• The late night battle rages on: After losing ground to Letterman, Conan bounced back last night, and had a pretty solid first week overall. [THR, NYT]
• Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. confirms that it has been talks with the New York Times Co. to purchase the Boston Globe. [BH]
• Stephen Colbert's decision to broadcast from Iraq worked out nicely: Ratings for the Comedy Central show have been up 25 percent this week. [NYT]
• Joy Behar is launching a new talk show on HLN. The best part about it: She'll be bumping blowhard Lou Dobbs from his 9pm slot on the network. [NYT]
• TV, print and online ad spending fell 14 percent in the first quarter. [WSJ]
• Hope you're a Marley & Me fan. HarperCollins is cemented a deal to publish 13 children's books about the world's most famous Labrador. Yes, 13. [PW]

As previously reported in tell-all novel form, superproducer Brian Grazer has split from his wife of 11 years, The Starter Wife author Gigi Levangie. Well now the divorce is final and, because of an ironclad prenup, ol' Grazerhead wasn't taken to the cleaners.

♦ Is Lauren Bush supporting Barack Obama? Maybe. The niece of the president praised the Democratic nominee in a recent interview and she decided against using her family name for her new clothing line, Lauren Pierce, taking her grandmother's maiden name instead. [P6]
♦ Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson are either engaged or splitting up, depending on what you read. [Daily Mail, MSN]
♦ Marc Jacobs is supposedly jealous that his ex, Jason Preston, is dating someone else, even though he has a new boyfriend of his own, too. [P6]
♦ He can't afford a plane, but Diddy did get to upgrade to a new Rolls-Royce last week. [P6]
♦ In a new memoir, Maureen McCormick (Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch) says she used to trade sex for coke. [NYDN]