Last week brought the TV networks' upfront dog-and-pony shows for advertisers, and this week's coverage makes clear that the most successful shtick came from ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson, who after weeks of training did some Dancing With the Stars-quality hoofing on the Lincoln Center stage, accompanied by a professional dancer. What's less clear, however, is what that pro-dancer partner was wearing. Up top is Mediaweek's chaste version of the publicity shot. Below left is Ad Age's seemingly unexpurgated version of what otherwise seems to be the very same image, and below right is Newsweek's take — idtentical but, curiously, with a bit of added shadowing. We got no idea.

· Coming into tonight's close of the 2005-06 TV season, Fox (adults 18-49), ABC (just behind Fox in the key demo, but has "the most water-cooler shows") and CBS (total viewers) all have claims to having the most success. NBC, however, doesn't have to share its proud strangehold on fourth place with anyone. [Variety]
· Adorable off-screen couple Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams are still picking their projects together, as they both join the cast of the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. [THR]
· The French are still working through their feelings for Sofia Coppola, offering up a mix of "Gallic-accented boos" (le boo?) and applause at the Cannes press screening of Marie Antoinette. [Variety]
· Queen Latifah tries to atone for Taxi by taking on a tour de force role as a formerly crack-addicted AIDS activist in the HBO film Life Support. [THR]
· Fox humiliates the competition behind the first night of the American Idol finale, which drew over 125 million viewers and may top six billion for tonight's pop star coronation. [Variety]

David Blum heads to the Sun today, where he pens a column that asks the real question about the network news anchor shuffle — and it doesn't have a single thing to do with Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, or Brian Williams. The real issue: What the motherfuck is Diane Sawyer going to do now?

Earlier: Anderson on 'Oprah': Spoiler Alert!

And so the speculation ends. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas is taking maternity leave until the fall and then returning to 20/20; with co-anchor Bob Woodruff still recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq, ABC's World News Tonight will be hosted by Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson. It's a pretty open-ended gig, and though ABC won't say as much, it could be permanent. He'll start on May 29 and will stay at GMA through June. But what about his morning co-host, Diane Sawyer? The poor woman has been campaigning for the anchor spot since she was in the womb.

· Sony's worldwide day-and-date release strategy for The Da Vinci Code proves incredibly effective, especially in Catholic-heavy countries like Spain and Italy, which set box office records this weekend. As a reward for their patronage, Sony's Amy Pascal has promised those markets special premieres of any future film that blasphemes their savior. [Variety]
· We'd somewhat naively assumed that deleting a show from our TiVo season pass made it disappear from the airwaves, but the huge Nielsens of the Desperate Housewives finale prove otherwise. [THR]
· Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette has already generated buzz in the fashion world. We don't even know what "flouncy pink footwear" is, but apparently it's "in" because of the movie. [Variety]
· A development executive at MTV wakes up from a two-year coma and greenlights a Jennifer Lopez-produced reality series about dancers trying to make it, tragically unaware that no one cares about what Lopez does anymore. [THR]
· After five days at Cannes, no film has emerged as frontrunner for the Palm D'or. Jury members, however, are considering awarding it to the out-of-competition X-Men: The Last Stand if Brett Ratner promises to leave their country a few days early. [Variety]

When NBC's Kevin Reilly made a bold move in the chess match that is this week's fall schedule announcements at the upfronts by advancing his most beloved pawn, Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, into the 9 p.m. Thursday night slot, ABC's Steve McPherson responded by picking up his queen, Grey's Anatomy, and tossing it into Reilly's face. NBC hasn't officially retreated, but the LAT's Scott Collins blogs that some think that Reilly may ultimately concede the position to the competition:

As brand names steadily creep into the plots of your favorite shows, TV writers are getting increasingly vocal about their trepidation in accepting these kind of embedded advertising dollars. Concerned that product placements can too easily come across as hacky, obvious commercials that jar viewers out of the story, a group of prominent showrunners, including Desperate Housewives' Marc Cherry, held a news conference to voice their disapproval at the growing trend:

Television upfronts and the celebrities enslaved to them continue to dominate Manhattan this week — we've yet to hear anything about young flacks passing out and shitting themselves, but 20th Century Fox is hosting its party tonight, so there's still a chance. The Times' Virginia Heffernan is live-blogging the networks' end of it (wherein the Heffer discovers that Ellen Pompeo has been denying herself bread crumbs), but she's certainly not going to tell us about any new instances of poopy pants. So if you see something, say something.

