Though NBC's Emmy ratings were shitty, the network at least avoided the shame of hosting the Shittiest-Rated Emmys Ever.
[Variety]
Two shocking developments out of ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live is still on the air (is Snoop Dogg still co-host?), and it's been renewed through 2008. The show plans to celebrate its first 3 1/2 years of existence with the whimsically titled special, Jimmy Kimmel Live's All-Star Salute to Jimmy Kimmel Live!. The fun never stops. [THR]
BET founder Robert L. Johnson's production company for making African-American-centered films, Our Stories, hires its first president and CEO, Tracey E. Edmonds, whose first act was to quickly reject partner Harvey Weinstein's suggestion to change the company's name to Urban Stories so that white people would feel less guilty about ignoring their output. [Variety]
· We're not sure we want to live in a world where someone can set up a movie based on the lives of Elisabeth and Andrew Shue. [THR]
Cruise/Wagner's Paula Wagner cites the "synergy" between her company and the amusement park moneymen who will bankroll their overhead and development costs as the reason for their unconventional partnership, as well as the fact that the diminutive actor has long sought friends who could "sneak him onto the big boy rides at Magic Mountain." That's right, with so many ripe areas to choose from, we go for the hacky height joke. [Variety]

While we merely conjectured that Jeremy Piven might have punctuated his Emmy win by coaxing his new trophy girlfriend into a celebratory three-way with red-carpet tormentors Billy Bush and Ryan Seacrest, how the actor actually spent his post-Emmy hours is coming into clearer focus in today's tabloids. And thanks to the miracle of gossip column product placement, we know that Piven's victory binge was sponsored by the fine folks at M et:

· At Comedy Central's after-party, Jon Stewart looks sad because he fell for Stephen Colbert's "Hey, would you mind holding my loaf of bread while I run off with one of your Emmys?" trick for a second straight year.
Quick, put in a bid on the sunglasses Jeremy Piven wore to the Emmys before he pulls them out of the auction, superstitious that they were responsible for his win.
There is perhaps nothing sadder than watching Tara Reid, who once had an entire series dedicated to her partying skills, denied entrance to an exclusive drinking establishment. She just looks so lost and powerless standing by that unmoved, unfeeling Hyde bouncer while Paris strides right in.
Agent Fashionwatch, Mini Edition: "...Emanuel's kid brother, famous Hollywood agent Ari (bright pink Polo shirt, lobster-print belt, white Adidas sneakers) kept jumping up from his front-row seat to pace and speak urgently into his dorky cell-phone headset." What's an agent got to wear to get some respect from the Daily News?
· Paris Hilton is unhappy that Cher's son claimed to scrub his genitals with Tilex after a sexual encounter with her to avoid contracting a social disease, as she fears this rumor might hurt her exclusive STV medication endorsement with Valtrex.

Those who felt that the three hours of the Emmys ceremony itself wasn't a self-mortification ritual sufficiently harrowing to atone for a year of their TV-watching sins may have tuned in to the supplemental torture of NBC's pre-show coverage, where they could have witnessed obviously tense Emmy nominee (and eventual winner) Jeremy Piven have the following testy exchange with red carpet inquisitor Billy Bush:

Judging from the seemingly endless procession of well-endowed actresses showing off their assets at this year's Emmy ceremony, Hollywood's stylists came to the unanimous conclusion that the perfect way to accessorize a plunging neckline on an exquisitely tailored gown was with a huge pair of breasts. To celebrate the widespread adoption of this red-hot fashion trend, we've put together a short quiz to test your knowledge of the celebrity decolletage on display at last night's awards. Answers are after the jump:

Realzing that adopting a defiant, "Hey, why can't you Kentucky people realize that our plane crash gag had nothing to do with your actual plane crash?" stance in the wake of the controversy over the Emmy telecast's poorly timed, aviation-disaster-based opening sketch (above) would be a PR disaster, NBC has instead issued the inevitable, semi-apologetic press release assuring the aggrieved that the network wasn't trying to score cheap laughs off a fresh tragedy:

Both Var and THR agree: The Emmys took place last night, 24 and The Office won big awards, and HBO extended to six years its run of kicking the broadcast networks' collective asses. [Variety, THR]
NBC soothes the sting of Conan O'Brien's musical ode to the network's current dark days in the Nielsen basement with six Emmy wins, its best showing in years. [Variety]
...but any warm feelings NBC might have derived from its wins were undoubtedly dulled by the fact that no one felt particularly compelled to watch, as the show's ratings we down 15 percent from last year. [THR]
Official Deal or No Deal briefcase inspector Howie Mandel shows he has a strong grasp on the dilemma surrounding this year's swag crackdown by the IRS: "Swag to me means free stuff, and if you pay tax on it, doesn't that kind of negate it?" [Variety]
· The TV Academy handed out four trophies to actors whose series are not returning in the fall, giving the honorees a nice "fuck you" to their networks to place atop their mantels. [THR]

Unsurprisingly, the opening skit of last night's Emmy telecast, in which host Conan O'Brien survives the plane crash that strands him on an uncharted island with the snubbed cast of Lost, didn't go over very well in Kentucky, where just hours before the awards ceremony began, 49 people died in a far less whimsical aviation accident:

Click to view

We love Stephen Colbert long time, but we are a bit confused by the honor bestowed on him this weekend:

As we pointed out yesterday, there are many things that Emmy winners can do with their gaudy, underutilized statuettes besides placing them upon a mantel, waiting for dust motes to collect upon their once-polished surface. While whimsical honorees might find a cute way for their golden angel to help out around the house, the more practical-minded might realize that Emmy, with the assistance of Craigslist, can also lend a hand with balancing the checkbook:

An actual winner (yes, we checked) at Saturday's Creative Arts Emmy Awards sent us this photo of the way she's displaying her statuette. Take this novel Emmy-repurposing as a commentary on how some Creative Arts victors might feel about having their ceremony held in untelevised obscurity a week before the more glamorous primetime event if you must, but we find it a wholly practical use of a glittery eyesore that would otherwise be nothing more than a dust-collecting conversation piece going to waste on a mantel. In any event, we're glad it's being deployed as a toilet tissue holder and not a personal hygiene device, as the aureate angel's pointed wings were clearly not designed to be placed anywhere near sensitive parts of the human anatomy.

Scientologists seize control of the Creative Arts Emmys, awarding the prime-time animation statue to The Simpsons over South Park's Tom Cruise-baiting "Trapped in the Closet" episode. Not particularly caring about the other races but wanting to generally recognize excellence in pay TV programming, the shadowy sect decided to give 17 Emmys to HBO. [Variety]
Marlon Wayans will star in the high-concept DreamWorks comedy Pretty Ugly, in which he'll play a "handsome lifetsyle mogul who wakes up hideously ugly because of a curse," and who, for reasons we will not even attempt to understand, must then disguise himself as a Caucasian baby for the remainder of the movie. [THR]
Pirates of the Carribean wins its seventh straight weekend at the international box office, but was edged out by Snakes on a Plane in the UK. [Variety]
Onetime The OC golden boy Josh Schwartz will once again get a chance to prove his gift for climbing into the minds of teenage girls by writing the pilot for a potential The CW series based on the Gossip Girl books. [THR]
While other networks have begun showing episodes of their series on their own websites the day after they air, Fox is dumping the streaming duties on their local affiliates. [Variety]

