That’s good for Sony, the people who paid the bill for “Dragon Tattoo,” right? Nope. Terrible, says Sony.

The studio is livid that the New Yorker is running Denby’s review today, more than a week ahead of a Dec. 13 embargo. Why does the studio care? If you want a good explanation of modern-day movie marketing and the push-pull between filmmakers and film reviewers, check out this lucid explainer from NPR’s Linda Holmes.

But for everyone else, this won’t matter at all. New Yorker readers (and now, drive-by visitors as well, since the review has been placed in front of  the magazine’s online paywall) will see the review, and a larger group of people will have a vague idea that the New Yorker likes it. That’s about it.

And that’s the moral for folks like myself in the technology-news-industrial complex, who spend way too much time thinking about, fighting with and cursing embargoes. This stuff can matter a lot (sometimes) to us, but that’s really only because we decide to agree that it matters. Readers don’t care at all.

I’d spend more time explaining this, except that if you care about this at all, you’ve already read many boring essays about it — perhaps even today! And I can’t tell you that I’m swearing off embargoes, because I can’t — I worked with three of them last week, have probably at least one more embargoed story coming this week and, I’m sure, many more down the road.

But this is a nice reminder that every time I do deal with one of these, it almost always means I’m not spending time on something geniunely interesting. Like news no one else is writing about, or a fresh take on something everyone else has already written about. Or even seeing a good movie.

Last night, the New York Times dropped a juicy little tidbit into its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink daily update of the board mishegas at Yahoo around the deliberations yesterday over two competing private equity bids to buy a partial stake in the company.

No, not the one about Jeff Jordan — former eBay exec, OpenTable CEO and now VC at Andreessen Horowitz — possibly taking a big role at Yahoo if the firm’s bid with Silver Lake prevailed — which was mysteriously removed very soon after it posted (’cuz he will not, so good move, NYT!)

I mean the one about the venture firm’s big-kahuna partner, Marc Andreessen — who will indeed take a board seat and play a strong role in Yahoo’s future if his bid wins — getting a possible competitor in the Silicon Valley savior section of the ongoing show.

That would be in the form of Reid Hoffman, the well-known entrepreneur, VC and angel investor, who the Times said had talked with TPG Capital, Silver Lake’s rival in the Yahoo bidding, about becoming a possible partner.

Wrote the Times:

“TPG has held discussions with Greylock Partners, another venture capital firm, about a possible alignment, two people said. TPG is hoping to draw on the expertise of Reid Hoffman, one of Greylock’s partners and the founder of the professional social network LinkedIn, these people said.”

Translation: If Silver Lake has a tech icon of substance on its team to give uber-geek appeal to its offer — dagnabbit — then TPG was going to raise with another one, whom the very same Times reporter who wrote last night’s article recently nicknamed “The Start-Up Whisperer” in a recent glowing profile of Hoffman.

While I am still trying to grok what a start-up whisperer exactly means (and how someone as self-effacing as Hoffman would react to such a twee moniker without snickering), it’s a move that has likely already irritated Silver Lake.

After all, TPG aiming at nabbing Hoffman is akin to two crazy neighbors trying to one-up each other in holiday-lighting lawn decor. (You have a singing Santa, so I’ll have a singing Santa — and I might even add a Lady Gaga-themed crèche for good measure!)

But it’s not a bad instinct, either, to get your own live-action Silicon Valley legend, even if it is only half true in Hoffman’s case.

Because, according to sources who know such things, while Hoffman and TPG have had conversations, there have been no commitments, and nothing is close to being agreed on to link the pair.

That could certainly change, and quickly, but Hoffman or Greylock aren’t currently in TPG’s proposal to Yahoo.

That’s in contrast to Andreessen, who is all in (I am not even going to bother with “sources said” here, since everyone and my mother has seen the proposal) with Silver Lake on the deal to purchase 19.9 percent of Yahoo for about $16.50 a share.

As I reported earlier this week, for Silver Lake’s money and expertise in fixing broken things, the bid includes: Silver Lake getting three board seats; cash going to a buyback of stock or granting of a dividend to shareholders; the ability to select a CEO; approval of its strategic plan for Yahoo, and its solution to come to terms with Yahoo’s unhappy Asian partners; and all the purple wearables you could ever hope for (perhaps Yahoo’s best asset, IMHO, especially worn by such obviously cool dudes, as seen here).

Also, controversial Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang gets to stay around on the board (but only if he becomes very, very quiet, so as not to rile the activist shareholders).

TPG’s bid is less formed, although its price is slightly higher. And the PE firm has yet to check the “Big Geek Included” box.

Hence, the floating of Hoffman as a contender to take on Andreessen, who was once dubbed the “Golden Geek” by Time magazine.

I hope TPG does, soon, since what a matchup it would be!

But, for now at least, the pair — who share big investments in a range of Web companies, most especially Facebook (Andreessen is on the board of the social networking giant, and Hoffman was an early investor and adviser) — are at peace.

Dagnabbit.

Disney CEO Bob Iger tapped Skipper to take over his company’s most important asset just a week ago. But Skipper, who had been ESPN’s content boss, has been a rising star there for years, hopping from print (!) to the Web to TV programming. We’ll have his first onstage interview in his new role.

At a time when the value of Big Media’s content is in flux, ESPN’s lock on sports — DVR-proof, pirate-resistant programming that draws mass eyeballs in a niche age — is more valuable than ever. Can Skipper keep it that way?

We’ll ask him in January, as he joins a lineup that includes: YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman, New Yorker editor David Remnick, Warner Music Chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr., News Corp. Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman, Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff.

All Things Digital’s first-ever media conference runs Jan. 30 and 31 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, an hour south of Los Angeles. See you there.

So says a survey commissioned by a publishers’ trade group: It finds that two-thirds of people who read magazines on tablets and e-readers think they’ll be spending more time with digital issues over the next year. Many of them — 46 percent — are consuming more magazines — both in print and digital form — than they did before they got their hands on an iPad.* And 63 percent of them want more digital stuff to read.

Overall, the survey has generally sunny news for the magazine business, though it’s fair to wonder if the Association of Magazine Media would release a survey that had glum news.

The report does offer some guidance for the industry: 89 percent of readers want publishers to adopt a uniform way of navigating magazines, and 69 percent like watching in-app videos that run less than minute.

The other point worth noting about the report is that it exists, period. The survey, conducted earlier this month, was completed by 1,009 people “pre-screened for their ownership of mobile devices and their use of magazine-branded apps.” Up until now, pollsters couldn’t have been able to find enough respondents to make that kind of poll possible, says Chris Kevorkian, the trade group’s executive vice president for digital: “We’ve been wanting to do this research for some time, but didn’t have the critical mass to query.”

*The survey isn’t explicitly about iPad magazine editions — in theory, it covers all tablet magazine apps, as well as magazines consumed on e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook. But the majority of these things are being read on Apple’s device.

Michael Bloom joined the publisher, which owns Rolling Stone, Us Weekly, and Men’s Journal, in May. On Friday afternoon, he sent out a memo announcing his departure. Here’s the bulk of the note:

As some of you already know, I’m moving on from Wenner Media. While it’s been a relatively short time, I’ve really enjoyed working with so many talented and creative people across Wenner’s incredible brands.

Over the past six months, a new digital leadership team has been put in place, and a lot of great work has been done to set the foundation of what will be a terrific digital future. I’m proud of what you guys have accomplished and I know that you will go on to do great things in 2012. I’ll certainly be rooting for you from the sidelines.

Unlike many of his competitors, Wenner Media owner Jann Wenner has never rushed to embrace digital publishing. For a long time, he did very little with the Web beyond handing over his flagship RollingStone.com site to RealNetworks.

That deal made him money, but it also allowed upstarts like Pitchfork to grab lots of territory and mindshare over the years. Last year, Wenner got control of the site again and moved to put most of it behind a pay wall.

Around the same time, Wenner declared himself unimpressed with the commercial upside of the iPad for magazine publishers, a position that put him at odds with the conventional wisdom. Since then, many of his peers have become much more sympathetic to his take.

Bloom, who had previously put in time at Sharecare, MTV, and AOL Time Warner, didn’t mention a new job in his note; Wenner Media hasn’t announced a replacement. I’ve asked Bloom and a Wenner rep for comment.

Time Warner’s publishing unit told its employees this afternoon that five magazines — Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People and Real Simple — would be available on the Kindle Fire tomorrow.

The announcement comes after negotiations that dragged on for weeks and continued through Tuesday morning — a process that baffled most of Time Inc.’s peers, who signed on to the new device in time for its September unveiling.

Supposedly, the major stumbling block for Time Inc. was that Amazon has retained the ability to set the retail price for the magazines it sells, which means it could theoretically slash prices or give away the magazines for free. That scenario would be a major bummer for all the publishers who have been diligently trying to convince subscribers and newsstand buyers that they’ve been underpaying for their reading material.

But Amazon has told Time’s competitors, like Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith, that it doesn’t intend to beat down prices, and that assurance was apparently enough for them. Jeff Bewkes’ company apparently needed more convincing.

This never seemed to be an issue, by the way, with Barnes & Noble and its new Nook tablet; Time Inc. was a part of that gadget’s launch announcement.

Like the titles that Time Inc. sells via the iPad and other Android tablets, access to the Kindle Fire editions will come via bundled deals, where consumers pay a single price and get both paper and digital copies of their magazines.

Here’s the memo that consumer marketing head Steve Sachs sent out at the end of the day:

November 15, 2011
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Steve Sachs
Re: Time Inc. Titles Now Available on Amazon’s Kindle Fire

I’m pleased to share the news that Time Inc. has just reached a deal with Amazon that will allow subscribers to our magazines to enjoy their subscriptions on the new Kindle Fire. Starting tomorrow, subscribers of FORTUNE, PEOPLE, Real Simple, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and TIME will be able to access digital editions of these magazines on the Kindle Fire at no additional cost. Other Time Inc. titles will follow shortly.

To date, hundreds of thousands of Time Inc. print subscribers have authenticated to receive their digital editions, with thousands more being added each week. Our agreement with Amazon continues to expand our All Access strategy, adding the Kindle Fire to the growing list of platforms where consumers can enjoy our content, including Apple’s iPad, the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet, the Android Marketplace and Next Issue’s store.

It’s important to note that Time Inc. is the only publisher designing all of its digital magazine apps specifically for tablets. Because we’re producing a rich consumer experience made for each device, our brands translate beautifully — and the Kindle Fire is no exception.

Adding the Amazon launch to our platforms has meant that IT and other dedicated teams have had to work quickly and nimbly. I want to offer a special thanks to all those who have been hard at work bringing our brands to life on tablets.

S.S.

Here’s a terrific interview that longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent Morley Safer did with the 92-year-old Andy Rooney just a month ago, when Rooney was retiring from the classic CBS television news magazine.

Rooney, who died this past weekend, did the well-known final segment on “60 Minutes,” playing up his grump to Olympic levels. In the video below, he obviously remained in fine curmudgeonly form until the end.

While Rooney could sometimes irk, the body of his work was legendary — and, if you really think about it, he was a kind of verbal blogger long before there ever was an Internet.

Which he grumped about, too.

Enjoy:

Zappos expects to launch its first attempt at recreating the catalog experience on the iPad in early December, just in time for the holidays.

The app was developed by the Zappos office located in San Francisco, where a dozen or so employees are working on building new shopping experiences.

Zappos, which is owned by Amazon.com, is headquartered in Las Vegas.

The new app joins the regular Zappos iPad app, which features most, if not all, of the products found on the company’s Web site.

Instead of being generally available in iTunes, the Zappos app will be found on Apple’s Newsstand, which organizes magazine and newspaper subscriptions for those who use iOS 5. It will be free; a new edition will appear monthly.

Articles will highlight things like fun and funky boots for winter or trends in color. All of the items will be for sale, making it more catalog than magazine.

Will Young, a director in Zappos’ San Francisco office, said the catalog will highlight about 100 items a month, featuring shoes, clothes and handbags. “Most people still think of Zappos as shoes,” Young said. “The main goal isn’t sales. It’s about educating.”

The app was unveiled to all Zappos employees at an all-hands meeting yesterday.