• After 37 years in business—and following several lease extensions—La Goulue on Madison Avenue will close its doors on Aug. 26. The owners say they're still hoping to reopen it somewhere else in the neighborhood. [NYT]
• Further evidence that this is a really tough time for media companies: The New York Times has licensed its name to a new wine club. [Reuters, release]
• Simon Hammerstein is hoping to revive The Box with some new talent. Joey Arias will be taking over hosting duties beginning next month. [P6]
• Like the many critics before him, New York's Adam Platt doesn't go easy on Monkey Bar: "A-list connections can't cover for D-grade cooking." [NYM]

• After two very unsuccessful years as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, Ben Silverman is finally leaving the company. He's teaming up with Barry Diller's IAC to start some sort of vague media/advertising firm. He'll be replaced by Jeff Gaspin, who headed up NBC's cable unit until now. [NYT, NYT, DF]
• Disney's G-Force topped Harry Potter at the box office this weekend. [THR]
• Remember Friendster? It's up for sale, in case you're interested. [PC]
• HBO is the most "gay-friendly cable network," according to GLAAD. [Reuters]

In a look at the shifting geography of late-night TV as Jay Leno prepares to move to 10 p.m., the New York Times' Bill Carter and Brian Stelter drop an idea we hadn't heard before: ABC is thinking of moving Nightline up to 10 p.m. as well.

• It looks like Geoffrey Zakarian's Town has closed its doors. [GS]
• A roundup of other spots that have closed in the last couple of days. [Eater]
• More cheerful: This roundup of places slated to open next week. [TONY]
• Jim Lahey has a few, not-so-kind words for Times critic Frank Bruni, who had the audacity to award Lahey's Co. a single star earlier this week. [NYO]
• Why was the Beatrice Inn shuttered this week? It may have been the work of "haters" who "couldn't get in," explains Chloë Sevigny. [GS]

He's called her a "bobble-head" and a "freakazoid," and has accused her of "peddling crack to kids" with her Dunkin' Donuts commercials, but if Anthony Bourdain's comments about Rachael Ray in the past have caused her any psychic pain, she isn't saying so. In an interview with Nightline airing tonight, Ray tells interviewer Cynthia McFadden that she "absolutely loves" Bourdain and has "an enormous amount of respect" for him. We're not convinced the feeling is mutual, but we have a feeling we'll find out for sure soon enough. [ABC News]

Ideally it would have been great to see Jimmy Kimmel come out and cut Nightline's throat in his just-released interview with Broadcasting & Cable. But! There remain some jagged edges in his late-night diplomacy.

In Africa with Diane Sawyer for Nightline, Hayek met a one-year-old who'd been born on the same day as her own daughter Valentina and was so moved by the coincidental bond that she popped out a breast and offered it to the grateful, suckling child. Adults who were born on the same day as Valentina will probably not be as lucky. (Also: Hey, Salma Hayek actually does speak English in a clear and natural manner! If only she could take a tip from real-life Salma's diction instead of hopelessly enunciating her 30 Rock dialogue as though she were a Grammy-addled Whitney Houston.)

• ABC is reportedly thinking about giving Jimmy Kimmel the Nightline slot, putting him in competition with Conan when he takes over for Leno. [NYT]
• ABC News is cutting 35; Disney-ABC TV is dismissing 300. [TVN, THR]
• Congressional Quarterly is for sale. [WSJ]
• The Washington Post is dropping Book World as a Sunday section. [WP]
• AOL is laying off around 700 employees, or 10% of its work force. [WSJ]
• Ex-MTV prez Christina Norman will run Oprah's new TV network. [THR]

ABC might move Jimmy Kimmel Live to compete with Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show, the New York Times is reporting. ABC is pissed about the story. But it gives Kimmel reason to smile.

• Nightline's exclusive interview with John Edwards on Friday night? It didn't pose much competition to the Olympics on NBC. [THR]

Here is an excerpt of John Edwards on Nightline, where the Democratic politician spent most of the time trying to explain the limited nature of his bad behavior. His affair was a brief fling he quickly told his family about, driven by "a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you're invincible, and there will be no consequences." He didn't have a love child with his mistress, Rielle Hunter, and didn't know anything about any hush money she may have received. He'll take a paternity test and release the results to the news media, if someone can get Hunter to participate. And, Edwards said, he only visited Hunter again recently in a Los Angeles hotel at the insistence of a mutual friend, who promised to be present, to hear a story of Hunter's "struggles." Edwards gave the careful, plausible admission of a skilled lawyer. Whether he is believed will hinge on how people react to his most vulnerable moments. Click the video icon to watch two of them. [ABC News]

"Are you a man" — hand chop left — "or a woman?" — hand chop right, asks a Nightline correspondent interviewing Megan Wallent, the Microsoft executive who came out as transgender last fall. "I'm me," Wallent replies. Good answer! But did the Nightline guy really need 15 seconds to spit out the question?

Megan Wallent, the Microsoft executive who first revealed her plans to become a woman on Valleywag, has told her story to ABC's Nightline. The segment airs tonight at 11:35 p.m. on KGO. Wallent rarely speaks about her relationship with her wife Anh. But in the TV profile, Wallent explains how he first confided his discomfort with his birth gender to her. "It felt like a betrayal," Anh told Nightline. "In 38 years he couldn't find someone who he felt comfortable enough to open up to and share this." Until Wallent met her, that is. The couple, who have a young child born before Wallent's transition, say they are staying together. When I first met them last December, shortly after Wallent's first surgery, the two spent most of lunch flirting with each other like newlyweds.

Nightline looked at the Page Six dust-up last night, and in addition to finally learning just how much weight New York Post chief Col Allan has put on lately, we also learned that Page Six honcho Richard Johnson and company basically just made shit up. We also learn that, somehow, T.V. feels sleazier than print! Oh, also, funny that talking head commenter (and the man most likely to always be wrong!) Michael Wolff's hot daughter is totally a reporter at the Post!

• More cuts are coming at Time Inc., according to David Carr. [NYT]
• Time Warner picks Google search over Microsoft for AOL, and sells the the search company a 5 percent stake in AOL — which means Parsons ain't selling off the whole thing. [NYT]
• The Times gets it from two sides on wiretapping story: Some media folks don't like the paper held the story for so long, while Bush doesn't like that the paper pointed out he's spying on citizens. [USAT]
• Jon Friedman thinks the new Nightline sucks. [MW]
• Media Guy Simon Dumenco looks back at the 10 big media-news stories of 2005 — nearly all of them bad for the biz — and realizes where it'll all end: Google Hunting and Gathering. [Ad Age]

We read La Stanley's tribute to Ted Koppel in this morning's paper, and we were doubly pleased. First, because it was a nice, appropriate farewell to an esteemed and accomplished journalist, and second because the error-prone writer seemed to have made her way through a full 900 words without any obvious fuckups. Then we read TVNewser, who reminded us of this sentence in Stanley's piece:

• At right, the new look of Nightline, premiering tonight. We can't wait to see if Martin Bashir tricks Cynthia McFadden into thinking he's her ally, only to destroy her. [TVNewser]
• Depending on how badly you want to make your eyes bleed, you may want to check out Madonna's "big toe" and ass-cheek goiter. [CityRag]
• Peter Braunstein hits America's Most Wanted levels of infamy. Can the show's prostrate viewers hunt him down? [AMW]
• Wal-Mart in Staten Island? Well, we suppose if it has to go somewhere... [Curbed]
• Author Rick Moody on baseball, and how all writers are on the same team. Except for the Gay ones. [TMN]
• Naomi Campbell goes on the Tyra Banks show, gets halfway weepy, and doesn't beat the crap out of anyone. [Jossip]

• This just in: Daily News Managing Editor, Features, Colleen Curtis has resigned from her position. She's heading to Good Morning America, where she'll fetch Diane Sawyer's coffee.
• It's possible to work at High Times and not love bong hits, but it's certainly not recommended. Unless, of course, you're purely intrested in their manual of style. ("Buddha" versus "buddha," etc.) [NYPress]
• Midwestern locals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison loathe their bourgie peers from the East Coast. What, is it the Uggs? [JSOnline]
• NB to the new Nightline: Ted Koppel is watching you. [B&C]
• Much like Paris Hilton, Al Reynolds has a patented paparazzi pose. [Cityrag]
• Done raping and pillaging (and eventually being scorned by) Hollywood, Mike Ovitz bends over NYC's art world. [LA Weekly]
• 62-foot Jesus makes us glad we live in Manhattan. [NYT]
• Nick Denton takes his moneybags out to LA and throws a party with Arianna Huffington. Finally, our slighted little brother gets a free drink on the boss man's dime. [Gridskipper]