As many of you pointed out, the dancer was actually wearing flesh-colored briefs under her dress. The network provided photos to the Washington Post's TV Column today, where you can clearly see the underwear. Guess everyone who said a female dancer was too smart to go on a TV show wearing a skirt without any protection was right.

However, the mock scandal was good for ratings. The ratings went up by about two million viewers for the show that aired the day after the news broke. And when the show's ratings are just at 7 million people, they need every pair of eyeballs they can get, even if that means using a transparent pair of undies to get them there.

It means that we will miss out on our favorite part of the television season, where, after all the months of hype, a bunch of shows fail spectacularly and are canceled after only a few weeks. Usually that time of year is right now, and so far we only have one casualty (RIP TBL). Fuck this series of slow deaths, we miss our annual massacre!

It also means that we're going to be stuck with NCIS: Los Angeles and a host of other crap for the long haul. It also means that, while many are performing well, thanks to NBC and their awful Jay Leno experiment, there are actually fewer series premieres this year than usual. It even further means there are fewer people watching network television. You know when your show doesn't even crack 10 million and it's considered a big victory times are getting tough.

Here's a breakdown of how everything is doing so far:

The Good:

• NCIS: Los Angeles (CBS) is the clear breakout hit with 18.7 million on its debut, proving once again that Americans love shitty television.
• The Good Wife (CBS) bobbled most of it's lead in, but pulled in an excellent 13.7 million viewers and won its time slot. Way to go, Carol Hathaway!
• Modern Family (ABC) rode positive ratings to a 12.7 million bow and its companion Cougar Town (ABC) was right behind it with 11.6.
• Flash Forward (ABC) predicted itself 12.4 million viewers, so we'll at least see how the mystery ends. Still, it's no Lost.
• The Vampire Diaries only scared up 4.8 million (shit more teenage girls than that stand wailing out front of Robert Pattinson's hotel room on a daily basis), but that was The CW's highest debut ever.
• The Cleveland Show (Fox) did just about as well as Family Guy with a 9.4 million on a Sunday night.
• Accidentally on Purpose (CBS) made 9 million people not laugh.
• The Forgotten (ABC) and Eastwick (ABC) were just on the right side of average with 9.5 and 9.3 million respectively.
• Though the numbers for Glee (Fox) weren't the highest at 7.3 million, it's still being considered a victory since a show this good and quirky actually seems to be finding some sort of audience.

The Bad:

• The Jay Leno Show (NBC) started out nice and strong with an amazing 18 million, but then fell to 5.7 million a week later and its ratings continue to go up and down a bit, but usually lands at the bottom of the pile. Please, please, make the unfunny stop!
• Community (NBC) also had a strong debut, keeping most of the run-off from the Office for an audience of 7.7 million. However, the next week, more than 2 million checked out and its ratings were down to 5.4 million.
• Medical drama Mercy (NBC) will be on life support soon, with only 8.2 checking it out on it's first Wednesday night. Yes, NBC officially sucks.

The Ugly:

• Brothers (Fox) started off with 2.8 million. Let's see how long it holds on.
• Melrose Place is hobbling along with only 2.3 million viewers in its opening week, and not much more since then. The network has ordered more episodes and Heather Locklear is set to come back in November, so lets hope she can breathe life into this thing for the second time.
• The Beautiful Life (CW) already got it's ass canceled. We blame Mischa Barton's wisdom teeth.

In an historic breakthrough bringing us one step closer to the moment when all media folds in on itself and swallows the universe, Fox TV has announced plans to develop the website, "Texts From Last Night" into a TV series.

The website invites people to share "the text messages you shouldn't have sent last night," streaming classics of modern literature such as, "Do you remember peeing on the wall and then yelling at us to stop looking at your dick?" — which will no doubt form the basis of the pilot episode's B-plot.

The Variety story reveals the writer, "will loosely base the show's characters and plot on the whole idea of racy — and sometimes embarrassing — communication, particularly among the twentysomething set."

In national politics, fundamental procedural changes come but once every hundred years or so — the electoral college will likely outlive us all. Whereas with Idol, those citizens who deeply care about the future of their society, the honest, hard working Americans who stay up late speed dialing votes, who devote their families savings to make signs and printing t-shirts for their favorite contestants — all because they dare to dream of passing on a better world to their children— those people now find their America turned on its head, as they see their judiciary shaken up once again with the news that there will now be four judges on American Idol, and one of them will be a comedian.

