Wanted: a name for Peter Chernin’s new company

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Anyone out there have a good name for Peter Chernin’s new production company?

If so, the soon-to-be-free News Corp. president wants to hear it. Chernin has been soliciting everyone he knows to come up with an unpretentious moniker for the TV and movie venture he’s launching in two weeks after his executive contract expires June 30.

For a moment Chernin actually entertained the idea of calling his new outfit ‘Clown Co.’ -- a raspberry to the skeptics at Google Inc., who used those exact words to dismiss Hulu, the online video service and competitor to Google’s YouTube launched last year by News Corp. and NBC Universal that has become an overnight sensation.

Marketing executive Tony Sella, Chernin’s favorite creative advertising guru at News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox movie studio, sketched out a potential logo of one smiling and one frowning clown based on the thespian comedy/tragedy masks.

Fortunately, when Chernin thought it through he came to his senses and realized that the Clown joke would have worn thin in a Hollywood minute.

Meanwhile, Chernin is in the process of locking down office space in Santa Monica, and after he vacates his executive suite will be temporarily housed in the Tom Mix stables building on the Fox lot where the legendary cowboy actor used to board his horses.

-- Claudia Eller