Monday wasn't good to former Everybody Loves Raymond star Patricia Heaton. First a former assistant filed a lawsuit against her for unpaid wages, then she made a fool of herself on national television. Seriously, you have to see this.

There is no reason why the hoofers on Dancing with the Stars should be the only ones to make profit from the show. While they're endorsing diet plans and signing deals, we're going to bet cash on the winner.

Indicted former GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will be a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. Terri Schiavo's dead—what else did you expect him to do?

In the wake of the "Paula's leaving American Idol" tragedy, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and get ready for her to guest star on some shows about dowdy fat girls.

• All is not well at ABC. The hoped-for comeback of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? didn't happen and ratings have been so low, the network is now occasionally falling behind Univision. Yes, Univision. [NYT, B&C]
• The owners of Uptown magazine are in talks to acquire Vibe, which shut down in June. What they plan to do with it is anybody's guess. [AdAge]
• Tina Brown's Daily Beast is on the move: She's planning to launch a U.K. version of the Barry Diller-funded website within months. [Telegraph]
• Not every magazine in America is struggling, apparently! [Newsweek]
• Is MTV planning to leave Times Square? Quite possibly. [NYP]

• Two years after he was booted from MSNBC and CBS Radio for making racist comments, Fox Business is now in talks to team up with Don Imus. [LAT]
• Is Hachette selling Elle? The company seems to be hedging. [AdAge]
• Magazine publishers are allowing advertisers to slap their ads just about any place they want these days. They're also planning to keep printing those annoying subscription cards until the end of time. [NYT, AdAge]
• ABC is planning a big programming push for the fall with seven new series set to debut, which is roughly double what NBC and CBS have planned. [USAT]
• CNBC's ratings are down big, in case you haven't heard. [Guardian]
• G.I. Joe was No. 1 at the box office this weekend, grossing an estimated $56 million. Julie and Julia came in second place with $20.1 million. [Variety]

• Keith Olbermann took Times reporter Brian Stelter to task last night for reporting that News Corp. and GE had worked out a deal to tone down the rhetoric between MSNBC and Fox News. But he didn't disagree with everything Stelter reported. Conveniently, only the bad stuff about him was wrong. [NYM]
• More bad news for Olbermann: MSNBC now admits it made a mistake by not disclosing that Countdown fixture Richard Wolffe is a paid lobbyist. Naturally, Olbermann had absolutely no idea about any of this. [Politico, Salon]
• Condé Nast is shedding more staff. This time around it appears the media giant's receptionists will be paying the ultimate price. [Gawker, NYM]
• Reps for Bruce Wasserstein met with BusinessWeek execs yesterday to discuss a bid for the magazine. Joe Mansueto, the founder of Morningstar and owner of Fast Company, may be a potential bidder as well. [BW]

So here's Anderson Cooper on his show tonight talking to Erica Hill about an innocent little interview he did with ABC's Bachelorette, Jillian Harris. But then a clip from the interview is played and Cooper immediately inquires about the sexing.

As we plod through The Summer People Stopped Watching Network TV, said networks are making a fuss about Barack Obama's insistence on holding press conferences because it temporarily prevents them from profiting from their endlessly looped last-gasp humiliation-based reality shows.

Bill O'Reilly is so torn up over the death of Walter Cronkite. According to Bill, Cronkite was a liberal, but he didn't let his political views influence his reporting, unlike everyone around today, everyone except Fox News of course.

In 2006 ABC's Bob Woodruff was seriously injured in a bombing by Iraqi insurgents while covering the war for his network. Today he returned for the first time since the incident.

Bernie Madoff's only remaining purpose in life is to be exploited by the media. Who will land the first jailhouse TV interview with the villain? We handicap the possibilities, below.

• The Sci Fi Channel is now called Syfy. It's pronounced the same way, except it's less science fiction-y, which is why it was changed to begin with. [THR]
• Justin Timberlake has tapped lit agent David Vigliano to sell publishers on the notion that Timberlake is just the person to write a book about golf. [NYO]
• After a heated, two-year battle, big record labels and online radio stations have finally agreed on new royalty rates for streaming music online. [NYT]
• Who says embattled media companies are doing their best to spend money more wisely? The soundstage for Jay Leno's new primetime show will be "specially fitted to accommodate his passion: expensive cars." [THR]
• "Online predators" have hit Twitter. Paging Dateline's Chris Hansen! [LAT]
• A new study finds that kids are spending more time online. Surprise! [AP]
• Equally shocking: Breaking the Jackson story has boosted TMZ's traffic. [AP]

News from the internet as it relates to TV, a rising comedy star ponders his many options, a new HBO show could be a disaster or could be great, and a Baywatch movie makes us cranky.

Probably thinking that no one in America would be watching television on the morning of July 5th, the Obama administration let Crazy Joe Biden out of his cage for an appearance on ABC's This Week.

In your Friday-like Thursday media column: Howard Kurtz types many words for no good reason, Rupert Murdoch denies wanting to own the NYT, the WaPo can't stop distancing itself from that sellout email, and journalism is practiced in Honduras.

NBC's Matt Lauer, CNN's Larry King and ABC's Cynthia McFadden have all been dispatched to the Neverland Ranch to anchor programs tomorrow from the Michael Jackson corpse-viewing that Jackson's family says was never scheduled in the first place. [TV Newser]

• Both NBC and ABC plan to pre-empt regular programming this evening to air specials devoted to coverage of the Jackson story. E!, MTV, and CNN (among others) have specials airing over the next few days, too. [NYT, THR]
• Time is publishing a special Jackson "commemorative edition" on Monday. For its part, Rolling Stone has a "bookazine" in the works. [NYT, NYT]
• How newspapers around the world covered the Jackson news. [Guardian]
• And how the Jackson story kind of broke the Internet. [ABC News]

• ABC and NBC will face off on Thursday night with competing tributes to Farrah Fawcett, who died today. But you probably expected that, no? [NYT]
• David Letterman beat out Conan in the ratings last week, the first time the Late Show has dominated the weekly ratings since 2005. [THR]
• Rosie O'Donnell will debut a new show on Sirius XM this fall. [NYDN]
• Rumor has it Ben Silverman's tenure at NBC may be ending soon. [DHD]
• Fox News now averages the same number of viewers as CNN, MSNBC, and HLN combined. Cue an evil grin across Roger Ailes's face. [THR]
• Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson's new book contains material he ripped from Wikipedia. But he's really, really sorry about it, okay? [NYP]

Already in a down-trend this whole year, network television is suffering from drastically low ratings this summer. ABC, for example? They just posted their lowest. ratings. EVER—ever!—in the 18-49 demographic. Other nets aren't doing much better.