While it will be for history to decide what the long term effects on our society were, some first thoughts about what this means for the most important show in the history of the world, and why it happened:

• Mixing It Up: At the beginning of last season, Fox's Reality Chief Mike Darnell told me that the challenge of the show from here on in would be constantly finding ways to keep it fresh and surprising in its eighth and ninth seasons, at the point where most TV shows are adopting orphans and relocating the series to Miami in desperate attempts to regain some interest. But that is what shows typically do when they are in free fall towards the bottom. Idol, despite being off its heights, still remains the #1 show in television by a mile and in that position, very few shows are willing to take chances with the basic formula. Say what you will about Fox and Idol, they are not afraid to take risks.

• Judges Rule: In exile from Idol, former showrunner and So You Thing You Can Dance boss Nigel Lythgoe has been offering the opinion that the judges' soap opera has gotten so carried away it is eclipsing the contestants. Last season, many Idol watchers were dismayed by how much the hi-jinx at the judges table sapped gobs of attention from the performers. And off-stage, every week the headlines were dominated by another judges story. It is Lythgoe's view that the show lives or dies on the strength of its contestants, not by the soap opera on the floor — which with four judges had become a monster. When Paula departed it was the hope of many that this would be used as an opportunity to deflate the panel back to its original size. It was not to be.

• Tivo Alert: Last season, the pile-up at the judges table caused the show to run over almost every week. Most egregiously, Adam Lambert's finest performance of the season, Mad World, was not seen by Tivo viewers. Despite howls of complaints it seemed impossible to rein in the judges. The addition of another judge who is already a star, with a very healthy ego of her own who will no doubt want to make sure her points get heard, will not help this cause.

• Nice Lives: Comedian though she is, Ellen has been the BFF to many an Idol contestant, having them all on her show and supporting each and every one. Likely, she has been thought of as one who will bring this caring concern to the cold-hearted panel.

• Quip-o-Rama: It has been said that this will bring a different element to the Idol judiciary, namely comedy. But in fact, that has more or less been Simon Cowell's function, providing just the right metaphorical one-liner to explain why a performance sucked. It's not like he provides serious musical instruction. Will the judging now become the equivalent of a Friar's Club roast?

Certainly, Ellen DeGeneres has been around the block in entertainment. But this is no little ABC sitcom, this is no Oscar telecast with Bruce Villanch there to back you up; this is American Idol and Ellen has just graduated from AAA baseball to the Indy 500. How she fares will depend very much though, not just on talent, but how seriously she takes the sacred responsibility that has been thrust upon her. History waits to judge.

AMC got all classy with critical and Emmy favorites Mad Men and Breaking Bad and then they went and ruined it all bypaying a whole lot of cash for a show about undead stumbling brain eaters. They acquired the rights to Robert Kirkman's comic book The Walking Dead which follows the lives of the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Sounds to us like 28 Days or every other zombie movie. But, since it's on AMC, it's going to be a smart zombie show. [THRfeed]

Natalie Portman designs vegan shoes and went to Harvard. She's so hip and so smart. Fox thinks so to, and now she's producing a comedy called Booksmart about two smart girls who can't find boyfriends. Oh, they never can. [Variety]

Danish toymaker Lego has finally allowed someone to make a movie about their plastic boxes and barely bending men. Warner Bros. is developing a hush-hush, live action/animation flick from writers Dan and Kevin Hageman. Well, the performances from the plastic playthings can't be any worse than a heavily-botoxed actress. Variety]

MTV orders up two Jackass ripoffs, a Hills rip off (set in New York, watch out!), a variety show, and Hard Times their first single-camera comedy. It's about a kid who is trying to survive being 15. Hey, maybe he can go out with one of Natalie Portman's girls. [THR]

Ed Helms is on a hot streak. He just inked his second deal since The Hangover made all that money. His next pic (after Cedar Rapids) is a comedy called Central Intelligence where he plays an accountant who becomes a spy after finding an old friend on Facebook. Damn, all we ever find are the annoying girls who sat next to us in French class. [Variety]

The top shows last night were America's Got Talent, Hell's Kitchen, and Big Brother. Wait. You mean Americans like reality shows? [Variety]

The Emmys give up on the idea of presenting the writing and editing categories early so that they can speed up their telecast. Your local news is pissed. [THR]

Looks terrific, right! And sort of intriguing that not every musical number will be strictly in the format of the club's performances. No, it looks as though we might get some Rob Marshall/Chicago-style fantasy songs. Which is fun! And fresh, for television. Hopefully High School Musical kids, now a little grown up, will appreciate this next step in their evolution.

There has long been tension between the White House and the networks, who don't like having their excruciatingly calibrated schedules torn up by politicians for political purposes. So when Obama scheduled a press conference to discuss his health care proposals for 9 p.m. tomorrow night, which would seriously screw up the networks' plans, the networks led by last-place NBC balked, obliging Obama to move it to 8 o'clock. And Fox, like they did for Obama's last primetime presser, just told the White House to fuck off, but that's a different story.

In any case, in describing the programming scramble caused by the press conference, The Hollywood Reporter pretty much sums up why no one watches broadcast TV any more:

The stakes were particularly high for NBC, which airs the most-watched show of the summer, "America's Got Talent," at 9 p.m. This week, the reality hit includes a heavily promoted interview with "Britain's Got Talent" singing sensation Susan Boyle.... ABC News often has the highest-rated coverage of Obama's primetime events and ABC was leaning toward carrying the conference all day. In one respect, the shift to 8 p.m. could make their night more tricky. ABC's highest-rated reality show, "Wipeout," will be pushed to 9 p.m. to face "America's Got Talent" along with "So You Think You Can Dance," with "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" moved to 10 p.m. The ABC News special "Over a Barrel: The Truth About Oil," originally slated for 10 p.m. Wednesday, will air Friday as a special edition of "20/20."

Fox airs its top-rated two-hour "So You Think You Can Dance" on Wednesday nights and will direct viewers to Fox News for the news conference.

That's right, television executives were willing to face down the White House over Susan Boyle and retreads of Japanese game shows where people bathe in squids and razor blades. The last time this happened, when George W. Bush scheduled a presser on the first day of May sweeps in 2005, they forced him to change the start time over CSI, Will & Grace, and The O.C. That's how far they've fallen. In their defense, summer has become the traditional time for vile reality TV. But the fact that NBC essentially told Barack Obama, "We are not going to take your press conference at 9 p.m. because we have to air a deranged foreign lady and amateur vocalist" is a good measure of just how desperate they are.

The solution of course, is to just break up the press conferences with ad slots. It's an engaged, Tivo-proof audience, and there are dozens of brands out there that would love to be associated with Obama. Back in February, his 8 p.m. presser netted NBC 9.75 million viewers—2 million more than stuck around for Heroes an hour later.

Fox! What is going on with you? Your network has set the high water mark for quality and now you choose to ruin your good name with this abysmal judgment? Why would you ditch Paula? Is it because she sat on a day laborer in Brüno (that was obviously a symbolic critique on our broken immigration policy!) You can't get rid of Paula. She is the slurred voice of the Vicodin riddled masses! She is the chorus in the Greek tragedy of Idol — which, obviously, makes Simon the smite-happy Zeus. Even though her remarks lack a certain insight they're like tight hugs to terrified contestants. Paula is the teacher that believes every child's finger-painting portrait belongs on the fridge. How can you turn your back on her? Here's a reminder of her wonderfulness:

Musical theater tribute to Paula's big heart!

Paula just wants your affection.

Paula on the beauty of Jason Castro (and Leonard Cohen)!

Talk about an incredible item. Brief recap: Fox canned Friedman after he wrote about how easy it was to obtain a leaked, unfinished copy of Wolverine that had made its way onto the internet. Friedman went through a Kangaroo Court of sorts and got the opportunity to reason for his job with EVP John Moody and Fox News chief Roger Ailes at Fox News. It didn't go well, and he lost. The statement that was released:

Fox News representatives and Roger Friedman met today and mutually agreed to part ways immediately. Fox News appreciates Mr. Friedman's ten years of contributions to building foxnews.com and wishes him success in his future endeavors. Mr. Friedman is grateful to his colleagues for their friendship and support over the past decade.

Not so much. Friedman took his story to Rush & Molloy in the Daily News' (immortal competitor to the Fox-owned New York Post, in case you forgot). Naturally.

In it, Friedman accuses Scientology of plotting against him for a long time, as he's been a vocal critic of the organization for a while. Friedman thinks the entire Wolverine saga - a case Fox definitely took to the FBI in order to trace the original source of the film's leak - was a bullshit cover-up for his termination, or at least, the pin they needed to pull on his employment that they'd been waiting on a for a while. He cites a few instances and interactions with key celebrity Scientology members, but mainly, John Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston.

