· In a town hall meeting on the Fox lot yesterday, network president Peter Liguori delivered an ultimatum to his showrunners, threatening that those who don't staff and cast their pilots with diversity in mind might find themselves without a series pickup. Said Liguori, "We think as a network, it's the right moral thing to do," Liguori said, moments before announcing the positive example to be set by his always-virtuous alternative programming department, which is rushing Who Wants To Hire A Black Staff Writer? into production. [Variety]
· A little more on the CAA gas explosion. [THR]
· Sad news: Aardman and DreamWorks Animation end their "troubled six-year partnership," finally deciding that a mutual love of Claymation is just not enough to make a Hollywood marriage work. Also, it didn't help that Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Flushed Away kind of bombed. [Variety]
· Speaking of pilots, Var lists all the current pilot pickups in one handy place, letting you know to whom you can direct your production resume. [Variety]
· Perhaps fearing that the American Idol Nielsen Death Star might vaporize them if they dared switch the channel after the show, audiences stuck around in mind-boggling, record numbers for House, which drew in 27.7 million viewers last night. [THR]

In a development that should shake the world of hugely popular televised karaoke competitions to its very, off-key-warbling, deluded-contestant-abusing core, Us Weekly reports that rocker-turned-general-use-famous-person Courtney Love has received The Call from American Idol's producers, inviting her to hold forth on the lack of musical ability on display at the planet's favorite talent show of the damned:

· Sundance hands out its awards, with Padre Nuestro winning the dramatic competition's grand jury prize, the John Cusack-starring Grace is Gone winning the drama audience award, and Brazilian corruption film Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) taking the documentary jury prize. [Variety]
· Will Arnett joins Will Ferrell's ABA basketball comedy Semi-Pro as a "hard-drinking sports commentator," probably reducing the chances that audiences will get to see him in knee-high tube socks and nut-hugging shorts, but increasing the chances he will appear in a mustard-colored sportsjacket while openly swigging from a whiskey bottle at courtside. [THR]
· CBS is forced to cancel Armed and Famous after American Idol's Nielsen death ray disintegrates its audience, while ABC moves fledgling Knights of Prosperity out of Idol's competition-annihilating path. [Variety]
· Night at the Museum holds off Pursuit of Happyness to continue its five-week reign atop the international box office. [THR]
· Hoping to lock up the coveted Ron Silver endorsement, Rudolph Giuliani plans to visit L.A. to raise money for his exploratory committee for a 2008 presidential run. [Variety]

· Mariska Hargitay and Christopher Meloni sign on for two more years of Law & Order: Sexy Victims Unit (that's what it's called, right? We get so confused.), getting pay raises that catapult them into the rarefied territory of Charlie Sheen-level remuneration. [Variety]
· Fox files a subpoena trying to uncover the identity of the scofflaw who posted entire episodes of The Simpsons and 24 on the YouTubes; if successful, parent company News Corp. will petition to have the pirate punished by being locked in a MySpace chat window with a known sexual predator to teach him (or her) a lesson about abusing the power of the internet. [THR]
· Eddie Murphy is in talks to star in the Paramount comedy NowhereLand, though it's unclear from the project's brief description where the star's contractually mandated opportunity to disappear into a latex fat suit will come. [Variety]
· The American Idol Nielsen h-bomb flattens competing network Nagasakis and incinerates the minds of 36.9 million helpless TV victims. [THR]
· Condo-hopping dealmakers compete to make thrilling Sundance acquisitions into the wee hours. [Variety]

Our simple words would do this no justice. Here, New York, is Ian Benardo, 'American Idol' casualty. Watch it now!

In an attempt to refute widespread speculation that her recent spate of alternately incomprehensible/slurry/ fidgety/nap-riddled promotional appearances were caused by a pre-interview regimen of washing down a joint compound bucket brimming with a medley of prescription painkillers with an entire bottle of grain alcohol, embattled American Idol judge Paula Abdul insisted to the media gathered at Saturday's TCA press tour event that any suspicious mental impairment on her part is due entirely to her own naturally imbalanced neurochemicals:

· The second night of American Idol is only slightly less huge than the first, pulling in 36.9 million viewers between 8-10 p.m. This thing's ready to burn out any second now, we can feel it. [Variety]
· Actor Matt Dillon is assimilated by the CAA agent-Borg, voluntarily entering their blood-draining embrace after being dazzled by their shiny new Century City headquarters. [THR]
· CBS picks up the 15th and 16th editions of Survivor, which will both air in the 07-08 season. Publicity-attracting concepts for the planned installments haven't yet been announced, but insiders expect a new, human sacrifice element to be added to the tribal council segment during one of the upcoming cycles. [Variety]
· Kyra Sedgwick signs a new deal with TNT that will keep her on The Closer through its seventh season, grant her a producer title, and pay her a reported $250,000-300,000 per episode. For a basic cable show? Really? [THR]
· In news as surprising as American Idol's ratings, Apple sold a lot of iPods over the holidays, solidifying the music player as the leading gift for those who couldn't be bothered to think of something original to give their loved ones. [Variety]

Network presidents tasked with counterprogramming American Idol's 37 million viewers (a job further complicated by the Mandatory 'Idol" Viewership Act For Citizens 18-34 just passed by the newly Democrat-controlled Congress under heavy lobbying by News Corp.) find themselves with precious few practical options for combating the Nielsen juggernaut; those brave enough to resist the easy out of simply scheduling two hours of test-patterns in their Idol-opposing timeslot and then splattering their brains on the windows of their corner offices really have only one reliable strategy for surviving their Sisyphean labor: burying their heads in the warm sands of total denial. TV Week's Critical Eye TCA blog notes how NBC's Kevin Reilly is dealing with the Idol problem:

· Top Chef's chefs don't seem to be huge fans of host Padma Lakshmi. Can't they see how hot she is, and that makes her feelings on anything automatically valuable?
· A story we didn't give enough of a shit about to mention earlier, but will happily dispense of with a day-ending link: Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz's Post-Globes Spat.
· Death by Camera went through the considerable trouble of digging up the MySpace pages of last night's American Idol contestants, so make sure you reward their effort by having a look.
· Paramount might want to think about retitling Letters from Iwo Jima if they release it in China, unless they think the Chinese would be interested in something called Toilet Paper from Sulfur Island.

We realize many of you lead busy and somewhat fulfilling lives, and, despite how much you might have wanted to, that it was simply unrealistic to drop everything in order to attend Madame Tussauds Las Vegas's premiere of their brand new wax likenesses of Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell. This gallery of photos from the event, however, provides the next best thing to being among the first to witness the unveiling of the greatest single paraffin-related endeavor for the American Idol stars since the two celebrated the premiere of their blockbuster show's sixth season by booking themselves into the W's Bliss Spa for a day of full-body depilation and pampering.

The moment that hit-starved Fox executives have been anxiously awaiting is finally here: the first overnight American Idol Nielsens, huge enough to erase the bitter memories of a dozen canceled OJ confession specials or failed sitcoms. The sixth season premiere of America's favorite talent show of the damned drew a (preliminary) average of 37.3 million viewers, and earned an 18-49 rating unseen since The One Where Chandler Takes Out His Pals And Then Turns The Gun On Himself (well, that's the way we like to remember it). Var offers perspective on the staggering opening night numbers:

While this just-discovered video of American Idol judge and serial technical difficulty victim Paula Abdul giving an interview to a Fox Dallas affiliate's morning show is decidedly lighter on the slurry, incoherent, and fidgety delights that made her recent Seattle and San Francisco appearances instant classics of the "What the hell is she on?" genre, it does have a special moment in which Abdul closes her eyes for a full six seconds, prompting her concerned inquisitor to ask the subject if she's a little "sleepy." At the conclusion of the interview, the nodding-off footage is replayed and the matter is turned over for consideration by the local morning show tribunal, who after being informed that "the producers" cleared the interview with the explanation that Abdul was "tired," offer their opinions in between fits of uncomfortable laughter, ranging from "Wow...I've never been that tired! The last time I was that tired I was asleep!" to "Obviously, she was a little [finger quotes] 'out of it'" to "Did she have the flu or something maybe?" We commend "the producers" for authorizing the clip to air, allowing audiences to decide on their own if Abdul's unexpected power-nap was merely the product of junket exhaustion, or the sudden metabolizing of the Klonopin-and-wheatgrass smoothie with which the Idol judge begins each grueling day of publicity obligations.

We're too cool to watch American Idol (not being ironic — we're not too cool for a lot of dumb shit, but we have to draw the line somewhere), but we know that a lot of people watched the debut episode of season six last night. So we wanted to draw your attention to the hard work of Eric at Death by Camera: he not only watched, he then hunted around on MySpace to find all the rejected famewhores' profiles, posting the cream of the crop. We especially like Jessica Rhode, right, who's a cosmetologist at Glamour Shots (no!!!) when she's not butchering Jewel songs. Maybe she should have attempted to warble a tune by one of her other favorite recording artists: the Google Dolls.

Last week's round of Paula Abdul satellite interviews (we can't decide which we prefer: the perky Seattle duo who kill Abdul with kindness, knowing the longer they keep her there, the worse things will get, or the straightlaced San Francisco interviewer who can barely conceal his utter contempt for her every rocking, slurred, incoherent answer) called for some serious damage control. When a flack's half-assed "press-junket-related exhaustion" excuse didn't seem to do the trick, a seemingly sober (but only somewhat less incoherent) Paula dropped in on Ellen to explain what actually happened:

UPDATE: Want another one? Go here. There was apparently a whole via-satellite junket full of uncomfortable moments!

• Paula Abdul - What is she smokin'??? [YouTube via The Evil Beet]

There exists in all of Gaydom perhaps no greater paradox than the one represented by the inner struggle of the Bible-thumping diva, who would have no career if not for the Gays who idolize them, but whose strict religious upbringing teaches them that God looks unkindly on the shirtless, sodomizing hordes gazing worshipfully up at them from the dancefloors below. No, not even Jennifer Hudson, recently anointed Gay Man's Messiah for her up-from-the-American-Idol-ashes, Beyoncé-upstaging turn as Effie in Dreamgirls, is immune from the fanbase-alienating phenomenon. The Dallas Voice recently interviewed Hudson—who until now has expressed a very pro-Gay attitude in the media—and found the Next Big Thing still carries with her some old-fashioned attitudes:

This just in: Network executives are impatient, either cancelling or giving full-season orders to shows based only on a couple of weeks of ratings data. [Variety]
It's nice to see Mira Sorvino breaking out of TV movie jail and getting a part in an Actual Feature Film, joining Mark Ruffalo, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jennifer Connelly in Reservation Road. (And we're so proud of ourselves for not ruining the moment by perving on Connelly, which would be completely inappropriate on Sorvino's big day.) [THR]
New MTV FIlms/Nickelodeon Movies president Scott Aversano's bloody housecleaning claims 16, with "several" others getting reshuffled elsewhere within the MTV family. [Variety]
ABC signs Bonnie Somerville to a talent-holding deal. Yeah, we had no idea who she was until we ran her through IMDb either, but we're sure it's money well spent. [THR]
Warner Bros. TV's "low-cost" Horizon Television unit signs American Idol judge Randy Jackson's production company to a multiyear deal, hoping that Jackson's ability to discern amateur singing performance that he's "totally feeling, bro," from ones he's "not feeling, dawg" translates into a knack for developing TV shows. [Variety]

PrivacyWatch celebrity sightings are submitted by our readers, and are now posted several times a week—so start sending them in more often! Send yours to tips[AT]defamer.com (please put "sighting" or "PrivacyWatch" in the subject line) and let everyone know about the time you heard the voice of Roger Rabbit bringing some laughter and light to the lives of the downtrodden patrons of a Starbucks in the Valley.

Merely donning a set of Kevlar wings and having a teamster raise and lower you by rope-and-pulley may not be enough to fully cement your status as Earthbound Angel, but gifted sonbgird and frequent online romance seeker Clay Aiken will soon be able to fully lay claim to the title: