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The Morning Fix: No Starz for Netflix! Smile, Warner Bros.

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After the coffee. Before what promises to be a very long Friday.

The Skinny: Great, I finally get a TV that has wi-fi and a Netflix app and now they won’t have Starz movies. In other headlines, a look at the end of ‘Rescue Me’ and a preview of the weekend box office.

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No Starz to see. Liberty Media-owned pay television channel Starz won’t renew its deal to offer its content on Netflix, which ends in February. This is a big deal because Starz content includes not only original content but movies from Walt Disney Co. as well, meaning that Netflix is losing a big source of fresh programming. While Netflix offered plenty of bucks to keep Starz as one of its programming sources, the pay cable channel decided to go the same route as HBO and Showtime, both of which keep their content off of Netflix for fear of alienating the multichannel video programming distributors who carry their channels. Netflix stock tumbled on the news. Analysis from the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.

One small step. It’s Labor Day weekend and given what’s being offered at the box office, Hollywood knows that a lot of people just prefer to chill out with family this weekend or sit in front of the TV watching college football. But if you do dare to head out to the multiplex, you can check out ‘Apollo 18’ or ‘Shark Night 3D.’ If you have a brain, there’s ‘The Debt.’ Box office previews from the Los Angeles Times and Variety.

What would Freud say? Bloomberg Business Week has a lengthy profile of Matthew Freud, the public relations guru who these days is better known as Mr. Liz Murdoch. Freud, who hasn’t always been the apple of his media mogul father-in-law Rupert’s eye, plays an influential role in the family drama that goes on behind the scenes at Murdoch’s News Corp. He also apparently isn’t a Hugh Grant fan. Reuters, meanwhile, looks at Paul Carlucci, the News Corp. executive who oversees the New York Post as well as some of the media company’s marketing operations whose methods are getting new scrutiny.

The revolution fizzled. ‘I would do everything differently,’ movie hot shot Joe Roth told The Wrap in a story about his failed efforts to build Revolution Studios. Revolution folded a few years ago, but the library is for sale and The Wrap examined financial documents as a hook for a look back at Roth’s aspirations and how the company was too freewheeling when it came to spending money.

He said, they said. Bruce Feldman, a writer at ESPN who got in hot water with his bosses for a book he wrote with Mike Leach, a college football coach who is suing the sports behemoth, is leaving to go to CBS Sports. New York Times sports media writer Richard Sandomir takes a look at the behind-the-scenes drama that led to Feldman’s exit.

The happiest place on Earth. The Wall Street Journal visits the Warner Bros. lot to see where the magic happens. This one will be hanging on every exec’s wall at the studio.

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Inside the Los Angeles Times: A look at ‘Rescue Me’ as it wraps up its incredible run. Saadi Kadafi’s career as a movie producer may be on hold as his father Moammar deals with a little stress in his homeland of Libya. Think your cable bill is too high? Here’s a cable operator who agrees with you.

-- Joe Flint

Follow me on Twitter. It makes me smile, which isn’t easy to do. Twitter.com/JBFlint

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