Business

No Nast(y) videos

Condé Nast lost an estimated 60 staffers this week, just days after The Post’s Keith J. Kelly wrote that budget cutbacks would be in the 5 percent range. Condé President Robert Sauerberg wants to move money in the direction of transforming the print mags into digital businesses in their own right.

He hired Dawn Ostroff, the former head of broadcast network The CW, earlier this year to spearhead the company’s transition into the video.

Rivals point out that little has emerged from the unit so far and that despite the hiring of a handful of development executives, things have been strangely quiet. But TV projects take time, and Ostroff has been pitching editors on how they might make more of their content rights and how to squeeze some cash out of Hollywood.

While staff at Brides were getting pink-slipped, Ostroff was jetting into Cannes, France, last week, speaking at a TV sales convention, Mipcom, about her thoughts on how digital TV is the new cable. “Two-thirds of people viewing video on their tablet are watching long-form video already,” said Ostroff.

Her big issue: The Condé fiefdoms haven’t exactly been excited to get on board. One issue is that a lot of big-name writers who file for such hallowed magazines as Vanity Fair and the New Yorker won’t give up their potentially lucrative TV and movie rights so that Condé can take advantage of the talent.

Sources say new contracts have been pushed on the magazine divisions that seek to enhance Condé’s access to video rights. Whether they’ll get enforced is another issue.–Claire Atkinson

Poetic license

Ignorance is no longer musical bliss for those running websites boasting lyrics to hit songs.

Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan, who co-founded MySpace, was just ordered to pony up $6.6 million in damages to music publishers for posting copyrighted lyrics without permission of songs from the catalog of such acts as Green Day, Van Morrison and David Bowie on his LiveUniverse site.

According to Paul Fakler, a partner at NY-based Arent Fox IP, the firm representing a group of music publishers involved in the lawsuit, Greenspan could have easily avoided the massive penalty “by simply getting a blanket license like everyone else who wants to have a lyrics site.”

The publishers (Warner, BUG and others), who’ve been battling Greenspan on the issue since 2009, were demanding $100,000 per song, which was eventually lowered to $12,500 a pop.

US District Judge George Wu’s ruling is writing on the wall for the remaining low-traffic — and low-budget — lyrics sites that are foolish enough to think they’ll remain under the radar .–Joseph Barracato

Let’s make a deal

Can Carlyle Group founder David Rubenstein push around Goldman Sachs and Henry Paulson?

Rubenstein — who graces the Oct. 3 cover of Forbes magazine — complained to Goldman when he felt the white-shoe firm was not partnering enough with his private-equity firm. On May 31, 2006, he allegedly wrote in an internal e-mail that Goldman invited Carlyle to co-invest in its $22 billion buyout of pipeline operator Kinder Morgan “because we had complained about Goldman competing with us and never having brought us a deal. ”

“So [Goldman CEO] Paulson told his partners to bring us into the deal,” according to documents unsealed last week in a private-equity bid-rigging lawsuit against Goldman and Carlyle.

Carlyle and Goldman, as of 2011, had almost a 200 percent return on their $7.8 billion investment.–Josh Kosman

Sports/wear

The next generation of little athletes from stars of the Knicks and Yankees are already racking up big scores.

About two dozen youngsters, including a dozen offspring of Big Apple sports celebrities — ages 4 to 9, both boys and girls — stole the show as models at a VIP opening of an upscale sports garb boutique for kids, Rookie USA, at Amsterdam Avenue and West 99th Street.

At the standing-room-only affair were three starting pros of the Knicks, with their spouses and kids, including Carmelo Anthony and his wife, La La , who also showed off her new sports-apparel line for kids with their son Kiyan, 5, modeling her handiwork.

Teammate Amar’e Stoudemire’s two youngsters joined the runway parade, along with the three kids of Yankees ace pitcher C.C. Sabathia, all dressed to the nines.

The Yankee hurler had to skip the Friday-evening event due to pressing duties on the mound at the Yankees’ playoff game. His wife, Amber kept a watchful eye on their young models: C.C III,9 ; his brother Jacen, 7; and little sister Cyia, 4. Derek Jeter’s nephew, Jaylen Jeter, 7, won cheers from the crowd.

“This is a wild opening and shows how much excitement there is for the kids sports apparel market,” said Sam Haddad, CEO of Haddad Brands.–Paul Tharp