From the moment an all-celebrity version of Donald Trump's ongoing, competitive reality TV work-placement extravaganza The Apprentice was announced, the world eagerly awaited word on which A-list talent the Manhattan land baron would select to fill the seats in his Board Room of the Damned. After winnowing down a list of 125 celebrity applicants ("They were all begging to be on the show..."), 14 were chosen:

"Why do we blog? We blog to exist," Dylan Kreiger told us in episode one of Quarterlife, your favorite Web TV show from real TV show Thirtysomething creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zick. And now we know why Herskovitz and Zick produce: They produce to exist. On network TV.

Every geek's favorite show of the moment Heroes is set to expire in three episodes due to the Writers Guild strike. What will the twitchy geeks do without their superhero fix? Fortunately, we have a solution. Have you ever noticed that Yahoo vice president Jeff Weiner, rumored to be on the outs with new president Sue Decker, bears an uncanny resemblance to Heroes villain Sylar? Or that CEO and cofounder Jerry Yang could stand in for the cuddly, bespectacled Hiro Nakamura? That's right: Substitute the hit show's cast with Yahoo's management team, and let the boardroom drama play out. No script necessary.

Wowza, everyone wants a piece of the YouTube market. During its third-quarter earnings call, Vivendi revealed plans to test a new content platform dubbed Zaoza that will mash together social networking and entertainment products together into an indistinguishable pulp. The running suspicion is Vivendi is setting up a site akin to the NBC Universal/News Corp. venture Hulu — never mind that Vivendi already has an interest in Hulu, through its 20 percent stake in NBC.

Following a recent mission of dolphin-saving mercy off the coast of Japan to prevent the slaughter of her favorite ocean-bound mammals (a commemorative tattoo of a pair of playful bottlenoses circling her navel is being custom-designed as we speak), indestructible Heroes cheerleader Hayden Panettiere now finds herself a fugitive from international justice for her interference in Pacific Rim commerce. Reports E! News:

We might scoff at News Corp. and NBC's claims that their joint video project, Hulu, is capable of taking down YouTube, but the site isn't above stealing a page from Google's playbook. Alongside its own hosted video, Hulu's search database will cull links to rival networks' shows — particularly those hosted on Hulu distribution partners like AOL. Hulu might never become a one-stop video destination like YouTube, but it's positioning itself as a rival to Google in video search.

· NBC drops out of the Television Critics Association winter press tour due to the writers strike, a move that will rob reporters of the chance to witness a retaliatory beatdown of Peacock perfect storm Ben Silverman by the network-running rivals he recently disparaged as "D-girls". [Variety]
· Entourage's Kevin Dillon joins Emma Roberts, Don Cheadle and Lisa Kudrow in hotly anticipated canine-housing drama Hotel for Dogs. [THR]
· Wistfully envisioning a time when writers and studios can once again skip down Hollywood Blvd hand-in-hand, New Line signs Neil LaBute to script a remake of The Woman Next Door once the strike is over. Helen Mirren's husband [Ed. note—HAAACKFORD!] to direct. [Variety]

There are women on the Internet. Did you know? Madison Avenue is just figuring this out, desperately looking for websites to stuff with female-targeted ad dollars. Lifetime, the cable network, just launched its own social network, mylifetime.com, with a lot of help from Glam Media's stable of female-centric blogs. Similarly, Warner Bros. announced entertainment and advice destination Mom Logic. Martha Stewart has launched Martha's Circle, an online ad network which represents other websites, and NBC Universal's iVIllage has struck a similar deal with Sugar Publishing. "It's kind of boring to say, but we really think content's king in this category," said Starcom's Jeff Marshall to AdAge. Boring, and false. The rule these days is sell the ads first, and find a place to put them later.

· Even though the WGA strike might wipe out a significant portion of this so-far underwhelming Fall season, there's still some good news for TV: most shows have produced enough episodes that the Academy may not have to cancel the Emmys, an awards show that rivals the average picket line in thrills-per-minute even in years when it's not hampered by labor strife. [Variety]
· E! further fortifies its lineup of strike-proof programming by picking up a second season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a show they can easily spin off into separate series following each member of the Hollywood's bustiest, semifamous family should the need for even more mindless schedule-filler arise. [THR]

Because Apple CEO Steve Jobs wouldn't give NBC a piece of iPod sales, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker announced plans to yank his network's content from Apple's iTunes store in August. Over the weekend, NBC launched an ad-supported download site, NBC Direct. The word so far? So far, so dreadful. But at least they're trying.

