· CBS affiliates argue that they shouldn't have to to pay the $3 million fine levied for airing Without a Trace's Very Special Teen Orgy episode because every complaint filed against the show came from the websites of religious crackpot organizations Parents Television Council and the American Family Association, not "real people." And as we all know, real people love nothing better than watching teenagers simulate group sex on network television. [THR]
· Because we know how hot and bothered it makes you to hear about how much advertising time the networks have sold, Fox and CBS have filled 70% of their ad slots, NBC 40%, and ABC is waiting for better offers on Lost and Grey's Anatomy. You may now take five minutes for a cold shower and then return to work. [Variety]
· Fox's Rupert Murdoch decides not to create his own search engine, and instead will choose between Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to provide search services that will allow MySpace's millions of lurking pedophiles to more efficiently find the profiles of vulnerable teens. Or totally rad emo bands, depending on their mood. [Variety]
· Shitergy Update! Corporate monolith News Corp plans on exploiting every part of its multimedia empire to promote next year's Simpsons movie, including forcing president/COO Peter Chernin to dress as a different Simpsons character each day and speak only in amusing soundbites from the popular animated series. [THR]
· We have no idea what the basic cable series starring Kevin Bacon's wife is about, when it airs, or even what network it's on, but 8.3 million viewers watched its second-season premiere. We've got to start branching out from TiVo'd episodes of Blow Out one of these days. [Variety]

A Defamer operative sent in this report, and accompanying photographic evidence, of CBS' valiant attempt at thinking outside of the "full-page ad in Variety" box for their CSI Emmy consideration promotional campaign:

· Variety assumes Cars will be this weekend's top earner, but wonders if it will beat any box office records, particularly when parents start warning each other of the dark, autopian vision of its ending: [SPOILER!] That the reason it's devoid of any humans is because they're all being ground up for fuel in subterranean farms. [Variety]
· Steven Spielberg tells Sunday Morning Shootout that Paramount was his second choice for DreamWorks' buyout, and that he "would love to go off and make a picture like Capote or George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck,"stopping himself before saying, "You know, movies that earn their Oscars, rather than getting nominations because I'm, like, Steven Spielberg." [Variety]
· Former Friends writer and Will & Grace showrunner Greg Malins is joining How I Met Your Mother, where he will school the show's green creators Craig Thomas and Carter Bays on the proper way to describe a blowjob to the writers' room. [Variety]
· Reese Witherspoon's husband is in negotiations to star as the lead in director Kimberly Peirce's first feature since Boys Don't Cry, the Iraq war drama, Stop-Loss. [THR]
· Ratings are up for the NBA finals over last year, with the boost's source suspected of coming from overcompensating, straight men feeling the urge to catch the nearest game after being subjected to an inescapable week of Brandon Routh's suberbulge. [THR]

In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, incoming CBS anchor Katie Couric pondered the minutae of her new job:

· "Bombastic" Marvel Studios head Avi Arad, the man responsible for making sure that even the most obscure Marvel comic book character had a movie deal somewhere in Hollywood, is leaving the company for a production deal, a move suspiciously timed in the wake of his selling his shares in the company for a reported $60 million. [Variety]
· The Super Bowl nipple fine stands! The FCC decides that it was correct in penalizing CBS $550,000 for the indecent exposure of Janet Jackson's armor-plated areola. [THR]
· The actual news in this story isn't nearly as important as the side-by-side pictures of Topher Grace and Imagine superproducer Brian Grazer, which looks like a worst case scenario rendering of what Grace might look like in 25 years. [Variety]
· CBS supreme leader Les Moonves reassures his network affiliates that they're focused on their on-air programs, promising that their new, token foray into internet content delivery, Innertube, would feature nothing better than low-cost, grainy webcam video of Moonves attending to various personal hygiene tasks or the occasional trip to a Mystic Tanning center. [THR]
· Brad Pitt will hardly have time to enjoy his new baby, as he has to shoot Ocean's 13 this summer and fulfill various promotional duties for Babel and his Jesse James movie in October. You know, if Angie lets him. [Variety]

· International audiences love boringly presented blasphemy, Brett Ratner: Da Vinci Code wins the foreign box office for the second week in a row with $90.9 million, while new release X-Men: The Last Stand rakes in $76.1 million. [Variety]
· CBS settles its lawsuit with Howard Stern and Sirius, with Stern's new satellite home paying CBS $2 million for rights to his radio archives, dashing our hopes that the affair would be settled by a winner-take-all match of anal ring toss between Les Moonves and Beetlejuice. [THR]
· The Palm d'Or goes to director Ken Loach for The Wind that Shakes the Barley, reminding us that films besides Da Vinci and X-Men screened at Cannes. [Variety]
· Studios looking past traditional promotional campaigns with fast food and soft drinks tie-ins this summer are joining up with less conventional marketing partners, like Superman Returns' risky, co-branded line of feminine hygiene products featuring Lois Lane's likeness. [THR]
· ABC and CBS make it easy for viewers to ignore their American Idol clones The One and Rock Star by scheduling them to face off in the same summer timeslot. [Variety]

· Variety leads with the story, "Will 'Code' erode?," which asks how X-Men: The Last Stand will fare at the box office this weekend opposite the still strong Da Vinci Code. Leading us to wonder out loud, "Does the mere posing of a question really qualify as a news story?" Or, for that matter, a lame trade round-up joke? [Variety]
· NBC's program-grid shell game has their competitors snickering behind their scrawny, fourth place ass. But it could well be they who laughs last, when Super Deal or No Deal, featuring a stadium of 1000 models holding briefcases containing amounts from $.01 to $1,000,000,000, devours the Thursday 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. time slot. [Variety]
· Canadian networks divvy up this year's American TV offerings, then frantically futz with their schedules in an adorable attempt at mimicking the habits of their neighbor to the south. [Variety]
· Morgan Freeman is close to signing on to Gone, Baby, Gone, Ben Affleck's directorial debut from a script he wrote, answering the age old question, "How many motorcycles does it take to get Morgan Freeman to star in your big comeback vehicle?" [THR]
· Les Moonves tells shareholders that CBS has gotten off to "a terrific start" since its divorce from Viacom, a less than subtle dig at rival Tom Freston. And somewhere in Heaven, the legend goes, the Angel of Corporate Honcho Harmony yelps in pain as a clump of wing feathers is instantly torn off. [THR]

The NY Times delves into NBC's unprecedented rejiggering of their fall schedule, which began with a scuttling of Aaron Sorkin's drama-about-a-comedy Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip away from the Thursday night competition, and, like a bored, jittery housewife on a furniture-rearranging rampage, led to drastic tinkering with the rest of the schedule :

Hilarious. Let's just hope they keep Lauer far away from the CBS studios on election night.

A helpful reader scanned this For Your Consideration cover ad from yesterday's Variety for us, demonstrating that CBS isn't backing down from supporting scandal-buffeted Charlie Sheen in its Emmy campaign for Two and a Half Men. While our spotlight might make it look like an unfortunate choice was made in selecting a pullquote for the ad, a savvy publicist actually made a wise decision by choosing the more ambiguous "perverse and timeless" description over the far less savory "cheerleader-devouring pom-pom fetishist" one from People's original text.

· 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]

· The Senate approves an indecency bill that would increase broadcast fines tenfold. According to precedent, the next time CBS decides to see if it can slip a teen orgy past the censors, it will cost them $30.6 million. And we don't even want to consider what a Super Bowl nipple-slip might cost in this brave new world. [Variety]
· The Reporter uncovers big news: Fewer broadcaster means fewer shows! Crazy shit, yo. [THR]
· Paramount renames its specialty division Paramount Vantage, which sounds more like a new plaque-fighting, tooth-whitening toothpaste than a movie studio to us. Then again, we were bound to be disappointed by anything other than John Lesher's House of Hugs. And no, we really never get tired of looking at that collage. [Variety]
· Casting, casting, casting: Rachel Weisz, Colin Firth, Ian McKellan and Susan Sarandon to star in the political thriller The Colossus, while Naomi Watts hooks up with Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises for Focus Features. [THR, THR]
· And in what will probably be the happiest news we hear all day, Conan O'Brien will host the Emmys again, after four year reprieve from awards show responsibilities. Can't wait for when Triumph invites Aaron Sorkin to join him for some crack and hookers backstage. [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:

During yesterday's upfronts presentation from CBS, the advertisers and press got an interesting treat: Les Moonves brought out his incoming news anchor, Katie Couric. On her Times blog, Virginia Heffernan writes of Couric's brief appearance:

· CBS will pick up only three new dramas and one comedy for the fall season, and is moving Without a Trace and The Amazing Race to Sundays, creating their first-ever (we think) All Jerry Bruckheimer Night. Color us terrified by The Bruck's creeping programming hegemony. [Variety]
· New network abomination The CW will be stitched together almost entirely from old parts of The WB and UPN, adding just two new shows to its inaugural fall season schedule. And one of those is a Girlfriends spinoff, so they're not even pretending to try. [THR]
· The Da Vinci Code will premiere tonight in Cannes to "an unprecedented mix of Hollywood hoopla, fest glamour and worldwide hysteria," and, probably, some pretty fun protests involving flaming effigies of Ron Howard. [Variety]
· Bastard Fox semi-network MyNetworkTV presented its ambitious plans to replace test patterns, infomercials, and public access shows about local bakesales with telenovelas in selected markets. [THR]
· American Idol pulls down great ratings, again. Doesn't that ever get boring for them? How about just one week where it gets a 9 share so everyone has something to talk about? Is that asking for too much? [Variety]

There was a time when generously betoothed CBS despot Les Moonves would invite the media to an informal chat over breakfast on the morning of his network's upfront, where he granted journalists an intimate opportunity to watch gape-mouthed as he slathered his bagels with a schmear made from the steaming entrails of his enemies (namely, NBC's Jeff Zucker). Today, however, the NY Times' Virginia Heffernan blogs that Moonves may have finally lost his edge:

· 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]

NBC might be inspiring poetry in some of its underlings, but at the top of the executive food chain, there still seems to be a touch of post-traumatic stress disorder following their cellar-dwelling season. At NBC's upfront presentation earlier today, president Kevin Reilly explained how too many shakedowns for his Nielsen milk money by the other network bullies informed his decision to go with just two sitcoms on their traditionally comedy-heavy Thursday night. Reports the LAT:

· 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]

· The whole world, including places that aren't versed enough in the tenets of Christianity to know why Catholics don't like the idea of Jesus and Mary Magdalene hooking up, seems really, really excited for The Da Vinci Code. [Variety]
· After closing a deal to sell his clothing company $1.6 billion, Tommy Hilfiger is so rich that he's willing to fart away $20 million on a movie about the fashion industry. We predict that he's going to be the most popular guy in Hollywood by next Wednesday. [THR]
· Credit Var for not falling into the "sinking" trap and instead going scatological with their "Will the ship hit the fans?" Poseidon headline. [Variety]
· CBS wins all three hours (both overall and in the key demographic) of primetime Thursday TV against "super-sized" NBC episodes, even though (spoiler alert) Jim totally told Pam he was in love with her at the end of Casino Night and we like cried for a half hour straight. [THR]
· NBC officially picks up Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Raines, 20 Good Years and The Singles Table. They still haven't given the official go-ahead to the Tina Fey comedy—the network seems to be working things out with Alec Baldwin so that they can premiere the show in the fall and fulfill their dream of having a solid 90-minute block of all SNL-inspired programming. [Variety]