Yesterday, Viacom told Wall Street that its third quarter had been better than most analysts expected. Today Time Warner delivered a similar report: Revenue was on track, but cost savings improved the bottom line. That won’t help hundreds of Time Inc. employees who face job cuts this quarter. Meanwhile, the company can’t ditch AOL soon enough: It has already spent $100 million prepping it for a spinoff this year.

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McGraw Hill isn’t quite done with BusinessWeek–it isn’t supposed to formally hand off the magazine to Bloomberg until later this year–but it is just about there. Today the company told investors just how much it will net from the sale of the 80-year-old title: $9.3 million, or $5.9 million after taxes.

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What’s one of the biggest names in magazine publishing worth? These days, maybe $5 million.

That’s the high end of the range Bloomberg will be paying for BusinessWeek, reports BusinessWeek. Next question: How many of the magazine’s employees stay on once the deal closes later this year? BusinessWeek publisher Keith Fox can’t make any assurances. But he does call the deal “exciting.”

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Ideal Bite, the green-flavored lifestyle newsletter business Disney bought in June 2008, faces an uncertain fate: Its parent company is shuttling the unit from one corporate silo to another and says it’s not sure what will become of it once that happens. Translation: The job market is going to see a few more resumes.

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Condé Nast, which shuttered four magazines this week, said it won’t be cutting any more titles. But that won’t be the last of its cuts: The publisher is looking to cut costs by roughly 25 percent at all the magazines it publishes, likely leading to layoffs in many cases.

Today’s example doesn’t come from a magazine per se, but from the company’s digital group, which let go of “more than” 15 people, Expect more to come from Condé, and from other publishers, in coming weeks.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt used the opening moments of a New York City press conference to reinforce a message he’s been delivering for several weeks: The worst is over, things are looking up, and Google is spending accordingly.

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Viacom has been rummaging through Google and YouTube records for more than a year as part of its $1 billion copyright lawsuit. Did it get what it was looking for? Maybe.

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Is Twitter a billion-dollar company? It is now, according to its investors. People familiar with the company tell me it has raised around $50 million in a funding round that values the start-up, which has no real revenue to speak of, at about $1 billion.

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This isn’t the long-rumored round of mass layoffs, but AOL boss Tim Armstrong did let go of two executives today: COO Kim Partoll is out, as is John Kannapell, SVP of search and local media.

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The cash-strapped New York Times, which has put the Boston Globe and its other New England properties up for sale, wants you to know that it’s in no way having a fire sale. Boston Globe employees appeared to have taken that message at face value.

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Waiting for the economy to come roaring back? So is Google. The search giant had a decent quarter, but not one that’s going to blow away Wall Street or convince anyone that the economy is roaring back. But it’s an okay performance for a media company in a recession.

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Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.

The site is laying off the majority of its 100-plus employees, and CEO Mike Volpi is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering.

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The music industry’s online forays have always inspired head-scratching, but this one is odd even by those standards: Project Playlist, the online music service currently being sued by Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, is bolstering its tech staff by buying the assets of… a music service owned by Universal Music Group. But the lawsuits have yet to be resolved. Confusing? Of course.

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There are plenty of question marks surrounding Vevo, Universal Music Group’s new music video site that’s scheduled to launch later this year with a big assist from Google’s YouTube. But here’s one answer: The venture will be run by Rio Caraeff, who currently oversees UMG’s digital business.

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The Boston Globe can keep printing. The New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, has reached an agreement with the Boston Newspaper Guild, the paper’s lone holdout union. A new deal involves pay cuts and “modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions,” but will allow the paper to stay afloat, for now.

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