Bad Markets Equal Good Business at CNBC

Plus: The New York Observer's list of the top "media power bachelors" is out

Today, in media and publishing: The New York Observer ranks the "media power bachelors," CNBC's ratings are up, up,  up, and Christine O'Donnell's memoir includes witch ad regrets and cutting words for Karl Rove.

• The New York Observer has followed up its completely unscientific but highly readable list of the top fifty media power couples with a completely unscientific but highly readable list of the top fifty "media power bachelors." What makes a media power bachelor a media power bachelor? Desirability, either due "physical appearance, byline, or pure and unfiltered cachet" and a relationship status that allows one to partake in "the freedoms afforded to one not in a long-term committed relationship," are cited as key factors in the Observer's criteria, as is being somebody who "simply come[s] to mind."  New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter tops the rankings, or at least is the first person to pop up when the slideshow runs. [The New York Observer]
• Standard & Poor's downgrade of America's debt rating and the subsequent market fluctuations haven't been good from brokers' blood pressure, but they've helped bolster the ratings for cable's financial news networks this month, with CNBC averaging "378,000 at-home viewers during the New York market hours of 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m." for the first two weeks of August, "up sharply" from July's 224,000 figure. Meanwhile Fox Business has "had an average of 107,000 viewers at those hours, up from 76,000 in July," and Bloomberg TV's "private ratings indicate that it too had a surge in recent weeks, though its audience is smaller than that of Fox Business." [The New York Times]

• Sony Television Pictures has optioned Alexandra Lebenthal's novel 2010 The Recessionistas for a movie that will "chronicle the lives of fictional New York social and financial heavyweights during the 2008 financial crisis." [Page Six]
• Talking Points Memo "is planning to expand its coverage of foreign policy, technology and financial news over the next few months," in an effort to increase traffic and ad revenues and be "viewed as more than just a politics news site centered on the war between liberals and conservatives." TPM editor Josh Marshall told Nieman Journalism Lab in an interview last month that ad sales revenues at the site were up 88 percent over figures from the same period in 2010 [paid Content]
• Former Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's memoir Troublemaker doesn't come out until tomorrow, but the Associated Press was able to get a copy early. In the text, she identifies her "I am not a witch" ad as the "lowest moment" of her 2010 campaign and blasts Republican strategist Karl Rove, who questioned her seriousness as a candidate after she beat Rep. Mike Castle in the GOP primary, saying Rove's "style of Machiavellian, unprincipled realpolitik that destroyed the Republican brand" and that his influence "tarnished [former President George W.] Bush’s legacy among true Constitutionalists." [GalleyCat and Politico]
• CNN's Wolf Blitzer will interview President Obama tomorrow from Iowa on the second day of the president's bus tour. The one-on-one interview will touch on topics ranging from "domestic economic and international issues to 2012 politics" according to the network's official announcement. [CNN]