· The writers strike could result in a windfall for Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who are reportedly in talks with NBC for the acquisition of blogtastic new online series Quarterlife, which is scheduled to premiere on the MySpaces on Sunday. If the alleged deal should fall through, forward-thinking network president Ben Silverman will announce that once he's out of new episodes of Bionic Woman, he'll run an hour of grainy YouTube footage of cheerleading-competition bloopers in its place. [THR]
· Had enough of the writers strike yet? Good news: a newer, fresher walkout by the stagehands union could be on its way, forcing Broadway productions to go dark. As we've said before: Strike fever, catch it! [Variety]
· A two-hour, crossover block of CSI/Without a Trace episodes brought CBS a ratings victory Thursday night, as viewers flocked to the network to enjoy every moment of their last few weeks of barely differentiated crime-procedural programming. [THR]

In its new issue, Esquire profiles compulsively quotable NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman, who apparently has not been too busy monitoring the foreign airwaves for lowbrow, easily importable reality TV formats he can plug into the holes the writers strike will soon blow in his network's schedule to publicly invite his favorite rivals over for a good, old-fashioned dick-measuring contest. We begin with Silverman's dismissal of network nemeses Kevin "The One Whose Job I Was Begged To Take" Reilly (now of Fox) and Steve "I Gave Him A Huge Hit He Didn't Even Want" McPherson as D-girls, fightin' words if we've ever heard any:

Completing a rite of passage that all late-night talk show hosts must eventually endure as their careers progress—something about the combination of a darkened room, the midnight hour, and a flickering TV screen seem to create unhealthy comedian/schizophrenic attachments—Conan O'Brien has earned the stalky affections of a Catholic priest from Boston, who was arrested in NY last Friday after sending unhinged letters on parish letterhead, threatening O'Brien's parents, and trying to crash a taping of his favorite show:

NBC paid "Perverted Justice," the outfit that impersonates children and rounds up would-be perverts for "To Catch A Predator," $802,520 last year. The non-profit's CEO, Xavier Von Erck, who expects to make $2 million in consulting fees in 2008, responded to questions from Radar about the group: "Thanks for contacting us for comment, John. Unfortunately, you're not a legitimate reporter, you're just a rather scummy fellow who writes for a tabloid rag. Other than being told that you're a scummy hack who resembles a stalker more than a journalist, we don't have any comment for you...." [Radar]

It may not be Christmas yet, but AOL CEO Randy Falco is feeling downright jolly despite the company's recent layoffs of thousands of employees. At a roast held in his honor by the Center for Communication, Falco traded quips with execs from NBC Universal, where he worked before joining AOL. After his former colleagues made fun of laid-off AOLers, Falco proceeded to play an audio recording of a call where he supposedly pitched incoming Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on switching AOL from a subscription business to advertising. One small problem: Former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, the man whom Falco replaced, actually came up with that idea. So, to review:

Hollywood writers are protesting in the street. They want a bigger piece of royalty payments studios earn when movies and TV shows find their way to the Internet and DVDs. The images from the scene are gruesome as police officers wield billy clubs to beat the protesting hordes back to work. Wait, no, those are images from Multan, Pakistan, where lawyers are fighting autocrats in the street. Still, this remains a very serious issue. No matter what you might think after viewing this SNL explanation of the news. (And yes, we suspect the writers aren't getting paid for this one, either.)

· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Reheated Edition: Sylvester Stallone is in talks to direct and star in an MGM remake of Charles Bronson's 1974 vigilante-justice classic, Death Wish. Stallone's reimagined version, however, will focus on an aging action star who seeks bloody retribution against studio executives who've collectively decided he's too old to carry an original feature. [Variety]
· Spotted on the all-star WGA picket line in front of NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters: 30 Rock's Tina Fey, SNL's Seth Meyers, and The Daily Show's John Oliver. [THR]
· Meanwhile, Meyers and Fey's NBC writer/performer peers from The Office have been ordered to show up at work to perform their acting duties during the strike. [Variety]

· A mere nine years after the first X-Files film surfaced in theaters, Fox announces that the second of Mulder and Scully's big-screen adventures (a reteaming, if you will) will arrive on July 25, 2008, a project that will begin shooting in December in Vancouver, far away from the picket lines of Los Angeles. [Variety]
· Joss Whedon reteams (we love it when people reteam) with former Buffy cast member Eliza Dushku for Fox's Dollhouse, getting a seven-episode commitment from the network for an idea that struck Whedon in between bites of a Caesar salad while lunching with the actress. [THR]

In the current contract, writers only get paid when viewers actually buy the content online, like from iTunes, for example. Problem is, the broadcast networks aren't exactly enamored with the online-retail model. Just ask NBC CEO Jeff Zucker. The broadcast business has always been ad-supported, which is why NBC and News Corp are comfortable with Hulu and the Disney-ABC Television Group signed a deal with AOL Video. And naturally, writers want a cut of the ad dollars, too.

Methinks NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker ought to worry a little more about getting more viewers for his little TV network than about squeezing more money out of Apple. NBC ranked fourth in the ratings last week, stomped by Dancing with the Stars and my Red Sox winning the World Series. [AP]