It's great for NBC that they get to save mountains of production money by churning out Jay Leno Show episodes rather than shelling out to stage cop-show shoot-outs, but one of the biggest pillars on which this whole network affiliates contraption has been based is the lead-in networks providing their local stations for their local news shows. So for NBC the Leno equation works out dandy, with them reaping less ad revenues for Jay vs. a drama (particularly considering the sad state of their recent dramatic launches), but spending far less in production costs. But if you're an affiliate, and big chunk of your revenues comes from nightly local news, the fact that someone else is saving money by lowering your ratings is infuriating.

The canary in the coal mine of this bold experiment has always been how long will the affiliates sit still for this reinventing the broadcast paradigm. And today in the LA Times we get the first hint that the answer may be not much longer.

In the piece, one voice from flyover country makes his feelings about the new era pretty plain:

"I'm not pleased with what Leno is doing. I don't think anybody is," said Craig Allison, vice president and general manager of KSHB in Kansas City, Mo. Allison's late news is off slightly from where it was a year ago, and he's anxious about the months ahead.

"I don't think any NBC affiliate wanted to wake up in the fall with a weaker lead-in to their late news," Allison said.

The piece goes on, however, to make clear that NBC has largely been effective in silencing affiliate opposition by buying them off with extra ad slots that they can sell locally. And then, in good newspapery "to be sure" manner, the article offers up a quote to cancel out the above quote's support of the article's thesis.

"

We're quite pleased," said Brooke Spectorsky, longtime president and general manager of WKYC in Cleveland. So far the station's news performance is flat compared with a year ago, although there are "still days in which you squirm a little."

The LAT leaves it to us to imagine the gun held to Spectorsky's skull as he recited that line to its reporter.

However, whether the rumblings are perceived or real, if Jeff Zucker, and your GE bosses are currently looking to sell off their entertainment holdings, this is not the moment when you want anyone thinking that your entire operating model is about to come apart at the seams.

Elsie Poncher, whose husband Richard Poncher, is entombed above Marilyn at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park in L.A., put her husband's plot of up for sale on eBay. According to the L.A. Times a Japanese bidder pledged $4,602,100, but went back on his offer shortly after he won the auction yesterday. The next highest bid was only $100 less than the winning offer. Poncher is giving the 11 other top bidders 24 hours to make her an offer for the coveted spot. She plans on using the money to pay off the mortgage on her $1 million home in Beverly Hills. At least she's not trying to blame "the economy."

Richard Poncher bought his final resting spot and the one next to it from Marilyn's ex, Joe DiMaggio, in the '50s, while the pair were divorcing. Elsie was going to have the spot next to her husband, but now she plans on selling one tomb and moving her husband's into the one next door. She plans on being cremated.

And for all of us who think we're clever for coming up with the "on top of Marilyn" joke, Poncher, who died in 1986, thought of it first and better.

[Elsie] said that when her husband was dying, he made a request. "He said, 'If I croak, if you don't put me upside down over Marilyn, I'll haunt you the rest of my life.' "

After the funeral, Poncher said, she conveyed her husband's wish to the funeral director. "I was standing right there, and he turned him over," she said. I guess she's no longer afraid of ghosts.

So what world leader or esteemed person of letters did UCLA get to replace Franco, the noted sleep-deprived grad student/part-time thespian? The LA Times reports:

UCLA announced that Brad Delson, lead guitarist for the popular rock-rap band Linkin Park, will step in to replace movie star James Franco as commencement speaker at Friday's graduation ceremony for the College of Letters and Science.

A committee of administrators, faculty and students turned to Delson after Franco withdrew, and officials expressed gratitude that Delson accepted the invitation on such short notice to address an audience expected to number 10,000 in Pauley Pavilion.

Brad Delson? Brad Freaking Delson? Are you kidding? No offense intended to Mr. Delson, noted by the Times as a UCLA alum who has established a scholarship fund at the school, but if we'd spent $100,000 on an education at UCLA, one of the more prominent institutions of higher learning in the country, and our graduation speaker was a guitarist for pop/rock band, we'd be mildly disturbed. Then again, we suppose Brad Delson is better than P.O.D. drummer Wuv Bernardo, who we heard was UCLA's backup in the event Delson couldn't clear his schedule.

How does it feel knowing that Arizona State is laughing at you right now UCLA?

Rock Star to Replace Actor for UCLA Graduation Speech [LA Times]

Mark Willes got the nickname "Cereal Killer" because of his penchant for ordering huge job cuts, and because of his background as a General Mills executive in charge of the Cheerios division. He took over at Times-Mirror in 1995, and set about cutting costs. He laid off 900 total employees at the LAT and the Baltimore Sun. And he bragged that he wanted to take "a bazooka" and blast away the wall between the news and business departments.

That predisposition ultimately led to a huge scandal at the LAT in 1999, when it was revealed that the paper had made a deal to sponsor the new Staples Center arena in Los Angeles, and agreed to split advertising revenues from a special Sunday Magazine supplement about the Center with the center. In essence, the subject of the stories in that section was being paid from it. It was a big deal at the time, and it was part of Willes' legacy.

And now Tribune still owes him Retirement and Deferred compensation of more than $11 million. Chew on that, newsroom. [Although LAO points out the upside: all deferred compensation to former employees has been discontinued, so Willes will have to line up along with the rest of the creditors to plead for his money. Jon Fine lists more former execs in the same situation.]

According to multiple sources at the Times, new publisher Eddy Hartenstein has been calling it "treason" for employees to share information with LA Observed...

And yet, solid sources have let me know that current Times leadership is unhappy enough (or paranoid enough) about stuff getting out to consider action against staffers.

Yes, they can sue all the employees that aren't already suing them! It's just common sense, people. As Lee Abrams said, "Are these amazing ideas? Not really." [LAO]

The two broke up. Then Martinez allegedly emailed Mullens over and over and over, moaning about his lost love and his bad mental state, and promising to stop contacting her (which she told him to do). But it just kept on, and got worse:

Soon Mullens started receiving emails from a mysterious (fake) "Hugh Frederick":

Martinez eventually acknowledged that he was Hugh Frederick. But his unwanted emails to Mullen got even more disturbing:

Here's a PDF of the entire complaint. If it's at all accurate, Martinez should probably 1. Stop that, and 2. Seek help.

[THR]

"Market forces are affecting the agencies," said Scott Harris, the head of Innovative Artists, a boutique outfit that represents top Broadway actors (Patti LuPone, Adam Pascal) and a number of established names, including Frank Langella, Ving Rhames and Marilu Henner. "Sometimes we have to manage expectations down. What someone made five years ago, the market may no longer bear." ...

Several managers — and more than a few agents — said the recent poaching is having a deleterious impact on the business. Rather than focusing on carefully building a career, these people say, some agents nowadays favor high-profile deals over strategic advice.

It's one thing to get a client a private jet and a fat cut of a film's profits, said UTA partner Jeremy Zimmer, "but it's also really exciting and emotionally satisfying to see someone's first movie premiere at Sundance or put someone to work who hasn't worked in a year."

We're encouraged to see moral rewards reclaim their status among dealmaking considerations — especially at UTA, where the recent defections of comedy super-agent Nick Stevens, Ben Stiller and virtually anyone who has had his name on a movie poster with him since 2003 promise a brave new era of phone-line sharing, cubicle consolidation and unisex bathrooms on every other floor. Next to go: Private e-mail, thus requiring a trip to Kinko's for agents faxing anonymous, client-hating poems to Nikki Finke.

• Behind the talent-agency shakeups [LAT]

Several private equity firms, newspaper giant Gannett Co. and an alliance of Los Angeles billionaires, Eli Broad and Ron Burkle, have expressed preliminary interest in owning Tribune.

But none of those parties have come forward with a formal offer, forcing Tribune to extend an auction that was to end this month into the new year. [...]

Geffen has told many friends and associates for more than a year that he would like to own the Los Angeles newspaper and improve the paper as a service to Los Angeles.

The 63-year-old tycoon has also said that he has enough liquid assets to buy the paper alone and pay cash.

His net worth is estimated at $4.6 billion.

Should the Tribune Co. eventually find a better-funded suitor, Geffen will grudgingly return his $2 billion in cash to the velvet treasure chest he keeps buried under the sand behind his Malibu compound, slowly letting go of his plans to cover the front page of the Times in For Your Consideration ads for Dreamgirls and filling its op-ed section with diatribes against the antiquated laws that allow the unwashed masses to spoil his glorious view of the Pacific by exercising their right to splay their pasty bodies across his precious stretch of Carbon Beach.

• Geffen's offer for The Times: $2 billion [LAT]