Realizing that explaining the reason that Isaiah Washington has unexpectedly joined the cast of their new series was, "Because Ben Silverman knew everyone would go apeshit if we put the angry Grey's Anatomy doctor onto our show. And, by golly, Ben was right! People hate that guy!" might get them off on the wrong foot with their new boss, the executive producer of Bionic Woman was more politic in discussing why he was willing to take on the actor's prohibitively heavy baggage. Reports TVWeek.com's TCA blog:

"From: Ben Silverman
To: Jennifer Aniston
Subject: Dinner

· At the TCAs, non-rock-star NBC co-chairman Marc Graboff repeats the hilarious party line on Kevin Reilly's non-firing "'He wasn't fired,' Graboff revealed, inspiring instant guffaws. 'What happened was when Ben [Silverman] became available, about three months after we made Kevin's new deal, we jumped at the opportunity to bring Ben on board to the company. We thought he would be able to be the person that was going to take us to the next level. Kevin, when that happened, realized or determined, frankly, that there was just no role for him at the company and decided to move on.'" In fairness, it does get a little hard to do your job when the new guy keeps interrupting your meetings to replace another piece of your office furniture with his own. [THR]
· Acquisitive News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch moves closer to buying Dow Jones and adding the Wall Street Journal to his ever-growing pile of media playthings. [Variety]
· Producers open their negotiations with the WGA by offering the guild a choice: either get down on your knees and put off the issue of internet compensation until a study about new media can be completed or bend over and let us recoup whatever costs we think are fair before we pay you any residuals. Talks have been convened until Wednesday to give the writers time to craft a counterproposal that doesn't start with the words "Go fuck yourself, greedy maniacs." [THR]
· Says Var on the tenor of those initial negotiations: "The gloves have already come off." But, as noted above, not the pants. Yet. [Variety]
· Hell's Kitchen still inexplicably popular. [Variety]

As if the announcement that NBC would be adopting exiled, mad-as-hell-and-not- going-to be-manipulated-by-deceptively-adorable- gay-puppetmasters-anymore Grey's Anatomy doctor Isaiah Washington into the Peacock Family wasn't enough to tantalize the TV scribes huddled at today's Television Critics Association event, new network "cool dad" Ben Silverman will soon reveal that he's welcoming prodigal son Donald Trump, who's recently been busying himself with creating the world's finest, most luxurious line of buttocks-pampering office chairs, back into the clan. Reports TVWeek.com's TCA blog:

We suspect that we may never tire of reading stories about how new NBC co-chairman/rock-star Ben Silverman plans to remake the last-place network in his own fun-loving, party-positive, hey-let's-have-that-meeting-at-The-Standard's-pool! image, especially when such pieces continue to yield details like this one from today's NY Times article on Hollywood's high-fivingest new executive:

· First Cavemen, now Jim Belushi. What new ways will ABC find to humiliate George Lopez?
· A bizarre twist in a thoroughly unpleasant story.
· Paris Hilton: The NDA.
· Here's an early-ish review of Transformers; we're not entirely sure, but we suspect that when a reviewer says he wants to "hunt down Michael Bay and stab him in the face-eye," it's not necessarily a rave.
· NBC rock star Ben Silverman: The Simpsons character.

By now, we've all gotten to know new NBC co-chair/rock-star Ben Silverman well enough that we feel sufficiently informed about his lofty goals, party "problems", recreational passions, and early corporate triumphs, but now that his reign at the network has begun in earnest, we think it's important to recognize the concrete steps he's already taking to promote the Culture of Fun he believes will deliver the Peacock from its fourth-place misery. Among the paradigm-shifting changes already instituted: doing away with those annoying morning meetings, which did nothing but amplify the pain of a skull-shattering hangover with the bad vibes transmitted by the overnight Nielsens. Reports the LAT:

Let the networkwide party begin: today's Page Six reports that allegedly 420-friendly NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman has jumped over the last mellow-harshing hurdle erected by the killjoy suits of his parent corporation, finally taking- his company drug test:

· If there's any blowback from NBCU corporate following Friday's DHD story about Ben Silverman's alleged 420-friendliness, the template for his salvation has already been established by his Peacock hero, Brandon Tartikoff. All he needs to do is grab some of his pals from The Office, cut a quickie The More You Know PSA about staying off the dope, and all will be forgiven.
· Is it possible to love the White Stripes too much? We think it is.
· OMG! She. Met. Angie! For reals! In person! And guess what? She's skinny!
· Tom Cruise is Becks' bestest BFF ever! He flew all the way to Madrid and pretended to care about his big soccer thingy.
· Breaking: Paris cooperative.

Last week, Slate's Kim Masters reported that NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker was starting to discover that the brash up-and-comer he'd just handpicked might be, to use the most delicate terms possible, a "voracious party animal." Today, in diving deep into All Things Ben Silverman, DHD's Nikki Finke discusses at length TV's leading Colombian tetas importer's "liberal attitudes towards marijuana use," noting that a delay in the completion of his NBC deal could put off the ceremonial turnover of his urine sample until after the Fourth of July holiday, giving Silverman plenty of time to clear his golden stream of THC. Rather than embrace the positive and take this alleged affinity for the bong (there is absolutely no truth to the rumor we just made up that Silverman tried to rename NUTS as 420 Studios before being forced to go with the safer Universal Media Studios by a mellow-harshing suit) as a sign that their new executive isn't a narc trying to take down the entire network from the inside, Zucker has apparently chosen to fret about the situation. Reports Finke:

· Displaying the kind of out-of-the-box vision that recently won him NBC's top programming job at the tender age of 19 (so young, we know!), Ben Silverman has acquired the rights to the Colombian televovela Sin tetas no hay paraiso (Without Breasts There is No Paradise), the story of a woman who seeks a breast enlargement as a solution to her poverty and gets entangled in prostitution. "I scour the world for the best ideas and for the game-changing hit shows and Sin Tetas is one of those shows," crowed Silverman about his get. "Dude, it's like my huge ABC success Ugly Betty, but with hookers and big tits. I've got another winner here, I just know it." [Variety]
· And with leadership like that, why wouldn't NBC Universal be "upbeat" about their network's prospects? [THR]
· The Middle East is hottest war-torn setting in Hollywood right now, with "at least six" films about the region on the way between June and early 2008. [Variety]
· Bruce Willis and daughter Rumer will spend some quality time together building up their family business on the set of The Sophomore, a "teenage take on Chinatown." Unfortunately, Mischa Barton, once famously out-acted by some scene-hogging patio furniture in a pivotal moment on The OC, is also attached to the intriguing project. [THR]
· Speaking of the Willis family business, Rumer step-dad Ashton Kutcher is producing another movie. Details available, but uninteresting. [Variety]

Continuing our recent series of late afternoon posts about "Getting to Know You" stories involving new NBC head-rock-star-in-charge Ben Silverman, we turn our attention to today's Kim Masters Slate piece on the party-positive network chief, who already seems to have intuited that he may have to abandon his plans to end each successful staff meeting with a round of tequila body shots if he wants to keep his corporate bosses off his back:

TVWeek corralled just-installed NBC Entertainment co-chair Ben Silverman (pictured above enjoying himself in the general vicinity of soon-to-be sworn enemy Les Moonves of CBS) for a "getting to know you" chat, in which the recently anointed New Peacock Messiah reveals that while he has managed to chug the company's "Choke on Our Quality" Kool-Aid, his acceptance of the gig progressed so quickly that he hasn't yet had time to take care of certain details unimportant to taking the job, like watching all of the network's Fall pick-ups. Reports TV Week:

· New NBC golden boy Ben Silverman is already hard at work, talking disgruntled Donald Trump down from a Trump Tower ledge by reopening talks about possibly bringing back The Apprentice. "I can see this guy is gonna be a star," says Trump, appreciating the business savvy of a player who might not be afraid to throw away untold millions to return his low-rated show to primetime. [Variety]
· Dania "The One Who Drove AJ Soprano To Suicide" Ramirez will join Heroes as a series regular. (Hey, she's got mutant experience from X-Men 3.) While her "powers are being kept under wraps," producers are rumored to still be deciding between superhuman Rollerblading skills and the ability to make the world's most delicious sandwiches. [THR]
· The Canadian government quickly surrenders to visiting California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, helpless against his onslaught of tired movie catchphrases meant to communicate the importance of introducing tougher anti-piracy legislation. [Variety]
· Not that you might possibly care, but USA won the cable rights to Pirates 3, completing its acquisition of all three installments of the franchise. [THR]
· Pirate Master (which we actually watched, God help us, confirming our suspicion that it's nothing more than Survivor with an eyepatch and a big boat) is off to a weak start for CBS. None of us are going to make it through the summer TV season alive, we can feel it already. [Variety]

· Let the CancellationWatch begin: After finishing fifth on Monday night with about 3 million viewers, On the Lot's ratings creep up to a still-anemic 4 million on Tuesday. We recommend that you enjoy judge Carrie Fisher's desperate attempts to marry off her daughter to the "next Spielberg" while you still can. [Variety, Variety]
· But here's some news sure to cheer you up: Dane Cook continues to work, and is in negotiations to star in comedy Bachelor No. 2, in which he'll play an asshole who tries to drive girls back to the guys they just dumped by taking them on hilariously bad dates. [THR]
· As if sleeping underneath an autographed photo of NBC legend Brandon Tartikoff as a child didn't prove new NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman's love of all things Peacock, he lets the industry know just how badly he ached for the gig: "I am taking a massive financial hit, which is a testament to how passionate I am about this job." Ah, there's nothing more heartwarming than a former agent publicly disclosing the pay cut he's allegedly taking to chase his Hollywood dream. [Variety]
· Meanwhile, Silverman will remain involved at Reveille (with which NBC extended its first-look deal for another two years) as a silent owner and won't have a financial stake in its new shows, a well-thought-out arrangement that is sure to be utterly free of troubling conflicts of interest. Everyone wins! [Variety]
· Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films signs an overall deal with CBS Corp., a move that clearly establishes the Punk'd star and up-and-coming producer as the eventual successor to Les Moonves, himself a former terrible actor with boundless ambition. [THR]

Because no seismic shift in the Hollywood power matrix feels fully complete without the requisite internal memo patting the ousted exec on his recently axed head for a job well done—but not quite well enough to warrant not getting fired!—while welcoming with great fanfare his more promising replacement, we offer the following message from NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker. It introduced new co-chairmen, Ben "Zucker II" Silverman and Marc Graboff, to his army of blind followers, who know better than to question the at times brutal wisdom of their sheeny-scalped overlord. The rest of the memo and press release follow after the jump:

NBC head Kevin Reilly, who just weeks ago optimistically unveiled his network's fall slate to advertisers with the fighting, Muhammad-Aliesque couplet: "We've got the class and next season we're ready to add some mass," has been relieved of his Deal or No Deal-replicating duties once and for all, in a Memorial Day weekend surprise shakeup ordered from on high by NBC Universal's Peacock King, Jeff Zucker. Reports LA Weekly's Nikki Finke: