· Golden Globes producers await a decision on whether or not the WGA will grant their (probably doomed) waiver request to allow striking writers to whip them up a script, a wish that they've already granted for their supportive bretheren in SAG's upcoming awards show. Meanwhile, the industry wonders who'll be willing to cross the picket line to attend the Globes ceremony. [Variety]
· Fox pushes back Avatar, director James Cameron's much-anticipated return to theaters, from Memorial Day 2009 to December 18th, then spackles that mid-year holiday weekend hole with Ben Stiller's Night a the Museum sequel. [THR]

NBC and News Corp.'s joint Web-video venture Hulu remains in an invitation-only beta. But if you can't wait to access "Conan the Barbarian" online, blogger Matt Schlicht has your workaround. It's called OpenHulu. It's full of embedded Hulu videos like Arrested Development clip below. Other than whatever cash he's earning from Google ads he runs on the site, why's Schlicht taking so much time to index Hulu's content? "It's mainly the satisfaction of sticking it to the man and bending the rules," Schlict tells Last100. Sticking it to The Man by promoting his ad-supported content on your site and stirring up as much enthusiasm for his product as possible. Yeah! That'll teach him!

NBC has started the painful process of issuing refunds — about $500,000 apiece — to advertisers. Why? The network is not meeting prime-time ratings projections. Something to do with a bunch of greedy, striking writers who I fully blame for the rather hurried, ramshackle conclusion of Heroes' second season. But it's hard to fault the Writers Guild when NBC, along with every other network on the planet, is making a huge push onto the Web — Hulu, NBC Direct, and other online means of stiffing the writers. But NBC isn't the only one who will be hemorrhaging cash. According to Mediaweek, ratings are so poor that most networks are out of makegoods — free ad airtime to compensate for shortfalls — and will be forced to issue refunds like NBC. Worse news: If the strike continues, NBC plans to fill its programming gaps with reality TV. YouTube's looking better and better every day.

Wannabe online-ad giant Microsoft has scored a deal to serve ads for CNBC.com. The site's previous ad provider was soon-to-be-Google-subsidiary DoubleClick. This would be more impressive if Microsoft and NBC didn't already share considerable Web ties, like their MSNBC.com joint venture. [Silicon Alley Insider]

For all those whining about Hulu's video quality, the NBC-News Corp. venture as added high-definition content to its Web library. Right now, offerings are limited to a few movie trailers, but we're betting shows will pop up in HD before long. Not that that solves Hulu's terrible interface or lack of selection, of course. [NewTeeVee]

· Paramount acquires the rights to the life of spy Kathi Lynn Austin, whose arms-trafficking and terrorism-related adventures could become "an action vehicle" for Angelina Jolie that will ultimately bear little to no resemblance to the intelligence operative's real life. [Variety]
· To help CBS survive the strike/break the wills of writers, Les Moonves plans to repurpose edited versions of Showtime series like Dexter for use on his content-starved broadcast network, though it's unclear whether this idea will include a fucking-lite version of Californication. [THR]
· Publicists love Judd Apatow! He'll be named 2007's "outstanding film showman" at the 45th annual Flackies. [Variety]

· Hoping to heal the emotional damage he once inflicted upon national treasure Steven Spielberg by declaring the director's possible departure from his corporate family "completely immaterial," Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman offered a conciliatory flurry of hugs, kisses and a vigorous foot massage to the icon he once offended, calling him "one of the great filmmakers of our time and actually of all time," and promising that "We're going to proceed with calm, with deliberateness, and our entire objective is to focus on making him happy doing what he's doing. Whatever makes him happy and makes us happy will be the way it works out" as they continue to try and salvage their relationship. [Variety]
· The strike clock, as always, is ticking: if things aren't settled "in the next few weeks," pilot season—and the booze-drenched upfronts parties TV reporters so look forward to each year—could be lost. [THR]

Turns out, as we heard, that Oxygen has indeed shitcanned a whole slew of people—25 percent of its staff, actually. The company fired 65 employees across various departments. The news comes two months after NBC announced it was buying the network and just two weeks after the sale was completed. Anyone getting the feeling that violence will be up more than usual over the holidays?
Previously: NBC Makes Oprah, Paul Allen Slightly Richer

About a week after the controversial announcement was made that Carson Daly would cross his writers on the picket line and return to Last Call, the highest-rated late-late night talk show among graveyard-shift convenience store clerks looking for a break from watching closed circuit video feeds of their empty parking lots, the embattled host finally returned to the airwaves Monday.

