Really, you can fire everyone and cut back all use of paper clips, but if you want to have a successful record company, you’ve got to have hits.

In the five years of Edgar Bronfman and Lyor Cohen’s reign over Warner Music, they’ve had few hits. Almost none, in fact. They relied on acts already signed to the company, such as Linkin Park, Green Day, Josh Groban and Nickelback.

The WMG stock has sunk to all-time lows, then revived very slightly based on completely strange reports from stock analysts.

Now the cows have come home to roost: massive losses posted yesterday.

How sad it must be for the remaining WMG staff and shareholders that as this news is released, the company’s biggest-selling album is No. 20 on the charts, with 27,000 copies sold for the week. It’s the Zac Brown Band. Ever hear them? Are you humming a Zac Brown song now? I didn’t think so.

It’s summer. The time when kids buy and listen to music, and WMG has, really, nothing.’ This is obviously not’the Warner Music of “Rumours,” or even “Smoke From a Distant Fire.” There is nothing to hum along to except stories of Bronfman and Cohen buying new, more expensive homes.

But Zac Brown is on WMG’s Atlantic Records, run by Craig Kallman. If it weren’t for Atlantic, WMG wouldn’t exist at all. Somehow Kallman and his staff’have kept the whole enterprise running despite WMG’s penchant for failure. If’Kallman had real support beyond his label, then Rob Thomas’s “Cradle Song” and the single “Someday” would be No. 1 on their respective charts. Instead, the excellent CD is struggling.

WMG reported a third quarter loss of $37 million, compared to $9 million same time last year. Come on, are we kidding? That’s with the release of the Green Day album, which, of course, was a disappointment. In the U.S., revenue fell 10%. Bronfman’s usual plea is that the release schedule is “backloaded” to the fall. If Warner doesn’t come up with a single hit this fall, or Christmas, then what? This party is over. If there really are shareholders somewhere, they should be storming the doors in Rockefeller Center.

WMG stock opened at $5.59 yesterday and closed at $5.28.

Has the end game begun to remove soap operas from the network airwaves? It sure looks like it.

Today, ABC announced it was moving “All My Children” from New York to Los Angeles in January. The given reason? Cheaper to produce because of space. But that doesn’t really wash. New York, if given the opportunity, could have made ABC a great deal to keep the soap in the city where it’s always been produced.

Yesterday, CBS’s Nina Tassler pretty much threatened “As the World Turns” with extinction in the press. The 53-year-old soap is the last remaining show owned by Procter & Gamble. The company once had many soaps, but whittled itself down to two when it cut “Another World” in 1999 from NBC. Next month they’re bringing “Guiding Light” to an end on CBS after 60-plus years.

At NBC, the network is down to just “Days of Our Lives,” the 2009 edition of which is a plastic replica of its original.

The networks don’t realize the value of the soaps, and they never have. For one thing, they’ve been a tremendous breeding ground for young actors. Dozens and dozens of stars have gotten their start on the shows.

But megamanical executive producers and truly terrible writers have conspired to create a perfect storm here. At “World Turns” the writing was on the wall in early 2008 when the network did nothing to prevent P&G from booting Emmy winner and demo-perfect star Martha Byrne. The show has never recovered. Ratings dropped and dropped. No one seemed to care. That was a sign and a signal to the cast that anything could happen.

At ABC, for some reason “All My Children” — which was a cult favorite years ago among stars like Carol Burnett and Rosie O’Donnell — has been treated very badly. For a few years now they’ve broadcast the show not on tape but on some kind of unwatchable stock that was said to be for HDTV. It seemed like was being acted in slow motion or under’a coating’of cough medicine. Little attention was paid to continuity or storylines. On the internet, where soap fans are vehement in their postings, ABC Daytime chief Brian Frons is reviled.

Moving “All My Children” to L.A. should be its death knell. Almost all the actors and crew live in New York. East Coast casting always tends to a more realistic kind of show. “AMC,” set in mainline Philadelphia, certainly won’t look or feel the same staffed with plastic west coast types.

Soaps never made much sense, and they were beautifully lampooned in the movie “Soapdish” some years ago. The plots were always outrageous, but recently on “AMC” an aborted fetus turned up after 20-odd years as a grown man. On “ATWT” one character just had to head to toe plastic surgery so he could fool everyone in town. What the soaps’ producers don’t get is that the viewers aren’t stupid, and don’t want to be patronized. What a soap could get away with in 1990 isn’t possible now.

And there are so many good stories to tell that people who do watch TV during the day — or tape it or TiVo it — could relate to: Family life in this economy, the struggle to make it, or just keeping one’s head above water — plus a little fantasy — should be enough to hook viewers.

But amnesia, surprise paternity, or maternity, and people rising from the dead — all of these plot twists have worn out their welcome. Just as the networks should be realizing the worth of the shows, the soaps are going to have make drastic changes if they want to stay on the air.

Two things worth remembering: Keep your stars front and center, and focus the stories on families.

Tom Cruise’s extended family is slowly but surely infiltrating the world of Rupert Murdoch.

First came the news last spring that Cruise would make Jim Mangold’s “Wichita” at 20th Century Fox with Cameron Diaz. It’s the only film that he’s reasonably counting on for a 2010 release.

Then came Katie Holmes’ recent appearance on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance.” She’s not exactly Shirley Maclaine, and there wasn’t much reason to have her, but it got some publicity for everyone involved.

Now comes the news that Victoria Beckham, wife of Cruise disciple and constant work-in-progress David Beckham, is in “talks” to replace Paula Abdul on Fox’s “American Idol.” It was reported today in the Sun, a News Corp. tabloid in Britain, so you know this is one time that rag has gotten anything right.

If the Beckham news is right — and why shouldn’t it be, she has nothing else to do — it would seem like the fix was in for Abdul right from the start.

All that’s left now is David Beckham getting his own project. And then the Cruise and Fox families will be completely intertwined. Well played, as everyone says lately.

I was sorry to read this morning about the passing of the great Sidney Zion, lawyer, writer and journalist, at age 75.

There’s a very good obit in the New York Times today of Sid. I knew him mostly from Elaine’s, where he was a regular presence, full of terrific stories and lots of laugh.

But Sid was also on top of everything. I will never forget his help back in April 2000, on the night we discovered Rudy Giuliani was on a “date” with his then mistress, Judith Nathan. Sid wore a full brimmed hat, like someone from a 1950s movie’and in my memory of it, as I zipped out Elaine’s front door to go see Rudy and Judy over at Cronie’s bar, having a midnight supper, it was Sid’jumping up, putting on the hat, coming over to confirm the story.

With four decades of writing for newspapers, he knew it was the hot story. He was my backup that night, coming back from Cronie’s to confirm what we’d seen’a married mayor, one day from an announcement he had prostate cancer, publicly wooing his next wife without informing his current one.

Sid, you will be missed. I hope the gang at Elaine’s raises a glass to you tonight.