· CBS is expected to announce a schedule tomorrow that "emphasizes stability and consistency" to contrast with the "pants-wetting desperation moves" made earlier this week by "the pussies" at NBC and ABC. [Variety]
· Following in the footsteps of directing giants George Lucas and Peter Jackson, the curiously hacky Michael Bay acquires the effects studio Digital Domain, which he will charge with the task of creating cinema's most realistic somersaulting, exploding exotic sports cars. [THR]
· The two-hour season finale Grey's Anatomy scored big without a Desperate Housewives lead-in, perhaps foreshadowing what the show might do when unleashed on Thursday nights this fall. [Variety]
· News Corp. will sell episodes of 24 on MySpace, part of a larger strategy to use the site to take on Yahoo and iTunes. So beware: When "Beheaded Terrorist Who Refused To Tell Jack The Location Of The Dirty Bomb" asks to be one of your friends, he's just trying to make you buy something. [THR/Reuters]
· Though the WGA's contract doesn't expire for over a year, studios are already starting to talk strike preparation in the trades, prompting the Guild to decry the rhetoric retaliating for their own "saber-rattling" in the media. Can't everyone just walk out now and get this over with? [Variety]

ABC's deliberate strategy of slowing feeding bored, disenchanted Desperate Housewives viewers to the infant Grey's Anatomy monster has finally come to fruition, as the Nielsen beast is now fully grown and ready to be sent out to wreak havoc on the network's competition. At a press conference this morning, ABC announced that it's moving Grey's to 9 p.m. on Thursday, where it will compete with CBS's CSI and, in a realization of NBC president Kevin Reilly's most career-chilling fears, the fledgling Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60. Reports Var:

· NBC still hasn't recovered from the pain of Joey and Four Kings, plays it safe on the comedy front by only picking up two new sitcoms for its fall schedule, the aforementioned 30 Rock and the John Lithgow/Jeffrey Tambor old-guys-who-fight-death-with-laughter vehicle 20 Years, both grouped in a new Wednesday night block. [Variety]
· ABC gives series orders to six more projects. Dramas: Brothers and Sisters, Ugly Betty, Traveler, and Anne Heche/Northern Exposure mash-up Men in Trees. On the comedy side: Big Day and the untitled Burnett/Beckerman heist comedy in which Grounded for Life's Donal Logue and his pals try to rob Mick Jagger. [THR]
· Americans might find him creepy and off-putting, but foreigners can't get enough of Tom Cruise as M:i:III wins the foreign box office for the second straight week with $40.5 million. [Variety]
· The CW can't bring itself to damn 7th Heaven to the TV afterlife, resurrecting the seemingly dead 7th Heaven for their inaugural season. [THR]
· CBS orders four new dramas and two comedies, and also picks up 13 episodes of fat, clueless husband/hot, skinny wife staple King of Queens and second seasons for The New Adventures of Old Christine and Close to Home. [Variety]

· ABC orders up six shows in advance of next week's network upfronts, the dramas The Nine, JJ Abrams' Six Degrees, and Daybreak, as well as comedies In Case of Emergency, "TV warhorse" Ted Danson's Help Me Help You, and Notes from the Underbelly. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, NBC is expected to pick up Friday Night Lights, Raines, Heroes and The Untitled Tina Fey Comedy (code name: Fuck Sorkin, There's Room For Two SNL Shows) today. [THR]
· The Da Vinci Code's global "day-and-date" release next weekend will be a crucial test for Hollywood's new strategy of unleashing its product simultaneously on international populations softened up by a coordinated media carpetbombing. We predict total box office victory, especially in places that want to piss off Catholics. [Variety]
· Viacom posts a 9% drop in first quarter profits, a loss they tragically can't blame on Paramount, Tom Cruise, and M:i:III. [THR]
· Showtime is developing an hour-long biographical drama series on Billy Joel's life, Big Shot, but its producer insists that the show "...isn't a love letter to Billy. He actually is pretty insistent that we tell the whole story." Look for the series to demonstrate that commitment to the unvarnished truth by employing a framing device in which each episode begins in a bar ands ends with a different drunken car wreck on a Long Island road. [Variety]

