"It's not funny yet. I'm working on material and it's really hard. Right now I've got half an hour and I've got two songs. Each song is 10 minutes each. I really have 10 minutes of stand-up. Pretty sad." [Newsweek]

After buying CNET for $1.8 billion, CBS CEO Les Moonves is getting around to inspecting his new property next Tuesday, we hear. Moonves is visiting CNET's San Francisco headquarters to address the troops. So far, beaten-down CNETters, weary of the fight with hedge fund Jana Partners, seem mostly supine in CBS's embrace. Show some spirit, guys! We suggest testing your new CBS overlords' sense of humor by wearing some 2006-vintage "I Hate Les Moonves" T-shirts, from the days of his tussles with Howard Stern. Ironically retro, of course.

A "handful" of CNET's MP3.com music writers got laid off on Monday. Otherwise, News.com's Caroline McCarthy tells us CNET employees are actually very excited about the CBS acquisition — if only because CBS owns all the rights to Star Trek. Nerds.

Old school ad agencies on Madison Avenue know and understand CBS, Inc. They've been selling its inventory to clients since 1928. So it's no wonder the ad agencies are so happy to see CBS take control over CNET, one of those Web properties everyone's saying they have to put money into. PaidContent rounded up the gushing and we've pared it down, below.

Under the wing of CBS, CNET CEO Neil Ashe will continue to earn his $700,000 salary. He'll also get a 100 percent bonus and, in the next 10 days, a long-term stock award of "not less than $1,625,000 per year," according to a 8-K CNET filed with the SEC yesterday. CNET CFO Zander Lurie will get such a stock award worth "not less than $1,000,000 per year."

The CW network, home to teen drama Gossip Girl, may be closed next year thanks to you, a Web-surfing pop culture consumer, possibly between the ages of 18 and 34. If you actually sat and watched network television at the appointed time instead of flitting around the mediascape like a monkey, streaming things here and TiVOing things there, maybe the network could actually get some Nielsen ratings for its shows. Instead, ratings are down 28 percent among 18 to 34 year olds so far this year. Other networks' ratings are down in the wake of the writers' strike, but apparently things are worse at CW, because according to the Wall Street Journal, "the network's hopes of surviving are looking increasingly bleak," and at least one of the CW's owners, CBS and Time Warner, may abandon the network next year if ratings don't improve. And it's hard to see how they will:

· Fox's fall schedule announcement introduces only two new shows: a comedy called Do Not Disturb (formerly The Inn), and J.J. Abrams's new series Fringe, which will air Tuesdays at 9 after House. Details on Fringe are being kept under close wraps, but based upon a slew of promotional images over at TV Week, we think it revolves around a conspiracy discovered by a quality control technician at a menthol cigarette factory, played by Joshua Jackson. Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, meanwhile, and new animated shows Sit Down, Shut Up and The Cleveland Show won't air until mid-season. Executed: Back to You, Canterbury's Law, K-Ville, Nashville, New Amsterdam, The Next Great American Band, The Return of Jezebel James and Unhitched. [Variety]
· Daniel Day-Lewis may be taking over the role vacated by Javier Bardem in Rob Marshall's movie of the musical Nine. Bla bla milkshake jazz-hands bla bla. [Variety]

If CBS were to greenlight a TV series about life at a modern media giant, the director would find it hard to cast anyone but Quincy Smith as himself. Call it 60 Seconds, a version of the news show sped up for the Web. His $1.8 billion CNET buy is just the latest episode in the life of the fast-talking president of CBS Interactive. Smith is sui generis; the stereotype, which grates on him but fits, is that of a frenetic dealmaker. Last month, he said he was looking for "the next YouTube"; instead, he bought a company which, having been founded in 1992, is eight times older than the current incarnation of CBS. CBS handlers offered to have him speak to me; I accepted. In the middle of the mile-a-minute conversation-argument, I think we both wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into. A partial transcript — the most I was able to type out while trying to keep up with Smith's banter:

CNET has been eyed by Quincy Smith, CBS's hyperacquisitive online chief, long before he sealed a $1.8 billion deal to buy the company. As a banker at Allen & Co., CNET was his client. "At one point, he wrote this major presentation about how valuable content was," a tipster tells us. "The single example in it was CNET. It was basically his only idea." An unfair dig? Perhaps. There is little like CNET on the market — a pure play on professional online content worth $1.8 billion? It can't be found. But the lack of a direct competitor may have also been CNET's undoing — the mixed blessing that brought it under attack by activist investors and led it to CBS's waiting arms.

Languishing TV network CBS is acquiring languishing internet media mini-conglomerate CNET in a deal worth $1.8bn. Synergy!

Shareholder activists Jana Partners and company got their way, sort of. CNET has new management, and in fact ownership: CBS, which will purchase CNET for $11.50 a share, or $1.8 billion. That's about $150 million more than Google paid for YouTube, but there is no buyer's remorse from CBS as of yet. "The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States," reads a statement from CBS, its traffic now fattened by visits to CNET sites CNET, ZDNet, GameSpot.com, TV.com, MP3.com, News.com, and UrbanBaby. CNET CEO Neil Ashe's internal email is copied below.

