(FORTUNE Magazine) – Maybe it's some kind of perverse status symbol, like checking in at Betty Ford. How else to explain the firing of one New York media honcho after another in the past few months?

It's getting bizarre. On January 17, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone walked into the office of his CEO, Frank Biondi, and gave him the heave-ho. After Redstone walked out, Biondi's next visitor was Nick Nicholas, the former Time Warner co-CEO who had fired Biondi from HBO in 1985. (Nicholas himself was purged from Time Warner, the parent company of Time Inc., publisher of FORTUNE, in 1992.)

"Nick was looking for a donation to the Big Apple Circus," says Biondi, chuckling, "and I handed him the announcement that said I was leaving. Nick thought it was a joke. When he realized it was real, he said, 'Hey maybe you, me, and Michael can do something new together.' And I said, 'Hey, maybe you, me, and Michael can do something old together.'" Michael, in this case, is Michael Fuchs, the Warner Music Group chairman axed by Time Warner CEO Gerald M. Levin two months before.

Maybe there's room for Sony's Michael Schulhof, also pink-slipped recently. What gives? "I think part of what's causing the churn is the inability of any human being to manage a media company of this size," says DreamWorks tri-chief David Geffen, who of course is trying to build a megamedia company.

Some heavy-duty networking is taking place--Fuchs invited his onetime rival Biondi and wife up for dinner Saturday the 20th, right after Redstone struck. And Fuchs will get together with Biondi in late January or early February to discuss ideas.

Not that Biondi will lack opportunities. Even Dick Snyder, the irascible former head of Simon & Schuster--he was canned by Biondi--grudgingly offers his compliments. "Though he has an accountant's mentality, to the extent that Frank was a stabilizing influence, Viacom will definitely miss him."

Schulhof wasn't fired by any of the above. He got dinged by the suits in Tokyo in early December for consuming dollars like so much popcorn, with little profit to show for it. Schulhof is now renting office space in the Seagram building, U.S. headquarters of the Canadian liquor company that controls MCA--which just might be in the market for a CEO. Irony City, huh?

One good thing about being a media mogul is that even though your job may be gone, the severance checks keep coming. But these are can-do guys who need work, so at right we present the FORTUNE Media Mogul job center. Some suggestions: Frank Biondi should move to Westinghouse's CBS unit. There he could finally push CBS into cable and create a video network to compete with Viacom's MTV. Slogan: "Music television not run by grandpa." The scuttlebutt is that Biondi may go to the Left Coast and MCA. But we're recommending Fuchs for the top job at MCA. He might enjoy advising Seagram chairman Edgar Bronfman on what to do with the company's 14.9% stake in Time Warner. Schulhof, a physicist and pilot, should become a consultant. He can fly other ousted media CEOs around to interviews and offer them metaphysical advice--or at the very least, someone to play tennis with.

--Andrew E. Serwer