No sale, says Time Warner. Maybe CBS should just acquire Viacom instead. [Variety]

Following today's much-anticipated Good Morning America appearance by Andrew "The Guy Who Decided It Was OK To Fly With a Drug-Resistant Strain of Tuberculosis" Speaker, the networks will undoubtedly be clamoring to adapt his story into the kind of ripped-from-the-headlines television product of which audiences are so fond, and so we are here, as we always are, to lend a hand in the casting process. Because we feel Speaker's tale has appeal as both the customary CBS MOW (Health Fugitives: A Love Story) and a more cutting-edge ABC sitcom (TB Guy) satirizing the way America unfairly stigmatizes the ill, we're providing choices for both comedy and drama: The Office's John Krasinski (hat tip to commenter heidiho) and crossover superstar Harry Connick, Jr, respectively. Let the frenzied phonecalls to their agents begin!

While admittedly not every competitive reality venture devised by format innovator Mark Burnett could be categorized as a runaway success (e.g., On The Lot has yet to connect with audiences, and seems headed towards granting the guy who made the retarded-guy-in-Heaven movie a corner office on the DreamWorks lot), he nevertheless boasts an impressive batting average in the unpredictable genre. His latest effort, Pirate Master, premieres tonight on CBS, and seems a sure a thing as they come, pairing the Darwinism-for-dollars premise that made Survivor such a runaway hit with the public's enduring fascination with all things buccaneerish:

· As we mentioned earlier, there's a new Golden Boy at NBC: Jeff Zucker reconfigures the executive structure at the once great, now consistently fourth-place network, essentially drop-kicking Kevin Reilly and luring Ben Silverman away from his successful production company to take over West Coast operations. [Variety]
· The aptly named Still Rolling Prods. says principal photography on grannie heist movie Poor Things is to begin Wednesday as planned, which means either co-star Lindsay Lohan will be recast, or the script will be rewritten to incorporate an actual L.A. courthouse and Malibu detox facility. [Variety]
· CBS greenlit six episodes of Do You Trust Me?, a game show that's betting audiences will show up to see if a player falling backwards will be caught by his co-contestants, or if they'll pull their arms away at the last moment, allowing him to be impaled on the Spikes of Death. [Variety]
· Miss Universe takes a beating in the ratings, trampled by a Two and a Half Men rerun. Miss USA, meanwhile, takes a beating of her own, tripping during the evening gown competition and getting booed loudly by the Mexican audience during the interview portion. Terrible! Kind of funny, but just terrible! [THR]
· In keeping with recent trends of premiering major Hollywood releases abroad (hey—they know on which side of the Atlantic and/or Pacific their popcorn flick is buttered), Michael Bay's blowing-shit-uppingest movie in ages, Transformers, is to get its first public showing at Rome's Taormina Film Fest. [THR]

Fans hoping to revive a cancelled TV series have been relying on increasingly flashy techniques in the hopes of registering on the radars of busy network heads, whose various galactic overlord duties may have rendered them tragically out of touch with the tastes of the common man. Arrested Development addicts pelted Fox execs with foam banana balls. Invasion lovers (yes, they existed) drowned ABC in bottled water. But devotees of the mushroom-clouds- on-Main-St. drama Jericho have decided to go the bulk snack route, inviting fellow grassroots supporters to send roasted peanuts to CBS's offices:

Tonight, CBS will air Bob Barker: A Celebration of 50 Years on Television, a tribute that will finally send the The Price Is Right legend into the gameshow host afterlife, where he will enjoy the attentions of 72 Barker's Beauties in an idyllic environment free of troubling sexual harassment lawsuits as his just reward for 35 years of dedicated service. While the network has yet to name Barker's successor, it seems that Rosie O'Donnell is renewing her public campaign for the job, undeterred by reports that the retiring host would sooner see an entire shelter full of abandoned pets have their neutering magically reversed than allow the skinny mic to be passed to O'Donnell. She's taken out a full-page suck-up ad in the trades today (above) inviting Barker to her Miami compound, where the two can enjoy a lazy day of Plinko (she's got her own full-size board), inverted yoga-swinging, and some casual conversation about her candidacy.

Fox has yet to officially release its Fall schedule, but we feel confident that nothing they're going to reveal tomorrow can possibly change our opinion about what will be our favorite new show come September: Kid Nation, the bold social experiment in which CBS abandons 40 children in a New Mexico ghost town for 40 days, leaving them to form their own civilization without the interference of adults.

By this third morning of the upfronts, you are probably exhausted by the constant barrage of stories about new television shows you probably won't have the time or desire to watch. (NBC really nailed it: Who has time for new? Give us more of what we already like! Fill us up with your quality, Peacock!) Still, CBS will take its turn before their advertisers today, unveiling a schedule aimed at convincing the money people that their network is ready to move beyond just mindless sitcoms and syndication-friendly procedural dramas and take a (well-calculated, not too scary) risk or two: that's right, the Eye is going (mildly) edgy! On the Fall schedule:

· Maria Bello has been cast in the role of "Much Cheaper Alternative to Oscar-Winning Actress No Longer Willing to Slum It in a Mindless Sequel" in the next Mummy installment, replacing Rachel Weisz. [Variety]
· Spider-Man 3 pulled in another $85.5 million internationally, bringing its worldwide box office to $622.1 million. [THR]
· NBC demotes Law & Order: Criminal Intent to its USA Network (with second-run episodes appearing on the network mothership), while the Original Recipe L&O will stay on the Peacock, avoiding a possible banishment to TNT. [Variety]
· CBS goes pre-upfront pick-up crazy, bringing pilot dramas Twilight (about a vampire P.I.) and Laughlin (guy dreams of opening a shitty casino in Laughlin, NV!) to series. [THR]
· Madonna's husband is finally getting back into directing incomprehensible, low-budget gangster films, and will team with Joel Silver's Dark Castle Entertainment on the "action comedy" RockNRolla this summer. [Variety]

