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· After a season of slumping ratings, Idol's finale matched last year's, pulling in an estimated 31.7 million viewers—roughly the same number of people who revisited their own gag reflexes upon hearing Mike Myers's pedophilic suggestion the David Archuleta would soon sprout "hair in weird and wonderful places." [Variety]
· We mourn the death of the once great and mighty television movie with news that the Tiffany network is "dumping" two long-completed examples of the genre—Mary-Louise Parker in Vinegar Hill and a Jessica Lange-starring remake of Sybil—in the Saturday night TV burial ground. RIP CBS MOW. [Variety]

· Former NY Times theater critic and op-ed columnist Frank Rich will serve as a creative consultant to HBO, an "informal" position that might involve him "picking up the phone and saying, 'What do you think about meeting with this writer or picking up this property,'" said network co-president Richard Plepler. It's an exciting arrangement that might well lead to the sexually explicit take on Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music we've long wanted to see. [Variety]
· Sam Neill and Sean Bean join the cast of NBC's Crusoe. [THR]
· Marvel heard your anguished and outraged cries over the lack of worthy superheroines in overblown, overstuffed CGI blockbusters, and seeks to snuff this evil with an adaptation of Runaways—a relatively new title about a group of troubled, super-powered teens who split from their supervillain parents and band together. Jesus Christ, the Lohan jokes write themselves. [THR]