· Did you miss last night's premiere of Semi-celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump and NBC's attempt to breathe new life into a moribund reality franchise by asking Gene Simmons, Big Pussy, a professional naked person, and a lesser Baldwin (there are other cast members, probably, but we can't think of them off the top of our head—oh, Omarosa's on it too!) to sell hot dogs? We did. But after watching this three-minute recap, we feel like we're all caught up and ready for next week's episode. (Spoilers ahead if you click the thumbnail to watch the vdieo.)
· Clearly, changing the title of Welcome to Valkenvania to Nothing But Trouble doomed the Chase/Aykroyd/Candy/Moore classic to failure.
· "I always wanted to be No. 1 at something, but I didn't think it would be something like this."
· Depending on the type of person you are, what you see at this site is either going to make or ruin your weekend.

Lazy, scummy, and smart. That's just the way we like them. YouTube-wannabe Veoh has jumped into Hulu's hoop by adding streaming video from all the Fox and NBC properties we know and love. Only, unlike Hulu, a joint venture between NBC and News Corp., or any of its distribution partners, Veoh hasn't actually worked out any licensing deals. Rather, it's following the smarter tactic pioneered by OpenHulu of embedding Hulu videos into its own site.

· Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch emerge from their jacuzzi-bound tete-a-tete with a new deal in place that allows iTunes users to "rent" Fox movies. [Variety]
· The stock prices of major media conglomerates have "barely budged" in the eight weeks since the writers strike started, but investment experts warn that Howie Mandel getting so much as a splinter would result in dramatic fluctuations. [Variety]
· The WGA hired Democratic strategists Bill Carrick and Kam Kuwata. Carrick "oversaw the campaign of former Los Angeles mayor James Hahn against current Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the gubernatorial campaign of Treasurer Phil Angelides against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger." Um... [Variety]
· Meanwhile, networks who formerly seemed destined to never get along are mending fences like never before: For the first time in history, NBC and CBS will both be airing the same Patriots season finale game. [THR]
· The Kingdom director Peter Berg is in talks to join Edwin A. Salt, a movie about a CIA officer "fingered as a Russian sleeper spy." Tom Cruise is attached to play the fingered Russian. [THR]

Hollywood, abetted by Internet pundits, has drawn the wrong lesson from the rise of YouTube: that the only way to make cash on the Internet is to offer bite-sized chunks of content. Hence Quarterlife, the microshow about 20-nothing artists. The only reason anyone cares about it is NBC picked it up for broadcast distribution, impressed by Quarterlife's 700,000-viewer debut, and will splice together 8-minute Web segments into six hour-long episodes that will air on broadcast TV this February. The only problem is that Quarterlife episodes, shown on YouTube and MySpace, are now averaging a mere 100,000 viewers.

Thought Monday's round-up was smothered in weak sauce? Just wait until you see today's!
· Jay-Z is retiring again—from his position as the president of Def Jam records. We totally foresaw this earth-shattering development when he tellingly rapped, "I hydroplane into fame/Come'n down with the Dow Jones/When the clouds come we gone" on "Umbrella." [Variety]
· "Classic" acts dominated 2007's concert business, with half of the top 20 tours having started their careers in the '70s. We set this news to the comforting strains of The Eagles' "Long Road Out Of Eden," evocatively covered in proto-spiritual sand dune imagery and available at a Wal-Mart near you. [Variety]

There have been 13 ten-minute episodes so far, and here's what you've missed: our girl Dylan is a considerably less-endearing, blander Angela Chase in her twenties who works at "Women's Attitude" magazine and doesn't know what to do with her life. Then she starts blogging because she's a "writer," often addressing her webcam directly between bouts of pacing her bedroom.

Is the entertaining feud between delightfully unedited NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman and ABC's Steve McPherson spilling over into their networks' primetime schedules? ABC just moved the last new episode of Nielsen juggernaut Grey's Anatomy to January 10th, forcing NBC to shift the premiere of Celebrity Apprentice for the second time this week in apparent attempts to get the vulnerable show out of Grey's destructive path. There is no truth to the rumor that McPherson's scheduling move was announced to Silverman via the delivery of a muffin basket accompanied by a note reading, "Who's the little D-girl now, Big Ben?" [THR]

The beta testers on Hulu, News Corp. and NBC's video site, like hot girls just as much as the rest of us. The two most viewed videos of all time? A clip from 30 Rock called "Wear a Bra" and another from Keeping Up with The Kardashians that showcases a comely blonde sunbathing. See both videos after the jump. Other top clips? Most from Saturday Night Live, including "Lazy Sunday," the video that kickstarted YouTube for the masses, and Natalie Portman rapping.

I saw a theme this morning as I perused the various other tech sites: Hulu invites! Hulu, the video-streaming partnership between News Corp. and NBC, is throwing open its doors to many early adopters by offering up thousands of invites on several tech sites. If you haven't gotten a chance to play around with Hulu and want to see just what the hell Paul Boutin is complaining about, here's your chance. GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, TechCrunch, and Mashable are giving away 2,500 invites each. All, we note, are clients of Federated Media, John Battelle's online-ad network. Coincidence, conspiracy, or just part of a future Hulu advertising campaign?

While NBC Universal and News Corp. keep Hulu, their online-video joint venture, under invitation-only wraps, OpenHulu, an independent website which appears to be legally embedding Hulu videos, is actually starting to earn some cash. Not only that, but it's getting a little attention from potential buyers, too. Not bad for just copying and pasting chunks of HTML code.

Well, that didn't take very long: The first new American Gladiator with a gay porn past has been revealed by our foam-baton -and- sandal-fetishist cousins over at Fleshbot. As he's described in his official website bio, Militia is a force to be reckoned with, measuring at "6-foot, 3-inch, 220-pounds," with "an impressive arsenal of skills at his disposal," including, but not limited to, the tennis ball cannon he appears to be smuggling in his shorts.

Starved for content as his network exhausts its reservoir of scripted programming, NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman says he'll soon repurpose episodes of USA's Monk and Psych to run on the Peacock flagship, but he claims the plan is more long-planned corporate shitergy than a strike-induced panic move. "A lot of this we would be doing anyway,' he said, according to TV Week. "The strike is pointing a flashlight on it.'" He then continued, his once-brave facade suddenly cracking, "Did you see how badly Clash of the Choirs shit the bed last night? My entire universe is crumbling around me. If dueling gangs of gospel singers isn't going to be a hit, I don't have a clue what's going to get us through until we get The Office back." [TV Week]

In news sure to rock the voiceover world, the Eat the Press blog's audio forensics lab has revealed that the new, disembodied voice of NBC Nightly News is...[SFX: drumroll] Michael Douglas. (In fairness, we should note that some false positives—like Richard Dreyfuss and Alan Alda—preceded the final announcement.) We're not sure which NBC official is responsible for this coup, but we wouldn't be surprised if co-chairman/designated big-idea-haver Ben Silverman called up boss Jeff Zucker and demanded that he patch this latest hole in the their leaky network with the finest celebrity spackle available. [Eat the Press]

More American Gladiators:
Mayhem: We told you Isaiah Washington would land on his feet. [AmGlad]

At least seven NBC News and CNBC producers and other assorted editorial staff are getting an extra-long holiday vacation. It 'tis the season after all. At least NBC is showing some sense cutting back on its television production staff — CBS Interactive is letting go about 20 CBSNews.com staffers. Apparently the Tiffany network hasn't heard that Web video is the new hotness.

American Gladiators first impressions, continued:
Toa: His bio states that "with his tribal garb and distinctive tattoos, he may conjure up images of an island paradise," although not with the force or immediacy that he conjures up images of a late-90's frat boy getting the "sweet ink" he'll come to regret when he starts going on job interviews. [AmGlad]

Conan O'Brien's parent company NBC Universal has just been sued over a Clay Aiken gay joke. (Is specifying "gay" joke a waste of typing?) The catch: the suit hasn't been filed by Mr. Aiken. This one comes straight from bodybuilder Dennis "The Menace" James, the Idol also-ran's punchline lust-object:

We get out of bed for days like these: The new American Gladiator bios are up on the NBC website. The return of American Gladiators. How has it taken this long? It's a mystery almost as profound as how a show about dedicated steroid-users shooting tennis balls out of a tennis-ball-shooting-gun at casual steroid-users ever went off the air in the first place. Regardless, it could not have picked a better moment for its triumphant return to the airwaves, as the unprecedented bloodlust of the American public's taste in entertainment dovetails perfectly with the unprecedented aversion of moguls and execs to give any money to talented people. We'll be glancing at the bios throughout the day. These are the real heroes. (Sorry, Hayden.)

Even though she's far too young to have experienced the early-1980s TV adventures of fashionably hirsute, Members Only-sponsored freedom fighter David Hasselhoff and his wisecracking—-but fiercely loyal!—Trans Am during Knight Rider's original, blockbuster run, we still dispatched Defamer videographer Molly McAleer to NBC's Burbank headquarters for today's event announcing the February premiere of the two-hour Rider movie they hope will relaunch the franchise into another series, figuring that she's squarely in the demographic their newfangled primetime product is targeting.

In another "We don't need no stinking iTunes" ploy, the NBC Direct download service will offer high-definition videos. Feign surprise. It turns out NBC partnered with peer-to-peer tech company Pando so it could distribute hi-def on the cheap. [TechCrunch]