The average person has eight daily sources of news.

The average person goes to 87 different websites in a month.

And 90% of people on the web arrive at sites not through the front door, but rather through a search engine.

So says Richard Edelman, the PR honcho who runs Edelman. Here’s his take on the implications of this multiple-news-sourced world we’re in: “We tell our clients, ‘You have to be everywhere. You have to think of yourself as a media company.’”

This was part of a discussion called “The Media as the Model of Reinvention or the Messenger of Despair,” which took place last night at Jeff Sonnenfeld’s Yale CEO Summit. The burly leadership guru bulldozed through dinner, as usual, calling on Summit participants, classroom-style.

I’m headed there this afternoon, to get grilled. I’ll share more in later posts. Lots of candor and fresh insights here.

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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.

by Patricia Sellers

Gerry Laybourne likes to stake out new ground.

As a cable-TV pioneer in the ’80s, she built Nickelodeon for Viacom (VIAB).

Later, she founded Oxygen Media to fill a female void in media.

In the past two years since she sold Oxygen to NBC Universal (GE) for nearly $1 billion, Laybourne has been advising a few small businesses and serving on boards–Symantec (SYMC), Electronic Arts (ERTS), and, pending her nomination,  J.C. Penney (JCP). Meantime, she says, she’s “thinking about another start-up.”

Laybourne is always on the move. Which is why it wasn’t so surprising last week when she told us she was pioneering again–this time, very far away, in Uganda. Laybourne was walking in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, for a cause.

She was participating in a Mentoring Walk, an African offshoot of an event she created in the U.S. Back when she was CEO of Oxygen, Laybourne began gathering a few hundred women–high-placed friends like Meryl Streep, Diane von Furstenberg,  J.P. Morgan Chase’s (JPM) Heidi Miller–in Central Park and pairing them with young aspiring women for advice-fueled walk-and-talks. Laybourne eventually did a dozen such sunrise walks in cities across the country. Now, as Oxygen’s owner, NBCU continues the tradition in the U.S.

On November 21, there was not just the Mentoring Walk in Uganda. Mentoring Walks took place in seven other countries across Africa and Latin America–all inspired by Laybourne.

Fortune too plays a role in the international expansion of the idea. The organizers of Mentoring Walks in five countries on November 21 are alums of the Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership. Each year, this program pairs participants of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit with rising-star leaders from across the developing world. These international mentees close out their month-long U.S. stay in Manhattan, and when they’re here, Laybourne invites them to her Upper West Side apartment to chat.

Hearing about the U. S. Mentoring Walks from Laybourne, several mentees ran with the idea–or rather, walked with it across the globe.

“Coming back home, mentoring other women has become my mission,” says Rehmah Kasule, a mentee of Axa Equitable Life Insurance Co. (AXA) EVP Barbara Goodstein in the 2009 Fortune-State Department program. Kasule runs Century Marketing, her own firm, in Kampala. On November 21, she drew 350 women and girls came to her Mentoring Walk there.

The real value of the Fortune-State Department program is when mentees pay it forward, so to speak, back in their home countries. That same Saturday, Lucy Kanu, a 2008 mentee of Exxon-Mobil (XOM), staged her second annual Mentoring Walk in Nigeria. Other Fortune alums put on Mentoring Walks in Argentina, Bolivia, and Egypt. Vital Voices Global Partnership, a non-profit group, helped organize the events. Vital Voices also supports the Fortune-State Department program.

If Laybourne could have cloned herself, she would have made it to all eight Mentoring Walks across the world. Turns out, she made it home from Uganda in time for Thanksgiving. She decided to give thanks this year, she says, “for a world of smart, energetic, game-changing women.”

P.S. Read Laybourne’s own blog post about walking and mentoring in Uganda.

“If I lost control of the business, I’d lose myself–or at least the ability to be myself. Owning myself is a way to be myself.”

–Oprah Winfrey, in “The Business of Being Oprah,” a 2002 cover story that I wrote about the billionaire media titan. Back then, Oprah was figuring out who she wanted to be, beyond a daytime talk-show host. She had recently (and warily) formed a partnership with Hearst–from which O magazine was born. But she’d rejected every and all offers to license her name for big money. Having been abused as a child, control meant everything to her, she told me.

And it still does. But now she’s taking a giant step, announcing on the air today that she’ll leave broadcast TV after the next season, her 25th on air, to move to cable. Her start-up, OWN, is a 50-50 venture with Discovery Communications (DISCA). “Twenty five years feels right in my bones, and it feels right in my spirit,” she said, fighting tears, at the end of her program this afternoon.

For more on Oprah’s new network, read “Behind Oprah’s next big move,” posted earlier today. And catch me with Anderson Cooper tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern on CNN’s AC 360.

by Patricia Sellers

Now that Oprah Winfrey is talking about her life-changing moves–to cable from broadcast TV and to Los Angeles from Chicago–I have to say: I’m not surprised at all.

After all, Oprah, who says she’ll end her daytime show in September 2011, does things only one way: with her full self in the game.

What I know for sure (and she does too): Building a major cable network will take all of the most popular woman on TV.

When I spoke with Winfrey a year ago (on the afternoon of Election Day 2008, when she was flying high as Barack Obama was hours away from winning the Presidency), she told me about her plans to go into cable. We were talking because I was profiling Tom Freston, the former CEO of Viacom (VIAB), whom she had chased around the world–literally–trying to lure the peripatetic corporate refugee to run Harpo, her media conglomerate.

Winfrey, 55, didn’t persuade Freston to become her CEO. But she did bring him on as a consultant to OWN, the cable network about empowerment and life purpose that she’s now in the throes of developing. “I believe in signs,” Winfrey told me that day, going on to explain how David Zaslav, the CEO of Discovery Communications (DISCA), first lured her to think about moving from broadcast to cable. Visiting her at her Harpo office in Chicago in May 2007, Zaslav said to her: “Today, there’s MTV and CNN and Discovery and a few brands that will impact people in years ahead.”

Zaslav, a former NBC Universal (GE) executive who was aiming to build his own legacy at Discovery, asked Winfrey to think about owning her own TV platform as a way to extend her presence after she’s no longer here physically.

The “sign” Oprah saw? She grabbed Zaslav’s hand, led him to her desk, and pulled a piece of paper from her drawer. On the piece of paper, she had written a note to herself, years earlier, plotting her own TV network: OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network. This was the same name as Zaslav was suggesting she call her new channel.

And so it is OWN–a Los-Angeles-based venture that’s been marked by repeated launch delays. In February, when I did the Freston story, the target date was early 2010; now it’s January 2011.

Developing a new major network is no easy task. But OWN is taking over the prime TV “real estate” of Discovery Health, which will put it in 70 million homes at its start. That’s a huge help. Still, it isn’t as big a plus as OWN’s No.1 asset: Oprah herself.

by Patricia Sellers

I told you that NBC Universal (GE) is decorating its “Green is Universal” eco-campaign this week with a strange but cool art project inside 30 Rock. An environmental muralist named Tom Deininger spent all afternoon yesterday inside Studio 8H–the home of Saturday Night Live–with 300-plus inner-city school kids and NBC staffers building a massive wall relief completely out of trash.

That’s right. 100% garbage. Used cue cards from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Old cassette tapes from NBC Sports. Junked CDs and DVDs.

I told you I’d share what these oddball artists created–and here you go.

The mega-mural is based on a photo called Aspen Groves by the late,  great Ansel Adams. NBCU hasn’t decided where they’ll put the mural on public display. But it’ll likely be a public school or community space somewhere in New York City. Any takers?

“Young is better than old,
Pretty is better than ugly,
Rich is better than poor,
T.V. is better than music,
Music is better than movies,
Movies are better than sports,
Anything is better than politics,
And nothing is better than the celebrity dead.”

–Stolley’s Law of Covers, created by Dick Stolley, senior editorial advisor to Time Inc., and founding editor, People. A legend of the magazine world, he made history when he secured the rights the Zapruder footage immediately following JFK’s assassination.

In a Q&A emailed to Time Inc. employees today, Stolley included an addendum to his law: “Obama has changed the “anything is better than politics” rule, but that won’t last forever.” Unfortunately 2009 offered too much proof of his rule about celebrity deaths. For more from Stolley, check out this photo gallery at Life.com where he shares some favorite photos from his years working at LIFE. –Jessica Shambora

While the top execs at NBC Universal (GE) are consumed with closing their deal to merge into Comcast (CMCSA), they’ve found a little time to do some good for the planet. You can’t miss this week’s “Green is Universal” campaign if you watch CNBC (featuring Green Stocks to Watch) or the Tonight Show (Jay Leno races eco-friendly cars in the Ford (F) Green Car Challenge) or Top Chef, where the focus tonight is on organic and sustainable ingredients.

On Law & Order: SVU, they even make a big deal of switching to energy-efficient light bulbs. I’m not kidding.

While this eco-effort on screen gets pretty silly, there’s a cool thing happening today inside NBCU–at Studio 8H, the home of Saturday Night Live. An environmental artist named Tom Deininger and a bunch of New York City middle-school students are building a massive mural out of trash that’s re-purposed, recycled, or reclaimed from all around the company.

Measuring 8×36 feet, this is bona-fide TV trash: cue cards from Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, thousands of discarded CDs and DVDs, hundreds of NBC Sports tape cassettes.

I know about Deininger because he built one of his eco-murals out of 100% trash at Brainstorm Green, Fortune’s confab last April. (Lonnie Lardner, a onetime TV news reporter whose Los Angeles-based firm Creative Voltage brought Deininger to Brainstorm Green, also works on art installations for the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.) Here’s a shot of Deininger at work:

Photo courtesy of Rob Dunn

Deininger and the kids are supposed to finish their organized chaos at NBCU at 5pm today. Once it’s done, we’ll post a picture here on Postcards.

Iranian voters

Uninsured Americans

Steve Jobs (AAPL)

Michelle Obama

Nancy Pelosi

Google (GOOG)

The Taliban

Warren Buffett (BRKA)

Last evening, I sat in the audience here at Manhattan’s Time & Life Building (where Fortune is based) and watched a bunch of brainy, well-connected people help Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel decide who should be Time’s 2009 Person of the Year. The list above belongs to Barbara Walters, who came prepared and kicked off a lively discussion. At a dinner party earlier this week, Walters explained to last night’s audience of editors and advertisers, she went around the table and asked each guest, “Who do you think will be Time’s Person of the Year?”

So it went last evening as Stengel asked his guests the same question. Rudy Giuliani–Time’s Person of the Year in 2001–brought his own list too. On the former New York mayor’s menu of possibilities: General David Petraeus, Derek Jeter, Rush Limbaugh, Ben Bernanke, Sonia Sotomayor, Nancy Pelosi.

Gayle King and Dr. Mehmet Oz had another idea entirely–not a person but rather, a thing: Twitter. Said King: “Twitter feels very 2009 to me.”

Maybe. Time ’s criteria for Person of the Year is whoever or whatever most affected the events of the year, for better or for worse. So, who (or what) is your No. 1 choice for Time’s 2009 Person of the Year?

by Patricia Sellers

The best stories of personal success defy the odds and the career rulebooks.

Paula Deen takes the cake.

The silver-haired, Southern-cookin’ star of the Food Network, has sold more than 8 million books. She’s got licensing deals with Wal-Mart (WMT) and other major companies. She has a magazine, Cooking with Paula Deen. And at 62, she has more fans on Facebook than Bill Clinton. And more followers on Twitter than David Bowie, Carson Daly, Tavis Smiley, and country star Martina McBride.

No one–and least of all Deen herself–could have imagined her success today. I interviewed Deen on stage last week at a “Fortune Most Powerful Women Evening With…” dinner, one in a series of regional events to accompany Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit. This “Evening With…” was in Atlanta and drew top women execs from Atlanta-based Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola (KO), Delta Airlines (DAL), Home Depot (HD), and UPS (UPS).

Best that Deen, who lives in Savannah, tell you her life story. Watch the video below. See what a hoot she is. And hear an extraordinary rags-to-riches tale.

I’ll give you a quick flavor, so to speak. Married to an alcoholic, broke, and agoraphobic for many years, Deen broke out of her personal prison 20 years ago, at 42. She started a tiny catering business with her two sons, and then a restaurant–funded by her Aunt Peggy, now 80 and ever spry. Aunt Peggy and Michael Groover, Deen’s second husband whom she married five years ago, were also with us last week to hear Paula pass on her entrepreneurial advice.

“I am living proof, y’all, that the American dream is still much in existence,” she told me on stage. “I’ve proven, you don’t have to be 30 years old. I have proven, you don’t have to be a size six. And I have proven that you don’t have to have blond hair.”

Hear it straight from Paula Deen–and enjoy…

Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne has joined the board of AOL–soon to be spun off from Time Warner (TWX).

Does Lyne love trouble, or what? Five years ago, after Martha Stewart began her five-month prison stint in West Virginia, Lyne stepped up from the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) board to be CEO of the company–and worked, eventually hand in hand with Martha, to rebuild the crippled company.

That was a slog (Lyne left last year), and so was her three-year stint on the board of CIT (CITGQ)–which she began in 2006 when it didn’t seem to be a terribly risky move. But it turned out to be. For the past few months, Lyne has had a seat at the table as CIT’s board and CEO Jeff Peek vied to save the company from bankruptcy. Peek failed. Lyne left the CIT board last week–one day before CIT filed Chapter 11.

So now Lyne is turning her attention to another once-mighty company that lost its way. AOL’s new CEO, Tim Armstrong, who joined from Google (GOOG) last March, is preparing for the spinoff from Time Warner by assembling a board that includes Procter & Gamble (PG) ex-global marketing chief Jim Stengel, former FCC chairman Michael Powell, tech investment banker Bill Hambrecht, and Jim Wiatt, who headed William Morris until he got squeezed out in a messy merger with talent agency Endeavor this year.

These people know pressure–and have their work cut out for them at the flagging web pioneer. Time Warner’s earnings report on Wednesday included news that AOL’s sales dropped 23% last quarter, while profits fell by half.

The good news for Lyne is that she has a positive story where, for her at least, it really counts: at Gilt Groupe. She joined the tiny purveyor of luxury goods last year, and it has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the Internet space.

by Patricia Sellers

Greetings from Atlanta. I’m here for Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Evening With…” Atlanta is tonight’s stop in a series of regional dinners that we’re hosting annually in addition to the main event, the Most Powerful Women Summit. I’ll be interviewing Food Network star Paula Deen, the silver-haired, Southern-cookin’ entrepreneur and star of the Food Network. Also with us: the top women execs at companies like Coca-Cola (KO), Home Depot (HD), Delta Airlines, (DAL), UPS (UPS), and Turner Broadcasting, which is part of Fortune’s parent, Time Warner (TWX).

It’s fascinating to be here since I grew up, career-wise, learning about business from two Atlanta-based Fortune 500 giants: Home Depot, back in the ’80s and ’90s when co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank were running the place, and Coca-Cola, when the late CEO Roberto Goizueta built Coke to be Fortune’s No. 1 Most Admired Company.

Isn’t it interesting that a false sense of invincibility and arrogance eventually poisoned both corporate cultures? Coke and Home Depot fell off the tracks, struggled through lines of wrong CEOs, and had their comeuppance. Only after painful cost-cutting and serious strategic rethinking did they begin to return to prominence.

I spent this morning at Coke with some folks who’ve been key to its recovery. One is SVP Wendy Clark, a hotshot marketer who joined Coke last year from AT&T (ATT) and this year made Fortune’s “Women to Watch” list in the Most Powerful Women issue. I also caught up with Clyde Tuggle, Coke’s global communications chief whom I’ve known since the ’80s, the Goizueta days.

Talking with Tuggle reminded me how radically marketing has changed. In May, he told me, he asked Coke’s social media experts to come up with “a big idea” that would be unique and turn consumers into brand marketers–what smart brand-owners must do today. The team delivered an idea called Expedition 206. It’s an online contest in which consumers vote, via Facebook and Twitter and other social networks, to elect a trio who will visit every country in the world where Coke sells its products. (Yes, Coke is in 206 countries.). Consumers have selected three finalist trios–who, if you look at the Expedition 206 site, you’ll see are from all around the world, literally. The winner will emerge in two weeks. Starting January 1, that trio will spend 365 days globetrotting “on a mission, quite simply, to find happiness,” as Tuggle puts it.

It’s a gimmick, but maybe a clever one in this new era when consumers, not companies, control public image.  “We have to move into a space where we let go,” as Tuggle says. “The world gets to experience the brand through the eyes of the consumer, not the company.”

Indeed, the consumer is now the chief marketing and communication officer.

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

Elizabeth Edwards, former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina and other cancer survivors convened for a discussion called “Stand Up to Cancer” at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in mid-September. Hollywood producer Laura Ziskin was also on the panel. She’s a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer, an entertainment-industry-led initiative that funds cancer research, requires scientists to work together, and is helping to accelerate  progress toward curing the disease that kills 1,500 Americans every day.

Ziskin, who was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2004 and has been fighting the good fight since, stopped me in the hotel lobby during the Summit and told me that she had made a film–a two-minute documentary–that she wanted to show before the Stand Up to Cancer panel. I didn’t know what this guerilla documentary might be, but I had to figure that a powerhouse producer whose film credits include Pretty Woman, As Good As It Gets, and the Spider-Man series would have something good to show.

