Looking to boost your talk show's ratings and prestige? Just book Barack Obama. About 7.2 million people tuned in to watch Obama's chit-chat with David Letterman last night, the sort-of funny man's biggest night in four years.

• Barack Obama's appearance on David Letterman's show last night helped the Late Night host score his second-highest ratings ever. [NYT, WP]
• Dan Rather scored a couple of victories in his suit against CBS: A motion by the network to dismiss the case was denied by a judge; and Rather's lawyers will be permitted to question Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone. [Reuters]
• Yesterday, activists handing out fake copies of the Post outside its offices were detained by cops. Today, the paper says it was "flattered" by it. [NYP]
• Book deals: Jenny Sanford, the estranged wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, is writing "inspirational memoir" for Random House. And Andrew Young, an aide to former Senator John Edwards, has landed a deal with St. Martin's Press' Thomas Dunne Books to publish his tell-all memoir.
• In an effort to keep more viewers tuned in, ABC plans to reduce—yes, reduce—the number of commercials in the premieres of its new shows. [LAT]
• Fox won the opening night of the fall season, a first for the network. [THR]

Barack Obama capped a media push by sitting down with David Letterman to talk to the everyman. Yeah, he discussed serious issues, but those hardly matter, because everyone's going to be talking about a heart-shaped potato.

(They are so good at that, by the way! They learned this trick during the election, sending out politically relevant Letterman clips to all the blogs right after the show tapes.)

Barack Obama will be on The Late Show with David Letterman next Monday. (This after he hits every single Sunday morning show—he will be exhausted!) This is obviously a snub of terrible Jay Leno.

• So how did Jay Leno's new show do? He hit it out of the park ratings-wise, roping in an estimated 18 million viewers. The reviews were all pretty lousy, though, so don't be surprised if it's all downhill from here. [AdAge, LAT, THR]
• The sale of BusinessWeek: Bruce Wasserstein has dropped out as a potential acquirer of the struggling mag. And it's cutting 20% of its staff. [BW, NYT]
• ABC News has apologized to the White House for Nightline anchor Terry Moran's tweet about Obama calling Kanye West a "jackass." [LAT]
• Speaking of the White House, Barack Obama will be David Letterman's guest on Monday night; it's the first time a sitting president has done the show. [NYT]
• Oprah's season premiere scored big thanks to Whitney Houston. [Wrap]
• The House of Harvey has sustained another blow: Harvey Weinstein's 70 percent stake in the home-video distributor Genius Products, once worth as much as $400 million, is now pretty much worthless. [NYP]
• Speaking of the film mogul, The Weinstein Co. picked up the rights to A Single Man, designer Tom Ford's debut film, at the Toronto Film Festival. [THR]

The devil is in the details, and the details to this little devil's story keep getting piled on. Piven told David Letterman last night that he not only had mercury poisoning, but a host of other ailments as well.

Kevin Bacon heading into Da Silvano to meet a friend for lunch ... Blake Lively and Penn Badgley walking down Fifth Avenue ... Hugh Grant jogging in SoHo ... Mischa Barton taking a smoking break outside ... David Letterman getting ready to play tennis with Andy Roddick outside the Late Show ... Maroon 5's Adam Levine walking downtown with his girlfriend ... Christina Milian hugging her fiancé, and later shopping at American Apparel ... Jane Krakowski walking with boyfriend Robert Godley in the Village ... actress Archie Panjabi filming scenes for The Good Wife ... ... and Rihanna taking her brothers to see The Lion King on Broadway.

• The average person consumed 32.2 hours of TV each week this summer. It's a new record. And it's all thanks to the quality programming that cable channels have been putting on the air the last few months, obviously. [NYP]
• The bad news for newspapers is getting worse: Ad sales dropped by 29% during the second quarter, which means newspapers have $2.8 billion less in their (already empty) pockets than they had at this time last year. [AP]
• Related: Please take the time this weekend to read the massive story about Hurricane Katrina in the New York Times Sunday magazine. It cost the paper and ProPublica a record-setting $400,000 to produce. [CJR]
• Because Nightline feels left out of the war between Conan and Letterman, the show is launching a campaign to remind you that it still exists. [AdAge]

Lindsay Lohan wants a reality show. So does Redmond O'Neal. Meanwhile, Derek Jeter may be getting a dose of married life, and Avril Lavigne may soon be a single gal. All that and way more in your Thursday Gossip Roundup...

• The Carolina Herrera dress that Anna Wintour wore on Dave Letterman's show this week? She wore it to the CFDA Awards back in June. Uh oh! [Stylelist]
• Zac Posen is the latest designer to bid goodbye to Bryant Park this Fashion Week. He'll be staging his show at The Altman Building instead. [WWD]
• Another good thing about the recession: There are fewer crappy catalogs getting stuffed in your mailbox. [AP]
• The September Issue doesn't open in theaters until Friday, but it seems some people (above) are already sick of all the publicity. [NYShitty]

• Just when you think members of the Jackson family can't possibly stoop any lower comes confirmation they've agreed to do a reality TV show for A&E. It's going to be "genuine," says the show's producer. Clearly. [THR]
• Because the public has been clamoring for 24/7 access to fake wrestling matches, the WWF is now hoping to start up its own cable network. [NYP]
• More on what went down when Vogue editor Anna Wintour sat down to chat with David Letterman on his show last night. [WWD]
• Sony unveiled its electronic reading gizmo/Kindle competitor today. [NYT]
• The Observer's Jason Horowitz is leaving for the Washington Post. [NYO]
• A homeless woman has scored a four-month internship at Elle. Just wait until Elle "employee" Olivia Palermo gets her hands on her on the next season of The City. Homelessness, we presume, will never have looked so good. [Gawker]

We thought the Late Show portion of Anna Wintour's Make-People-Like-Me-Before-My-Contract-Is-Up Tour 2009 would be a disaster. Until Letterman asked about The Devil Wears Prada. Then we knew she was safe, because she could never come off worse than Miranda Priestly.

Anna Wintour on the Late Show with David Letterman [YouTube]

We got what we expected from alleged Hannibal Lecter stand-in and Vogue editor Anna Wintour appearance on The Late Show: a staid, polite exchange. Regardless, it only made us love Wintour more — and she actually came off looking good.

We had a mole inside the Late Show's studio audience today, and it sounds like Anna Wintour will reinforce her reputation when the program airs in several hours: Stiff, cool and sharp-tongued.

• Get ready to see commercials appear inside magazines. CBS is embedding tiny screens in an upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly, which will play a clip promoting the network's fall season. What will it look like? Like this. [WSJ]
• Poor Rupert: The billionaire chairman of News Corp. only collected a compensation package of $18 million for the most recent fiscal year, which is down from $30 million, or 40 percent, from a year earlier. [AP]
• David Letterman continues to beat Conan O'Brien in the ratings. [NYT]
• Did Glenn Beck get yanked off the air after stirring up so much controversy recently, or is he on a regularly scheduled vacation? It's a mystery! [Politico]
• 60 Minutes is planning to air a tribute to Don Hewitt this Sunday. [NYT]
• Meghan McCain is returning to The View as a guest host. How thrilling. [NYP]
• Reader's Digest is one step closer to officially filing for bankruptcy. [NYT]
• What is Jayson Blair, the disgraced ex-New York Times reporter, up to these days? He's a "certified life coach" for a mental health facility. [Gawker, AP]

Robert Pattinson whines about not getting more hot chicks, Brad Pitt is a joint-rolling artist, Kate Major says boning Jon Gosselin was "amazing," Mariah Carey disses the Grammys, Alicia Silverstone gets naked and David Cook is dating an older woman.

Reality TV star Donald Trump was on Letterman tonight braying about how much he loves pageant broads and how Carrie Prejean was crucified on a wooden cross just like Jesus because mean people hate her for being so damn hot.

• The value of Michael Jackson's estate may double by the end of the year thanks to the surge in music sales and all those movie/merch deals. [LAT]
• Bad news for Conan: Repeats of David Letterman's show last week still managed to beat new episodes of the Tonight Show in the ratings. [NYT]
• For the first time, Us Weekly's website attracted more monthly visitors than People.com. Us's footage of Michael Jackson's hair on fire helped. [WWD]
• Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner of LA and, before that, New York City, has landed a book deal with Random House's Broadway Books. [AP]
• Does lots of buzz on Twitter send people to movie theaters and boost box office sales? Not so much, at least according to one poll. [NYT]
• Dr. Dre, Interscope chairman Jimmy Iovine, and Hewlett-Packard are teaming up to "save digital music." Good luck with that, guys. [CNET]