• Has anyone ever looked quite so miserable while receiving an on-camera blowjob from Lindsay Lohan? He must know of the bacteria that's to come. [Yeeeah]
• Speaking of Miss Lohan: her new beau, Harry Morton, woefully underperforms in his first paparazzi getaway. [TMZ]
• Socialite/designer Tory Burch is splitting from her husband. Tragic — this is really going to throw a wrench in the Hamptons party schedule. [Page Six]
• How does Lauren Weisberger come up with dialogue? By secretly writing down her friends' conversations during social outings and sending them to herself on her BlackBerry. We love the method: if she continues to do this, she'll soon have no friends left, and thus no material. And then maybe she'll go away. [Lowdown (3rd item)]
• The National Enquirer confirms that Star Jones did have gastric bypass surgery at Lenox Hill hospital, having her stomach stapled in two places. Obviously, hers wasn't a single-staple job. [Gatecrasher (4th item)]
• Alas, a retraction: Natalie Portman does not appear nude in Goya's Ghost; it's a body double. On the bright side, the footage is a nude torture scene, so you can still spank away. [Egotastic]
• CNBC anchor Joe Kernan loved Aquaman and can't wait to see Springtime for Hitler. [Page Six]

• So it really looks like De Niro and pals will buy the Observer. And Kurt Andersen — like Peter Kaplan — is just thrilled about it. [NYM]
• Michael Eisner pisses off Pat Robertson by having the rightwing preacher on his CNBC show, challenges him on gay rights, whether Jews can get into heaven, and whether it was in fact a good idea to have advocated the assassination of Hugo Chavez. For the first time perhaps ever, we're kind of liking Eisner right now. [NYP]
• NBC honcho Jeff Zucker says he's not worried about Today without Katie, or about Brian Williams competing with her. He also says he's thrilled with NBC's primetime performance, positive the stock market is going up up up, and confident that the Iraq insurgency is in its last throes. [USAT]

From a reader:

CNBC's Battlebots.

You know what a troubled cable network needs? New programming, specifically shows hosted by the most reviled and demonized media executive in recent history. CNBC knows what it has to do, then: Give former Disney CEO Michael Eisner his own talk show. Surely the one-hour program, Conversations With Michael Eisner, will make Tina Brown's late Topic [A] look like a breakaway hit.

Know who Becky Quick is? Us either, until yesterday. That's when someone directed us to a Becky Quick website, where we learned not only that she's a correspondent for CNBC's morning show, Squawk Box, but also that she's "beautiful and talented." At first we thought this was her personal publicity site, but then we looked at it for a bit and realized that even a television reporter couldn't be quite so narcissistic and tone deaf as to write in the first line of the "About Becky" bio:

If audience is any indication, "Topic A with Tina Brown" was a total bomb. Approximately 74,000 people tuned in. Amazingly, I was not one of them. But I heard it didn't go very well. Tina stumbled over Conrad Black's title in an effort to make a joke that would have probably been fine in print, but just didn't work on TV. CNBC says they're "not concerned" with the ratings. (*Cough* bullshit *cough.*)
On cable, Tina Brown talks and 74,000 or so listen [NYT]

Tina Brown's new talk show, "Topic A with Tina Brown" debuts tonight at 9PM EST on CNBC. Tonight's guests: Barry Diller, Sony Corporation of America chief Howard Stringer, Hollinger Inc. chairman Conrad Black and Queen Noor of Jordan, writer Malcolm Gladwell, and historian Simon Schama. Tina on her absence from the magazine world: "I miss being a journalist as such, being a journalist in the mix of the news. I keep thinking every day of articles that I would assign. And I keep thinking, why isn't anybody assigning Anthony Swofford, the author of 'Jarhead,' to go to Iraq? It seems to me mad. I would have done that instantly."
Tina Brown: I've always put myself in the hot seat [IWantMedia]
Dialogue with Tina Brown [Hollywood Reporter]
Press release: Topic A with Tina Brown [CNBC]

Ex-Talk Editor Tina Brown's much anticipated talk show will be postponed because CNBC doesn't want to launch it just as the war in Iraq starts. (Right: Tina's reaction, perhaps?) "The last-minute change was reminiscent of her days at the helm of the New Yorker and Talk magazineswhere she was famous for tearing up nearly completed editions in the final hours for breaking news," writes Michael Starr.
How dare they! [NY Post]

Tina Brown, former editor of Talk, is reincarnated as host of a series of talk shows for CNBC. Which gives her something to write about in this week's column in the Times. She's been studying her rivals.
· Tim Russert "grills his guests with an amphibious glare and the pointed waving of a surgical pen."
· George Stephanopoulos? "Pretty boy George looks as if he is still doing a kind of spin."
· Tina's favorite is Larry King. She's fascinated by his on-air metabolism, "which combines iron-butt stamina with a toddler-like short attention span."
As for Tina herself, she wonders whether her style will transfer to television. "I got some of my best interviews as a magazine profile writer by being a furtive, watchful presence in a low-cut sweater." The low-cut sweater, at least, works.
America's new talk-show host [Times of London]

The NYT reports that Tina Brown is working on a talk show program with CNBC. The series will consist of four one-hour programs with guests of her choosing. At least one episode will cover the Oscars and the state of the film industry. The first episode will air on March 20th.
Tina Brown, turning page, heads to TV [NYT]

Ouch, that has to hurt. Jack Welch, former chairman of GE, says he turns to Fox News for breaking stories. I like the Fox style ... the Fox edge. GE owns CNBC and MSNBC.
Vault Message Boards [TVSpy.com]

CNBC's documentary on the AOL/Time Warner merger, titled "The Big Heist," is one big lesson in C-level schadenfreude. The big media big boys Sumner Redstone, John Malone, Michael Eisner, etc., can barely contain their glee as they talk about The Deal They Didn't Do. Levin is ultimately exhonerated for being an all-around nice guy, while Case is portrayed as the evil mastermind behind the operation. Case, according to ex-boss James Kimsey, has no intention of going anywhere.
How AOL took Time Warner
See also: Ex-TW Exec, Jeff Jarvis, on "The Big Heist":
The flim-flam spam man [Buzzmachine]

A new CNBC documentary observes the predatory AOL/TW executive in its native environment. Watch as Steve Case stalks his prey and goes in for the kill, leaving the mangled career of Gerald Levin dead on the ground (floor).
[Atlanta Journal-Constitution via IWantMedia]