• These late days of print media bring some strange potential owners out of the woods to poke around at the fire sale and see what kind of bargains they can land on unmatched, only-slightly-singed argyle socks. The Wrap reports that the venerable journals, the Hollywood Reporter and Billboard have been sold by their parent company Nielsen to James Finkelstein's News Communications Inc. publisher of Who's Who and The Hill. Also included in the sale, The Wrap reports, Backstage, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek and Editor & Publisher. [The Wrap]

• After a strong debut, the ratings for ABC's V took a tumble last night with 29 percent drop-off. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Carrie Underwood's hold on the music charts has not let up. "Play On", the former Idol star's third album easily took the top slot on Billboard's Hot 200, selling 318,000 copies in its first week out, knocking the soundtrack to Michael Jackson's This Is It down to #2. [Billboard]

• There was an actual bidding war over content in Hollywood yesterday and in the end, Peter Chernin's New Regency walked away with the prize. Chernin beat out Universal and Warner Brothers to snatch up the rights for My Name is Memory, the first book of a trilogy about a college couple whose souls have been intertwined for hundreds of years. [Variety]

• Simon Cowell has topped primetime TV's top-earners list. According to Forbes, the Idol judge/America's Got Talent creator rakes in $75 million a year, soaring past Donald Trump in the #2 slot at $50 miilion. [Forbes]

• To promote its new film Nine, the Weinstein Company has signed a deal to annoy ABC viewers in unprecedented ways. According to the deal with the network, the film will be written into the plotlines of a variety of ABC shows including its daytime soap operas, will be featured on Dancing With the Stars. [Variety]

• And if you're keeping score, it hasn't been a great week to be Nikki Finke. Not only does she inform blog readers that she is down with the flu, but she gets beaten by Sharon Waxman on the Hollywood Reporter story (assuming it pans out) and her biggest scoop of the year, the news about Oprah's departure from her syndicated show, still has yet to be confirmed by anyone else, with all sources still, a week later, publicly saying that no decision has been made. It may yet turn out that Oprah will end up making the leap, but some are wondering is it possible Nikki jumped the gun claiming the deal was done?

On the show, it is definitely a space lizard (maybe Balloon Boy's dad's conspiracy theories about lizard people were right all along!), but like a Chicago Tribune review by Glenn Garvin points out, it could also be about our nerd president.

Welcome to ABC's "V," the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it's also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president's supporters and delight his detractors.

Anna is the beautiful and charming leader of the aliens—knows as V's because they are visitors—and she tells the world that her people can fix everything that is wrong with society. She has the liberal media brainwashed, and they all go along with stories about how great and wonderful she is. Of course, there is a fringe group who rebel against her and want to expose them as the evil-doing, reptile skinned, foreigners that they really are. Of course, these are the heroes of the show. Wow, that really does sound like the teabaggers! There's even a religious rebel named Father Jack, which is basically an anagram of George W. Bush.

It certainly wouldn't be new for a sci-fi series to be an allegory about modern society (Battlestar Galactica, anyone?) but it would be sort of odd for a sci-fi show on a major network to give credence to tactics and delusions of the far right. The birthers will be lapping up a show about a foreign-born president who comes to snatch society out of their clutches, and Glenn Back and his cronies will love to see a media that is overtaken by liberals and keeps the truth away from the "real Americans." But what will everyone else think?

The sci-fi culture usually veers to the left in its political allegory (again, see Battlestar or this summer's upbeat Star Trek that was an endorsement for the hopeful future that the Obama administration promised to usher in). The original 1983 miniseries that the show is based on was an anti-fascist message that preyed on "the aliens are coming, the aliens are coming" invasion fears of the Cold War. This is what it has been warped into. We find it hard to believe that thinly-veiIed conservative propaganda will find a strong foothold with the core sci-fi audience, and as for those leaning to the right, they tend to like their entertainment much more straightforward. Why try to figure out what all those lizard people mean when they can just watch Jack Bauer bash people's heads in on 24? That's their idea of fun.

Our prognosis, keep picking on the president and the only letters that V will get are D.O.A.

Among the descriptions of series regulars is this one:

[CHAD DECKER] 28 years old, an Anderson Cooper wannabe, he's a newscaster with BBN, based in New York City. Amoral, ambitious, and a little slippery, Chad is intent on getting to the top of his profession in a big hurry. The kind of man who sleeps with the Vice President's press secretary in order to gain entree, Chad gets the Ultimate Source when he is tapped by Anna to become her steady outlet for information (propaganda) about the Visitors. Too ambitious to realize that he's going to become an unpaid sycophant, Chad doesn't question his good luck...SERIES REGULAR (3)

We suppose this would be an appropriate moment to voice our gnawing concerns about the real Anderson Cooper, who's always struck us as just a little too slick, a little too everywhere at once, a little too staring at John King with a hungry look in his eye that reads, "Hm. You'd be tasty in a Moroccan tagine, my little Magic Wall-mastering friend." That said, we nominate Mad Men's John Slattery—a smidge too old, but really the only silver-haired, dreamy-eyed, rodent-chugging himbo we could possibly picture in the part.

• Meet The Characters Of ABC's New V Pilot!! [AICN]

After the jump: What hunky mystery disease was spotted lunching at The Grill with Seth Rogen?

· Seth Rogen will produce and co-star in I'm With Cancer—an autobiographical spec by Will Reiser about his struggles with the disease—promising to do for chemotherapy what Knocked Up did for morning sickness. [THR]
· Remember the names Kristy Flores, Paul Iacono, Paul McGill, Naturi Naughton, Kay Panabaker, Kherington Payne, Collins Pennie, Walter Perez and Anna Maria Perez de Tagle. Now forget them, because they're starring in a Fame remake no one is going to give a shit about. [THR]