· Let us all rejoice at the further enriching of a faceless multimedia conglomerate! Even without franchise pictures like Harry Potter and LOTR, hits from New Line, Warner Bros, and Warner Independent (Wedding Crashers, Dukes of Hazzard, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, March of the Penguins, et al) have made a dandy summer for Time Warner. [Variety]
· Let us be gripped by profound sadness because of the financial misfortune of another conglomerate! Blockbuster more than doubles its forecasted loss, leaving investors to make frowny faces. [THR]
· ABC isn't sure how it will replace beloved, just-deceased anchor Peter Jennings, but World News Tonight with Peter Jennings will still bear his name for now. We can't decide if that's creepy or a touching tribute. [Variety]
· The Asian box office looks to King Kong's "800 pound gorilla" for salvation. This isn't some kind of weird cult, merely a recognition of Peter Jackson's track record. [THR]
· New Line tries to repeat the plucked-from-indie-obscurity-to-mainstream-visionary-hitmaker formula that worked with Peter Jackson and Lord of the Rings, choosing the little-known but highly enthusiastic Anand Tucker to direct the first movie in their His Dark Materials trilogy. [Variety]

· Variety and THR offer their tributes to Peter Jennings. Mercifully, Var doesn't say that Jennings "ankled" his mortal coil. [Variety, THR]
· DreamWorks sends a "vote of confidence" by extending the contracts of production president Adam Goodman and producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, bolting down the furniture on the Titanic before prospective buyer Universal can rearrange it. [Variety]
· Charlie and the Chocolate Factory continues its impressive run at the international box office. [THR]
· Props are due: ABC is first out of the gate with a John Paul II biopic, which Var headlines "ABC's Up With Papal." Nicely played. [Variety]
· Bravo tacks on two more episodes to their order of Being Bobby Brown, giving the world an "inside look" at the homes where the phrases "Hell to the no" and "dootie bubble" were born. [THR]
· Miramax's production co-president Jon Gordon will play out the string on his contract before taking the same job with Universal. We loved his scene-stealing work on the first season of Project Greenlight. [Variety]

It is remarkable for those of us who were children in the 1970s and '80s, who have virtually no memory of a time before Peter, Tom, and Dan were the network anchors, that the three men, who just a year ago seemed a fixed part of the landscape, always there when you looked for them, even if you didn't look for them often, that today none remains in the job.

Not content to have his brain melted by Heather Graham's comments at ABC's pres tour event, LAT critic-blogger Paul Brownfield seeks out Graham at the network's "All Star" party, and in the process, seems to have discovered what blogging's really about: the stalking of hot actresses under the guise of "working":

Heather Graham was on hand to face the critics at the TCAs (the Television Critics Association press orgy) yesterday, promoting her midseason ABC show Emily's Reason's Why Not (odds that this unwieldy title will be hacked down to the simple Emily before it reaches the air: 60/40). The LAT's Paul Brownfield fights off the little reporter in his pants ("I am immediately a 14-year-old boy. She is wearing a dark lavender dress, Lycra, scooped out teasingly in the back and strategically in front, and flip-flops") to blog some of the words coming out of Graham's mouth:

At yesterday's Television Critics Association press event, ABC honcho Steven McPherson kept his head down, refusing to publicly wallow in the recent success that hit dramas Lost and Desperate Housewives have brought to his network.