Clash of the talk show hosts

There are a lot of subtle details to the late night TV debacle at NBC. This video sorts it all out.

Sure it's in Chinese. And it depicts Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jeff Zucker as costumed superheroes battling each other. And it features David Letterman wacking Zucker with a folding chair.

But otherwise, it really tells the story well.

Stay tuned

With the success of sites like Hulu and the increasing ease of streaming high-quality video straight to your television, one has to wonder what the point will be of the network affiliate in the near future.

Networks used to need local affiliates to broadcast their content. Do they still?

NBC head honcho Jeff Zucker insists the network-affiliate model isn't going anywhere, telling affiliates this week:

“We are not abandoning the business of broadcast network television. We are not going direct to cable. We are renewing affiliation agreements. And we are going to be in business together for a long, long time.”

Well, that's nice to hear. Time will tell how long that holds up.

MILF Island: the T-shirt!

The must-have T-shirt of the summer of 2008 is now on sale at the NBC store.

Show how much you love the newest (un)reality TV sensation: "MILF Island: 25 super-hot moms, 50 eighth grade boys and no rules..."

The Donald vs. Dwight

There has been a lot of talk lately about the feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell (a big publicity stunt on Trump’s part to hype “The Apprentice” in my opinion).

But now Trump has a real fight on his hands. Head over to the “Apprentice” page on NBC.com to play Bobblehead Bash—where the Donald Trump bobblehead gets to duke it out with the Dwight bobblehead from “The Office.”

I wouldn’t count out Dwight with his karate skills.

NBC swag

This little NBC promotional item was passed on to me today. It’s my very own set of official “Save the Cheerleader…Save the World” pom-poms.

I brought them home and gave them to Thomas, who had fun shaking them and trying to place them on my head.

I’m looking forward to Monday night’s big episode of “Heroes,” in which we’ll supposedly find out why Claire the cheerleader needs saving and how that will save the world. The promo makes it look pretty cool—and we all know how well promos can be trusted.

Play ball

Major League Baseball owners approved television contracts today. The bad news is, the World Series will remain exclusively on Fox through 2013.

The good news is Fox will no longer have exclusive rights to the ALCS and NLCS. They’ll start sharing those series with TBS under the same system they used to have with NBC. Fox will have the ALCS next year, TBS gets the NLCS. Then the following year they’ll switch.

I don’t know if TBS will be any good or not, but at least it will be nice to have an alternative to Fox.

The ESPN article doesn’t make any mention of the Divisional Series. Right now ESPN gets some of those. I believe that’s part of a separate deal that’s still continuing.