Certainly we'd never wish suffering or terror on anyone, but it's refreshing to see our friends at MGM hand off this week's fleeing-in-terror duties to someone else for a change: A Defamer operative sent word minutes ago that staffers at MTV and Lionsgate have evacuated their positions due to a gas leak in the garage of their Santa Monica headquarters. But where to go, especially without the aid of their threatened vehicles?Where else? "Everyone is now having drinks at the Daily Grill," says our source of the shellshocked line of refugees filing across Colorado for some extra dry humanitarian aid — with two olives, and maybe some food. Can they have another minute to decide? Meanwhile, please say a prayer for their safe, swift return to work; if this turns out anything like the building's last crisis in 2006, we'll have an explanation (along with a video of the culprit) by the end of the day.

MTV is sponsoring a contest to promote the action film Max Payne starring Mark Wahlberg. So what do you get if you win? "Two-nights accommodation at the luxurious Hotel Pennsylvania." Next thing you know they're going to throw in dinner at the classy Hawaiian Tropic Zone! [NYO]

It's definite: Whitney Port, the sole cast member of The Hills with discernibly functioning frontal lobes, has escaped her duties as Lauren's grimacing sidekick to star in her own show, The City. Us Weekly reports that the show, which will air next spring, will focus on her move from LA to NYC, where she has an job working for Diane von Furstenberg. Let's hope it's also true that, as rumored, Whitney's pseudo friend/co-worker will be Olivia Palermo: the prospect of the two of them engaging in stilted yet plot-driving "what did you do last night?" conversations while pretending to move dresses around is too delightful.

Though Hills stars Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge recently patched up their fractured friendship under the warm, nurturing eye of multiple video cameras, a brand-new rumor has both girls on the outs yet again. Says E!:

We have to admit, we were surprised at how much our hearts ached in the absence of Lauren Conrad - who was sojourning to Italy for some much needed R&R after exhausting her energy crying mascara tears while sparring with Audrina - during the majority of last night's episode of The Hills. But we knew those crafty MTV producers wouldn't leave us hanging, sending entertainment in the form of Linda Thompson, Brody Jenner's mom. You may be more familiar with Brody's dad, Bruce Jenner, a former Olympian who along with his wife, Kris, helm their clan of estrogen-fueled narcissists on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Linda, on the other hand, is a plastic-surgery addled cougar extraordinaire who apparently once dated Elvis Presley. Well, on the show last night during Stephanie Pratt and LC's former flame Doug Reinhardt's maybe-date at hotspot Beso, Linda runs into the couple and eyes the shit out of little Dougie the baseball player's physique. "Are you two on a date? Is that what's happening here?" she asks. "Just wondering!" she shrugs, throwing her hands in the air. We're sure you're just curious, Linda. But this is a woman who scored with The King - so the son of a frozen burrito heir? Ain't no thang. [The Hills]

♦ Not only is Rachel Maddow more popular than Keith Olbermann, she's now ahead of CNN's Larry King, too. [HuffPo]
♦ Sunday night's Emmy Awards generated the lowest ratings in history. [THR]
♦ MTV missed out on its chance to buy MySpace, but they have no plans to give up on their sixth-tier social network, Flux. [AdAge]
♦ Life magazine is back. For the third time. Time Inc. and Getty Images will use life.com to offer up "free, downloadable photos from world-renowned photographers." [NYP]
♦ Jeffrey Toobin, who says he "owes his TV career to [O.J.] Simpson," has no interest in covering him again, thank you very much. [TV Newser]
♦ Starbucks and ad agency Wieden & Kennedy are parting ways. [AdAge]
♦ Kanye West is teaming up with Comedy Central on a new series described as "hip-hop meets the Muppets." [THR]
♦ The Times recaps the service held on Monday night in memory of Clay Felker, the founding editor of New York magazine who died on July 1. [NYT]

Viacom subsidiary MTV Networks acquired the rest of software company Social Project, which runs Flux, a platform for social networks. Flux links together sites and gives them social features like messaging and video sharing. MTV already owned a large stake in the company and had 35 sites on the platform. MTV plans to turn Flux into an ad network because "the Web is fragmented,” says Mika Salmi, MTV's president of global digital media. “People are attracted to niches. We have a history in the cable business of going after niches.” True enough: Online, MTV has a history of turning what should be successful, mainstream ventures into mere niches.

♦ Vanity Fair's Dominick Dunne was taken to a Las Vegas hospital today after he fell ill while watching the O.J. Simpson trial. [AP]
♦ People.com passed TMZ last month for the first time with 11.5 million visitors, thanks to pics of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's newborns. [WWD]
♦ Hard to believe it if you've been watching the news this past week, but financial journalists say they're "parsing their words with unusual care." [NYT]
♦ MTV has given the greenlight to a "sex-themed series for teens and their parents" featuring Dr. Drew Pinsky. [THR]

Though Shia LaBeouf is still recovering from wounds both real and imaginary, none are too fresh to stop actors Seth Green and Clark Duke from landing a few blows of their own. The Defamer-loving duo spoke to MTV while promoting their new comedy Sex Drive, and when they learned that LaBeouf had shamed their interviewer into carrying a bulky folder, the actors let fly with a volley of neverending LaBeouf insults that would put any "yo mama" contest to shame. Don't listen to 'em, Shia: plug your ears, pop in a VHS of Porky's II: The Next Day, and have a stiff drink (or five). [MTV]

We know that the cast members of The Hills have many outside talents: Lauren Conrad is an acclaimed young adult author, Heidi Montag makes a second living as a fitness instructor, and Audrina Patridge's blog reveals her to be a face cream connoisseur. But before last night, did we have any idea how skilled the Hills women are at cutting a rug? While watching the band White Tie Affair perform at the Roosevelt, Lauren & Co. kicked out the jams with a series of white-girl moves so fierce that they could be worked into common rotation for just about any type of song, no matter the genre. In fact, to test our theory, we tried out their moves to a very 90's backing track that just so happens to be making a Kanye-assisted comeback. Go Lauren, go Lauren, go! [MTV]

When we heard the news that MTV mainstay TRL was headed for that great cancellation box in the sky, we decided to get some inside scoop from one of the people who knew it best: former MTV VJ Dave Holmes. The music buff first appeared on the channel as the runner-up to Jesse Camp on MTV's 1998 Wanna Be a VJ contest, but he outlasted the offbeat Camp and hosted multiple shows on MTV, eventually ascending to his own major place in the TRL firmament. So what does Holmes make of the cancellation — and the current state of MTV in general? Lauren Conrad, you've been warned:DEFAMER: How did you hear that TRL was going off the air? DAVE: I think I saw it on, like, Huffington Post or something. There wasn't a 3am phone call or anything like that. DEFAMER: How did you feel when you heard the news? DAVE: I hadn't watched [TRL] in a long time, but it was kind of a bummer, you know? It was a funny show where a lot of people who I still work with got their start. It'll be missed. DEFAMER: Had you heard any rumors about its demise? Did you see this coming? DAVE: I'm a little bit out of their demographic right now, so I hadn't heard anything. I check in every now and then, but I don't recognize a soul who's on it anymore. Damien [Fahey] does an awesome job, but I have no idea who the artists are at all. Like, I don't get Tokio Hotel. I don't understand why they're trying so hard to get them into them in the running. But yeah, I kind of thought that it might be coming. In 1999, 2000, there were a few huge stars. Now, there are a ton of semi-big stars. There's nobody that every thirteen-year-old girl can agree that they love, that they'd skip school and hop on the train and stand in Times Square to look at through a window. DEFAMER: But what about a show like 106 & Park, which I think is still BET's highest-rated show? How can a music video show like that succeed while TRL is cancelled? DAVE: Yeah, I don't understand how it doesn't make sense to at least keep it on. I mean, it's MTV's last music show, it's like their little clubhouse. It seems like the kind of thing they would want to keep going on forever, but then, what do I know? I mean, I just saw my first episode of The Hills last night, so what the fuck do I know?

MTV's RW/RRC Destroy the Planet Challenge: Did you happen to catch Real World/Road Rules Challenge: The Island, in which your favorite MTV reality stars are plopped "on a deserted beach off the coast of Panama" to compete for $300,000 in treasure? It's like The Hills, but with relay races and coconuts! And all they had to do was clear some rainforest, throw up some temporary living quarters that they never bothered to dismantle, and leave a pile of junk behind, according to one local's account: “I have seen the aftermath of a tornado and this was almost as bad...A large plot of rainforest had been cleared, a pristine Caribbean beach had been trashed, and the creators had simply packed up and left. A family of what appeared to be ‘squatters’ had already moved into one of the buildings left behind.” [sustainablog]

One of the final shows on the MTV roster to still fulfill their "M" classification, Total Request Live is at long last drawing to a close. Once the state-of-the-art in boy-band-disseminating technology, it allowed viewers to e-mail, text, and phone in their votes, while offering them the thrill of seeing their feedback—"OMG Tom DeLonge izz zooooo hot. Blink-182 roxx so hard!!! LUV U GUYZZZZ :D BlinkGrl182"—crawl along the bottom of the screen in real time.It had multiple hosts over the years, but it's Carson Daly with whom it will forever be associated: A little-known Bay Area DJ dropped into the gig of a lifetime, he instantly became the fantasy dream boyfriend of billions of American teenage girls—and very nearly avoided early tragedy by calling off his engagement to Tara Reid. Variety reports the show "will depart in mid-November with a two-hour Saturday-afternoon special," replaced by the more popular Feedback New MTV, or FNMTV. We salute its departure with one of its greatest-ever moments: Part 2 of Mariah Carey's infamous TRL meltdown, when she called the show naked from her shower, shattering untold eardrums along the way with a sustained high G.

♦ NBC's Ben Silverman says he hasn't managed the "unrelenting press attention" as well as he could have, and he's doing better than most people assme, a sentiment echoed by his close pal, Donny Deutsch. [TVDecoder]
♦ Harbinger's Phil Falcone says he has no plans to dump his investment in the New York Times. [Reuters]
♦ MTV is pulling the plug on TRL. [WSJ]
♦ Mark your calendars: Jeanine Pirro's court show debuts next week. [HuffPo]
♦ Current and former staffers at the LA Times are planning to file suit against owner Sam Zell. [LA Observed]
♦ How writers in Hollywood are dealing with the "new comedic landscape." [NYO]
♦ Product placements have earned less airtime on network TV compared with the same period last year, according to Nielsen. [AdAge]
♦ How the financial meltdown will affect Hollywood. [THR]
♦ Jeff Zucker, Mel Karmazin and Steven Rattner weigh in on the state of the media biz. [Portfolio]

"It becomes more of a mainstay and more of an institution than - pardon the pun - the new kid on the block." [AP]

After a long history of exclusively dating poseurs and paparazzi, comeback-adjacent singer Britney Spears may be taking on her biggest romantic challenge yet: Russell Brand. Though their first meeting at a VMAs commercial went poorly, with Spears recoiling from the comedian and calling him "Russell Brown," the Daily Mail reports that the two hooked up this week (noting, in their helpfully British way, that Brand is "an ex-drug and sex addict"):

Bravely taking her pro-abstinence, purity-ring-rocking message to the Fox News flock, Jordin Sparks spent a few minutes last night explaining her recent outburst against oversexed Video Music Awards host Russell Brand. The difference between a "non-virgin" and "slut" remains foggy, but, at the very least, Sparks's convictions are burnished here to the fine Murdochian glow that so eluded the MTV class last weekend. The same cannot be said for her remarks on the subject of temptation ("I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means!"), from which conservative firebrand and noted hymen-defense expert Sean Hannity was later forced to rescue her with that metaphorical bucket of ice water known around the Fox offices as "a commercial break." [Fox News]

• David Letterman had his second-highest ratings of the year last night thanks to Barack Obama's appearance. [THR]

Though The Hills star Lauren Conrad is highly paid enough without having to do anything but passive-aggressively judge her friends over drinks at Goa, she must be applauded for finding new skills to add to her highly staged resume. First, the 22-year-old took a detour into fashion design, and now, according to People, she's been signed to a three-book deal with HarperCollins. Heretofore limited to short stories in the vein of a Sidekicked "OMG Audrina WTF," the deal will allow Conrad to spread her wings and write young adult fiction:

When you watch The Real World on MTV, don't you often wish the episodes were only five minutes long, focused mainly on computerized digital art, and full of awesome Hewlett-Packard products? No? That's cause you're out of touch with the youth of today. Luckily MTV and Hewlett-Packard are in touch with what's hip, and are bringing this fantasy "Real World Of Kids Looking At Computer Screens" to life! Could this be the best digital art-focused corporate co-branded semi-reality advertainment vehicle ever? YES, if Moby has anything to say about it! The totally tubular new series is called Engine Room, and is thoughtfully sponsored by HP itself. It follows in the footsteps of classic HP-sponsored MTV branded entertainment video series like Meet or Delete and Dorm Storm. Remember those? Yea! HP is seriously spending "tens of millions of dollars" on this show. Try to ignore this focus-grouped lineup!: