· Ben Affleck will star in Mike Judge's Extract, about the trials and tribulations of "a flower extract factory owner." We know the punchline is "Ow My Essence of Citrus Blossom!" We're just not sure how the rest goes. [Variety] · The Zurich Film Festival will bestow their highest honor, The Golden Herring, upon the franchise-defibrillating achievements of aging action mercenary, Sylvester Stallone. [Variety] · NBC Universal has acquired U.K.'s Carnival Film & Television, the first step in their ruddily cherubic child-king's seven-year plan towards world domination. [THR] · The House Bunny and Legally Blonde writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten "Kiwi" Smith have sold ABC Studios a script for a potential series based on their "champagne-and-therapy-fueled" creative process. Working title: Set-Ups and the City. (Now who wants a show about our malt-beverage-and-hackery-fueled creative process?) [THR] · Lifetime ordered six episodes of Blonde Charity Mafia, a documentary series about young fundraising socialites in D.C. Couldn't they have squeezed the word "Sluts" in the title somewhere? That would have really sold it. [Variety]

What better après-puff-piece aperitif to follow the NY Times's profile of a content-hungry Time Warner than Portfolio's equally attentive servicing of NBC Universal oligarch, Jeff Zucker? Interviewed at his ballroom-sized corner office at 30 Rock, the reporter at first can't resist infantilizing his subject: "Zucker has an appealing, ruddy tint that lends him a cherubic appearance," reads one willies-inducing passage. "When he sits back, his feet actually lift off from the floor a bit, like a boy taking a turn on someone else’s throne." (We'll assume the part that read, "He then soils his diaper, a mess quickly attended to by the youngest and prettiest of his three assistants..." was edited for space.)But let not his gnome-like stature fool you: Zucker's quick rise to supreme power at the G.E.-held media conglomerate was no upwards-failing accident. This former "captain of his high-school tennis team" applies the same ruthless brutality of his deadly slices and backhands to the business of hacking away the fat hindering a rapidly evolving medium:

Time Warner yesterday announced some weak quarterly financials, with earnings off 26 percent. But there was a big bright spot, the media conglomerate's cable networks like HBO and CNN, where profits were up 18 percent, led by advertising gains. There's a similar situation at NBC Universal, where ratings gains at Bravo (Runway, Top Chef), MSNBC (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews) and even the USA Network have formed a thick silver lining around the storm cloud that is the flagship broadcast network. The business-side gains add a financial dimension to the cable industry's creative golden age, described by the Times' David Carr in June and obvious to anyone with a smartly programmed DVR or Netflix queue. Cable is the swaggering golden child of television, and it's only going to get more confident, because the advertising model that's fueling all its fun happens to be perfect for a recession.

Because global weather patterns will only get more catastrophic until the last human finally starves in a sea of sand and fire, NBC Universal is wisely buying the Weather Channel for $3.5 billion. The deal includes website Weather.com, but more exciting for NBC is surely the cable channel, carried in 97 percent of U.S. homes. Imagine the cross-promotional possibilities that will emerge as global warming engulfs both coasts, and their advertiser-coveted demographics, in slow but steady ruin!

Time Warner is in many ways a self-sustaining media ecosystem: Their intermittently functioning cable networks and motion pictures wing create celebrities and cultural trends, which then wind up on the covers of their top-tier glossies, migrate online via their internet porthole AOL, and eventually float amidst the other sewage runoff filtered by bad-seed web-holding, TMZ, at which point the entire cycle begins anew. The only pie Time Warner has yet to stick a chubby little finger into is the business of network TV, and recent rumors have indeed suggested that they were hungrily circling NBC Universal. Addressing a media conference yesterday, CEO Jeff Bewkes issued a standard non-denial denial:

Joining with private equity firms Blackstone and Bain Capital, NBC Universal bid $3.5 billion to acquire the Weather Channel and Weather.com. The cable channel is available in 97 percent of all cable TV home and has 96 million U.S. subscribers. With its local coverage and the always popular schadenfreude-laced disaster porn excerpted in the video above, Weather.com can claim a "people count" of 19 million in the U.S., according to Compete.

Will cable network Lifetime ruin reality fashion television forever when it takes over Project Runway from Bravo later this year, de-snarking the show on behalf of overearnest spinsters and partnering with a third-tier fashion magazine? Bravo is working hard to make sure it doesn't have the chance. First it sued to stop the show from moving. Now Bravo owner NBC Universal has cut a deal with Runway's longtime executive producers for new shows. The deal would presumably enable Bravo to create something very similar to Runway if its lawsuit fails, assuming the poached producers never signed anything that would prevent a Runway copycat. In any case, the producers are definitely done with their old show. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Some days we're so full of love for Harvey Weinstein that our weak, arrhythmic blogger hearts nearly explode. It was one thing last week when he brazenly moved Project Runway to Lifetime, pulling the rug out from a supposedly unwitting NBC. It was another thing entirely on Monday when Harvey rolled the rug up and started whacking NBC boss Jeff Zucker over the head with it:

Critically acclaimed but chronically low-rated jock opera Friday Night Lights managed to sneak in a third season thanks to a unique deal between NBC Universal and DirecTV. But the network has built an interesting window into the release — the episodes will premiere on DirecTV's "The 101" channel in October, but not air in prime time until February. The episodes also won't be available on Hulu until NBC airs them next year, which makes no sense at all.

Tomorrow, Hulu will finally open its doors to the wider public. Rumor has it Time Warner and Viacom soon plan to join the site, which is backed by NBC and News Corp., through nonexclusive distribution deals. CBS digital guru Quincy Smith, however, remains pessimistic: "If the Web is just another way to watch TV, I think I'm going to slit my wrists." Below, the best friend of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel's daughter in the kind of short form clip Hulu hopes the public will take to.

So! Jeff Zucker says Universal will inevitably release movies simultaneously on various media. DVDs! Theaters! Downloads! Which is kind of like it already is for those of us who steal movies online! It's a magical wonderful future, not because I'll get to instantly watch a lamer version of a movie at home on my iMac and my Logitech speakers, but because the only way theaters could survive this change is to kick the theater-going experience up a notch. And that had better mean beer, food and double features.

Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers advisers have CEO Jerry Yang and the Yahoo board of directors talking a merger with AOL, according to the Times of London. Last week, new Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes announced plans to formally split AOL from its ISP business, in a move that he said would "increase AOL's strategic options." The Times also reports Yang and company plan to test interest from Disney.

VC blogger Fred Wilson argues that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger will be bad for users and for the Internet as a whole. "If you think about the Internet, it's a huge distributed network of loosely connected services owned and operated by literally millions. We don't need or want consolidation of services on the Internet," Wilson writes. But you know who the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is even worse news for? The incompetent executives who landed Yahoo in this pickle in the first place. They're ferociously spinning gullible reporters with rescue fantasies. Here are the five most widespread rumors — and why they're unlikely to happen.

"This thing with Microsoft is not a lock," a source tells us. Citing executives at NBC and Yahoo, this source says that as alternative to selling out to Microsoft, Yahoo is considering selling its Yahoo Media Group to NBC Universal and doubling down on search and display advertising, essentially "throwing the kitchen sink" into beating Google. According to this source, NBC and Yahoo have already started talks.

"I shudder to think about a MSNBC.com and Yahoo News integration," a source formerly employed by both companies in the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo merger tell us. The "cultures," she says, "will be really tough to integrate." In that case, we're happy to report the good news: There's no way it will happen. Legally, Microsoft can't keep both news sites, and if it has to choose between the two, Yahoo News would be its natural choice.

"We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple," NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said in the Financial Times this morning. Of course you have, Jeff. Except for maybe that time last fall when you told an audience at Syracuse University that "Apple has destroyed the music business ... If we don't take control on the video side, they'll do the same [there]." What does Zucker's pirouette mean?