ABC's deliberate strategy of slowing feeding bored, disenchanted Desperate Housewives viewers to the infant Grey's Anatomy monster has finally come to fruition, as the Nielsen beast is now fully grown and ready to be sent out to wreak havoc on the network's competition. At a press conference this morning, ABC announced that it's moving Grey's to 9 p.m. on Thursday, where it will compete with CBS's CSI and, in a realization of NBC president Kevin Reilly's most career-chilling fears, the fledgling Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60. Reports Var:

NBC president Kevin Reilly's admission of scheduling fear at the upfronts seems to have opened the door for his own employees to take some pokes at him. Blogs the LAT:

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:

Shortly, NBC will be the first network to announce its fall schedule at this week's "upfront" presentations to advertisers in NY, when it is widely expected that the network will formally anoint Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and the new, highly buzzed-about drama Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip Live From A Soundstage In Los Angeles, California, as the Peacock Messiah. But don't think that the folks at NBC didn't perform their due diligence (Executive: "So, Aaron, um...yeah...how are, you know, things?" Sorkin: "I'm not making my own crack anymore." Exec: "Welcome to the NBC family.") before putting their fate in the hands of the famously troubled showrunner. Reports the WSJ:

Today's NY Times looks at Tina Fey's still-untitled, behind-the-scenes-at-a-variety-show NBC sitcom pilot, which may wind up making the schedule despite the presence of Aaron Sorkin's behind-the-scenes-at-a-variety-show dramedy pilot, a potential logjam that NBC president Kevin Reilly categorizes as a "high-class problem":

· Amidst the expected, ugly fight for incredibly scarce Oscar tickets, a philosopher is born: "Any system that produces a wide range of unhappy people is probably pretty fair. If everyone is equally unhappy, then maybe we're doing it right," said the Academy's executive administrator. [Variety]
NBC's ratings for the Winter Olympics are deemed "so-so," especially when compared to the demographic-attracting monsters Lost, American Idol, CSI, and Desperate Housewives. And in case you were wondering, the semi-secret Friday night Arrested Development finale finished up the series' Fox run with a ratings "whimper." [THR]
NBC's Kevin Reilly has been "drinking the Kool-Aid" (not the Guayana Suicide Punch flavor, yet), lusting at the downloading prospects of new, serialized Dick Wolf Hollywood crime drama Power. Will hard-boiled cops and harder-boiled fake tits play on a three-inch screen? Reilly's betting on it. [Variety]
Feel free to ignore any story that leads with the words "Skeet Ulrich has been tapped to star," because it only goes downhill from there. (I.e., Mark Feuerstein's next career move is mentioned.) [THR]
And the award for Filthiest-Sounding Title for a Series of Articles goes to Variety, for "Nurturing the Niche." [Variety, Variety]

My Name Is Earl has just shut down production, because its star, Jason Lee, has come down with a highly contagious case of adult chickenpox:

· NBC president Kevin Reilly rearranges some deck chairs on his primetime Titanic, with exec VP of development Ghen Maynard and senior VP of comedy Cheryl Dolins being de-Peacocked. Reilly, it seems, is not quite ready to fire himself. Give it time. [Variety]
· Fox gives a cast-contingent order to latest ——-ing With the Stars reality idea, Simon Cowell's Duets, wherein a "star" performs a song with a professional singer in front of a panel of judges. Pending results for the network's Skating With Celebrities, an ice-skating component may be added to maximize cynicism. [THR]
· Warner Bros. rescues the Maurice Sendak-approved Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are from Universal's turnaround. Huzzah! (Really.) [Variety]
· You can stop holding your breath now. The WB has netted its Aquaman! [THR]
· Paramount is still working on deal to sell the DreamWorks library to help defray the cost of their holiday impulse studio buy, is in talks to get George Sorosto pony up about a billion or so dollars for the rights. [Variety]

