According to this morning's Ad Age Daily, Dow Jones & Co. (parent of the Wall Street Journal, Barron's and other financial properties, has tentatively agreed to a $5 billion acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which has brought us such respected media properties as Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, World's Scariest Police Chases and Cops.

Yes, folks, this week the jokes in M&A are writing themselves. First the unholy marriage of Applebee's and IHOP, and now the Maestro of MySpace managing one of the world's most respected newspapers.

To be fair, Murdoch already owns a fair number of print publications, among them the venerable New York Post, whose infamous Page Six causes me to question whether I really have to place the newspaper's title in italics after all. TV Guide is his, too, along with the Sun in London. Does anyone notice a pattern here? Murdoch's media empire is profitable (with the exception of ailing TV Guide), but it's also pedestrian.

If the Bancrofts, Dow Jones' controlling family, approve this transaction at their Thursday meeting, what's going to happen to the WSJ? Perhaps, in a show of synergy, they'll start running TV listings, along with a business gossip column. Maybe Tom from MySpace can write a column, too - anything to cut costs, you know.

I'm curious to see where this goes and will keep you, dear readers, updated accordingly. In the meantime, brace yourselves for a newer, edgier Journal. How about a Hannity & Colmes point-counterpoint right on the cover? Of course, Hannity would get twenty column inches to Colmes' two, but hey, if you wanted fair and balanced financial news, you would have read The Economist.