· Universal and Fox bring Peter Jackson and wife Fran Walsh on as executive producers of their co-production of Halo, buying some very expensive insurance against the possibility that yet another video game movie will be a disaster. [Variety]
· NBC has picked up the "back nine" episodes for My Name is Earl, greatly increasing the chances that we're going to be subjected to a full season's worth of the network's Satan's-nails-on-a-chalkboard-in-hell promotional campaign. [THR]
· Tony Scott abandons his directing duty on Touchstone/Bruckheimer project Deja Vu due to "logistical and scheduling problems" resulting from the destruction of New Orleans, where the movie was set to shoot. Indeed, those pesky natural disasters can really mess up a production schedule. [Variety]
· Seemingly unaware that the season premiere of Will & Grace has ruined the live-TV stunt for all time, CBS and George Clooney (of "not hosting Brangelina's wedding" fame) will team up for a live TV version of the Academy Award-winning film Network. [THR]
·Roland "The Independence Day After Tomorrow" Emmerich will direct 10,000 B.C. for Columbia pictures, which follows "three stages in the development of primitive man." We can't wait to see what it looks like when caveman society is ravaged by incredible explosions. [Variety]

· NBC greenlights the hourlong comedic drama pilot Heist, to be directed by Doug Liman. The show "is an 'Ocean's Eleven'-style hour about a group of thieves who'll spend the season engineering and executing a grand scheme to simultaneously rob three Rodeo Drive jewelry stores. The twist: They're planning to pull off the job during Oscar week." Liman's pilot has been optimistically budgeted for $175 million. [Variety]
· One day, there will be only two things on your television: A faint distress signal* originating from an inflatable raft after the Great Biblical Flood of 2021, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. [THR]
· Cancellation watch: NBC pulls Inconceivable from this week's schedule, though it's scheduled to return on the 14th. Looks like fertility drama fans can kiss their televised turkey basters goodbye. [Variety]
· With teams from four of the top six cities in the playoffs, FOX and ESPN are ready for big ratings. But should the Yankees and Red Sox not meet in the ALCS, both nets will petition MLB for do-overs until the correct results are achieved. [Variety]
· Filthiest trade-paper headline of the day: "Arnett, Shepard Get Wet at Par" [THR]

[*After 2019, mobile phones will have TV broadcasting capabilities.]

NBC's Kevin Reilly realizes that when you're in charge of a fourth-place network, you've got to shake things up a bit—think outside of the box, as it were—to reverse the disastrous descent into the dark Nielsen places occupied by the WB and UPN. Today, Reilly heralded the launch of the NBC Entertainment Idea Box, a web-based system through which his employees can transmit their craziest, paradigm-shifting thoughts to the appropriate decision makers—for awards and cash prizes! The e-mail follows:

Today's LAT looks at the New York Television Festival, a showcase of independent TV projects currently being circled by a predictably hit-hungry swarm of Hollywood vultures. But despite the obvious comparison to the entertainment industry's annual orgy at Robert Redford's resort, NBC's Kevin Reilly says that the fest's not exactly Sundance:

· Sony Pictures Classics unofficially begins the Oscar season by sending out screeners of Junebug five months before the awards ceremony, ensuring that their little film will be forgotten long before any ballots are mailed. Meanwhile, no one seems to want to use Cinea's magic antipiracy DVD players. [Variety]
· NBC wins a bidding war with ABC over Victor Fresco's high-concept sitcom "centering on a twentysomething average Joe whose world is turned upside down when he realizes that his life is being driven by supernatural forces representing good and evil." Sounds considerably more interesting than Life on a Stick, Fresco's last show, which was high-concept only in that it seemed designed to invite immediate cancellation. But a new, lucrative deal always takes the sting out of a quick hook, doesn't it? [THR]
· Renee Zellweger, taking a break from the exhausting work of entering into and quickly annulling marriages with gay-seeming country music stars, is in talks to crinkle up her face in Miss Potter, the story of writer Beatrix Potter. [Variety]
· Fox and NBC get nutty with early series pick-ups, ordering more episodes of Prison Break, American Dad, and The Office. [THR]
· HBO gives a script commitment to the Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson, Larry Charles, and Rick Rubin (Rick Rubin? Wha?) comedy project Bert & Dickie, about an "odd-couple standup comedy team that can't ever manage to come out on top — personally or professionally." Nice to see The Stallion finally conquer the small screen, even if he's just writing. [Variety]
· Kate Winslet is in final negotiations to give Cameron Diaz some much-needed acting lessons. [THR]

We sampled the debut of Martha Stewart's version of The Apprentice last night, and it seems like she's a little bit unclear on the concept. After she dismissed the first hopeful with that terribly ineffectual catchphrase, "You just don't fit in," she's heard in voice-over—and then pictured—writing the unwanted candidate a letter on beautiful stationery. It's all way too toothless and civilized. On the new season of Trump's show, the castoffs are dipped in barbecue sauce and locked in the back of the limo with a dozen rabid weasels while the cameras roll. The trying-too-hard-to-be-nice Martha Stewart stops just short of naming a shade of paint after each week's loser. It's like she had all the icy bitch poncho'd out of her in prison.

Judging from last night's strong opening night Nielsens, much of the viewing public wasn't as actively turned off by NBC's wildly intrusive Earl-awareness campaign as we were, but another report of one of their unconventional promotions we'd didn't know about has come in:

· The WGA West elects Patric Verrone president and installs his entire Writers United slate, giving him "a mandate to follow through on the efforts...to organize animation, cable and the reality TV sector." Translation: There will be many more people to hold up picket signs for the strike in 2007. [Variety]
· Fox will donate 10% of the box office proceeds from the opening weekend of Roll Bounce to Katrina victims, and will screen the movie free before opening night at 80 shelters in the gulf coast, assuring that the refugees' basic human need for period rollerskating movies will not go unmet. [THR]
· Harrison Ford will take some time off between helicopter rescues to star in the Civil War drama Manhunt as the leader of search for Lincoln's assassin. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Ford will play the character of Col. Everton Conger with a poorly practiced Russian accent. [Variety]
· My Name is Earl has a big debut for NBC, temporarily keeping the trap door underneath president Kevin Reilly's desk from opening and dropping him into a pile of the moldering bones of other failed executives. God help us all if Earl's success brings a new wave of even more incredibly annoying advertising. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Germans and CZJ Edition: Catherine Zeta-Jones signs on to star in Mostly Martha, the American remake of the German romantic dramedy Bella Martha. She will play a chef, whom we assume will have her icy heart melted by something or other as she learns the true value of love. [Variety]

· "Got Jeff Zucker fired. I'm sorry. My Name is Earl." TMFTML adds a much needed splash of truth to NBC's Earl-awareness campaign. And while we're on the subject, we heard an Earl radio ad today in which a bunch of friends actually discussed those incredibly annoying talking magazine ads. Advertising about advertising? What. The. Fuck. NBC's brain-damaged promotional team must be stopped.
· Rebecca Romijn decides to make a serious commitment to slumming with Jerry O'Connell.
· Someone really needs to remind Teri Hatcher (and this publicist) that she didn't get that Emmy. Diva bullshit is for winners, babe.
· With so many washed-up pseudocelebrities desperate for attention in this town, The Surreal Life should be able to assemble a much better cast of the damned than Alexis Arquette, CC Deville, and the guy from Smashmouth.

· HBO won't pick up another season of The Comeback, mercifully euthanizing the eternally suffering fictional actress Valerie Cherish and sending real-life counterpart Lisa Kudrow to the unemployment line. Goodbye, Valerie, you're going to a better place, one where Paulie G can't abuse you and you'll no longer have dog poop in your hair. [Variety]
· Shitergy update, pigskin edition: NBC plans to adapt corporate sibling Universal's Friday Night Lights into a television series, planned to arrive at the—here it comes—same time that the NFL returns to their network. [Variety]
· Brad Garrett wasn't talking shit when he joked about a Raymond spinoff at the Emmys, as talks for his own show are underway. [THR]
· The Emmys were up 30 percent in the 18-49 demo over a year ago, which isn't really saying much. The TV Academy should move them to NBC and finally finish them off. [Variety]
· Tom Sizemore signs on to develop a reality show about his life. Expect the Super Sizemore project to fulfill the suicidal promise reneged on by Breaking Bonaduce. [THR]

· Variety reminds you about the Emmy moments you may have slept through: Lost takes best drama, Raymond best comedy, Felicity Huffman beats out her fellow Housewives, HBO nabs the most awards overall, and as best comedy writing award winner Mitch Hurwitz would like to remind you, Arrested Development plunges headlong into a third straight season of teetering on the brink of cancellation. [Variety]
· THR analyzes various Emmy wins, including Raymond's statue-hogging last gasp: "How did 'Raymond' pull the comedy series upset? My theory is that voters looked at 'Housewives,' thought to themselves, 'I like this show, but it isn't particularly funny,' and then went with their heart rather than their head..." In other words, ABC's scheme to submit DH as a comedy exploded in its face. [THR]
· More Emmys? Yeah, we got that: Celebs wear ugly flowers to honor the victims of Katrina, but largely avoid going all Kanye West during the show. However, the Bush administration is expected to give serious consideration to Blythe Danner's call to bring our soldiers back from Iraq, but ultimately will double over in laughter and light their cigars with money earmarked for hurricane relief. [Variety]
· Martin Sheen will leave the White House to executive produce a sitcom for NBC through Warner Bros. TV. Brace yourself for the ensuing hilarity: "The show is described as loosely based on a situation that occurred in Sheen's extended family whereby a heterosexual man found himself living with his gay older brother and his brother's lover, all three of which are tasked with taking care of the straight man's ailing mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, however, is a fundamentalist Christian and thus is kept in the dark about the true relationship between the gay couple." [THR]
· Project Greenlight update! First season winner Pete "Stolen Summer" Jones sells his comedy script, Hall Pass, to 20th Century Fox as a possible directing vehicle for the Farrelly brothers. [Variety]

Demonstrating that he's certainly no "blubbering basket case" passively waiting for another season-long Nielsen colonic, NBC president Kevin Reilly fired off an e-mail rallying cry to his troops this afternoon as the network prepares to launch its new Fall season. Things are really "sparking," he says, instantly conjuring an image of the fourth place pres struggling valiantly to conjure fire from a child-proof Bic, from which a nearby six year-old easily coaxes a two-foot flame. But putting aside our predictable negativity, Reilly maintains that they have a lot to look forward to:

• First the Democratic Party, now NBC: All our old friends are going after those dastardly God-fearing Red Staters. [NYT]
• Did you know CMJ is actually a magazine? Yeah, we were afraid of that. [Folio:]
• If we've got the chronology right: Jennifer Bleyer tripped through Dead show in Ohio, came to New York and found a shul on the Upper West Side, created Heeb, showed Howard Stern her ass, and quit the magazine. Then she wrote about it. [Nextbook]
• ASME wants to pick the best 40 magazine covers from the last 40 years, and we're betting none will feature Britney. [MW]
• NBC, CNN to open New Orleans news bureaus. Wow — U.S. TV neworks expanding their coverage. We never thought we'd see the day. [AP via USAT]
• Turns out that, yes, "I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport," can, in fact, get you fired from your school paper, even in North Carolina. [N&O]

With the Fall television season kicking off, networks are trying new and exciting ways to distinguish their shows from the others in a crowded marketplace. Blogging.la's Will Campbell came across an ad in Entertainment Weekly (fun fact: if you ignore those renewal notices, they eventually stop sending you new issues, thus freeing up your bathroom time for the consumption of actual literature!) for NBC's My Name is Earl that was so effective in its attention-grabbing mission that it demanded immediate destruction:

If you've not been following NBC anchor Brian Williams' blog, you certainly should be — at least for the sake of witnessing this new, "transparent" chapter in television news. From New Orleans, Williams writes:

By now, we imagine that nearly everyone is aware of Kanye West's incredible demonstration of his freestyling gifts on NBC's Friday evening "We Care the Most About Hurricane Relief Because Our Concert Was On First" telethon. (If not, here's a transcript.) We'll cut to the money shot, because we've already spent a good portion of the weekend recreating the exchange for friends who missed it: After West went off-book (kids, ask your acting coach!) to rant about the media's coverage of the hurricane (i.e., black people loot, white people find) and the government's response to the disaster, stunned co-presenter Mike Myers dutifully continued with the teleprompter script. West then punctuated the segment with the Sound Bite Heard 'Round The World: "George Bush doesn't care about black people." In the incredibly uncomfortable two seconds that followed, Myers registered a look of utter helplessness, as if wishing he could crawl into a protective cocoon of two hundred pounds of Fat Bastard latex, and NBC then quick-cut to a clearly unprepared Chris Tucker, who floundered about with some ad-libbed exhortations for people to help, help, help. And...scene. Live television history is made, Kanye West becomes a folk hero, and we're officially the 29,000th blog to offer a blow-by-blow of the events. SNL sketches to follow.

Surprise: No NBC News after Labor Day! This morning, NBC News president Neal Shapiro sent out an email rather abruptly announcing that Friday will be his last day on the job. TVNewser speculates Steve Capus will be named acting president, and so the band-aid is ripped off at the speed of light. Shapiro writes:

· NBC surprised and angered other networks by launching its preemptive hurricane benefit strike while they planned a cooperative, cross-net event, and they worry the NBC Friday concert will dilute the talent pool and audience for the relief effort. [Variety]
· NBC dispatches its own private security team to New Orleans to keep protect its employees reporting from the lawless post-Katrina city. [THR]
· When not bickering or competing for viewers with benefit specials, media conglomerates donate money to aid Katrina victims and establish matching gift programs for employees. [Variety]
· THR reviews MPAA sultan Dan Glickman's "rocky" first year on the job. Replacing the legendary Jack Valenti hasn't been easy, and Glickman still isn't quite comfortable adopting his predecessor's nightly ritual of bathing in the blood of movie pirates. [THR]
· The Weinsteins completely disregard Jessica Alba's rocking body and pouty, sultry lips, signing her to star in the psychological thriller Awake based only on her hard work and acting talent. Hayden Christensen will unconvincingly portray her husband. [Variety]

NBC entertainment president Kevin Reilly knows that you can't circle the ratings toilet in fourth place, a single flush away from the Nielsen annihilation of UPN or WB numbers, and not hear chatter that your job might be something less than secure. Reilly keeps his chin up for Broadcasting & Cable:

• New York mag launches major new ad campaign that involves replacing subway billboards every day. Because that's the big problem with waiting for the train: Not enough new reading material. [NYT]
• Is reality TV even worse for its writers than it is for the contestants? [CSM]
• Jon Friedman can't wait for the Conde business mag. [MW]
• Actually, Judy Miller is not having the time of her life in person, her husband now says. [WWD]
• What happens to NBC execs if this season bombs like last season? Bad thing happen, we imagine. [B&C]