· NBC commanded an appropriately world-record-breaking ratings win over the other four networks thanks to Michael Phelps and the rest of their Olympics coverage; but CBS's Big Brother managed to hold its own, due in no small part to a competitively themed Drown the Old Guy in Slop episode that tested the outer limits of senior contestant Jerry's will to live. [Variety] · She lost the weight, she's feeling great, and now she's ready to work: Valerie Bertinelli will return to her sitcom roots with a half-four TBS comedy about a single mom "who struggles to care for two kids and a lumber business." Even more exciting? Bonnie Franklin is in talks to play a stack of two-by-fours! [Variety] · Fox News Channel is sprucing up its Facebook page with a video clip library, enhanced feedback applications, and anchor status updates alerting you that "Bill O'Reilly is...totally nuts for WALL-E even though he knows he shouldn't be :P!!!" [Variety] ·James McAvoy and Emily Blunt will voice the title gnomes is Gnomio and Juliet, playing starcrossed Travelocity pitchmen from "rival gardens" in a computer-animated Miramax feature. [THR] ·ABC is going forward with Supermanny, a male version of Supernanny, in which bratty problem-children will be dazzled into submission by their new hunky caregiver's rippling abs and dreamy smile. [THR] [Photo via BWE.tv]

• Hachette is shuttering Home magazine. [Mediaweek]

There's no disputing the fact that NBC has made a fucking mint broadcasting these Olympics. They even used their clout to ensure Michael Phelps could be shown live in US prime time, and reaped millions while speeding up the Phelps backlash. But they have pissed off some serious sports fans by often relying on replays over live events, and announcing marginal Beijing events from Midtown NYC. So now ESPN is considering sneaking in and jacking the future Olympic broadcast rights, to bring you archery and steeplechase freaks every second, live! ESPN is considering a bid with ABC for the 2014 and 2016 games, and promises to "carry more of them live, regardless of the time zone, than NBC traditionally has done." They liken it to their World Cup coverage, where morning broadcasts of games results in bleary-eyed drunk fans stumbling out of Irish bars at 7:30 a.m. Um, yay. So why didn't ESPN and ABC get the games this time around?

• Addiction sells: now in its fifth season, Intervention is A&E's highest rated show. [NYT]

Last week we floated an absolutely delicious rumor-the sort of inside media gossip that we hope to be known for when future generations are considering our legacy. Specifically, it was the story of the crazy pooping intern. A summer intern at one of the networks, we heard, went on an on-the-job pooping spree, but somehow stayed on and continued her internship through the rest of the summer. Tips have poured in, and it's become clear this is the story of your worst at-work nightmare come to life. Here's how one locked toilet at NBC caused a disaster: The intern was at NBC in New York, at the famous 30 Rock (NBC has not responded to our request for comment). Our tipsters diverge a tiny bit in their details, but all agree that this intern did exist, and she did have quite an accident. They say it all happened on the intern's first day on the job, in June. Apparently, she tried to make a run to the bathroom, but didn't quite get there. One account:

Are you sick of hearing by now how Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day to fuel his superhuman championship swimming for the gold? Too bad dude! Because what has not been adequately discussed by the media is how awesomely all-American Michael Phelps' calories are. He eats McDonalds! And you can follow his championship diet, too! Allow one of our nation's most prominent journalists to tell you all about it: NBC anchor Brian Williams gave Phelps some special McD's dining advice before their recent interview:

We'd heard of some unauthorized twaddle going around focusing on the gay undercurrent of the Summer Olympics, but as far as we're concerned, NBC is doing some of most trailblazing work this year by playing out Beijing's homoerotic currency right in the mainstream. Nowhere is it more evident than the network's Olympics Web site, where after a sleek, soaking stretch of Water Cube drama, a new slideshow today invites readers to guess the rippling abs whose owners made it through the historic week that was.Some are more challenging than others, but not knowing which Australian "recently dropped backstroke to focus on butterfly" or which American "has dominated his best stroke since 2001" (hint: not Michael Phelps!) hardly seems to detract from the guessing-game fun. All that's left now is to determine which of the fledgling Adonises will be first to attempt an unwitting, towel-snapping crossover opposite the latter-day equivalent of Steve Guttenberg and a diving dozen of West Village extras. (Read more coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games.)

He speaks! In the midst of fending off the rumors swirling about his job security, NBC head honcho Ben Silverman has taken time out to become a recurring Olympics correspondent for Ryan Seacrest's morning radio show on KIIS-FM. Broadcasting & Cable has the scoop (not to be missed is Silverman's quip about his Chinese tour guide: "Her name is Fun Fun, so you can imagine how much fun-fun Fun Fun is"), but with the help of Molly McAleer, we've assembled some of Silverman's most enthusiastic moments in the video after the jump. Who knew that Silverman and Seacrest were so well-versed about the gay goings-on in West Hollywood? [Broadcasting & Cable]

• Bob Costas and Meredith Vieira are among the many NBC anchors who haven't been pronouncing "Beijing" correctly. (It's Bay-jing, not Bay-zhing.) Bonus points to Brian Williams for getting it right. [AP]
  

That photo in this month's Portfolio of NBC chief Jeff Zucker dressed in an immaculate Nike outfit, without a single bead of sweat on his shiny bald dome as he crushed a serve? "The profile coincided with the Olympics. In the picture, he's dressed head to toe in Nike. And Nike happens to be spending a fortune on the Olympics. You do the math," says an NBC tipster. It's possible Zucker was also hoping to capture some of the sexiness of Roger Federer, the tennis star who wears similar Nike outfits and carries similar red tennis racquets. That won't be happening any time soon, of course. But Nike must be pleased with Zucker's dedication to the brand, no? "I suppose when an advertiser is spending that much money, it's only fair that the CEO of the network does everything in his power to promote it," says the tipster. Maybe Zucker should just be happy the company didn't insist that he wear a Rafael Nadal-style bandana.

• Analysts are steeling themselves for a loss of as much as $1.8 billion when Lehman closes out the third quarter in a few weeks. [WSJ]

Though dating Kelly Kapoor could drive any man to self-medicate, never did we think that Darryl from The Office had quite as extensive a stash as his portrayer, Craig Robinson, has been revealed to possess. According to TMZ, Robinson was busted late last month for driving under the influence, and what officers found led them to charge him with two felonies:

The network's online lockdown of Olympics video coverage, ridiculed as old-Web thinking, has paid off: A captive audience drove television ratings for NBC's Beijing coverage higher than the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens games. Advertisers who bought a billion bucks' worth of spots from NBC are probably happy. Oh well, maybe next time. [Wired]

Lewis Lapham's forthcoming Harper's column on Tim Russert is not entirely unexpected, given the cranky literary liberal's public pronouncements on the late host of Meet The Press. But Lapham, sometimes slammed as insufferable bore, has spun a compelling essay out of his rough initial pronouncement that "1,000 people came to [Russert's] memorial service because essentially he was a shill for the government." Maybe Lapham's thorough disassembling is so tasty this time around because the reverence for Russert (not to mention his son Luke) was so completely over the top: two days and three nights of televised memorial, or some 96 hours of airtime, by Lapham's count. Lapham's column is called "Elegy For A Rubber Stamp," entertains the concession that Russert was probably a good father and friend and Catholic, and then swifty moves on to saying Russert had "the on-air persona of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter," that his "stock in trade was the deftly pulled punch" and that Russert was a "pet canary." Further excerpts after the jump.

This Should Help With Those "Party Boy" Rumors: NBC head Ben Silverman, who's never let running a network get in the way of being a party-positive "rock star," will be guesting on the upcoming fifth season of Entourage, says Nikki Finke. What kind of storyline might the HBO brofest have in store for Silverman? We imagine that after sparking up a doob with Vincent at Teddy's, a jealous Johnny Drama will grunt to Turtle, "I want to go hang out with that guy!" Their quest to befriend Silverman will result in a hilarious B-story that ends as all Entourage plotlines do: indifferently, punctuated by loud outbursts from Jeremy Piven. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

While the New York Times spent hundreds of thousands of dollars sending dozens of reporters to Beijing for the Olympics, NBC spent hundreds of millions of dollars for broadcasting rights, only to leave a bunch of its announcers in cubicles in New York City. The Times (meta) reports that 13 different Olympic sports were deemed unimportant enough by NBC to have them called by announcers lounging around in jeans in an old Saturday Night Live studio, watching the action on TV. Oh, the glory of the Olympiad!

Electric Farm Entertainment, the production company behind NBC's new Web-only show Gemini Division, has already earned themselves a profit on the production. How? By lacing the show with consumer-electronics product placement from Intel, Cisco, and Microsoft, and striking distribution deals with NBC and Sony. NBC, however, might have a harder time making the project pay — the ads currently running on the site look like cheap, run-of network trash. Whose idea was it to advertise a fiber supplement alongside a sci-fi romp with Rosario Dawson that's clearly targeted to young, male viewers?That would be the new Digital Studio headed by Vivi Zigler, presumably. Hopefully the site will actually feature some video on the front page by the time the series launches on August 18. Now, it takes at least two clicks and a wait through a 15-second ad for said digestive supplement or headache pills just to get to a preview featuring Dawson vlogging. At least the headache pills are appropriate. It's nearly as difficult and frustrating as finding something to watch on NBC's Olympics site.

• News about Warner Music's Lyor Cohen's stock sales and compensation has sent the stock down nearly 10 percent. [Forbes]

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:

Traffic to NBCOlympics.com has likely already surpassed the 229 million pageviews garnered by the entire 2004 Athens Games, according to the network. Even so, users frustrated with the lack of full-screen video have already started to figure out workarounds. So where are people turning for better-quality Olympics video?Pirates are providing the highest-quality viewing experience for video-on-demand, with events being posted in HD even before they air on tape-delayed TV broadcasts in the United States. Torrents of the opening ceremonies, including a giant 5-gigabyte download of all four hours in HD, proved the most popular television programming available on file-sharing networks this week. And while event organizers and network operatives continue to play whack-a-mole with illegitimate live streams, where there's a will, there's a way on the Web. Want to know where to look? Check out our handy guide.