It all depends on who has the best answer to the "When did you stop choking your girlfriend" question. [Multichannel]

The Wall Street Journal's Brooks Barnes has just been seduced by the New York Times, it'll be announced soon— and also by Los Angeles. From out there, he'll cover the film industry for the New York Times's Biz section. This will be much-needed reinforcement in the paper's battle with the LA Times—for years, New York was gaining an upper hand. But recently, things have not gone well for our hometown paper on that other coast. For one thing, arts and television reporter Edward Wyatt has been dying in Los Angeles.

Hoping to land a coveted Fake Emmy nomination for long-suffering, easily wounded actor Johnny "Drama" Chase, the Entourage team has taken out a For Your Consideration ad in today's Variety for Five Towns, the breakout B-story hit that occasionally distracts viewers from the tiresome on-again, off-again romance between younger brother Vince and cartoonishly foul-mouthed—but secretly tender—lover Ari at the center of the current, disappointing season of the HBO series. To complete the reality-blurring illusion, Chase has also "written" a First Person essay about the emotional brutality of awards season:

Time Warner President Jeffrey Bewkes, heir apparent to CEO Richard Parsons, should be having a great week. The company's annual stockholders meeting happens today in sunny Burbank, and Bewkes is expected to be formally announced as the guy who gets the gig. But that pesky Chris Albrecht thing—the former HBO honcho whose fists did some allegedly excessive hugging on his girlfriend's neck outside a casino in Vegas—keeps coming up in the press. And for good reason! It wasn't the first time!

Good news about former HBO head Chris Albrecht and his recent alleged chokee: Seems like they're going to make it work! Page Six reports that the throat-grabber "and gal pal Karla Jensen, 37, went out on the town last night, grabbing a bite at the Waverly Inn in TriBeCa." (TriBeCa! It's at Bank and Waverly! Like Page Six has never been?) Anyway, we're so happy that the two have been able to put this whole thing behind them. Eyewitnesses say the pair enjoyed the restaurant's famed $55 "smack and cheese." Yes, it's where the elite meet to beat! Oh we could go on!

The Wall Street Journal notes a growing trend: TV networks are showering free whatnots on bloggers in hopes of favorable coverage. You won't be shocked to learn that, in most cases, it works, although if you're deciding to watch "The New Adventures of Old Christine" because some mommy blog told you to (the article's main example), you probably are shocked. And extremely stupid. One little detail caught our eye though.

· NBC has pre-upfront pick-up fever, renewing the critically beloved, but anemically rated, Friday Night Lights for a second season. ("First be best, then be first" is the Peacock motto stitched into a throw pillow on Kevin Reilly's couch.) Also making the schedule: new dramas The Bionic Woman, Chuck, Journeyman and Life. [Variety]
· Barry Sonnenfeld is in talks to direct supernatural adventure The Box for Fox, prompting the best headline of the morning: "Sonnenfeld Ponders Fox's 'Box'." Can't wait for "Barry All Up Inside Fox's Box" when the deal closes. [THR]
· You already know all about Ari Emanuel's opinion of the Chris Albrecht ouster, but the industry's feelings on the matter remain complicated. Recovering addict/friend/Deadwood producer David Milch says Time Warner did the right thing even if they were just afraid of the bad press: "All these people saying the corporation should have forgiven him, what they're really saying is the corporation should have kept him sick."[Variety]
· Forgiving the franchise for its later floppy-eared, jive-talking transgressions against their craft, The Visual Effects Society recognizes Star Wars as having the most influential special effects of all time. [THR]
· Var boldly predicts that Spider-Man 3 will crush new competition Georgia Rule and 28 Weeks Later, but does note Spidey's fallen off the record-setting pace of last summer's Pirates sequel.. [Variety]

• Google will only buy your company if it hosts "user-generated" content—so newspapers are out, as Google could only buy their "tool-generated content" (we made that phrase up! Oh har!) and then only "own" it. Funny company plan, to only buy amateurism and ephemera. [Reuters]
  

Never one afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom, Endeavor superagent and HuffPo freethinker Ari Emanuel has leapt to the defense of embattled pal Chris Albrecht, "appalled" at the way the media unfairly drew a connection between a harmless little 16-year-old cover-up (was there even an HBO way back in 1991? Who knows?) and this weekend's isolated incident in the MGM Grand valet lot to create the dubious "pattern" that ostensibly cost the executive his job. Blogs Emanuel:

So HBO head Chris Albrecht allegedly beat his girlfriend and beat the rap - she's not pressing charges - but couldn't beat the heat: Time Warner has forced him to resign. Albrecht, who conveniently played the "but I'm a drunk" card the last time he allegedly knocked a ladyfriend around, issued a statement saying that "I take this step for the benefit of my Home Box Office colleagues, recognizing that I cannot allow my personal circumstances to distract them from the business." Your best bit of color comes from Page Six, where a source admits that covering up the earlier alleged paramour-battering was a bad idea. But, you know, "There wasn't as much sensitivity then to the issue of violence against women." Yeah, how we pine for the early nineties, when one could batter a lippy broad with impunity. Those were the days. Allegedly.

Confirming the earlier DHD report that HBO's Chris Albrecht was, in the words of an insider, "toast," Variety now says that corporate parent Time Warner will soon announce that it's given the embattled, rehabbing executive "the boot." Brace yourselves for a press release short on colorful firing metaphors, but long on talk about how the company hopes the surrender of his job will give Albrecht the time to get the help he needs.

If this morning's reports of previous workplace lady problems and secret HBO settlements weren't enough to ruin CEO-in-hasty-absentia Chris Albrecht's day (pictured at left in happier. pre-mugshot times), the LAW's Nikki Finke's afternoon item claiming that the executive has an ankling in his very near future ought to do the trick. We're not up on our corporate crisis-management lingo, but whatever "toast" means, it doesn't sound very positive. Reports Finke:

The media shitstorm in which HBO CEO Chris Albrecht finds himself since his early Sunday domestic violence arrest in Vegas has not diminished in filthy intensity since Tuesday afternoon's announcement that he's headed off to rehab, as today brings a new wave of reports hinting that no hastily scheduled AA vacation will be long enough for this to blow over:

As heralded just a little while ago in an internal e-mail circulating through the company that sounded suspiciously like a press release, HBO CEO Chris Albrecht is taking the time-honored route of following up an embarrassing personal incident with a quick trip to rehab (it's worked so well for Mel, Britney, and Lindsay lately), where he'll battle the alcohol-fueled demons that resurfaced in the MGM Grand's valet lot this weekend. There's no timetable given as yet for Albrecht's return from the leave of absence, but one hopes that the usual 28 days will be long enough for the public's memory of that unflattering mugshot, and for his own pain over the emotionally devastating end of The Sopranos, to fade.

According to a memo just sent around HBO by Chris Albrecht, he started drinking again a few years back and then everything went wrong and then he was in jail this weekend in Las Vegas for allegedly harming his girlfriend and now he has to take a leave of absence from HBO which is all so totally crazy that we can't wait to watch it on HBO. Holy smokes. The memo follows.

Usually low-profile HBO chief Chris Albrecht is hiding out at home in Los Angeles, and has not been charged after his weekend visit to a Las Vegas jail. Police officers said that they saw him involved in some manner of fisticuffs (or at least a misunderstanding) with his girlfriend at the MGM Grand's valet parking. (We prefer to rumble at New York, New York.) We're looking forward to Albrecht's lawsuit against the Las Vegas Tourism board regarding their "What Happens In Vegas, Stays In Vegas" slogan, which has now proven to be a complete and total lie. His girlfriend won't be pressing charges, but two cops say they saw "evidence of battery." HBO has said nothing.

As it turns out, Paris Hilton's late Friday sentencing to 45 days in a tragically unfashionable Lynwood jail would kick off something of a blockbuster weekend in Hollywood jurisprudence: The Smoking Gun reports (with unflattering mugshot!) that HBO CEO Chris Albrecht was arrested for suspicion of an assault against his girlfriend in the valet parking lot of Las Vegas' MGM Grand hotel following the Oscar De La Hoya/Floyd Mayweather fight on Saturday night, a physical altercation that we're sure will be explained away as nothing more than the pay cable chief getting a little carried away in excitedly demonstrating a dramatic domestic dispute that will transpire between Tony and Carmela in one of the remaining four episodes of The Sopranos. Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition star Ty Pennington took a more traditional path to the police blotter (sadly, no booking photo is available) by getting popped for a DUI in West L.A. Pennington's people have already issued a public statement of apology aimed at restoring his fans' faith in their favorite primetime toolbelt model:

• Oprah Winfrey endorses Barack Obama. Hell, if she can move copies of The Road she can probably sell anything. [NYT]
  

Last night's season premiere of Entourage brought the giddy hope that the conspicuously porking-free pay-cable series might finally cast aside its troubling modesty and let its boots-knocking-freak-flag fly, treating us to the kinds of hott, nonpenetrative action that is the right of all HBO subscribers. Alas, even in an episode featuring an ocean liner stocked with enough groupies and nymphomaniac Victoria's Secret models to kill even the most priapic, Hefner-level satyr, there was nary an ugly being bumped, on-screen or off, forcing us to once again repeat the LAT's recent question, "Are you really going to make us switch over to Cinemax to see some fucking, guys?" In an interview with TV Week.com, creator Doug Ellin explains his "tell, don't show" philosophy concerning his characters' ostensibly busy fuck-lives:

Tonight, at 9 PM, on HBO, The Sopranos returns for the home stretch of its sixth and final season. Imagine if there were a day in which God comes back from the dead one last time before going away forever. This is like that day, but bigger. In fact, basically every demographic, interest group, and extant species is primed to benefit from the brief earthly return of The Sopranos before its ascension, nine episodes from now, to the heavenly pantheon currently occupied by other such pillars of Western civilization/dearly departed HBO originals as Rome, Socrates, William Shakespeare, Karl Marx, Tracy Takes On... and Arli$$. Everyone, that is, except TV critics. Indeed, the Inquisition dilemma facing the nation's small-screen literati this weekend is stark and unforgiving: To ignore The Sopranos would be sacrilege, of course, but to actually claim to "review" it—that is, to claim oneself as capable of understanding its true nature—would be heresy. The only solution? Total Prostrated Submission.