· Alison Lohman has taken the lead in Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, a role recently vacated by increasingly picky Friend of K.D. Ellen Page. [Variety]
· Hollywood EmploymentWatch: Unlike shitcanning-happy The CW, TNT is beefing up its original programming, with a goal of launching "all-original Monday-Wednesday primetime lineup by 2010." [Variety]
· The Weinstein Co. optioned Rita Marley's autobiography No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley for a screen treatment set for a 2009 release. Cate Blanchett is in talks to play both halves of this moving, musical love story, as well as a young Ziggy. (We now acknowledge that the hacky "Cate Blanchett can play anything" jokes were pretty much put to rest at the Oscars, and move on.) [Variety]
· The Genies, aka The Oscars of the North™, give Sarah Polley's Away From Her and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises seven trophies each, worth far more on the open awards market now that the U.S. economy is in the shitter. [THR]
· CBS picked up a "cast-contingent order" of Single White Millionaire, a sitcom pilot from Family Guy writer Ricky Blitt about "an unassuming millionaire in his thirties who is ready to settle down." No word on who they're eyeing for the lead, but may we offer up Fat K-Fed? Think about it for a second: It's kind of perfect. [THR]

· More strike tzuris: Studios won't greenlight any movie that can't complete shooting by the ominous June 30 SAG contract expiration date. [Variety]
· Cable networks continue to snap up movies that haven't even had a theatrical release yet: After USA paid $40 million for broadcast right to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Turner Broadcasting paid an undisclosed (read: your mind cannot conceive of this number) sum for a slew of Warner Bros. blockbusters, including The Dark Knight, Get Smart, and 10,000 B.C.. Said a Turner rep, "We here at TBS and TNT are committed to bringing our watchers the highest caliber of entertainment we have yet to lay our eyes on." [Variety]

Seemingly unstoppable late night force Jay Leno has already demonstrated that he needs no writers to conquer his time slot: Audiences looking for non-addictive insomnia cures and lovemaking soundtracks clearly prefer Leno's middling presence and chirpy joke-delivery over his more cantankerous competitors. For whatever reason, however, the management at NBC decided four years ago that Leno required an expiration date, unfeelingly stamping the host on the forehead with a "BEST BEFORE 2009" notice, and designating Conan O'Brien as his successor. Now, a full two years before his contract expires, rival networks and studios are unfurling their green, high-currency plumage, and doing the late-night mating dance for the still viable talk show host. The NY Times reports:

· If the concept of the two names Tyra Banks and Ashton Kutcher (Tyrashton?) melding into a single, reality-TV -producing force for ABC would drive you to incontinence with excitement, well, maybe you should take a bathroom break before reading this story. [THR]
· Quarterlife, the drama from the creators of thirtysomething that started as a pilot at ABC, then got resuscitated for MySpace, and finally was resurrected on NBC, tanked last night, posting a 1.6 rating/4 share. The series about "twentysomethings coming of age in the digital generation" was doomed to be outdated before it ever reached a wide audience, already replaced with far more timely takes on the same material, like ABC's mid-season replacement, Tumblr Road. [Variety]

Leaders of the writers strike declared a "huge victory" over the suits when they won a larger share of revenues from internet video. Oh yes? One of those suits, Les Moonves of CBS, says the TV network learned during the stoppage that it didn't need nearly as many expensive scripts and pilots. Explaining healthy earnings, he says: "I think there's been a lot of wasted spending...You don't need to spend $5 million on a pilot." So let's get this straight: writers traded in the traditional pilot season, the audition for their boldest ideas, for a cut of non-existent internet revenues. But don't be too harsh in judging their business acumen: this is why they're writers.

