· NBC commanded an appropriately world-record-breaking ratings win over the other four networks thanks to Michael Phelps and the rest of their Olympics coverage; but CBS's Big Brother managed to hold its own, due in no small part to a competitively themed Drown the Old Guy in Slop episode that tested the outer limits of senior contestant Jerry's will to live. [Variety] · She lost the weight, she's feeling great, and now she's ready to work: Valerie Bertinelli will return to her sitcom roots with a half-four TBS comedy about a single mom "who struggles to care for two kids and a lumber business." Even more exciting? Bonnie Franklin is in talks to play a stack of two-by-fours! [Variety] · Fox News Channel is sprucing up its Facebook page with a video clip library, enhanced feedback applications, and anchor status updates alerting you that "Bill O'Reilly is...totally nuts for WALL-E even though he knows he shouldn't be :P!!!" [Variety] ·James McAvoy and Emily Blunt will voice the title gnomes is Gnomio and Juliet, playing starcrossed Travelocity pitchmen from "rival gardens" in a computer-animated Miramax feature. [THR] ·ABC is going forward with Supermanny, a male version of Supernanny, in which bratty problem-children will be dazzled into submission by their new hunky caregiver's rippling abs and dreamy smile. [THR] [Photo via BWE.tv]

• Hachette is shuttering Home magazine. [Mediaweek]

Lamas Family acting dynasty heiress Shayne Lamas may not have made love work with the green-card-curious man of her dreams, but by no means does that mean that she'd cover all the mirrors in her house, don a black cocktail dress, and mourn her broken engagement indoors. Life goes on for our little Monkey, as evidenced by a sequence of photographs on inebriated-social-interaction documentation site lastnightsparty.com. What starts out innocently enough, however, with a little round of "Who's the Marilyn-est of them all?" quickly devolves into a regrettable attempt at unbuckling a nearby patron's belt with her head, followed by a shocking display of unobstructed tuchus that will forever taint the pristine Bachelor brand. It's after the jump. But BEWARE! Shayne Lamas's dumps are NSFW!

Hope you don't already have anything important planned for the end of September: ABC just announced that the week of September 21st is "National Stay at Home Week." How convenient, especially since it's premiere week, too! We're just hoping that Regal Cinema's "National Go-to-the-Movies Week" doesn't conflict! [Variety via NYM]

· George Clooney gets back to what he does best—terrorism, law firms, and car explosions—by buying the rights to The Challenge, a book about the trial of Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver. [Variety] · Tom Cruise is close to signing on for the lead in The Tourist, a Spyglass remake of 2005 French thriller Anthony Zimmer, about an American abroad made the patsy to flush out a master criminal. Cruise would play the patsy. [Variety] · Las Vegas parking lot nuisance and prematurely ejected HBO head Chris Albrecht has left his job at IMG sports and entertainment management after just one year of a three-year contract. A "terse" statement blamed an inability to "raise substantial funds." [Variety] · Chick-flick-plundering network ABC follows up their pilot-order of a The Witches of Eastwick series with another for a show inspired by Maid In Manhattan. [THR] · Lionsgate has purchased scripts from screenwriting duo Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain for Conan and Amazon, with Scarlett Johansson attached to star in the latter. Open casting call for 3-foot-tall mainland extras to follow. [THR]

What better way to cool down in the summer heat than with a frozen reality turkeycicle, aka High School Musical: Get In The Picture? We had yet to encounter the kids vying for whatever it is this show is promising—we assume some sort walk-on role on High School Musical 5: Pregnancy Pact!. But we figured, "Hey— aspiring child actors competing for our hearts and votes on a competitive talent show, what could go wrong?" A lot, it turns out.The series is presided over by host Nick Lachey, who has apparently been directed to address the contestants as if they were kindergarteners on a field trip to the local industrial bakery. Nick: this is not a step in the right career direction. And speaking of the contestants: Where did they find this many teenage weirdos? It's like they managed to round up every junior high kid across the country who'd tell on you for drinking at a sleepover because it "just didn't sit right," dangled the promise of fame in front of them, then turned the cameras to capture their creepily eager smiles and emphatic head-nods as the world's most patronizing day camp counselor ovvverrr-eeenunnnnciiiiates a lecture about the importance of cooperation. We want to beat them up! Where's our little bendy-toy, Victoria? Ahh—there you are. Better. Much better.

The second ABC announced Brian Ross was on the case, you knew this was coming-John Edwards has admitted to having an affair with his former campaign staffer Rielle Hunter. The interview's on Nightline tonight. Edwards also claims he's not the father of Hunter's baby. And he didn't love her. So it's not cheating! Edwards claims his wife Elizabeth's cancer was in remission when he began the affair, so it's TOTALLY not cheating, at all. How did the story suddenly break on a Friday afternoon like this? Funny story. The Observer's Media Mob broke the news earlier today that Ross, ABC's celebrity investigative reporter, was preparing a report on the Enquirer's affair allegations. This usually means there's something to the story-they bring Ross out to bring legitmacy to sleazy internet tabloid stories, like the Mark Foley IM conversations that made Ross famous. This meant the story not only had legs but had the possibility to be huge. Edwards probably decided to get out ahead of it (too late, John) and acquiesce to an interview with Bob Woodruff instead of a sensationalistic Ross segment done without his cooperation. One might also imagine that prominent Democrats were pushing him to get this out of the way well before the conventions. Could be way worse than the Friday night that also happens to be the night of the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Sigh. Guy's still slick. So John owes the nation, and Elizabeth, a big apology. DailyKos owes the internet an apology. The Los Angeles Times owes its bloggers an apology. Someone probably owes Mickey Kaus an apology. Wikipedia editors can just do whatever they want, no one cares about them. Now it just remains to be seen about this damn kid. [ABC]

In a scene that will surely give the Lost producers too many ideas, all sixteen of the babies who played Aaron on the show's fourth season reunited in one place for a celebratory Hawaiian picnic this past weekend. Like a good episode of the adventure serial, it was packed with confusing revelations — namely, that thirteen of those boy-playing babies were actually girls! What could that possibly mean? Is Aaron a girl? A hermaphrodite? Did he/she commandeer the Black Rock and build the four-toed statue??? WAAAAALT!

Moderators: Lehrer and Gwen Ifill of PBS, Tom Brokaw of NBC, Bob Schieffer of CBS. [WSJ]

It's a shocking turn of events anticipated by only a handful of the most cynical romance-haters: Shayne Lamas, heiress to the Lamas Family acting dynasty, and British Bachelor Guy, a reality TV contestant from England, citing irreconcilable attention whoredom, have announced that their engagement is off. What's more—and we urge you now to take a seat if you aren't doing so already—the two will be going their separate ways forever. From usmagazine.com:

At NBC's TCA press conference yesterday, network co-chairs Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff confirmed their plans to eject Jay Leno from The Tonight Show via jerry-rigged catapult device on May 29, 2009. That gives them only three rushed days to erect a new set and change the dressing room door names from "Kevin Eubanks" to "Masturbating Bear" for the premiere of replacement host, Conan O'Brien. There to press the executives on the questionably motivated decision to fire the highest-rated name in late night (Graboff insisted they'd like to keep Leno at NBC Universal, but give us a break): Leno himself, disguised in a bald wig, goatee, and glasses:

Katie Holmes debuted her new look for husband Tom Cruise while visiting the set of the ABC series Eli Stone. Holmes thought the look combined two of her favorite elements: high fashion and being a mom. Cruise nodded in agreement and also complimented her on taking him up on his recommendation to wear gloves while drinking coffee. Later on, Cruise was overheard warning Johnny Lee Miller that, "They don't put that warning label on the cup just for kicks, you know."

Made to address rumors that Grey's Anatomy writers' room dartboard pinup-girl Katherine Heigl might not survive the coming season, ABC head Steve

Yesterday, we noted a Gawker item suggesting that Molly McNearney, who swiftly ascended the Jimmy Kimmel Live! ranks from lowly Chinese Theater Chewbacca-wrangling assistant to that show's head writer, had been the woman who came between Kimmel and Sarah Silverman. A Defamer tipster who knows McNearny wrote us to say this couldn't be further from the truth:

The ongoing mutual loathfest between notoriously stroppy film and TV star Katherine Heigl and the producers of Grey's Anatomy reaches a hateration crescendo with rumors that her character will have the plot equivalent of a soft hospital pillow (or maybe an actual one) pressed onto her face by showrunner Shonda Rhimes until all of her limbs stop flailing, at which point her lifeless corpse will be free to pursue whatever big screen pursuits it so pleases. From EOnline.com:

In a leaked internal memo that Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke has designated in her characteristically restrained style as a "bombshell" (let's just say it's about as close to a legitimate bombshell as Tara Reid ), ABC Studios executive vice president Howard Davine listed the procedure for developers to obtain foreign formats rights. He suggests in the opening paragraph that in light of the "complexities of negotiating" these sorts of deals, what might ultimately serve the studio best is to just borrow the basic "underlying premise."

With legalized same-sex unions already labeled passé, Hollywood discovered its newest cause designed specifically to piss off Arkansas: live, televised, boy-on-boy fox-trotting mayhem. This fall, Lance Bass is reportedly set to join the cast of Dancing With The Stars and partner with a male dancer and cha-cha his way into America's hearts. You know, because he's gay. And it's edgy.

ABC has a big, dumb hit on its hands with Wipeout, which, despite a 5% drop from its premiere, finished second once again this week behind America's Got Talent. Alas, the network's would-be monopoly on lowest-common-denominator horseshit is threatened today as word gets around that ABC might be hewing a little too close to Spike TV's own padded-obstacle-course mash-up MXC. Spike is apparently taking the lift in stride, but MXC's co-creator has his own theories; after all, a rip-off would be one thing — the nets are built on them these days.

They say that every soul has their One out there somewhere—and after a false start that left her hunched over and coughing up blood on her Gazebo of Broken Dreams, DeAnna Pappas finally found hers last night on The Bachelorette's season finale. And who, we ask, is more deserving of legitimate and lasting happiness, having submitted herself to not one but two six-week-long cattle-call searches for true love? No one! Learn who DeAnna chose—the very same fellow who scribbled that spell-unchecked grocery list of proposal talking points above—after the jump!

ABC News producer Michael Bicks had a feeling something was wrong after dropping out of a long group bike ride a few weekends ago. "Besides the nausea, my only symptoms were a persistent cough and an overwhelming feeling that something was not right... That’s when Tim Russert popped into my head." Bicks looked up the symptoms of cardiac arrest online and, ignoring his instinct that "it really didn't feel like much," drove himself to the hospital, where he learned he was, indeed, having a severe heart attack. He lived to write about it in this morning's Times, where Bicks said there has been a spike in men hauling themselves into hospitals with symptoms like his, and with similar thoughts of Russert: