The recurrent bitchiness between Michael Wolff and NBC's Ben Silverman usually lapsed back into polite chatter at the Monaco Media Summit, judging from the lengthy YouTube video of a panel discussion at the Monte Carlo event. But one can't help but wonder if would-be internet mogul Wolff was more personally invested in his reference to television networks as the scapegoated "trash heap of everybody's expectations" than he let on. And calling Silverman "functionally digitally illerate" was just plain mean, as was using a vulgar expletive to refer to old media. But then sublimated envy and resentment are kind of Wolff's calling cards, so no harm, no foul! Click the video icon to watch the fireworks.

Just when it looked as though viewers were going to be cruelly deprived of their weekly life-affirming glimpse into the lives of three mistresses of the universe who always drop everything to be supportive to one other (or to engage in the most idealized cougar-cub relationship ever likely to grace our screens), Lipstick Jungle has won an eleventh-hour reprieve.

Few were surprised when NBC axed Lipstick Jungle, figuring that if a brutal, Project Runway-assisted title indoctrination couldn't help it gain a ratings foothold, nothing could. But wait! insists star Brooke Shields to Us. "It's not true," she said. "Our bosses are saying, 'You’re not canceled, don’t worry. We’re just trying to figure out how to make this make sense.'" Yes, if only a major media conglomerate like NBC could get the word out somehow! Still, James Hibberd writes that even though there's been a fan outcry (really?), there are other factors at play that may doom a new application of Lipstick:

Last week we jumped on the news that tiresome ladybusiness drama Lipstick Jungle had been canceled. We may have, heh, actually danced on its grave a little. But, it sounds like we were wrong! People from the three-business-ladies-make-sex-with-men-and-drink-and-talk show are now coming out and saying that the show is not over at all. Just ask the series's star, Brooke Shields:

Where do you mine for easy laughs when you no longer have the most satirizable election in history at your disposal? In SNL's case, that would be the Gays, a topic this week's Paul Rudd-hosted episode visited and revisited so often, we lost count. And where does the show stand on the subject, in this, arguably the most important week for gay civil rights in history? Enjoy the highlight reel above, accompanied by this handy synopsis: · The fun starts with a sketch about an overly affectionate family that builds to Samberg making out with Fred Armisen for no apparent reason. · Then there was a legitimately funny Digital Short in which Rudd and Samberg paint each other naked, that ends in what has to be the most violent scene in the show's history. (If the episode had a secondary theme, it would be guns blowing people's heads off.)· Moving along, we have a carload of seemingly straight guys admitting shocking things in song, that—surprise!—starts with Jason Sudeikis admitting he had sex with a male cab driver. · Here's where things get really interesting. Seth Meyers introduces the topic of Prop 8 on Weekend Update. The crowd boos, which annoys the anchor, who admonishes them by saying, "OK. Vote's over." What follows is an over-the-top flaming Bobby Moynihan as Hanna-Barbera character Snagglepuss, who decries Prop 8, but denies he himself is gay. He finally admits it, and says he has a "partner"—the Great Gazoo. · A parody of Beyonce's "Put A Ring On It" video featuring backup dancers Justin Timberlake, Moynihan, and Samberg in high heels and leotards. They could have played this straight, and it would have been funnier, but instead they lisp and mince the way gay people do (that's supposed to be sarcasm for those of you currently wearing your fierce, Tom Ford irony-ray-blocking sunglasses), and it gets old kind of quick. · Another direct reaction to Prop 8 features yet two more characters in the closet—tough guy parking attendants played by Rudd and Bill Hader. The humor derives from the fact that they are so in denial about their homosexuality, they act as if their random sex acts in bathrooms, and with each other, is all a joke. It ends with them proposing to each other and talking about how excited they are to have a wedding. Before you leap into the comments to either defend the material as hilarious and that's all that matters, or decry it as ugly stereotyping that couldn't come at a more insensitive moment, we'd just like to remind you all of one thing, OK? Vote's over.

Nevermind that Lipstick Jungle was axed by NBC last week: Brooke Shields thinks the show is doing great! In fact, she says the show has a "huge fanbase," people have been demonstrating their support by mailing NBC chief Jeff Zucker tubes of lipstick, and the only reason the the show is rumored to be on the rocks is because it's "so popular on DVR" that advertisers don't know what to do with it yet. Possibly related: Shields shares a birthday (and astrological chart) with Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. [NYO, NYP]

Uncool, America. We realize it must have been a rough week for Jennifer Aniston, so we were hoping we could pass along some great news that her guest appearance on 30 Rock last night as a...woman who likes to do a lot of things but is ultimately crazy but not in a particularly ha-ha funny way?...boosted the show's ratings. Unfortunately, a season low of 7.5 million tuned in for the episode, which also happened to feature three Night Court cast members. Anthony Edwards's return to ER, however, boosted the show by 1.2 million viewers to 9.8 million. The moral? We're not really sure. Put Michael J. Fox on Kath & Kim and see what happens. [E! Online]

Before the premiere of this fall season, NBC head Ben Silverman liked to brag about the extensive movie star outreach he'd done to populate his shows: Selma Blair in Kath & Kim! Christian Slater in My Own Worst Enemy! Sadly, Kath was poorly received, Enemy has just been axed (alongside another show called something like Project Lipstick, we think?), and the rest of the fall lineup is skidding out like Silverman's Knight Rider retread. You might imagine, with all this broadcast carnage, that some of it might be Silverman's fault. Nuh-unh! protests Page Six:

♦ Peter Chernin, Rupert Murdoch's right-hand at News Corp., may be planning to depart the company in the near future. [LAT]
♦ 60 Minutes has snagged the first interview with Barack Obama. [THR]
♦ WWD has a roundup of how magazines will fare overall in 2008. Most of the news is depressing, yes, but there are a couple of bright spots: Elle and Men's Journal reported 3 percent increases in ad pages. [WWD]
♦ You knew this one was coming: Political statistics star Nate Silver is reportedly shopping a pair of books to publishers. [NYO]

THR reports NBC has canceled both Christian Slater amnesiac secret agent show My Own Worst Enemy, as well as Lipstick Jungle, in which Brooke Shields leads a troop of cosmetic assassins down the Nung River to eliminate the AWOL and believed-insane Colonel Mary Kay:

♦ NBC chief Jeff Zucker is tightening making another round of cuts. This time it's CNBC, which will see its budget slashed by 10 percent. [NYO]
♦ A group of liberal activists printed up fake copies of the New York Times today to hand out to passerby in Midtown. [NYT]
♦ Gerard Baker has been named deputy editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. [Romenesko]
♦ Katie Couric's advice for Sarah Palin: "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing." [Page Six]
♦ John McCain's first TV appearance since he lost the election translated into big ratings for Jay Leno's Tonight Show. [THR]
♦ Monday's interview with Sarah Palin was also a winner with Greta Van Susteren's On The Record earning its best ratings of the year. [B&C]

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's loudest, angriest, not-votingest, network-controllingest personality, just signed a sweet new deal. It's a four-year extension of his Countdown show, with two NBC specials and occasional nightly news "essays." It's also worth $30 million! Good work Keith! It was bound to happen, as MSNBC's ratings were way up this election cycle, and Olbermann's show is now a vital part of the network's brand. But it was also brilliant of Olbermann to get the deal now, because there's a good chance he's peaked. Keith Olbermann became the voice of Bush's second term. After eking out a narrow victory and calling it a mandate, the President really outdid himself. The war went to hell, the lies that got us into the war were further aired out, the details of his various unconstitutional surveillance programs came to light, the ideological disdain for effective governance and the bubble of true believers led to the Katrina disaster, and America basically got a serious case of buyers' remorse. One guy on TV sounded as perpetually pissed off and outraged as you did, from 2003 onward: Keith Olbermann! His newfound glee at casting moral judgment on the mendacity of the lunatics in charge was, you know, refreshing after a couple years of the newsmedia wandering in the post-9/11 desert of breathless Bush-worship. Everyone felt kinda bad for selling that stupid and pointless war, but no one quite wanted to be the first to go whole-hog anti-authority. But Olbermann's voice of the opposition was the best thing on TV, leading right up to the 2006 midterms, when America first wholly rejected the Republican party. But now we've just had an election about Hope and Change, and the new guy in charge is not a fire-breathing pissed-off Howard Dean, but a calm and cool unifier promising to bring dispassionate rationality back to the White House. Meanwhile at MSNBC, Olbermann's charming protege is a Rhodes Scholar who's specifically pledged never to have more than one guest on at a time, because shouting and argument and cross-talk don't actually advance the discussion. Rachel Maddow's ratings are phenomenal, and every month there's a new fawning profile of her showcasing how... normal (and nice!) she is. If Olbermann was the voice of the opposition, Maddow is the voice of the new liberals in charge. It won't necessarily diminish Olbermann's popularity and influence (or even his ratings), but he's not on top of the zeitgeist anymore. Let's pray for a great 2012 race to get him across that next contract renegotiation hump. Gingrich/Palin '12!

How's this for a cliffhanger: ratings for NBC's Heroes have dropped precipitously this season, leading to the firing of two producers, an Entertainment Weekly cover story asking whether the show can be saved, and now, a NY Times article that lays the blame on Jeff Zucker, Ben Silverman and show creator Tim Kring. According to the media frenzy, Heroes has suddenly undergone a drastic creative plummet in its third season. Here's the thing though: the show? Never that good!Sure, when Heroes premiered in 2006, it had a couple of things going for it, namely: freshness, a good villain, and a series of wicked, show-ending cliffhangers. Still, the problems that EW and the NYT are citing in the current season were with Heroes from the start. The show has always had too many characters, and even in the first season, many lacked a compelling reason to be there. That season was clogged with storylines (like the yawn-inducing travails of narrator Mohinder) that practically demanded to be fast-forwarded through, and the revelation that the show's writers were assigned separate plotlines in each episode instead of writing full scripts on their own is only partially to blame for the show's whiplashing segues. Eventually, the more interesting characters were saddled with so many powerful abilities that they needed to be repeatedly incapacitated to move the plot along, causing heroes like the time-jumping Hiro to become annoyingly extraneous. Also, the acting is, uh... well, just watch this clip. Yeah, it's at least campy, but in a "best show on the Sci-Fi Channel" kind of way. Actually not even that, because they have Battlestar Galactica. So maybe in a "third or fourth best show on the Sci-Fi Channel" kind of way. All we're saying is that if a show is desperately hanging onto an actress like Ali Larter, it won't exactly be burning up the Emmys. Heroes doesn't need to be saved — it's always been like this. Sometimes, when the shock of the new wears off, reappraisals like this can occur (in much the same way, America has finally come to grips with its embarrassing Life is Beautiful phase). Don't head to Heroes expecting great acting, skillful plotting, and emotional resonance. Enjoy it for what it is meant to be: a showcase for Milo Ventimiglia to take off his shirt.

Since joining Saturday Night Live as a featured player in 2005, Andy Samberg has been an important addition to the overall tone of the show. While his 2007 flop Hot Rod proved a long career in Hollywood may not be in his future, Joanna Newsom's boyfriend has been involved in a lot of great stuff over the past three years. We all know Samberg classics like his Emmy-winning "Dick in a Box" or "Lazy Sunday," but here's five clips that you may not have seen a billion times:The SNL Digital Shorts that Andy and Lonely Island writing partners are so frequently involved in can be hit-or-miss, but when the sketch hits, it's usually a big winner. McCain throwing his running mate under the bus is what we'll likely remember from last week's SNL, but "Giraffes" is typical of Samberg and his writing partners, whose comedy I would describe as a tender blend of The State and The Kids in the Hall: I'm not sure whose brainchild "Dear Sister" was, but this incredible parody of the season two finale of The O.C. never fails to amuse me for some reason. The video below is a parody of a parody, with some kid cutting himself into the misery:

On The Office last night, we learned that Dunder Mifflin customer service rep Kelly Kapoor threw an America's Got Talent finale party, where she gave out personalized gift mugs featuring every worker's face over a blue star. (In a nice touch, you can purchase said mugs at the NBC online store. We'll take six Phyllises—something about her smile puts us in the mood for warm beverages.)A mugless Jim and Dwight never bothered showing up, however, and begin to realize that a vengeful Kelly was the reason behind their poor performance review scores. All of this is really just set up for the scene above, a perfectly executed comic gem in which the two engage in a role-playing sales call. It eventually climaxes with Dwight shouting something at the top of his lungs which, we think it's safe to say, has never been uttered on network primetime before. We'd suggest it veers on NSFW—but if it's safe for their office, we guess it's safe for yours. Enjoy!

· The first day after the election earned low ratings all around for the networks, but particularly NBC, whose new crime block of Knight Rider, Life, and the 19th season premiere of Law & Order (down 42% from last year) all tanked. [THR] · Jack Black is set to star in Fox's adaptation of Gulliver's Travels, in which he'll teach the tiny denizens of Lilliput the building blocks of Rock and Roll. [Variety] · 9-and-a-half-fingered Congressman Rahm Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama's offer of White House chief of staff, and now goes about the task of rounding out the cabinet. Drama for Minister of Viking Affairs! [Variety] After the jump: What Oscar-nominated actress and Oscar-winning actor will co-star in a Lifetime movie?· Lifetime MOWs are now officially prestige affairs: Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons will star in a biopic on the life of Georgia O'Keefe for the women's network, directed by Bob Balaban. [THR] · James Van Der Beek and David "Pam's Ex" Denman will star in Fox pilot Eva Adams, about "an egotistic sexist agent who, under a witch's spell, turns into a beautiful woman so he can endure the harassment he's been dishing out." A magical comedy of errors! Shakespeare would be proud, Van Der Beek. [THR]

What's a struggling network to do when faced with last-place ratings, corporate inertia and a few dozen mouldering costumes from a hit going off the air? If you're NBC Universal, you invite the world to a yard sale, as it's planning to do Jan. 16 in order to cash in on the final season of Battlestar Galactica. The geek gold rush is on, and its nervous hosts in Pasadena are stocking up on canned goods and bottled water as we speak.NBCU has been plotting a Battlestar prop auction since the summer, trickling out such must-sorta-haves as Cylon War-era flight suits and War Room chalkboards on a Web site ranking right below asthma inhalers among fanboy essentials. The network has hosted such events before, previously cashing in at last year's Heroes/Office/30 Rock sale. But the international interest in Battlestar sparked a recent run on hotel rooms in and around the Pasadena Convention Center, we hear, with the artifacts' online clearing house now offering a handy guide to making the most of that slavering southern pilgrimage. Which, in the end, is fine with us; anything that helps pay off NBC's Olympics debt and keeps us in Jeff Zucker profiles is a true public service in the long run.

♦ ABC appears to generated the highest ratings as the election results rolled in last night. NBC came in second and CNN ranked third. [TV Decoder]
♦ Time is rushing to produce a commemorative issue of the mag by the end of the week. [HuffPo]
♦ Both People and Us Weekly will feature Obama on the covers of the next issue. [NYP]
♦ Can The Daily Show survive an Obama presidency? and how will other media outlets deal with the post-election dropoff? [Politico, AdAge]
♦ An explanation of that holography thingie on CNN last night. [YouTube]

Oh, adorable. The ice rink at Rockefeller Center is a big Map, tonight, and they are painting it red and blue, like the states, in this election! Hey they can go ahead and paint New York blue. SHOCK: New York just went for Obama. Below, losers in Times Square, the worst place to celebrate anything, let alone an election, watch the results come in.

♦ Election returns may set TV viewing records tonight, assuming there's some "suspense." [AP]
♦ What's been on cable news channels all day? Mindless talk and speculation, for the most part. [TV Decoder]
♦ It's possible the networks will call the election before the polls close. [THR]
♦ Some of the high-tech wizardry in store tonight: CNN plans to feature 3D "holographic images" of the network's remote correspondents in its New York studio. [WSJ]
♦ More trouble for tabloid kingpin David Pecker: John Miller, AMI's chief operating officer, has resigned. [NYP]