· Any plans for Memorial Day weekend 2009? Great! That means you can catch the opening of Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, McG's utterly essential contribution to the futuristic-robot-killing-machine franchise that keeps on giving. [Variety]
· The WWE entered into a deal with Fox, giving the studio "a first-look deal" for any project starring one of their wrestlers, and first dibs on John Cena to voice an irascible musk ox in Ice Age: Boot Camp. [Variety]
· A three-month Chinese government ban on Hollywood product has ended, with a March release set for National Treasure: Book of Secrets and 10,000 B.C., after government censors screened both films to ensure they contained "no fingerprints of that lie-spreading Spielberg-devil." [Variety]

Parenthood groups are always trying to ruin the fun. Just after adorable homocidal freak Dexter made his debut on CBS to triumphant ratings, the Parents Television Council is trying to take the show off the air (or at least back to Showtime, where skeeviness and scandal rules). Despite having some of the funniest accusatory headlines we've seen since "Headless Body In Topless Bar" on their site (NBC is guilty of Airing Nudity and Assaulting Families!), Dexter seems to have pushed their buttons more than any entries on their list of Worst Shows On Television:

When I was a lot younger, I taped — onto VHS! — all of the original Star Trek episodes when they aired at 3 a.m. on Friday nights, so I could watch them later. If only I had waited 13 years. CBS has put all three seasons of Star Trek online for anyone to view, along with a number of other old shows to the Audience Network, including The Twilight Zone, Hawaii Five-O and MacGyver.

· The strike's over, but we were waiting for a deal like this one to really start celebrating: Sony bought 2012, an obnoxiously over-the-top end-of-the-world disaster flick that's going to cost at least $200 million for Roland Emmerich to make! Yay! The studios are back to hemorrhaging money again! [Variety]
· The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films Saturn Awards nominations gave 300 the most nominations with ten, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a close second at nine. Flabbergasted producers of The Golden Compass responded by saying, "We had fucking talking-polar-bear fights! What else could you possibly be looking for?!" [Variety]

Village Voice gossip Michael Musto tossed out something like 10,000 of his classic blind items yesterday. So why not go nuts trying to figure out who they refer to? Here's one we feel like we should get: "Which CBS personality sits in his car telling passersby that he's doing so to watch Katie Couric on the news, but it's actually to stall until 7 p.m., when his parking there can become legal?" Bob Schieffer? A couple more entertaining ones, after the jump.

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric can't wait to show you these new cartoons on her show, which explain complicated stuff, like what a "superdelegate" is, apparently Katie was confused about that but "now I get it!" thanks to one of the cartoons. Complete with funny "magical" type music, the cartoon explained how a superdelegate is like a wizard created by the Godless Democrats to have a special magical vote at the convention, and also is like the Wizard of Oz, except the Wizard of Oz is supposed to be a powerless facade with a man behind the curtain and superdelegates are powerful. In fact the whole Oz analogy is so bad it is giving people headaches, but Katie thinks the whole thing overall is awesome, so expect to see a lot more cartoons on CBS newscasts, like maybe something whimsical on ethnic warfare in Kenya. Wizard superdelegate video after the jump.

With the fumigation circus tent removed from the Big Brother house on the Radford lot, every stubborn germ, virus, and parasite from the last batch of contestants effectively snuffed, we're now ready for another round of the hit CBS reality series. And while there was certainly nothing broke with the show's last incarnation—who doesn't love watching 16 off-duty bartenders stand around a kitchen island sharing Jew-spotting tips?—they've tweaked Season 9 considerably. Big Brother: 'Til Death Do You Part pits eight teams of two against one another: all couples. And by that we mean, sex-having couples.

Take a listen to this original clip of former CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer crooning Honky Tonk Confidential's "How I Became An Anchorman," a version of which he sang for Viacom boss Sumner Redstone last week. This recording has Schieffer's original line.Rebuffing the advances of a gas-station customer, Schieffer warbles, "I said, excuse me, bud, but before you intrude, I ain't some Brokeback Mountain dude, my kind of cowboys live in Lonesome Dove."
Click to view

The line was changed after Heath Ledger's inconvenient death, so as not to appear, you know, callous or whatever. Because it was the death of the film's actor that made that particular line insensitive.

Harris Poll asked TV viewers, both Democrat and Republican, to name their favorite and least liked news personalities. The results of the survey, crunched and displayed on our chart, are fascinating.

· Anxious that the Oscars are approaching and he still has no real idea of whether or the WGA—obviously a little preoccupied with their own issues—intends to grant a waiver for their awards ceremony, Academy president Sid Ganis begs the Guild for answers so that complicated logistical issues can be resolved. "We're running out time! [desperate punctuation ours]," wails Ganis, pleading for the sweet release of either a simple "yes" or "no." [Variety]
· Following his reported Monday dismissal from CAA for allegedly getting caught with his hand too far into Oprah's network cookie jar, reality TV agent Michael Camacho lands at UTA after "competitive and aggressive courting" by other agencies who believe that the controversy just proves he's an impish go-getter who might have gotten a little carried away during that recent Death Star misadventure. [THR]

· Looking for inventive ways to develop scripted programming during the writers strike, CBS Paramount TV reaches across our northern border to partner with CTV to produce the police drama Flashpoint. which will be scripted and shot in Canada. "[The production values] will be as good as any American production," somewhat defensively notes a source, trying to alleviate fears that CBS is trying to save money by eventually airing some second-rate Mountie melodrama badly overdubbed to eliminate suspicious Canadian accents. [Variety]
· As expected, the WGA has reached an interim deal with the Grammys, saving the highly expendable awards show from suffering the same undignified fate as the Golden Globes. Reacts Recording Academy president Neil Portnow, revealing that he may never have watched a Grammys telecast: "Having our talented writers on the team further ensures the highest level of creativity and innovation, something our audience has come to expect every year." [THR]

CBS has unearthed a novel idea for growing the U.S. audience of Last.fm, the U.K.-based music website cum social network it purchased last May. It's going to try promoting it. In the Stateside push, the network is offering free, streaming music from the four major music labels and a bevy of independent artists. The ad-supported network bills itself as "redesigning the online music economy": It will pay artists per play. That explains why it's agreed to all sorts of icky streaming restrictions, such as limiting songs to three plays per user. It's a mutually agreeable term where CBS doesn't end up pissing off the music industry, which provide the songs it plays on its many conventional radio stations, nor does the music industry end up slighting CBS, an important promotional partner. Lost in all the tradeoffs: The interests of the very listeners CBS hopes to attract.

· This should make up for Hannibal: Oliver Stone's next project is a G.W. biopic titled simply, Bush. (Why is the frat boy in us suddenly compelled to add the words National Lampoon's to the beginning of that?) To play the Greatest American President Currently Holding Office—Josh Brolin, who's looking forward to taking on a role in which he gets to turn the figurative pitbulls on everyone else for a change. [Variety]
· Just days after the DGA reached a quick and dirty deal with AMPTP, the WGA announces that they have ended the negotiation stalemate, and that "informal" talks have been set, just as soon as the two sides can settle on which Koo Koo Roo sides would be acceptable for the catering. [Variety]
· DreamWorks Animation entered into a multibillion-dollar deal to build a theme park in Dubai. Michael Jackson must be rolling in his oxygen chamber for having left the country so tantalizingly close to the grand opening of Donkey and Puss n' Boots's Wacky Wave Pool. [Variety]

Today's Page Six asks "WHICH slave-driving producer of a morning TV show was ordered by the network's legal department to cease and desist offering staffers tequila shots on Friday afternoons?" We haven't had a good poll here in awhile, but this one's pretty obvious. Over at the CBS 'Early Show,' producer Shelley Ross has been breaking balls since she arrived in September, prompting a number of staffers to walk. Ross herself was fired a couple of years ago from her ABC News gig in the wake of staff complaints about her um, rather intense management style. One CBS staffer, who sent a protest manifesto to network executives, complained that despite "tequila Fridays" being nixed, "there is much evidence that drinking tequila or alcohol but especially tequila with Shelley is considered the way 'in' with her and her group." Oh my God, the same thing happened to me in the ninth grade! After the jump, more bitchery and unrest at the consistently third-ranked network morning talk show.

How is new Wallstrip host Julie Alexandria different from Lindsay Campbell, the thought-provoking interviewer she replaced at the CBS-owned videoblog? "I'm in for adding some dirty humor," Alexandria told NewTeeVee. "I don't want it to become the next Perez Hilton, but I do look forward to bringing my own little spice to it." Enough sexist, adolescent pandering — bring on Alexandria's glamour shots!