TV BUZZ: Coming soon on Fox: real-life layoffs as reality TV. Each week of the exciting series “Someone's Gotta Go” will feature a struggling small business that needs to fire an employee. The entire staff will be told how much everybody makes, what their performance reviews have been like, etc. Then they will discuss and vote on who should be let go. It's being described as like The Apprentice meets Survivor meets The Office, but really it is like “so depressing” meets “makes me uncomfortable.”

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The Best Links:

1. The WaPo asks the key question, “What on Earth would motivate anyone to be on this show?”
2. “Fox takes another bold step towards live televised executions…”
3. Sacked Employees To Provide Fox with Ratings — Everyone Wins!
4. Layoffs get the reality TV treatment
5. Dailies: “Isn’t TV supposed to be an escape?”
6. Fox, Endemol USA Have ‘Gotta Go’
7. Reality TV hits the motherload
8. Bad economy good for reality shows
9. Fox orders downsizing reality series

Banks are not the only things that are too big to fail. We are going to be just fine, people. We are going. To be fine.

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Microsoft Songsmith can turn anything into music genius, including the downward spiral of the global economy. This is clever, but then it gets kind of depressing. Cheer yourself up with a selection of classic songs Songsmith-ified.

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The Best Links:

1. Nothing Can Prepare You For The Microsoft Songsmith Commercial
2. Classic Hits By Microsoft Songsmith
3. Economic Failure Medley, by Microsoft Songsmith

BUSINESS BUZZ: Breaking on Friday morning: December's unemployment rate was announced at 7.2%, a 16-year high. Here are some alerts from top news sources.

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This is the official logo of the recently laid off and the formerly hopeful. Brought to you by ASSME, the American Society for Shitcanned Media Elites, a “support organization for newly downsized members of the magazine, newspaper, book publishing, advertising, TV and web industries.”

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The Best Links:

1. Get The Shirt Here

BUSINESS BUZZ: The financial rescue term is the Word of the Year, probably because the bailouts will never end . Somewhere, Dick Fuld is screaming. Or being punched.

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The Best Links:

1. Bailout: “A rescue from financial distress.”
2. the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program
3. ‘08 Bailout costs more than the Marshall Plan, Lousiana Purchase, and NASA combined
4. AIG Bailout
5. Citigroup bailout
6. Bailout for the big 3 automakers?

BUSINESS BUZZ: Yet another victim of our tattered economy: the kept woman. Men about town are less willing to spend money on bottle service and pricey jewelry for their companions, and a whopping 82% of men surveyed plan to reduce payments to their mistresses (though there must be a Bradley effect in that poll). All in all, not a good time to be a woman of leisure.

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The Best Links:

1. “It sucks to be a single girl right now”
2. “For the men, they’re just cutting across the board.”
3. “They follow their company share prices in the newspapers, and will bail out if he does badly. “