• Don Imus' contract with CBS said: "Services to be rendered are of a unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial, and personal character." Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin thinks that makes Imus's $40 million lawsuit against CBS a bit more plausible. [CNN]
  

· CBS announces that Survivor's fifteenth (!) edition (tentative title: Survivor: Human Rights Violations) will shoot in China, which hopes that hosting an American reality TV series that's overstayed its welcome for ten seasons will somehow get people excited about the 2008 Beijing Olympics. [Variety]
· Mr. & Mrs. Smith writer Simon Kinberg has been brought on to overhaul the Ben Stiller/Tom Cruise project Hardy Men, hoping that the scribe will figure out a way to finally harness the duo's incredible comedic chemistry in a feature-length setting. [THR]
· AOL announces a slate of new, TV-style programming, offerings that are expected to immediately draw more viewers than the majority of NBC's primetime schedule. [Variety]
· Nearly 26 million Americans witnessed Simon Cowell do that thing with his eyes that has everyone so upset today, [THR]
· We'll have to check on this, but we think this story about the pitch (Inland Saints) Paramount bought for The Number 23 director Joel Schumacher, may have identified a totally new cinematic genre: "the supernatural urban drama." [Variety]

Glaring Omissions reproduces tips received from readers in the last week that weren't covered on Gawker, either by accident (it happens!) or by design (it happens more often).

From time to time the news cycle offers up an event of such import and complexity that it can only be comprehended through the medium of musical theater. Ben Greenman, the Rodgers & Hammerstein of the age (or, at least the Hammerstein), will lead you down the Great White Way to understanding. Shhh, the curtain's starting to rise!

Last night's edition of The Insider gave its audience a brief respite from incremental updates on who might be awarded the fatter, juicier part of Dannielynn Smith following a Bahamian judge's inevitable, Solomonic order to cleave the disputed infant in twain to share the fascinating story of the so-called Wolf Whisperer, star of National Geographic's documentary A Man Among Wolves. That this Whisperer was pragmatic enough, unlike Werner Herzog's ill-fated Grizzly Man hero, to choose an object of obsession that can't kill him with a single swipe of its paw bodes well for his future Hollywood prospects; if he'd met a tragic end chasing his feral dreams, his chances of having his story eventually adapted into a feel-good Friday night drama for CBS (starring Billy Ray Cyrus, red-hot off his Dancing with the Stars revival) would probably have died with him.

From the big man, CBS honcho Les Moonves himself:

For those of you unable to concentrate on your jobs, family, or the heartbreaking news that Angelina Jolie seems unable to love her lone biological child because you've been sick with worry about this Don Imus situation, relief: He's been shitcanned by CBS, and shitcanned good. Our east-coasted siblings at Gawker have smiling CBS Corp. despot Les Moonves' announcement of the firing, who is no doubt a little annoyed that sworn NBC enemy Jeff Zucker beat him to the kill yesterday; he hates being the guy to fire the second bullet at a public execution.

• Bernie Goldberg: will bitch about CBS for food. [NYP]
  

The LAT takes a look at the roughly 12,000 network pilots currently in development, trying to make sense of any trends that emerged from last season. What we know: Serialized storytelling is out, except when it's in; viewers love a heavy dose of lighthearted quirk with their hour-long, fashion-centric dramas; and the public's appetite for the plight of fundamentalist Christian sketch comedy actresses was vastly overestimated. There is also the predicament of the half-hour primetime comedy, a languishing format that can only claim Charlie Sheen paycheck-generator Two and a Half Men as its single entry in the Nielsen top 20. It's a problem executives have approached with the kind of no-fail solution that results in a grab-bag pilot crop littered with Geico Cavemen shows and Lee Majors's triumphant return to TV: Greenlight everything and hope someone laughs.

· MGM has teamed up with Salma Hayek for Ventanazul, a production label dedicated to Latin-themed and staffed productions. Hayek will be overseeing operations, with MGM COO Rick Sands explaining, "To the extent that it makes sense for her to act, she'll do that; to the extent that it makes sense for her to produce, she'll do that." He then added, "To the extent that it makes sense for her to do a round of P.R. in an extremely low-cut, tight-fitting top, she'll do that, too." [Variety]
· Next week is Mip TV Mart, which brings with it all the glamour you'd expect from an expo in Cannes peopled by international television sales guys. The question remains, however, of whether or not American shows will continue to net record-breaking license fees from a foreign market hungry for the next cheerleading global savior. [Variety]
· Warner Bros. has greenlit Super Max, in which the Green Arrow is thrown into jail and "stripped of his powers." Will he be able to conquer the bad guys without the use of his trusty boxing-glove arrow? We'll just have to wait and see. [Variety]
· More casting news from Lionsgate's The Christmas Cottage, by far Hollywood's most anticipated holiday-painting-inspired movie! Marcia Gay Harden has signed on to play Painter of Light™ Thomas Kinkade's mother. [THR]
· ABC and CBS tie for first place last night, with audiences tuning in for one of their last looks at nine-season under-the-radar staple King of Queens, and mostly uncomfortable improv comedy Thank God You're Here doing "all right" for a trailing NBC. [THR]

Confronted with the upcoming end of his sitcom's surprising, nine-year run, reflective King of Queens star Kevin James shared his theory about how his Little Sitcom That Could (Repeatedly Defy Cancellation) lasted as long as it did: by carefully avoiding the unwanted attention that comes with critical acclaim and Emmy wins.