationships with the ad community.

This new set-up with Media Link is unusual–a one-year deal that will have Millard staying at Media Link and working on Los Angeles-based MySpace from her own space in New York. (Media Link CEO Michael Kassan, who recruited Millard to Media Link in April, is based in LA.) Millard says she’ll likely assemble a team of six Media Link execs to work on MySpace. On Monday, she’ll hit the ground running, she says, but right now, one more stop on her trip—Venice.

“Never put tomatoes in the refrigerator.”

- No. 1 on Nora Ephron’s 10-point list from Fortune’s recent “Best Advice I Ever Got” cover package.

Julie and Julia, Ephron’s cinematic homage to Julia Child and food lovers inspired by her, opens today. (I’m seeing the movie tomorrow.)

Nora knows food, and if you want more of her tart but savory wit, check out her “Pancake Breakfast”interview with IHOP (DIN) CEO Julia Stewart at the 2007 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Sorry, we didn’t videotape the early-morning chat. But the audio and photos are charmingly retro and very amusing. Worth checking out if you’re a fan of Ephron or IHOP.

by Patricia Sellers and Jessica Shambora

We took a break from posting our daily Power Point–Postcards‘ quote of the day–last week, but we collected more than a few good ones at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Pasadena. Here are our 10 favorites,  from the mouths of media moguls, tech titans, Tweeters and more.

“It’s not really my thing. I don’t go to the dentist. I don’t do things that cause me to emote.” — IAC (IAC) chairman and CEO Barry Diller, talking about why he’s not on Twitter.

“We want to be like Ron Howard.” – Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, noting that he doesn’t want his two-year-old company to turn out like childhood actors “who grew up all freaky.”

“I shut down a website everyday because I send too much traffic from my Twitter feed.” – actor Ashton Kutcher, who has 2.9 million followers on Twitter.

“You can get so focused on expanding your current business model that innovation slows down.” – eBay (EBAY) CEO John Donahoe, on how the e-commerce giant stumbled.

“You can’t play catch up. The gig in the on-line world is how to capture new behaviors.” — News Corp. chief digital officer Jon Miller, on how he aims to revitalize MySpace, which has lost ground to Facebook.

“I’ve learned more about my daughters on their Facebook pages than I did while I was raising them.” — Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger.

“I don’t think I could get my wife to say that about me, so I don’t think I could say that about a business partner.” — AT&T (T) CEO Randall Stephenson, on whether he’s completely satisfied with his company’s relationship with Apple (AAPL).

“[We’re taking] what used to be a goofy gimmick [and turning] it into great platform for storytelling.” — Dreamworks (DWA) CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, on 3D technology.

“Real value in a world of infinite choice is someone making choices for you.” — NBC Entertainment (GE) co-chair Ben Silverman, four days before disclosing that he’s leaving to partner with IAC’s Barry Diller on a new venture.

“The Internet puts people like politicians out of business.” Former Governor of Vermont and chairman of the Democratic National Party Howard Dean, explaining how new tools on the web like Twitter have disrupted the political game.

Did you notice something missing from this Power Point list? Women. We had some top women in tech with us at Brainstorm–Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior–but guys dominated the stage and uttered the most provocative lines. Calling Carol Bartz! The Yahoo (YHOO) CEO, along with a tremendous lineup of leaders, will be with us at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this coming September.

“Barry stirs the pot and he sees the future.”

NBC programming boss Ben Silverman, on why he’s leaving to join Barry Diller’s IAC Interactive Corp. (IACI). The two media honchos, who participated in Fortune Brainstorm Tech in California last week, are plotting a multi-media production company, which will be their third venture together. It’s been a bumpy two years since NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker brought Silverman on board. Still, says Fortune’s Richard Siklos, NBC (GE) could be a backer or partner in the new venture. Sony (SNE) could be involved as well.

by Patricia Sellers

Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix (NFLX), came by our offices on Monday. He’s one of the more down-to-earth CEOs you’ll ever meet.

He’s a Bowdoin grad like my boss, Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer. Post-college, Hastings joined the Peace Corps and taught school in Swaziland. Then he played Silicon Valley start-up guy for a stretch and eventually struck gold with his movies-by-mail idea, aimed at easing the hassle of in-store drop-offs and pesky late fees.

He didn’t name his start-up “Movies by Mail” or anything like that to limit the company’s evolution — which helps explain why Netflix continues to grow briskly, even in this brutal environment. The guy had vision when he launched Netflix in 1999. The company went public in 2002 at $7.50 a share, and today the stock, at $45, isn’t far below its all-time high.

Netflix is due to announce quarterly earnings tomorrow after the closing bell, so we’ll see how well it’s riding the the digital revolution, as well as the bad economy. But the ride seems to be pretty smooth. Referring to subscribers, which today total more than 10 million, Hastings, 48, told us, “We were growing 25% when the economy was growing. We’re growing 25% now.”

Among the things that he and his team are doing right, the smartest may be choosing what they don’t want to be. As Hastings told me on Monday, he learned from Jim Collins, the renowned management guru, that it’s just as important to decide what not to do in business as it is to determine what to do.

Especially today, when change is happening so fast and unpredictably,  it’s critical to prioritize. For Hastings, this has meant not competing with Blockbuster at retail. That was smart, given that video-rental stores industry-wide are down to some 10,000, from 20,000 at the peak. “In five or 10 years, video stores will be gone,” Hastings predicts.

A more recent choice he made — “really hard,” he admitted — was deciding not to enter the ad-supported web-video fray against Hulu, YouTube (GOOG), and CBS.com (CBS). “Commercial-free subscription is where we can compete. It’s our best shot,” Hastings says. Netflix offers unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited instant streaming to computers and TVs for a flat $8.95 a month.

Hastings decided not to compete with pay-per-view purveyors like HBO (TWX)  and cable companies. And recently, he opted not to go head to head against Redbox. That’s the fast-growing start-up that places kiosks–more than 15,000 to date — in McDonald’s (MCD), supermarkets and other heavy-traffic locales. Videos cost $1 a day.

Despite inordinate disruption and confusion around distribution — or maybe because of it — Hastings is clear about his game. An engineer by training and a Microsoft (MSFT) board member, he’s determined  to make video-watching more personal and satisfying — via advancing technology, of course.

Hastings looks forward to the day, a decade or less from now, when an Internet browser will be built into every television, he says. We’ll be calling up movies and channels and websites with a click of a button or just a spoken word: “Wizard of Oz.” Or “ESPN.” Or “Netflix.”

Take a look at my conversation with Hastings for more about how he sees the future…

“Lots of conversations going on behind the scenes but I fully expect you will see the whole team next year.”

American Idol host Ryan Seacrest on his Twitter page today, amidst reports that he sealed a deal with CKX (CKXE), the parent company of Idol producer 19 Entertainment, worth $45 million over three years. No salary caps in this biz. The deal reportedly triples Seacrest’s annual pay for hosting the top-rated show on TV.

“I don’t think you’re going to have those anymore. Bigness isn’t that great an asset anymore.”

– Tom Freston, former Viacom (VIAB) CEO, in a Reuters story about the waning influence of media moguls. These titans are being upstaged by the darlings of digital, like Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Evan Williams. Old and new media alike are gathered this week at the Allen & Co. media summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Freston’s opinion comes from experience. After being fired in 2006 by one major media tycoon — Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone — he has gone on to help Oprah build her OWN cable network (which is likely to have a strong digital play) and to join U2 frontman Bono on his mission to reduce global poverty and AIDS. Read more about Freston in Pattie’s profile of “The Most Wanted Man on the Planet.” –Jessica Shambora

“If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change.”

– Michael Jackson’s lyrics from “The Man in the Mirror.” The song rang out as the King of Pop’s casket was carried out of the Staples Center in Los Angeles Tuesday. The 20,000 seat arena was filled to capacity as fans witnessed tributes from Smokey Robinson, Brooke Shields, Al Sharpton and others during the two-and-a-half hour ceremony. –Jessica Shambora

Greetings from France. I’m at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, where the skies are sunny and the industry outlook is dark. This morning, Marcel Fenez, managing partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ global entertainment and media practice, laid out the dismal details. He called the current recession in ad spending “not cyclical but structural.”

Which means that the advertising business has permanently changed. And it’s going to be rough sailing for a long while. Global ad spending will decline 12.1% this year, Fenez estimated. Next year will be another bad year — down 2.7% — before an upturn begins in 2011.

That’s the worldwide view, and the U.S. picture looks even worse. Fernez forecast a 14.8% drop in spending this year and 3.3% next year.  Hardest hit: TV, newspapers and consumer magazines. (That’s us at Fortune!)  Stealing share as the total pie shrinks: Video-game companies and the Internet. (That’s us at CNNMoney.com!)

“The upturn will be all about structural change,” says Fenez. So what’s a big fat media company to do? In lieu of getting more ad revenues, media outfits will try to get consumers to pay for content, particularly digital as the world goes in that direction. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2009 survey of consumers across the globe indicate that they’re game to pay for quality and premium content. So, says Fenez, we’ll see lots of experimenting with micropayments, stored-value cards, and “all you can eat” subscriptions. But it won’t be easy getting people to pay for what they’ve gotten used to getting for free.

To take a deeper dive into the global outlook and the challenges, you can go to pwc.com/outlook and see the full report, executive summary and video….Now heading to the Cannes Lions Tweet-up with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Hill & Knowlton. More later! — Pattie Sellers

The sun’s coming out in New York City after a week of seemingly endless rain. This was also a whirlwind week of interesting encounters.

On Tuesday, I had lunch, unexpectedly, with Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger. We were both at the New York Stock Exchange for Jeff Sonnenfeld’s Yale CEO Summit, and Iger was getting the “Legend in Leadership Award.” The Summit was off the record (as was the lunch), but I can tell you that Iger talked about the commonly held notion that the world is flattening out culturally. It’s a misconception, he contends. He noted a rise in local pride and said that Disney, in response, is turning distribution centers into creative centers and producing more local TV shows. My Fortune colleague Richard Siklos wrote about this and more in “Bob Iger Rocks Disney” earlier this year.

On Wednesday, I led a Q&A with Condoleezza Rice. This was for a small group of execs, private and pro bono. (We at Fortune can’t take money; I do these gigs occasionally for exposure and connections.) It was off-the-record, but I can tell you that Rice, now at Stanford University, is optimistic about the Middle East. She’s planning to teach in the fall. For now, she’s busy writing two books: one on foreign policy and the other about her parents. Ever a model of discipline, she gets up at 5:15 a.m. to work out — better than a 4:30 a.m., which was her wake-up time in Washington. This is her routine six days a week — after working out, she writes for three or four hours. (And yes, she’s writing the books herself.)

Yesterday, my Postcards partner Jessica Shambora and I shared and learned wisdom about careers on NBC Universal’s Mentors Walk. Check out our Thursday’s Postcard. By the way, Jess and I saw The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 last night. If you’re up for intensity, see it. Travolta is tremendous.

P.S. David Kirkpatrick, Fortune’s star tech editor and writer who’s been on book leave since last August, just swung by and gave me a big, big hug. He’s working tirelessly on The Facebook Effect, due next spring. You can follow the book’s progress and become a fan at www.facebook.com/thefacebookeffect.

Seventy of New York’s top women in media joined 160 aspiring young women for a “Mentors Walk” in Central Park this morning. It was drizzly and great. NBC Universal (GE) and Step Up Women’s Network, a non-profit group all about advancing women and girls, hosted. The Mentor Walk’s creator, former Oxygen Media CEO Gerry Laybourne, was there along with J. Crew (JCG) President Tracy Gardner, Bank of America (BAC) Merrill Lynch media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive, Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel….an eclectic mix!

Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBCU’s Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, was mentor-in-chief. She, along with the rest of us mentors, accompanied the young women on a “walk & talk” through Central Park, followed by breakfast at Tavern on the Green. I walked with a young woman named Maria Jordan, a young finance manager who spent four years at IBM (IBM) before moving to General Electric’s (GE) NBCU. Jessica Shambora, my Postcards colleague, walked with Zalaznick, who is something of a media-industry phenom, having built Bravo into a highly profitable cable brand. Jessica and I both learned a lot and thought we’d share with you by letting you in on our post-Mentors Walk email chat:

Jessica: What did you talk about with your mentees?

Pattie: My favorite advice that I give to young people, women and men alike: Focus on the job at hand. Don’t plan your career. And think of your career as a jungle gym, not a ladder. Who can know, especially in today’s unpredictable world, what the next big thing will be? You need to have peripheral vision and swing to opportunities as they come along. Agree?

Jessica: I do. I think Lauren Z. would too. She told her mentees, “In your career, you can have high expectations for good experience, but it’s hard to have expectations for an exact path.” From her perspective, today was about helping the mentees understand the things they need to be thinking about to get to the next level in their career, as opposed to thinking your mentor or anyone else is going to just give you a job. Although we both know that can happen at these events!

Pattie: Indeed! So I gotta share our story. I did my first Mentors Walk in 2006. I was assigned to a mentee named Selena Soo, this charismatic young woman who got a velvet grip on me and never let me go. Since then, I’ve spoken and moderated panels at events that she’s organized. One event was 15 months ago at NYU: a career panel with Citigroup (C) CMO Lisa Caputo and a few other rising-star women. Before the panel began, you walked up to me and said, “My name is Jessica Shambora. I’ve read your stuff for years and I’ve seen you on panels. I even blogged about you.” I loved your manner and your confidence.

Jessica: Yeah, I just thought it would be cool to get to know you. I felt a strong connection to the “Most Powerful Women” idea—the stuff that you talked and wrote about often. I never imagined what would happen next. I was just pursuing my passions and interests, and it led to one of those “right place, right time” situations…

Pattie: That’s a lesson. You never know what will come out of a chance encounter. As a Fortune Editor at Large who started here 25 years ago as a reporter (like you are now!), I’ve been struck so often that just getting out there brings opportunity. First, you have to be curious. Curiosity is an undervalued trait. Second, you need to think broadly. Back to that peripheral vision that I mentioned. It’s so easy to bury yourself in your work—there’s so much to do!—but if you’re young and really smart, you think broadly: How can I contribute beyond my assignment? You look for ideas outside your four walls. That is, if you have four walls!

Jessica: Yes, and these are all things you can do no matter what state the economy is in. In fact, you should do them even more during tough times. We’ve heard this from a few different business leaders that we’ve written about on Postcards: Don’t hunker and hide. Get out there, be curious, look around. Think big.

One of the last things Lauren said this morning was about strking the right balance between celebrating and questioning success. When times are tough, she said, make sure to celebrate successes. In good times, deconstruct your successes so your business will have discipline and rigor to survive tough times. It’s a bit counterintuitive. But it’s good advice so you don’t get complacent or take any success for granted.

Pattie: I would never!

Here’s the third and final segment of Tom Freston’s 2007 commencement speech at Emerson College. In earlier posts, Viacom’s (VIAB) former CEO shared career lessons and detailed the first two “things you’re going to want to be able to say you’ve done if ever you are called upon to impart wisdom upon the young.” Here are Nos. 3 and 4 on that list, along with Freston’s warning about what could happen if grads don’t follow his advice.

No. 3: You’re going to want to say that your passport is well worn and filled-to-the-brim with stamps and visas. Because all those exotic stamps from far away places are the kind of tattoos that you won’t regret when you’re older. Travel is the best and probably cheapest graduate school you can buy.

I learned way more from my travels than I ever did in business school. My experiences overseas gave me the self-confidence and international perspective to build MTV and Nickelodeon into global brands early on. We were the first to do that.

A good adventure can change your life – and why would you put that off? It’s too late for you people to drop out of college now, but there are still plenty of things you can drop out of: Just get on a plane and go. Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

We, as Americans, have so much to learn here. We have a shockingly low level of global awareness and familiarity and little idea of how the world sees us. And those disturbing facts keep getting us into a lot of trouble.

The flatter the world, the more you need to be globally attuned and conversant. And you will find that the diversity of friends, interests, and thinking that this will bring you will broaden your scope and enrich your life here at home.

Fourth and last: Forty-years from now, you DO NOT want to say you are still only listening to The Shins and Arcade Fire, or LCD. To do that, you must very consciously maintain your curiosity, broaden your interests and continue to follow the cultural flow wherever it goes. Refuse to get too comfortable with what you already know. People’s tastes and attitudes tend to freeze up in their late ‘20’s. There are plenty of people my age whose cultural preferences were cryogenically sealed in 1974. It’s amazing and it’s not pretty. Many guys my age are still exclusively rocking out to Foghat.

What I have seen over my many years in the media and entertainment business, where I know a lot of you are headed, is that the most successful people – writers, executives, whatever – have many interests, an encyclopedic knowledge about them, and an undying curiosity about social trends and the endless parade of “next new things.”

They are always growing.

So my advice to you: Stave off obsolescence and prolong adolescence. Stay a young thinker. Read, listen to and watch everything you can. Explore the corners of popular culture and the arts. And, of course, these days you have to stay maniacally plugged in to the cutting edge of whatever technology is taking your profession into the future – otherwise you’re toast.

I know you just got done cramming for finals. But most of what you have to learn in life is yet to come. At Emerson you have been immersed to your eyeballs in the mix of today’s culture, and you have all thrived. But it will become increasingly hard to maintain that edge as you get older. Your responsibilities pile up. But learning is never the wrong choice…those who stop learning are the only people who really ever grow old.

Now, I don’t want to scare you but these guidelines I offer are to be ignored at your own peril. If you don’t show maniacal passion for something, if you don’t immerse yourself fully in the world by traveling or living abroad, if you don’t stay curious, if you never change your mind or develop a healthy sense of self-awareness, there is a real danger that you might end up as the President of the United States. [Bush was President when Freston delivered this speech.]

But if you take this very basic advice to heart – to follow your heart and never settle for less, to reincarnate when necessary, to live on our whole planet and revel in all of it and to keep learning always – maybe you will have the kind of career and life that no guidance counselor could have predicted for you.

And maybe, 40 years from now, you will find yourself at a commencement podium passing along the wisdom you acquired. And, if you are especially blessed, you will look out into that sea of graduates and see your own son or daughter in cap and gown.

So, Class of 2007, congratulations on all your hard work. You should feel very proud. Enjoy your accomplishments today and prepare for the great ride that starts tomorrow. Relax – you’re gonna be OK. The fun is just beginning. Best to you always and Godspeed!

For more on Freston, read Pattie’s exclusive profile in the February 16 issue of Fortune, “The Most Wanted Man on the Planet.” Freston built MTV and rose to be CEO of Viacom, only to be dumped by Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s chairman, on Labor Day 2006. More recently he’s been trotting the globe –Afghanistan, Burma, Rwanda; helping Oprah build her new TV network, OWN; and joining U2 frontman Bono on his mission to reduce global poverty and AIDS.

Here’s part two of Tom Freston’s 2007 commencement speech at Emerson College. In yesterday’s post, the former Viacom (VIAB) CEO shared the story of the sudden turn in his storied media career. Here Freston explains the first two things “you’re going to want to be able to say you’ve done if ever you are called upon to impart wisdom upon the young.”

One. First and foremost: You’re going to want to be able to say that – “but for Joseph Campbell, my life would have been one of quiet desperation.”

