We may never learn the true nature of the backroom dealings that led to Jay Leno winning NBC's 10 p.m. slot, but as VF.com notes, he's always shown a ferocious capacity for Darwinian late night survival.

It's reconciliation day: Letterman invited Leno, Madonna offered to visit Guy Ritchie and even Marc Jacobs dropped the drama. Tom Cruise is still kind of a bastard, though.

Man, Tom Cruise really did not want to answer Jay Leno's questions about musical theater and Broadway. But Leno kept asking! Defensive about something, Tom?

Nature, nurture, or Leno? That was the question last night when Jay Leno hosted the newly out (and pissed at Proposition 8) Wanda Sykes.

• Newsweek is planning to cut staff as well as give the mag a makeover. [WSJ]
• NPR is cutting 7 percent of its staff and dropping two shows. [NYT]
• Ad spending fell 2 percent during the third quarter, although online advertising continued to grow. [Adage]
• Les Moonves isn't too worried about Jay Leno's move to primetime. [NYP]
• Rumor has it Entertainment Weekly may go web-only. [Gawker]
• Reed Elsevier, which has been trying to sell trade titles like Variety and Publishers Weekly, is pulling them off the market. [NYP]
• Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning. [HFPA]

As Jeff Zucker foists his last hopes for NBC on Leno and his arsenal of funny newspaper-clipping typos, his arch nemesis—future galactic despot Les Moonves—couldn't help but engage in a favorite pastime:

All eyes were on Conan last night in anticipation of what, if anything, he'd say about NBC's surprise announcement that Jay Leno would upstage his long-planned ascension to The Tonight Show throne.

Conan O'Brien is considered one of the big losers of Jay Leno's decision to stay on at NBC, because Jay will eat up his audience, steal his guests, and keep him out of the spotlight. How did Conan handle the issue last night? With a simple bit involving newspapers that is way funnier than anything Jay Leno's slackjawed writing staff has ever come up with. Click to watch Conan's moral victory.

So, the new Jay Leno variety hour. Are you dying to learn more about it or what? Ha, network statistics show that you are! Advertisers are also very enthusiastic about the move of the not-quite-funny entertainer into prime time. Perhaps the enthusiasm stems from the fact that Leno now has a mandate that his show not suck quite so much as it currently does. Is this guy trying in vain to rip off the Daily Show, or bring back vaudeville?:

David Letterman's rivalry with Jay Leno goes back more than 15 years, to when Leno outmaneuvered Letterman to host the Tonight Show, a job Letterman deeply coveted. Now Leno has ceded the Tonight Show timeslot to Conan O'Brien (rather than fight him from ABC), and accepted to a proffer from network suits to move to 10 pm to make a (still amorphous) show 1/10th the cost of a primetime drama and less likely to be TiVoed. And Letterman isn't about to miss the chance to get in a few digs about how this makes Leno a capitulating loser. (Video after the jump.)

· We'd lay even odds that Will Smith reclaimed his going-away present to Jay Leno after reading the trades this morning.
· In related news, a noted Hollywood blogger today revealed the source of NBC's internal turmoil: Aliens.
· Film critic-turned-director Rod Lurie remembers the glory days when reviewers went on to helm Robert Redford movies instead of just getting unceremoniously discarded by their former publications.
· "You got no fuckin' idea what it's like to be number one. Every decision you make affects every facet of every other fucking thing." Who (allegedly) said it: Tony Soprano or disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich?
· Is Steve-O next year's Cloris Leachman?
· A court found that Tyler Perry is singly, solely responsible for the Madea franchise. We mean that as a good thing.

· Jay Leno explained a bit more about his new primetime show's format: "It won't be necessarily comedy, Kevin Eubanks fake-laughing, comedy, more Kevin Eubanks fake-laughing, first guest, Kevin, second guest, Kevin, music." He went on to explain that he plans on mixing up the parts in the broadcast where he cuts to his band-leader's infectious fake laughter. [THR]
· Sony announced from Tokyo that it would make $1.1 billion in cuts and lay off 16,000 members of its workforce, but miraculously, none of them will affect Sony's movie, gaming and music divisions. [Variety]
· Jennifer Anison and Gerard Butler will star in a romantic comedy for Columbia, about a bounty hunter who has to retrieve his ex-wife for skipping bail. A rep for Aniston said the actress is "just amazed Angelina would have said those things in the press. Who does she think she is? Does it get any less cool?" [Variety]
· SAG's Monday night powwow was just the shot in the arm Alan Rosenberg's self-esteem needed. It was like strike-support Viagra! Any disgruntled thespian takers? He can go all night! [Variety]
· The Sex Drive team of Sean Anders and John Morris are in final negotiations to write and direct Hot Tub Time Machine, the most ribald comedy to use Red Bull as a major plot point since Yes Man. [THR]