He says he saw Preston at fellow Scientology member Issac Hayes' funeral in Memphis about eight months before he was fired. They ran into each other in a hotel lobby, and as Friedman tells it, Preston had some words for him:

Mrs. John Travolta loudly blasted him for his columns criticizing Scientology. "She called me a ‘religious bigot,'  " Friedman recalls.

Sometime thereafter, as the story goes, Preston then tried to get him fired by getting Friedman's aforementioned Kangaroo Court, John Moody and Roger Ailes, on the phone. Preston called Moody a dirty word when Moody wouldn't fire Friedman for slagging on Scientology. Moody and Ailes supposedly met with Preston and Scientology's spokesman Tommy Davis to put them on ice. Friedman's overlords then told Friedman to ease up on writing about the controversial death of Jett Travolta, Preston's son. [It was recently revealed that John Travlota went against the Church of Scientology's teachings in noting Jett as having autism, a condition regarding by Scientologists as a psychological disorder, and thus, a relatively stigmatized term to them.]

Sometime after, Jim Gianopoulos, 20th Century Fox's chief, told Friedman to lay off of Tom Cruise's Hitler-hunting epic Valkyrie in the leadup to its release. Which, if it's true, sounds like some typical studio-news overlap, and probably has less to do with Scientology and more to do with Gianopoulos trying to curb the momentum of bad press his movie was getting at the time.

But then:

Last month, Variety reported that Cruise was in advanced talks to star with Cameron Diaz in a Fox action comedy, "Wichita." A source suspects that Cruise may have made Friedman's ouster a condition of the actor appearing in "Wichita. "

And, conspiracy! Someone, somewhere, suspects that some shit might've gone down! Maybe? Either way, Friedman notes that the moment his job was on the line, nobody came to his defense. "Nobody from Fox News defended me. They let the studio dictate to the newsroom," he told the News. The quote they got from Friedman's lawyer is far less conspiratorial: he's arguing the whole "piracy" aspect of things, and he's probably going to try and spend less time trying to convince a court that Friedman's being plotted against than he is working on the whole "wrongful termination" thing, though he does toss one gem to R&M: "I've seen how Scientology intimidates even the most powerful media. That seems to be what happened here."

So it goes. The final note in the column that matters is that Fox Overlord Rupert Murdoch isn't a fan of Scientology and reportedly "bristled" when they tried to recruit his kid.

Preston and Cruise's lawyers both issued outright denials. Fox refused to comment. And we might have a ball game. Let's say this thing goes whole hog: that's Preston and Cruise, being called to the stand, being asked to testify under oath as to whether or not they wanted Friedman fired and had remarked the same to anybody, at any point, ever.

But really, this just sounds like a case of Friedman being more trouble than he's worth. Fox makes exponentially more cash via Scientologists than they do their gadfly columnist talking shit on some of their highly-connected high-earners. Why keep Friedman, who's pissing off their Big Names, around? There's no reason to. So, yeah, the Wolverine thing was probably the straw that broke the gossip's job in half. To win and/or settle this thing in Friedman's favor, his lawyer's gonna have to drag whoever he can through the mud, which is probably going to be far more difficult than he thinks it's going to be.

Meanwhile, Friedman's doing a watered-down variation of his shtick at the Hollywood Reporter, incredibly. The Reporter, which has always played second fiddle to Variety for industry trade news, needs the favor of studios and agencies in order to get scoops. Why, then, would any trade paper brass in their right mind associate themselves with Friedman's gossipy items? In order to get the money Friedman's used to being paid by Fox, he has to associate himself with a big name (like The Reporter). Eventually, they're probably going to learn that Friedman's items are costing them news, and they'll cut him off from writing the "good" stuff. And Friedman's going to need something to do when that happens. Like sit on some of that lawsuit money.

Onward! To the courts!

Fox's axed man blames Scientologists [Rush & Molloy]

Matthew Morrison (South Pacific at Lincoln Center) plays Will, a bored Spanish teacher with a materialistic shrew of a wife who gets a bit of divine inspiration one day and decides to become the new head of his school's once-proud, now fading show choir.

Lea Michele (a Julia Allison lookalike from Spring Awakening on Broadway) is the star singer, a less political and more musical Tracy Flick, and the adorrrrrable Corey Monteith is Finn, the aw-shucks football star with a secret passion for song. These two characters may sound a bit like cliches, and they are. But as livened up by sparkling writing and non-showy performances, these old archetypes seem suddenly shaded and complicated. Really, they seem new again. Whereas you can plug the same plot formula into any other number of let's-put-on-a-show high school stories and get basically the same results every time, Glee's first 43 minutes seemed to hint that the tale will unfold a little bit sideways, into the world of the weird. Think The Office set in high school and with, you know, really fun musical numbers ("Don't Stop Believin'" being a particular highlight last night).

The show is a definite gamble for Fox. It's gay as hula hoops, stars mostly unknowns (if you're not a theater nerd), and the second episode won't air until the fall. But if it pays off, something good and earnest (but not treacly) could bloom on a network that, sans the chintzy corporate glitz of American Idol, is in dire need of some cynicism antivenom. One hopes that where this show would sputter and quickly disappear on the more unforgiving ABC (the only other logical place on network TV for this kind of program), Fox—which seems to have slightly different ratings standards—will give it a longer runway. Other than song rights it can't cost much to produce. The actors are probably payed in collectible old Playbills! Because they're theatery!

But the show really isn't just for show queens, I promise.

Here embedded is the first episode. Put your work headphones on and give it a chance. Blow off the QED report and please watch it and tell other people to watch it.

I think you'll find that the title of the show says it all.

As you can see in TV By The Numbers' chart below, Fox's crime serial Lie to Me beat everyone, with nearly 8 million viewers and a 2.3 share. So Rupert Murdoch probably isn't too hurt that Obama snubbed Major Garrett of Fox News, who never got called on for a question like he did at the first two pressers.

That said, Obama beat Fox, if you add together his numbers on the other broadcast networks, and netted a respectable 29 million total viewers (including cable). And that's with questions from Ed Henry and Chuck Todd, who were not banned, or ritualistically flayed, this time. The American people really do have incredible fortitude.

Yes, this Wednesday, when every other channel in the country is playing the president babbling about the Swine Flu Bailout Budget or whatever, you, the educated television viewer, will not have to miss one all-new minute of Lie to Me, a.k.a. "House But He Got to Keep His Accent and He Solves Crimes."

Has a broadcast network ever refused to air a presidential news conference before? Well yes, probably the WB. But god, we dream of a world in which Obama preempted the American Idol results show, forcing them to just fucking tell us who lost, during a commercial break, without K.C. and Lady GaGa and David Cook getting all up in our business.

(Unrelated:

The three networks have evaluated Mr. Obama very similarly: 57% positive comments on ABC, 58% positive on CBS, and 61% positive on NBC. But he fared far better in New York Times stories, where nearly three out of four evaluative comments (73%) by sources and reporters were favorable. And he fared far worse on Fox News, where only one out of eight such comments (13%) were favorable.

What a simplistic way of evaluating media coverage of a public figure! Also, Fox is evil and bad.)

Friedman is set to meet tomorrow with Fox News chief Roger Ailes and John Moody, the news network's executive vice president for editorial, the source said. Friedman will have a chance to plead his case, but the meeting could well end with the columnist losing his job.

Friedman is in hot water for posting to FoxNews.com Thursday a review of the forthcoming movie Wolverine. The freelance columnist based his comments on an unfinished version of the movie that leaked onto the internet last week. "It's so much easier than going out in the rain!" he wrote. "I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer."

You can imagine how this went over at Wolverine producer 20th Century Fox, which last week called in the FBI to find out who leaked the film. The studio complained corporate sibling Fox News, according to Nikki Finke, and parent company News Corp. publicly condemned the review and requested its removal. Fox News promptly deleted the piece.

Finke wrote that Ailes then fired Friedman, a development seemingly confirmed by a statement News Corp. supplied to the New York Times, reading, "Fox News… terminated Mr. Friedman."

But Fox News' only statement on the affair (also given to the Times) is that "This is an internal matter that we aren't prepared to discuss at this time."

And in fact Friedman has not been fired, according to the Fox News source, although he could well be terminated during tomorrow's meeting. The delay in firing Friedman (despite News Corp.'s announcement) could be read as a play by Ailes to assert the news division's independence from film studio 20th within the News Corp. empire.

The meeting also gives Fox News time to reconcile its own definition of journalistic ethics with 20th Century Fox's. The film studio says Friedman shouldn't have broken the law in the service of a story. But Fox News seems more comfortable with such mischief. Network anchor Shep Smith wasn't fired after he was arrested for running over a competing reporter with his car so he could snag parking space, even though the incident resulted in felony battery charges (later apparently dropped without explanation).

When Bill O'Reilly's former producer accused the Fox News host of sexual harassment, producing lengthy conversation transcripts O'Reilly never denied, sibling publication the New York Post slammed her in a story headlined "'Lunatic' O'Reilly Gal Went Nuts in Bar." O'Reilly settled the suit and, of course, retains his job.

And Fox is unrepentant about stalking a liberal blogger, sending a camera crew to tail her from her apartment across state lines to Virginia.

In a lengthy overview of Fox's new power structure after the elevation of Fox Searchlight chief Peter Rice and Fox Networks Group president Tony Vinciquerra to fill the vacuum left by Chernin, Variety drops this nugget:

If there's any question mark to the new setup, network execs wonder how active Murdoch plans to be in the pilot screenings this year. In recent years the mogul hasn't played much of a role in Fox's programming decisions, but with Chernin out of the picture, some wonder if Murdoch will feel the need to have more of a say this spring as the net plots its upfront presentation.

Murdoch has reason to believe that he has the programming touch in his blood. The last time he intervened into the affairs of Fox Broadcasting, it was to force then-TV chiefs Sandy Grushow and Gail Berman to put American Idol on the air at the recommendation of his daughter Elizabeth. That decision has to inspire confidence in his meddling abilities. And since, as we pointed out last week, Rice is a Murdoch loyalist whose father was an old friend of Rupert's—not to mention that he has no television experience—he's unlikely to stand up to the boss' suggestions about the lead-in to House.

As always with Murdoch, personal loyalty trumps business. The biggest loser in the reshuffle is Peter Liguori, who's been pushed out as the entertainment chairman of Fox Broadcasting, overseeing the Fox prime time schedule. It was Chernin who put Liguori in the job in 2005, promoting him from the job overseeing the FX cable network.

Replacing him is the Brit ex-pat Rice (on the left with Danny Boyle), and currently the head of specialty film label Fox Searchlight. For a studio exec, Rice is well-liked and affable enough. Also, Searchlight has been one of the only companies to consistently profitably play the Oscar game, backing this year's Slumdog Millionaire and last year's Juno.

But he struggled to succeed outside that boutique business. When Rice was approached in 2006 to take over Paramount's specialty business, Murdoch was so set on keeping him that he let him launch a whole new film division, Fox Atomic, which was meant to court young men. But the venture quickly proved to be a bust; its first film, a remake of Revenge of the Nerds was cancelled in the middle of production. Last year, the unit was scaled back dramatically, and today's memo doesn't bother mentioning it.

What Murdoch's memo also doesn't mention is that Rice's father was a friend and business partner of Murdoch's back in England and it was that connection that landed Rice his first Fox job back in 1989. Murdoch writes in his memo, "Peter has the vision, creativity and determination to grow and remodel our television network." Rice has never worked in TV, so who knows? But Murdoch has always been more comfortable running News Corp. as a family business than the conglomerate that it is. Apparently, he still is.

Fox hired a group of consultants to measure how much carbon-dioxide is released from the production of the television show, including the spectacular car chases and crashes, so they can buy offsets. They're also using B20 biodiesel fuel in trucks and generators and paying more for wind and solar power. How much does 12 hours of 24 release? Approximately 1,291 tons of carbon-dioxide.

Though the message won't be a large part of the actual show, we like the idea of Jack Bauer torturing someone in an environmentally friendly way like, maybe, making someone listen to the An Inconvenient Truth soundtrack repeatedly.

[Photo: Fox, via NYTimes]

The Simpsons still has a ways to go before it can surpass the amount of episodes Gunsmoke produced; due to then-longer seasons, the western banked 635 episodes (whereas the current Simpsons renewal would bring it to 493). However, we have full faith that Fox will continue to keep The Simpsons on the air long enough to outlast even that record. How can we be so sure?

· The show still does all right in the ratings. Don't mistake us—The Simpsons is hitting all-time lows this season. Then again, so are many network shows this year. The difference is that The Simpsons is the 8 p.m. linchpin for a night of animation that helps anchor the higher-rated Family Guy, and Fox would never sacrifice such an ideal lead-in. Hell, even King of the Hill managed to stick around for thirteen seasons based on Fox's Sunday night strategy.

· The voice actors may eventually become expendable. In 1998, the show's six main voice actors threatened to quit if their pay wasn't upped from $30,000 per episode. In response, Fox immediately scheduled auditions to replace them, and a deal was reached (subsequent negotiations over the years raised their pay rate to the current $400,000 per episode). In this case, The Simpsons' decades-long ubiquity may work against it—if Fox wants to cut costs and fire the original cast, they'd surely be able to find new actors raised on the show who could closely replicate the voices (the genius comic timing would certainly suffer, but are fans still ardent enough to make a fuss?). The network already enacted such a move in 1999, when minor voice actor Maggie Roswell (who performed characters like Maude Flanders and Helen Lovejoy) was fired after asking for a pay raise, and only hired back after several years' absence. Did anyone notice?

· The Simpsons is a billion-dollar global franchise. Fox has become even more of a corporate behemoth since The Simpsons first premiered in 1989, and it's hard to imagine they'd ever devalue one of their few properties that can keep a comparatively enormous pace. At this point, it almost doesn't matter what ratings the flagship series gets—not when its merchandise continues to sell all over the world, or when a feature-length movie version produced well past the show's peak makes well over $500 million.

Someday, then, when NBC is running ten hours of Today (leading straight into a four-hour block of Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon, and Howie Mandel), you can be certain that The Simpsons will keep on keepin' on. And this is where we would post our favorite Simpsons episode (the Gamblor one, natch), but Hulu has cruelly yanked every old episode off their service, keeping only the latest five instead. If only it aired constantly in syndication or something!

Regardless of what you think of Silk Spectre's seemingly Xanax-dulled dialogue in this scene, few would deny that before Hayter came along to shepherd it to greatness, the script was "one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit they had read in years." So listen, now, as the passionate fanboy Bard describes Fox as an "ethically challenged...rough group of people" —the Devil's minions, who easily possessed the power to lock the finished product away forever in Rupert Murdoch's Forbidden Goodies Vault, where the cryogenically frozen body of Darva Conger is tended by hunchbacked Fox paraphysicist David Faustino.

• WATCHMAN WRITER SLAMS FOX AS SATAN [hollywoodoutbreak.com]

On last night's interminable announcement of the "Top 36" (yes—they've chosen 36 semi-finalists for your speed-dialing pleasure), major changes were introduced to the format. Well, slightly major. For one, the Pasadena music hall with its three-camera-outfitted Elevator of Destiny was replaced by the Judge's Mansion, an estate befitting Simon Cowell's ego and good taste.

There, contestants were forced to walk through the Marble-Floored Foyer of Fate, where they were met by the Kings and Queens of the Idol court. The judges were called upon to stretch their improvisational skills as never before—seeking out new and innovative ways to convince semi-finalists they'd gotten the boot. ("We have terrible news. You are not going to be on American Idol this season, because we're eliminating you right now. So off you go! Out the doors! Goodbye forever! Wait! Where are you going? Stop right there! Why are you crying? Perhaps this is a good time to tell you...that all that was just a dream and you really did make it into the Top 36!!!")

Another change: Certain fence-sitting contestants were paired off and forced to "sing for their lives." Which brings us to the clip above, pitting wholesome, untalented beauty Jen against Kristen, a singer the judges felt possessed the inverse qualities. What followed was the classic existential Idol debate, which played itself out, quite mortifyingly, directly in front of them: "Do we want the pretty one who doesn't sing so great? Or the one who's hard to look at but who can really belt? If only there were some way of putting you both into a blender and making a beautiful-singer smoothie! But we can't. So we pick you, Kristen—but work on that look," was the talked-out consensus. Perhaps she can start here.

And like that, Jen was gone. As was contestant Joanna Pacitti. In perhaps the greatest contestant fake-out in Idol history, the controversial ringer—who'd already had an A&M deal, appeared on several movie soundtracks, and had some kind of relationship with show producers—was told she'd been granted a "second chance." Today it came out she's been dismissed. "It has been determined that Joanna Pacitti is ineligible to continue in the competition," read a Fox press release. As Simon might say, "If it's any consolation, you wouldn't have won anyway."

Ladies and gentleman: Your Top 36! [Idol]