And if you don’t know who Joseph Campbell is, don’t worry, I am about to tell you. For those of you who have not read his books or don’t watch a lot of PBS, he was a scholar, philosopher-guru, and the author of the Power of the Myth who famously pleaded with students to “follow your bliss.”

I am under no illusion that anything I might tell you could improve upon that. He believed that by pursuing the thing you love, you actually put yourself on the path that has always been intended for you and that you were therefore destined to succeed on that path.

Boy, there is so much truth in that! And sadly, most people never get this guiding principle. I had my first Joseph Campbell moment on the deck of a houseboat floating in Kashmir, India. I was on the tail end of my year-long travel odyssey, still tormented with the question “What would I love to do?”

Advertising had not been it. This time I did not want to settle for anything less than true love. It was such a beautiful evening and, looking out upon the incredible landscape, my bliss revealed itself to me: I loved India! I felt so alive there. Even though I was just a kid from Connecticut who had arrived on the subcontinent practically by mistake, I felt this strong connection to the people. And somehow I was certain I wanted to make a life there.

It seemed to offer everything I needed. Also, as luck would have it, the recent introduction of the 747 and low air-freight costs created all kinds of exciting import-export opportunities to explore. I took it as a sign.

Now, in choosing Emerson and being more focused, most of you are closer to your “bliss” than your average graduate at other colleges. Use that advantage to your maximum advantage. You’re at a place in your life where you can do any of a million things, but find what you can do better than anyone else. You may have to bob and weave a bit — and you may find yourself waiting tables at some point — but never settle for less than what you love.

Everything good in your life will spring from this. Talent is the gift God gave you and you have spent the last 20 years making that gift your own. Each of you was lucky to receive it and from here on out, the harder you work, the luckier you will become. Only true love can fuel the hard work that awaits you. When Joseph Campbell said to follow your bliss, I’m sure he meant: Don’t walk after it, but run.

So be prepared to sweat.

Two. You’re also going to want to say your path included a couple of sharp left turns. Or even better yet, an illegal U-turn.

Asia, travel and entrepreneurship, as it turned out, were just the first in a series of blisses for me. As you may or may not have learned about love by now, sometimes you change your mind and other times, someone changes it for you. Then what?

I came home from India only to be professionally reincarnated. It was a big blow to me, but I methodically sought out another “bliss” of mine: music. It was something I knew a lot about, cared a lot about, and had a passion for. Knowing I had transferable skills from my last career, I sold my entrepreneurial track record to a young outfit that needed entrepreneurs, MTV.

People often say that a bad event is a “blessing in disguise.” Trust me, experience will teach you that some are unbelievably well disguised. Everyone gets fired, or decides to make a radical change at some point. Everyone suffers setbacks. Bad days await you, I can promise you that.

But as careers unfold, you might just find you have another “bliss…and it’s OK.” You are certain to change with time and there’s a chance your bliss may evolve too. Not to worry: The skills you acquire can always be effectively redeployed. You will look back on setbacks and be grateful for a catalyst that came not a moment too soon.

Look at Al Gore. He won an election for the Presidency, only to immediately be told that, actually, there was a mistake and he wasn’t President after all. He got fired before he was even finished being hired. But look at what he’s accomplished since then: working hard to save a planet, for God’s sake, and even winning Academy Awards. Not to mention that he also guest-starred on Futurama. Now that’s an inspirational career adjustment!

Tomorrow, the third and final segment of Tom Freston’s speech: two more mandates for life, and a warning about what could happen if grads don’t follow his advice.

For more on Freston, read Pattie’s exclusive profile in the February 16 issue of Fortune, “The Most Wanted Man on the Planet.” Freston built MTV and rose to be CEO of Viacom, only to be dumped by Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s chairman, on Labor Day 2006. More recently he’s been trotting the globe – Afghanistan, Burma, Rwanda; helping Oprah build her new TV network, OWN. He’s also working with U2 frontman Bono on his mission to reduce global poverty and AIDS.