We try to subject ourselves to ABC's menopausal kaffee klatsch The View as rarely as possible, though we have to admit we were looking forward to watching their latest loud-lady addition, Rosie O'Donnell, squeeze the living breath out of Star Jones with one giant, lesbian bear paw. Sadly, however, that display of alpha-gal dominance may not play itself out, as Page Six reports Jones is leaving the show:

· The ratings for David Blaine: Drowned Alive spike in the special's second hour, clearly indicating the desire of viewers in the 18-49 demographic to watch the magician suffer a tragic, soggy death. [Variety]
· Apple will now sell shows from the Fox family of networks on iTunes, allowing fans to watch on their iPods an even tinier Kiefer Sutherland yell about why he doesn't have time to explain why he's acting like a terrorist in order to stop terrorists. [THR]
· Warner Bros.based Legendary Pictures has bought the rights to adapt online game World of Warcraft for the big screen, and will spend the coming weeks trying to figure out a way to charge the game's installed, 6 million person subscriber base a monthly $14.99 fee for the duration of the movie's development. [Variety]
· Polly Cohen is named president of Warner Independent Pictures, replacing the recently, messily ousted Mark Gill. [THR]
· Clear Channel gives Whoopi Goldberg the opportunity to prove that she can be annoying in the exciting medium of terrestrial radio, handing her a morning drive-time show. [Variety]

• Magician David Blaine Leaves Hospital [AP]

Mediabistro's FishBowlLA has the perfect recap of the last two weeks' dot-com frenzy (Lloyd Braun — pictured because I like picturing him — zigs, Steve Ballmer zags, and still they try to dance):

Towleroad noted a segment from Jimmy Kimmel Live last week (we found the clip on YouTube) in which Joseph Gannoscoli, the actor who plays Vito, was sent with a camera to West Hollywood's best known gay bar, The Abbey. Why? We're not exactly sure—something about interviewing the owner about membership in the "pink mafia." (In Kimmel's world, adding "gay" to anything makes for instant comedy.) Other highlights include a heated discussion with porn star Max Grand over whether or not Vito is his type (he isn't), and a provocative encounter with a bowl of sliced apples ("Get a load of this fruit!") Luckily, no whack jobs transpire, unless you count a brief interaction between clientele at the bars' furthest urinals.

· Sirius' one-time, $225 million stock payment to Howard Stern contributes to the company's $459 million loss. Still, the company's stock rose six percent, supporting the perceived value to satellite radio of having porn stars ride orgasm-inducing machinery. [Variety]
· An MPAA study claims that piracy cost the film industry $6.1 billion last year. But not having read the report, we don't know if that total counts every time someone illegally download Deuce Bigalow or Stealth for a goof as a lost DVD or ticket sale. [THR]
· Emma Roberts will star in the Fox teen flick Rodeo Gal, which writer Katie Wech will "rewrite and tailor" for Roberts, i.e., make sure there's a juicy cameo for Aunt Julia. [Variety]
· ABC yanks the once-promising, much-troubled Commander in Chief for the rest of the season. [THR]
· ABC's alternative programming chief describes the upcoming Summer Share as "'The Real World' meets 'Laguna Beach' for adults." We love it when a pitch lets you know you'll never have to watch a show. [Variety]

· The success of NBC's Deal or No Deal has erased every network's institutional memory of the primetime gameshow flops following the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? craze, as the nets scramble to once again get their copycat offerings on the air. Especially promising is Fox's obligatory knockoff, Yelling At Sequentially Numbered Duffel Bags Full Of Cash. To be hosted, of course, by a soul-patched Chuck Woolery. [Variety]
· Jack Black joins director Michael Gondry for the suitably surreal comedy Be Kind Rewind, about a man who must remake all the movies in his friend's video store after his magnetized brain destroys them all. [THR]
· Richard Gere and Terrence Howard are in talks to star in Spring Break in Bosnia, the (apparently seriocomic) tale of some journalists who are mistaken for a CIA hit squad in Bosnia. [Variety]
· ABC picks up a third full season of Boston Legal, a development that may temporarily slow William Shatner's enthusiasm for bizarre side business as he worries a little less about not having a steady paycheck. [THR]
· Fox plans to sell downloads of individual American Idol performances in both video and audio formats, allowing the modern entertainment consumer to never be far from his favorite Chris Daughtry cover of a Creed song. [Variety]