NBC and Apple have finally parted ways. All NBC Universal shows have been removed from iTunes completely after talks to renew their contract fell apart. Disagreements on pricing led the partnership, once hailed for saving NBC's The Office, to founder. But Apple found an unlikely replacement: News Corp.'s Fox studio, NBC's joint-venture partner in online-video site Hulu.

Until we saw this clip from Larry King Live last night, we honestly had no clue how hard Johnny Carson made things for our secretly favorite Dancing with the Stars contestant, Wayne Newton, who couldn't pull on a single, sequined polyester outfit and launch into song in a Las Vegas floorshow without having the late night despot crack some crass joke questioning his sexuality. (And later, he claims, finagling him a spot on a Mafia's Most Wanted hit list.)

· Sports-specialist writer/director Ron "Bull Durham/Tin Cup/Cobb" Shelton will helm a movie about steroid-enhanced home run king Barry Bonds based on the book Game of Shadows for HBO Films, a cinematic journey through Bond's clear-and-cream-lubricated pursuit of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron that Shelton and his writing partner plan to undertake after the conclusion of the writers strike. [Variety]
· The heads of some media conglomerates are trying not to ruin their relationships with the writers they'll one day have to collaborate with by biting their tongues during the strike, resisting the tantalizing impulse to publicly brand them as "greedy residual monkeys" whenever contacted for comment about the ongoing labor dispute. [THR]

NBC Universal, in its ongoing effort to throw Steve Jobs into a jealous rage, is wooing every other feller with a video service in sight. In its man-harem: Jeff Bezos, with Amazon Unbox, and Jason Kilar, CEO of its joint venture with News Corp. Hulu. Add to the list Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. NBC has wooed Hastings into a syndication deal. As Apple used to do on iTunes, Netflix will offer new episodes of Heroes the day after they air, alongside a library of prior 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, and The Office shows. Looks like someone can finally stop whining about the gaping hole left by the iTunes pullout.

So successful (read: chock full of cute, single writers) was the inaugural Gay Gate march outside Raleigh Studios that the organizers have already called for a sequel. Gay Gate 2: Return to Oz is slated for tomorrow at 10 a.m. outside NBC. Why NBC? A gay striker explains in a rallying e-mail:

I got hooked on iTunes TV shows last year, marathoning my way through Battlestar Galactica and then Lost. My TV-hating wife went from rolling her eyes to rolling up a chair to watch with me. But NBC has yanked the rug. My favorite shows of the moment — Galactica and the outstandingly witty 30 Rock — are no longer being added to iTunes. They're on Hulu, the new NBC/News Corp. site. I hate Hulu, for four very good reasons.

If you were one of the many horny mailroom clerks, assistants, or bosses who quietly snatched out of the nearest recycling bin the issue of Variety featuring a tantalizing glimpse of Heroes's Hayden Panettiere's stretchy, crimson underthings, we bring news of an exciting charitable opportunity currently underway at the NBC Universal Auction Store:

Responding to Tuesday's reports that not only was Carson Daly choosing to be the first late night talk show host to cross the WGA picket line and return to work without his striking scribes, but that he'd undertaken a hilariously ill-advised e-mail campaign to organize friends and family into an ad-hoc staff of gag-writing scabs, the Guild announced late yesterday that it was tearing every last TRL-era Tiger Beat magazine cover featuring Daly's smirking image from their headquarters' walls in protest, releasing this statement of Official Disappointment:

The Smoking Gun has obtained an e-mail circulated by picket-line-crossing late-night talk show host Carson Daly, in which he personally petitions friends, family, and co-workers to call in to a "joke hotline," on which they can contribute some pro bono comic material for him to play on the air.

CafeMom, a social networking site for the maternal set, was the No. 1 destination for women in October, according to ComScore. CafeMom, with 90 million pageviews, beat out other female-centric sites such as BabyCenter, NBC's iVillage, Oprah.com and MarthaStewart.com. [Mashable]