This morning's post about the rapidly widening gap on the Paramount lot between New Viacom employees and the red-headed stepchildren of CBS Corp. prompted several e-mails from the frontline of the escalating class war. A couple of people noted The Christmas iPod Incident, in which those who landed on the wrong side of the corporate split (CBS) watched as their Paramount/NV officemates played with their shiny new toys while they got this seemed to foreshadow future problems. The divisive fun's not over yet, however, as a lucky NV'er details another slight:

The official separation of Viacom church and CBS Corp state on Tuesday was celebrated with much bell-ringing, exuberant manifesto-penning, and snack gobbling—at least by the New Viacom employees. While Tom Freston's corporate family is enjoying coffee, ice cream, and free movies, Les Moonves' Kids are finding themselves marginalized citizens of the Paramount lot. Writes an operative:

This morning, newly minted CEOs Tom Freston and Les Moonves helped chairman/skeletal executive presence Sumner Redstone ring the New York Stock Exchange's opening bell (gently, of course, lest Redstone's fragile bones splinter from the force of the resulting sound waves) to commemorate the official split of Viacom into the New Viacom and CBS Corp. The always exuberant Freston was so excited by the creation of his new media kingdom that he rushed back to the office and dashed off a manifesto defining it for all of his subjects, whose stated "key values" of Creative Excellence, Reinvention, Global, Diversity and Inclusion, and Social Commitment and Ethics should ease the paranoia about DreamWorks-related layoffs at Paramount and soothe the sting of rival Moonves's instant five-percent stock price jump. Said Freston in a company-wide e-mail:

· Viacom names the board members of its post-split companies. While "new" Viacom head Tom Freston endeavored to populate his new board with solid, qualified businesspeople, CBS Corp. despot Les Moonves selected only directors bloodthirsty enough to help him rise up and slay skeletal corporate overlord Sumner Redstone when the time is right. [Variety]
· Sylvester Stallone recasts his own real-life son (whose heartbreaking turn as Rocky Jr. in the last movie haunts us to this day) with Gilmore Girls' Milo Ventimiglia for the sixth Rocky installment. What can we believe in when even nepotism fails us in this time of need? [THR]
· CBS midseason schedule unfolds before our eyes: Out of Practice gets a January "breather" (read: tied up in Les Moonves's trunk) while Tom Cavanaugh project Love Monkey and The Jenna Elfman Show find time slots. In March, when (read: if) )Out of Practice returns, it will be joined by the Julia Louis Dreyfus show The New Adventures of Old Christine and the David Mamet drama The Unit. Got it? Nope, neither do we. [Variety]
· Kevin Reilly celebrates the pre-Thanksgiving miracle of an NBC ratings win by giving turkeys to all of his employees. Unfortunately, the birds were already half-baked and will likely have to be abandoned midway through Thursday's meals. [THR]
· Single track downloads more than doubled from last year, but album sales are down 7%, prompting the MPAA to sue each individual downloaded track for destroying the industry's business model. [Variety]

Actor Jon Voight recently spoke candidly about his role in CBS's sure-to-be controversial take on the life of the recently deceased Pope John Paul II:

· Les Moonves blinks CBS News chief Andrew Heyward out of existence, a delayed reaction to the Bush military service report fiasco that also stained Dan Rather's legacy. Replacing him is CBS Sports president Sean McManus, who plans on retooling their flagship broadcast into the more ratings-friendly CBS Evening Point Spreads. [Variety]
· While Peter Jackson is shrinking himself out of existence, his upcoming King Kong is taking the other route and turning into a bloated, 3-hour affair, pushing the budget to $207 million. Universal executives go giant apeshit behind closed doors, but ultimately give in. [Variety]
· Robert De Niro will star in the Barry Levinson-directed What Just Happened?, "based on Art Linson's memoir about his experiences as a Hollywood producer...[T]he filmmakers hope will do for moviemaking what Wag The Dog did for politics." Remember when everything was the 'Wag the Dog' of something else? "It's the Wag the Dog of black, middle-aged female empowerment movies!" [Variety]
· Dreamworks acquires MacArthur Genius Award-winning author Jonathan Lethem's novel As She Climbed Across the Table for a feature adaptation. First studio note: "Let's take some of this genius-stink off Mr. Brainiac's little science project, shall we?" [Variety]
· The record whose title confirmed our darkest fears, Ashlee Simpson's I Am Me hits the Billboard 200 at No. 1, proving once and for all that we are a loyal, forgiving nation of scat enthusiasts. [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:

CBS has announced that it will air its four-hour miniseries John Paul II (starring Cary Elwes and Jon Voight in a young pope/old pope one-two punch) over two nights in the first week of December. And while it may seem that CBS's Les Moonves might have softened his stance on God-heavy programming, he did demand that the series complement the network's other programming. As a result, about two of the four hours deal with John Paul II's little-documented early days on the job, in which he supplemented his papal income by moonlighting as a forensic pathologist solving baffling crimes of passion in The Vatican.

· Spike TV outbids USA, SciFi Channel, TBS, and TNT to get a six-year exclusive deal for all six Star Wars movies, paying a reported $65 to 70 million, a great opportunity for the network to show off how well the disappointment of the three latest films holds up on the small screen. [Variety]
· The Viacom split has been sped up, and will now be completed by year's end. There's nothing that soon-to-be CBS Corp CEO Les Moonves likes better than an accelerated divorce. [THR]
· NBC signs up Meet the Parents/Fockers writer Jim Herzfeld for a sitcom pilot based on his experiences working at an LA country club. "I tell the stories at cocktail parties, and people laugh," said Herzfeld, perhaps inadvertently revealing that NBC head Kevin Reilly made the deal while drunk and munching on crab cakes. [Variety]
· The WB "benches" Friday comedies Blue Collar TV and Living with Fran. It always makes us a little sad when the first time we hear of a show (who knew Fran Drescher was back?) is when reading a story about its impending cancellation. [THR]
· Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films pay $1.5 million for the rights to as-yet-unpublished Ahmet "No, Not Dweezil, The Other One" Zappa novel Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless, about "a young brother and sister who learn their family is part of a long line of monster hunters... [and who] must band together against the most diabolical creature in the universe." Didn't take long for the Disney folks to take a thinly veiled shot at Michael Eisner, did it? [Variety]

Never having had a reason to visit CBS.com, we had no idea that the crown jewel of Les Moonves' growing empire of pain had embraced the blog format, and in the process, sowed the seeds of the online medium's inevitable destruction:

· Details of the Viacom split emerge: Sumner Redstone will still control everything, the two companies will share some directors, and new CEOs Tom Freston and Les Moonves won't be able to hot oil-wrestle for the same properties. Which is probably good news for Freston, as Moonves has been secretly practicing his Warm Crisco Figure Four Leg Lock for months. [Variety]
· The reality TV boogeyman continues to gobble up jobs that could be going to SAG members. But look at the flip side: reality TV creates many exciting opportunities for non-union sweatshop writers. [THR]
· Sensing that the nerd audience might be more forgiving of his "quirky" decision to name his son Kal-el, Nic Cage will executive produce the pilot The Dresden Files for Sci-Fi network. [Variety]
· UPN picks up the back nine for Everybody Hates Chris; somewhere deep within his secret lair, Les Moonves plots how he can shift the show to CBS without looking like a liar. [THR]
· Disney will adapt the novel If You Could See Me Now into a musical vehicle for Hugh Jackman. We're only going to say it one more time: There's nothing suspicious about Hugh Jackman's obsession with musicals, OK? If you had Jackman's triple-threat skills, you'd just close your eyes, slip into your tight, gold pants and cheetah shirt, and dance, dance, dance, not caring what people were whispering about you. [Variety]

How "laid back" is Viacom co-president Tom Freston? This laid back:

Defamer's Breakfast at Viacom continues: According to the LAT, skeletal Viacom executive presence Sumner Redstone has "raised eyebrows" by letting wife Paula hang around the offices of UPN and Nickelodeon:

Are we sensing some tension between Viacom co-presidents Les Moonves and Tom Freston, who are about to take control of their own fiefdoms when the conglomerate is cleaved in twain next year? Looks like the separation can't come soon enough. From today's Rush & Molloy column:

· "Just 10 days away from taking the baton at the Mouse House, a composed and articulate Bob Iger put the emphasis on single-mindedly growing the company's brands." Composed and articulate? What was Variety expecting, that Iger speak in tongues while crapping his pants? Maybe he's saving that for his first day on the job. [Variety]
· The premiere of Lost does "astounding" and "stellar" numbers, while its 8 pm recap/lead-in special causes Martha Stewart's Apprentice to bite the doily. [THR]
· The newly split-up Viacom explains its strategies to Wall Street, with Les Moonves bristling at the idea his division is "slow growth," and calling counterpart Tom Freston "laid back," which will make him "easy to kill, when the time is right." [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Vigilante Judges Edition: Hyde Park Entertainment to redo 1983's The Star Chamber for Fox. Well, at least it isn't for Paramount, home of all things remake. [THR]
· Batman Forever reunion! Jim Carrey is in talks to be homoeroticized by director Joel Schumacher in New Line's "quirky" thriller The Number 23. Should talks progress as expected, Carrey will begin his rubber-nipple fittings immediately. [Variety]

· We take back that spurious "talentless" remark we made earlier about Moonves's beloved Julie Chen. TV Gasm clearly demonstrates that she's really, really good at saying at least two words. Also, don't miss their Golden Gasms (at least three times more exciting than the Emmys!), in which we were invited to offer our useless opinions. Mischa wuz robbed, yo.
· We love it when actresses play humble: "When her name was announced, Huffman said she was so nervous, it felt like 'an out of body experience' and that the Emmy voters 'were going to come in and go "oh, I'm sorry. We didn't mean Felicity Huffman. We meant Shmalicity Guffman."'" Well, they definitely weren't going to call up Schmeva Gongloria or Schmicollete Geridan, were they?
· Hey, unicorns! (We love us some Boing Boing, yes we do.)
· An Agent Dance Blind Item, courtesy of Page Six. Talk amongst yourselves: "WHICH high-powered but hated agent tried to leave Endeavor for rival CAA? The offer was rescinded when two high-level CAA agents said they would quit if he came on board."
· Kate Moss is quickly becoming our Favorite Celebrity Ever.

The Sunday NY Times profiled upcoming CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother executive producers Craig Thomas and Carter Bays (strangely, and perhaps fittingly, pictured clinging to each other for dear life), who played a dangerous game in devising the pilot for their series: trying to get inside the mind of Les Moonves:

This Sunday's NY Times Magazine dedicated 8,000 or so lovingly crafted words to the delicate salad-tossing of CBS chief Les Moonves, the generously-betoothed future galactic despot who will one day use his humble position as head of a successful network to hold the entire universe in his incredibly charismatic sway. Realizing that busy television executives with their own plans for world domination may not have time to pore over the entire text of the New Moonves Testament for crucial trade secrets, we've distilled the mammoth profile down to four easily digestible tips for Nielsen success:

Last week we mentioned that the upcoming Times magazine cover story, a profile of CBS' magnificently-toothed chairman Les Moonves, was written by Lynn Hirschberg, who we understand to have traded several friendship bracelets with Moonves. Surely, however, the profile would be objective, and so we spent our Sunday pulling the most telling parts:

The other day, six-figure media blogger Jim Romenesko picked up an item from Times magazine writer Lynn Hirschberg, who has an upcoming piece on CBS chairman Les Moonves' obsession with reinventing television news. Usually we leave the Moonves-stalking to our Juicy Couture-loving brother, so we moved on.