The big highlight of the McGraw-Hill media summit in New York when NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker took a couple of shots at Jon Stewart.

But our favorite story came at the end of the day, courtesy of Viacom top dog Philippe Dauman. The background to this story was a question about Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s YouTube  over copyright infringement.

That led Dauman to mention that his son, Phillippe Dauman Jr., happens to work at… wait for it… Google.

Here’s the CEO’s described the chain of events that led to his son’s hiring:

“It just so happens that he was being interviewed at business school by someone at Google on the very day we sent our massive takedown notice.

So he called me up the next day, Saturday. ‘Dad you really screwed me up.’

I said, ‘What do you mean?’ I had no idea.

‘I had a great interview with Google yesterday,’ he said. ‘And they aren’t going to hire me.’

I said, ‘Oh? Well, you’re right, they probably won’t. But you’re a smart kid and you’ll get lots of offers.’

Now I give Google a lot of credit because his interviewer — who was actually a very  senior guy — called him the next week. ‘We liked you,’ he said. But he couldn’t escape who my son was because he’s, well, a junior. But he told my son they make offers on merit, and he invited him out to Mountain View and ran him through the computerized tests — and he got a job offer.

It was actually down in the end between Apple and Google, he had offers from both companies. So my son called me up. ‘I know you have this thing with Google,’ he said. ‘But I really liked Google. I told him Google’s a great company, and we have a dispute at the moment at the top, but it’s still a great company.

‘You should go there.’

The next time I saw Eric Schmidt — because I did find out they ran it up the flagpole to him because it involved my son — I said to him, ‘I admire what you did. It could have come out differently.’

And my son’s doing very well there. He loves it. But we agreed, and my son is meticulous about this, that we don’t talk about it.”

And what exactly does Philippe Dauman Jr do at Google?

“He’s in content acquisition.”

(Picture: Reuters)

How bad is the advertising market? Pretty bad, says Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman. And it’s only going to get uglier.

“It is clear that while as cable network owners we are in a more favorable media segment than most, advertising comps are likely to get worse before they get better,” he said on a conference call today.

This comment may seem dry, but we’re totally ready to cut him some slack since it came shortly after this poetic gem: “And despite the orgy of pessimism prevalent of the late, the economic tide in our economy and our industry will rise again.”

Dauman, whose job means he oversees MTV, VH-1, Comedy Central and so on, assessed the situation this way: Advertisers who committed dollars during the upfront for the first quarter are holding solid, but are getting shaky for the second quarter.

Viacom finance whiz Tom Dooley expanded on that. “In terms of second-quarter option exercises, many of the moves have been shifting dollars from quarter-to-quarter. Some advertisers have done so but come back later in the quarter to make smaller buys in the scatter market. It is this activity combined with the overall economic trends which leads us to believe that ad market will get worse before it gets better.”

Not exactly an orgy of optimism, guys.

(Photo: Reuters)

Meet News Corp’s latest cool dude: Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music. They say he’s not only talented, but he’s hip as well — and reports of his arrival were, to say the least, plentiful.

Here is his history, as outlined by MySpace’s press release:

Holt previously served as Executive Vice President of Digital Music for the MTV Networks Music and Logo Group where he oversaw several initiatives for the company’s digital music group, including working with the MTV, VH1 and CMT brands… Prior to joining MTV, Holt was Senior Vice President of New Media, Creative and Strategic Marketing at Interscope Geffen A&M.

It couldn’t hurt that he used MySpace to tout new albums from well-known pop acts such as Weezer, Nine Inch Nails, Beck, Black Eyed Peas, and Audioslave.

CNET’s News.com in October reported that Holt was coming from a little more upheaval at Viacom than might have been comfortable:

Impending layoffs at the media conglomerate, perhaps staged in phases to avoid publicity or shock, have been well documented. And a source within Viacom said that there has been talk of some “reorganization” within Holt’s digital-media division.

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told the Los Angeles Times that Holt brought a blend of knowledge about where music is going as well as the connection to bands that large amounts of people want to hear: “He was the first person that we really found that had the music experience, both from a marketing perspective and from a music programming perspective, the technical knowledge and the relationships with all the major labels as well as independent labels.”

DeWolfe also liked the cut of Holt’s jib, apparently: “If you look at Courtney, from the clothes he wears to the glasses that he may wear, he’s got a very eclectic style to him… A very unique style.”

It almost feels like a Pet Shop Boys song: I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks, let’s make lots of money!

Keep an eye on

• Associated Press union members say contract talks show that the news outlet is trying to justify the old phrase, “You can’t spell cheap without AP.” (Editor & Publisher)
• Jeff Jarvis, the new media guru, gets the Tolstoy treatment in this lengthy story. Conclusion? The medicine he gives old media executives lists nausea as one of its side effects. (New York Observer)
• Newspapers aren’t the only ones trying to claw their way out of the pit of despair. Read about radio, the other revenue-challenged medium. (The New York Times)

(Courtney Holt photo: Courtesy of MySpace)