· Networks and studios mull possibility of "suing the living shit" out of TiVo for allowing users to transfer recorded programs to their iPods or PSPs, at least until they figure out how to cut themselves in on the action. [Variety]
· Testifying before a panel of Senators at the Museum of TV and Radio in Beverly Hills, MPAA head Dan Glickman blamed the Chinese government's restrictions on foreign entertainment product for creating "a marketplace vacuum that pirates are only too happy to fill." Glickman then implored the Senators to launch an immediate nuclear strike on the nation to "wipe out Chinese counterfeit DVDs...forever!" [THR]
· Confident that housewives will welcome a break from the relentless presentation of cheap, made-for-TV movies about domestic violence and eating disorders, Lifetime shells out over $1.35 million an episode for Medium reruns. [Variety]
· Hillary Clinton's presentation of an award to the most powerful woman in the world (Oprah, duh) brings welcome buzz to the International Emmy Awards. [Variety]
· NBC Universal demotes struggling network Trio to broadband, still working on the technology that will allow them to upload struggling president Kevin Reilly onto one of its new servers. [THR]

With CBS's Without a Trace finally prying apart ERs cold, dead grip on the 18-49 demo on Thursday nights, it seems that we can officially declare NBC's onetime "Must See TV" juggernaut dead. Joey, Will & Grace, and a flagging Apprentice are nobody's idea of a programming Murderer's Row (we picture something closer to a group of autistic five year-olds clutching inflatable bats), so fourth-place president Kevin Reilly is forced to consider drastic measures to reclaim his network's former Nielsen glory:

NBC, America's Most Desperate Network™, won a bidding war with CBS for Aaron Sorkin's Studio 7, a Larry Sanders-esque drama about a Saturday Night Live-ish variety show. Sorkin's previous credits include creating The West Wing and Sports Night, writing A Few Good Men, and exploring altered states of consciousness through the intake of various hallucinogens and narcotics. This is how the LAT concludes its piece on the Studio 7 sale:

Every so often, a magical combination of celebrity and odd circumstance birth a Special Edition of our PrivacyWatch feature. A reader gives us David Carradine, a fast food joint, and a wandering canine:

NBC's Kevin Reilly realizes that when you're in charge of a fourth-place network, you've got to shake things up a bit—think outside of the box, as it were—to reverse the disastrous descent into the dark Nielsen places occupied by the WB and UPN. Today, Reilly heralded the launch of the NBC Entertainment Idea Box, a web-based system through which his employees can transmit their craziest, paradigm-shifting thoughts to the appropriate decision makers—for awards and cash prizes! The e-mail follows:

Today's LAT looks at the New York Television Festival, a showcase of independent TV projects currently being circled by a predictably hit-hungry swarm of Hollywood vultures. But despite the obvious comparison to the entertainment industry's annual orgy at Robert Redford's resort, NBC's Kevin Reilly says that the fest's not exactly Sundance:

Demonstrating that he's certainly no "blubbering basket case" passively waiting for another season-long Nielsen colonic, NBC president Kevin Reilly fired off an e-mail rallying cry to his troops this afternoon as the network prepares to launch its new Fall season. Things are really "sparking," he says, instantly conjuring an image of the fourth place pres struggling valiantly to conjure fire from a child-proof Bic, from which a nearby six year-old easily coaxes a two-foot flame. But putting aside our predictable negativity, Reilly maintains that they have a lot to look forward to:

NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly knows that you can't circle the ratings toilet in fourth place, a single flush away from the Nielsen annihilation of UPN or WB numbers, and not hear chatter that your job might be something less than secure. Reilly keeps his chin up for Broadcasting & Cable:

We know that NBC's Nielsen disaster of last season has caused some pretty profound self-esteem issues at the network (the "colonic" talk was a tip-off), but this plea for comedy scripts sounds a little like a recent divorcée slurring, "Boy, am I waaaaasted! I think if I do one more widdle shot, I might go home with anybody!" from the end of the bar:

How bleak are things at the publicly humbled, last place (UPN and The WB don't count) NBC? So bad that president Kevin Reilly had to conjure a rather unpleasant image to communicate his network's plight to the Television Critics Association: