A quiet game of musical chairs is going on in Hollywood, and the result could be one entertainment mogul rejoining an old friend at Paramount and a former movie tycoon landing at tech power- house Yahoo!
On the Money hears that Chris McGurk, the former vice chairman and chief operating officer of movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, has been approached by Yahoo! to head up its media group, a post currently occupied by Lloyd Braun.
Braun, meanwhile, has been rumored for some time to be jumping ship to Paramount, where he would join Brad Grey, his old boss at talent-management giant Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, to launch a TV production unit.
“Brad is an old friend of Lloyd’s,” said one Tinseltown source.
Grey – who was tapped early last year to run Viacom’s Paramount – and Braun go way back. As president of Brillstein-Grey, Braun oversaw the development of the hit HBO series “The Sopranos.”
Sources say that now Viacom has split – and Paramount’s former TV production unit has gone to corporate sibling CBS – Grey is intent on launching his own television division and is eyeing Braun to lead the effort.
Braun, who also has worked as chairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group, joined Yahoo! in 2004, overseeing its original content plans. But his Hollywood sensibility has clashed with the Silicon Valley culture of Yahoo!
According to a piece in the Los Angeles Times last year, Braun irked his colleagues when he received a special parking spot, took a conference room with a patio for his office and demanded a corporate jet.
A Paramount spokeswoman denied the rumor, and a Yahoo! rep didn’t return a call seeking comment. Susan Decker, Yahoo!’s CFO, declined to comment about it on a conference call last week.
McGurk, meanwhile, left MGM after he and former boss Alex Yemenidjian sold MGM in 2004 for about $5 billion to an investment consortium that included Sony, Comcast and several private-equity firms.
McGurk, who formerly held posts at Disney, Universal, Pepsi and Price Waterhouse, has been scouting new opportunities in Hollywood.
POISON PEN
A new book by ace investigative reporter Gary Weiss, a longtime BusinessWeek staffer, is guaranteed to be a front-runner for most controversial business book of 2006, according to The Post’s Roddy Boyd. The book, “Wall Street Versus America,” won’t hit the stands until early April, but his arguments – gleaned from two decades worth of reporting on Wall Street – are sure to provoke outrage in many sectors.
The most provocative argument in Weiss’ book is that naked shorting – or short-selling a company’s stock without being able to borrow it first, per long standing rules – is not only a good idea, but a necessary one.
Weiss argues that the indifference of regulators toward small-cap stocks has promoted a lawless Wild West dominated by stock promoters and sleazy underwriters. The only remedy against such “bacteria” is to short these stocks mercilessly.
This is guaranteed to send Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and the other disciples of his “stop naked short-selling crusade” – Weiss dismisses the lot of them as the “Baloney Brigade” – into further spasms.
The book is witty, readable and hunts big prey: Weiss spends a chapter filleting Bear Stearns for its sins in some preposterous municipal securities transactions. His eyeglass spares no one, and financial reporters come in for special mention for their sins of omission, as they focus on the machinations in the Morgan Stanley executive suite while ordinary investors are robbed blind by scams that continue to this day.
CEASE-FIRE
The record industry’s clash with the satellite radio industry – which could still shape up as the next front in the war against copyright infringement – has reached a cease-fire.
According to a source, the record companies have reached a deal to temporarily refrain from litigation with satellite radio giant Sirius over its portable device that allows users to record and store songs – a function that record executives say is a clear violation of copyright law.
Sirius rival XM, meanwhile, has not yet brought a similar device to market, so discussions between XM and the Recording Industry Association of America – the record industry’s lobbying group – are in early stages.
ROUND TWO
Steve Gottlieb says his fight against Island Def Jam Records and its former boss Lyor Cohen isn’t over, despite an appeals court overturning the original $132 million judgment.
Gottlieb’s last resort is the U.S. Supreme Court, and he is likely to file a writ before the Supremes by April – even if getting the High Court to review the case is a long shot.
“That’s my intention,” Gott- lieb told The Post.
TVT Records, an indie label headed by Gottlieb, had sued Cohen and Def Jam for allegedly reneging on a deal to produce an album with rapper Ja Rule and his former group Cash Money Click. At the time of the suit Ja Rule was signed to IDJ subsidiary Murder Inc., but he got his start with TVT.
Gottlieb also pointed out that the courts are still reviewing allegations by his legal team that Cohen misrepresented his net worth in a court filing.
JUST ASKING
Which television business reporter is screaming at Wall Street bankers and traders after getting scooped multiple times on a recent merger story involving a historic New York institution? The hell raising has turned off more than a few sources who are complaining the reporter is brow-beating them to give up information. tim.arango@nypost.com