So SAG's fucked. Wait—did we say "fucked?" There we go again—needless doomsday prophesying where Obaman cool-headedness is clearly required. What we meant to say is: "SAG's probably fucked." Yesterday brought a confluence of Pop Culture Doomsday events that not even a walrus blowing like Bird could have foretold:

♦ What recession? Condé Nast is launching a new magazine in the UK. [WWD]
♦ More on the fallout from the Tribune Co. bankruptcy. [NYT]
♦ Yesterday the New York Times revealed plans to mortgage its office building; now it says it's in talks with lenders about upcoming debt payments. [AP]
♦ Jann Wenner has hired a new chief digital officer. [AdAge]
♦ Is the advertising world sexist? Maybe! [HuffPo]
♦ Jay Leno may earn $40-50 million a year for his new gig on NBC. [MP]
♦ NBC still has some Super Bowl ads available, if you're interested. [AdAge]

Jay Leno is moving to 10 p.m., every god damn night of the week! That sure is something. You never realize how many people love Jay Leno until something like this happens (or until you find yourself in a comedy club in Winston-Salem, talking to the owner, Roy). NBC is obviously happy about it—and so is Jay, or he would have taken his middling act elsewhere—but, as in everything in showbiz, some people got screwed in this deal. After the jump, the biggest winners and losers of the Return of the Chin:

Jay Leno will stay at NBC and move to 10pm weeknight slot after Conan O'Brien takes over his Tonight Show in June, Broadcasting & Cable and Nikki Finke are reporting. Everyone thought Leno was probably going to end up at ABC after he said in a July interview "I am definitely done next year - with NBC." But NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker persuaded him to stay! Probably with wheelbarrows full of money. The big loser in all this? That would probably be embattled NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman, who just survived a major corporate bloodletting but suddenly finds himself with five fewer hours a week to program. And to think he was having so much fun skiing in Utah this weekend!

With its beloved mascot swirling 'round the toilet, letting out a meager peacock "yorp" as its exhausted claws scratch helplessly at its porcelain confines, there truly was nothing left to come out of NBC HQ today we thought could possibly shock us. We were, of course, hopelessly wrong, as it is now emerging that Jay Leno—the longtime poster boy for NBC mismanagement for the way he was being forced out of his Tonight Show spot at the top of his ratings game—is being given the 10 p.m. slot on the network. Every night of the week.

It's been a rough 2008 for Heather Locklear, what with the jail, rehab, imaginary 911 calls, and the lingering shame of sex with David Spade (their matchmaking colorist really owes her after that one). "I've been better!" she told Jay Leno last night, understating things just a tad.

Chris Matthews is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of TV news hosts. Even his NBC colleagues at the Tonight Show give him no respect. Host Jay Leno just last week led with dashing Matthews competitor Anderson Cooper of CNN, who was first to sit on Leno's couch and got extra time to chat after a commercial break. Matthews? After flying to LA for the appearance, he came out last night after a segment called "Things We Found On eBay," two turns on the couch by self-styled redneck Larry The Cable Guy AND after a special skit involving Larry. Then Larry insulted Matthews with a joke about "The Chris Matthews Show," not realizing the program is known as Hardball (UPDATE: Joke's on me — that's an actual show! I guess Matthews looked annoyed at being interrupted so crudely, or somesuch). Leno awkwardly tries to salvage the situation in the clip after the jump.

Life is getting harder and harder for 'Bolt' star Miley Cyrus in her 16th year, faced with so many of the crises that make our mid-teens such a dramatically turbulent era. Like the driving instructor taking less than kindly to her defiance behind the wheel ("I don't wanna turn left, I wanna turn right!"), all those cheapskate hangers-on who won't buy tickets to her shows, and the father whom the young phenom reduced to a punchline last Friday while in late-night conversation with Jay Leno. It must have been 'Miley Day' again; these rituals just get more and more painful for poor Billy Ray. [The Tonight Show]