· Here's your first glimpse at Jay Mohr's new CBS sitcom, Project Gary. Did that kid just say, "Tap it?" OMG! He did! LOL! [TV Week]
· People, for crying out loud, it's a picture of Curious George! It's not like he put "OBAMA in '08" underneath a picture of Chim-Chim from Speed Racer. Now that would have been racist. (And just plain mean.) [Boston Herald]
· It's the America's Next Top Model finale liveblog with the Jezebelers! But don't peek yet, 'cause they are three hours ahead. [Jezebel]
· Woody Allen: "Can I ask you what your favorite commandment is?"
Billy Graham: "Right now, it's Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother."
Woody: "Really? That's my least favorite commandment." [BoingBoing]
· Anne Heche is worth $34,840.93, says Anne Heche. [TMZ]

Following a detour in last season's CBS programming strategy which saw the network throw a few wackier ideas against the fridge to see what stuck (Drac Steele, Vampire P.I. and The Singing Venetian, Hugh Jackman's addition to the musical-casino genre, were what stuck), it seems they have returned to the dependability of laugh-tracks and procedurals for the fall 2008-09 season. At their upfronts announcement this morning at their New York offices, Les Moonves and trusty commandantes Nina Tassler and Kelly Kahl made official their last-minute, 22-episode order of The New Adventures of Old Christine, the unlikely story of what happens when Elaine loses her balls and spends the majority of her leisure time bickering with her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. Following them on Wednesdays is a new sitcom, Project Gary, starring Jay Mohr, while another new, single-camera comedy, Worst Week, joins the Monday night lineup, alongside all the wisecracking nerd-geniuses and Britney guest spots you've come to expect.

Writers so fancy themselves as cultural guerrillas, sneaking in subtle messages of protest against the media-entertainment complex or any other form of totalitarianism. They really would have been happier penning samizdats in the former Soviet Union; and many authors did indeed mourn the passing of a régime so brutal-and mockable. Successful TV writer Chuck Lorre has little to fear from Les Moonves and his other bosses at CBS, but the millionaire writer has embedded subversive short texts in the vanity cards at the end of shows such as Two and a Half Men. In one recent message, the 55-year-old Mr. Lorre wrote: "I received a phone call from a mid-level CBS exec who began the conversation by saying he wanted to give me a head's up. Having been in this business a while I knew 'head's up' is code for 'we've decided to s- you.'"

· Paramount bought Steve Martin's pitch From Zero to Sixty, which legend has it he apparently sold with three words: "Steve. Diane. Lamborghinis."[Variety]
· Will & Grace star Megan Mullally returns to sitcomdom playing opposite Alicia Silverstone in ABC sitcom pilot Bad Mother's Handbook. [Variety]
· American Gladiators tanked in the ratings, leading the order, "Skimpier costumes! NOW!" to reverberate out of Ben Silverman's office. [THR]
· CBS gives that show with Christine in the title and How I Met Your Mother full-season pickups. [THR]
· ABC is only ordering two new series, including a final, 13-episode order for Boston Legal.

· Fox has picked up J.J. Abrams's Fringe, about a female FBI agent who "tackles unexplained medical and scientific phenomena," and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, both for mid-season debuts meant to be bolstered by American Idol's return, an effect Fox internally refers to as "the Drunk-Paula Boost." [Variety]
· The CW makes it official: The Beverly Hills, 90210 spinoff is a go, with Jennie Garth reprising her role as Kelly Taylor. New York magazine will eventually go on to declare the series "mankind's greatest single achievement since the Wright brothers perfected human flight." [THR]
· ABC, meanwhile, has ordered "quirky sci-fi thriller" Life on Mars, a new animated series from Mike Judge called The Goode Family, and Ashton Kutcher reality show Opportunity Knocks. Unlike last year's Cavemen, none are based on an insurance commercial—though Allstate, a "drama with supernatural elements" starring Dennis Haysbert as a creepy guy who has a way of always showing up at highway accidents, is said to be a possible mid-season replacement. [Variety]

CBS continues to be a total disaster. Last year they brought in former MSNBC president Rick Kaplan to save Katie Couric's Evening News (without asking Katie's opinion). We all know how that went! Not that Kaplan stayed there long—soon he was dispatched to take control of the constantly failing Early Show, where he replaced the scary, tequila-swigging Shelley Ross. Ross left, but her "mean girl" staff remained. So far, Kaplan has not righted the sunk ship. Now we hear it's curtains for Kaplan. Or at least he's taking a suspicious two-week vacation during sweeps. The kind of vacation you don't come back from. Speculation from a leaky CBSer, below.

It's time to salute David Letterman, who continues to do a great service for us, the non-Hills watcher with only a vague idea of what the hell's going on with that inexplicably popular program. Thanks to the Reality TV Catfight Reform Act of 2007, Heidi Montag was granted equal Late Show broadcast time to that of Lauren Conrad, whereupon she too was grilled by Dave on the ins and outs of their feud. Apparently, the MacGuffin propelling much of this season's warfare was a much-discussed, but yet-to-surface sex tape starring Conrad and her former lover.

With the promise of Jeff Zucker's Old-Time Radio City Upfront Dog-and-Pony Show vanquished months ago by NBC's decision to unveil its 2007-08 schedule a full month ahead of the usual schedule, the news that other networks are downsizing their own upfronts isn't shocking anyone. The WGA strike that thwarted the networks' normal development schedule left most without any pilots to pitch to advertisers in the annual industry orgies, and even Les Moonves doesn't know what he's programming at CBS this fall. Sorry, L.A. staffers! Unpack your bags — you're staying put this year.