Sundance organizers are "thrilled" that the IRS is cracking down on gift bags, while recently re-elected AMPAS president Sid Ganis is sweetly naive about how the crackdown might affect A-list actors' desire to show up at the Oscars and read bad awards presentation Telepromtper copy: "Presenters appear on our show because they want to be part of the Academy Awards, to help us celebrate our art form." [Variety]
The CW assures its affiliates that it has an unspecified "contingency plan" for America's Next Top Model should labor disputes continue past the 13 already-produced episodes of this "cycle," consisting mostly of stopping the camera and shouting at the contestants, "We're gonna cut off your bottled water allowance if you skinny bitches don't do something interesting right now.". [THR]
Will nearly a solid year of online hype boost Snakes on a Plane to a huge opening, or just an OK, B-horror-movie one? That's the motherfucking million dollar question, isn't it? [Variety]
NBC files a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the WGA has instructed showrunners to refuse to provide material for webisodes, believing that existing contracts allow them to bleed writers for as much web material as they please. [THR]
The "Disco Duck" guy is returning to L.A. radio. Please refrain from soiling yourself from excitement. [Variety]

The What I'm Watching blog has video of the notorious, Emmy-nominated role in HBO's Mrs. Harris that ignited the growing EllenBurstyngate controversy we first noted last month. In it, the seated actress delivers exactly two lines of dialogue directly to the camera, in a vaguely Eastern European accent. Total running time of the performance the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of singling out for excellence? Nine seconds—or roughly double the amount of time it took voters too lazy to watch the screeners delivered directly into their hands to glance at names on a list and pick the only one they recognized.

If you weren't at the Get Cocky for Charity Awards ceremony, you probably have both dignity and self-respect. We, on the other hand, have neither, and were thus forced to attend the "tribute to downtown arts and culture." Here's an assault that's both visual and auditory!

Fresh off the heels of AdjectiveGate, the modifier-related scandal that rocked the world of TV awards show nomination procedures forever, comes yet another, shocking Emmy brouhaha. According to one irate GoldDerby message board poster, Ellen Burstyn's nominated performance for HBO's Mrs. Harris lasts a grand total of 15 seconds:

In a year in which the new Emmy nominations process has robbed the public of promising tabloid cat-fights between various Desperate Housewives by snubbing all of them, we're all going to have to look a little harder to find anything compelling about the run-up to the upcoming awards show. Awards site The Envelope turn to the nominations procedure itself to generate some controversy for Oscar's Paste-Eating Cousin™, but when the quarrel involves the phrase "seemingly arcane rule change" and a discussion of poor adjective choices on the TV Academy's evaluation materials, chances are good the muted uproar won't make anyone forget how fun it would be for Eva Longoria to "accidentally" plant a stiletto in the back of Felicity Huffman's neck as she hunts for an errant contact lens. Welcome to AdjectiveGate:

· The trades have Emmy fever! Browse their lists of this year's nominees and join in the fun! [Variety, THR]
· The stars react to their nominations with an refreshing mix of humility, surprise, and surprised humility! Really, it's an honor just to be reading about these nominations. [Variety, THR ]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Defiling Christmas Edition: The evil stocking-plunderers at NBC will make a completely unnecessary live-action version of the 1974 stop-motion animation classic The Year Without a Santa Claus, with John Goodman starring as Santa. [Variety]
· David Duchovny, whom we'd assumed had given up acting for a quieter life bagging groceries somewhere in Montana, will join Benicio del Toro and Halle Berry in the highly buzzed about DreamWorks project Things We Lost in the Fire. [THR]
· Dakota Fanning is among 120 new invitees to join AMPAS, all of whom she plans to ruthlessly slaughter in an attempt to show fellow Academy members who's going to be running things for the next forty years. [Variety]

We know what you were thinking as you glanced over the seemingly endless list of those nominated for Emmys this morning: "I would find this infinitely more compelling if there were a place where I could see some of these people naked." The Tabloid Rabies blog has heard your silent, mental cries for Emmy-related nudity and compiled a brief collection of nude and/or topless photographs and screen-captures of this year's nominees in the Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series category. (Mariska Hargitay and Kyra Sedgwick are well represented, but even though we love ourselves the occasional mature lady, Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy is mercifully clothed). The blog has yet to correct its regrettably sexist bent by posting photos of their male counterparts in either the dramatic or comedy fields, but we're sure it won't be long before images of Larry David's early full-frontal work surface.