Ziskin made her video with her tiny Flip camera. As it turned out, it was the perfect intro to the Summit session about cancer. Today, day one of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is a good time to share the film publicly . Click on the video below and you’ll see some of the business world’s most powerful women, all participants in the Fortune Summit–such as NBC Universal’s (GE) Bonnie Hammer, Walt Disney (DIS) media boss Anne Sweeney, Goldman Sach’s (GS) Kathleen Brown, Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne,  and Time Inc. (TWX) CEO Ann Moore–standing up to cancer. Because, as we all know, cancer touches everybody.

P.S. Click here to see Edwards and Fiorina–who lives in California is considering a run for the U.S. Senate–talk about their own missions to conquer cancer.

I thought I was dreaming.

After posting yesterday’s rant against Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) service “upgrade,” can you imagine how I reacted at 6:30 this morning when I turned on my TV and found that all my favorite functions–which I’d thought were obliterated by the upgrade–were back in action?

Time Warner Cable (spun off recently from Time Warner (TWX), which owns Time Inc., Fortune’s parent) responded to my complaining–I was sure of it. I suspected that Alex Dudley, the TWC PR man whom I quoted in yesterday’s Postcard, had become my personal cable repairman. My Dudley Do-Right.

“I did not do anything,” Dudley told me when I phoned him this morning. The return of my beloved DVR functions, he said, “is nothing but a coincidence.”

Dudley didn’t dispute yesterday’s claim that I—as well as others I surveyed–could, after the company’s Navigator “upgrade,” rewind a program a scant eight seconds. That annoying problem disappeared this morning: When I pressed “Replay,” Voila! I could rewind an entire hour-long show (as long as the DVR was tuned to that channel for the program’s entirety.)

“The software was fixed,” explained Dudley, while admitting he himself was guessing about this midnight magic. “When people are sleeping, we ping the boxes. I guess we did your neighborhood overnight.”

That’s kinda creepy. But I’m glad it’s fixed. Wonder what the cable fairy will ping tonight.

Time Warner Cable’s DVR “upgrade” is a downgrade.

If you’re a customer of America’s second-largest cable company, as I am, you  came home one day recently to find that the new “Navigator” DVR system has taken over your TV–and taken your TV viewing hostage.

You used to be able to watch a show live and–let’s say, you dashed to the kitchen and missed that touchdown pass–rewind and watch it in repeat.

Now you can’t do that. The “Replay” button takes you only eight seconds back.

You used to be able to come home at 9:20 pm on a Thursday–after a rough day at work, let’s say–and if your TV was already set to NBC, you pushed “Record” to capture 30 Rock in progress. That 30 Rock episode instantly popped into your library of recorded programs.

Now you can’t record those in-progress programs either.

And don’t get me started on “Start Over.” This is a new feature that Time Warner Cable–recently spun off from Time Warner (TWX), which owns Time Inc., Fortune’s parent–hyped leading up to the Navigator “upgrade.” Now, if you press the little “Start Over” button that pops on your screen during certain programs, the program starts over–and you have to watch that show then and there. The new Navigator is like a stern grade-school teacher: No rewinding or fast-forwarding allowed during “Start Over”!

I’m not the only customer who isn’t happy. After I advertised my angst on Facebook yesterday, one friend, Manhattan architect Eric Gartner, commented: “It’s really really bad, i agree!”

Gary Belis, a long-ago Fortune colleague, wrote: “Hate it, hate it, HATE IT! And don’t even get me started on trying to find my usual channels.”

“FiOs can’t get to Manhattan soon enuf,” he added, referring to Verizon’s (VZ) broadband Internet-phone-TV service.

Another comment came from Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne, who once co-headed ABC Entertainment at Disney (DIS): “I called to complain that the upgrade had erased all my saved shows. The nice rep suggested I start over.”

I too called Time Warner Cable customer service to complain. The nice rep told me yesterday that they’ve been getting lots of complaints. “I’m so sorry,” he said, trying to console me by adding  that “sometimes a change in your equipment and in your personal life” is good.

Thank you. I needed that.

Time Warner Cable (TWC) spokesman Alex Dudley told me today that he wasn’t aware of the problems. (He’s a Connecticut resident and Cablevision (CVC) customer, he explained, so he hasn’t used the new Navigator system.) “If there’s any temporary pain, it’ll be worth it,” he said, noting that better program-search capabilities and other new functions are to come with the upgrade.

Fine, but really, I just want my rewind and fast-forward returned to me. As for the latter, Dudley says, programmers like Time Warner and the TV networks chose to block fast-forwarding, obviously to protect advertisers, “The networks and content owners would allow us to do “Start Over” only if fast-forward was disabled,” he says.

Ah yes, the consumer loses again.

“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.