• ABC: 3-1. Barbara Walters? Hello? She was made for this.
• CBS: 4-1. Madoff could easily fall prey to the charms of Katie Couric; then at the last minute CBS could swap her out for the 60 Minutes people. Maybe all the 60 Minutes people, at once, hurling questions at Madoff press conference-style, as he squints into a bright spotlight, confused. That's good solid television.
• NBC: 5-1. They have the resources of a network, but who are they really going to send in there, Stone Phillips? Heh. NBC's correspondents would all seem to wear too much hair gel to be considered top-tier contenders.
• CNBC: 9-1. They could appeal to Bernie like so: "Those other networks just want to make you look like a monster in front of an audience of unsophisticated, bloodthirsty, oafish Americans. We can make you look like a flawed but intriguingly brilliant financial genius in front of an audience of slightly more sophisticated, bloodthirsty, greedy investors, who are more than willing to suspend moral judgment if you toss off a few stock tips." Then they can send Jim Cramer to do the interview and just imagine how fun that would be.
• Fox News: 12-1. Hey, Republicans respect self-made millionaires. Plus they could agree to send Bill O'Reilly to interview him and talk only about how New York was a better place when white guys lived in Flatbush.
• Youtube: 18-1. This is what Madoff would do if he was really smart. Get a flip cam, start his own YouTube channel, and do the interviews himself. All the networks would be forced to run them anyhow, and he wouldn't have to tolerate one god damn second of Steve Kroft's mock-surprised look.
• PBS: 25-1. Charlie Rose or Jim Lehrer are both incapable of showing outrage on their faces, which would serve Madoff well, PR-wise.
• CNN: 30-1. Were Larry King to be the guy chosen to conduct the first Madoff interview, the public outrage when the interview devolved into two guys trading stories about women and baseball could potentially get CNN's headquarters burned to the ground.
• NY1: 80-1. Bernie's been transferred out of Manhattan jail now, but still. Roger Clark and Bernie Madoff, on roller skates, at the Central Park Zoo, feeding the sea lions. DO IT.

We hear the New York Times' Brad Stone has been calling around frantically, trying to get hold of a galley himself and spoil Fortune's exclusive. And he may well succeed; the writer outed the author of the anonymous Fake Steve Jobs blog last year with help from his sources in the publishing industry. Mezrich's book is due out July 14.

The media scramble for galleys of Accidental Billionaires just goes to show Facebook remains something of an "it" company in Silicon Valley, even as it grows out of its startup phase and gropes for revenue.

It also proves that respected media outlets have no trouble taking seriously a project created by a busted, fabricating author and adapted for film by would-be crack smuggler, about a money-losing company.

Nor do we, obviously. We'd love to get our hands on said galleys, if only to fact-check them the way we did with Mezrich's comical book proposal. If you can help, please get in touch.

It's not that Stanford wasn't convincing. Quite the opposite: the Stanford Financial mastermind offered an impassioned, compelling self defense, rooted in the claim that none of his depositors have lost any money. The accused scammer even cried, ABC reports, though it's hard to see any waterworks in the attached highlights.

Savvily, Stanford confirmed one of the least damaging allegations from the Securities and Exchange Commission — that his money is tied up in illiquid real estate investments, sort of like like the money of America's largest banks — while denying the other charges.

"I would die and go to hell if it's a Ponzi scheme," Stanford told ABC.

This is exactly the level of charisma one would expect from an Antigua-based scammer who convinced investors to hand him billions of dollars. If Allen's as innocent as he claims, he'll spend a lot of time wrestling with this Catch-22: The more convincing an accused con artist sounds when protesting his innocence, the more guilty he is presumed to be.

A plugged-in tipster directed us to the freshly-uploaded YouTube video above, in which Rosenblat speaks to an unseen interviewer. He could be talking to a GMA producer in a pre-interview, doing media training with a publicist, who knows. (The video is carried in a YouTube channel named after Rosenblat, although the title of this video curiously misspells his last name.)

Rosenblat is a genuine Holocaust survivor. So perhaps he'll have some luck attempting a redemption less than two months after he was exposed (Even macho James Frey waited a couple of years.) And maybe he'll be able to somehow sell the rather bold and hard-to-believe story he outlines in the YouTube video: that his wife told him she tossed apples over the fence at some boy in some concentration camp, and that Rosenblat convinced himself he was the boy, even though he was not. Rosenblat said he believed the girl was an angel sent by his mother, who died in the Holocaust.

"In reality, I wasn't telling the truth, because she didn't throw the apple to me. But in my mind I believe she did... I still believe it's me..."

It's interesting that Rosenblat is now roping his wife into the meta-narrative of how he came to fabricate part of Angels. The move is likely to bring her a good deal of scrutiny in the news media.

Rosenblat wants forgiveness. In the video, he tells the story of some sad, unreachable widow whose life was miraculously turned around, somehow, by reading about Rosenblat on the internet.

I did no harm to anybody, in fact I did good to people... I made a mistake and I want America to forgive me.

Actually, Rosenblat needs forgiveness, to sell the (fiction) book and movie projects he's participating in. Both are plugged in the video above, and in all likelihood on GMA, which scored a major "get" in landing the exclusive first TV interview with Rosenblat since his book scandal. (Movie proceeds have been pledged to Holocaust survivor charities. It remains to be seen whether the filmmaker who made that promise keeps his narrative closer to the truth than Rosenblat.)

Matt Lauer could have told her that.

After all, Couric's former Today show colleague had a promise from Sullenberger and his people that the pilot of Flight 1549 would appear first on Today. After the Today appearance was delayed, Couric swooped in and Stole Sully for CBS' 60 Minutes.

NBC called "foul:"

"Unfortunately, people close to [the pilot] have not acted nearly as admirably [as he] over the past few days. They gave us their word, and then broke their commitment."

Now Sullenberger is running around on Couric, whose 60 Minutes had promised "the first interviews" with him and the crew. He ran into an ESPN reporter at a party for the Super Bowl, which he attended as an invited guest.Sully talked about crying with his wife, and what it was like in the cockpit:

"It was very quiet as we worked, my co-pilot and I. We were a team... But to have zero thrust coming out of those engines was shocking - the silence."

...Asked how he felt inside as his Airbus glided towards the water, the dashing silver-haired Californian said, "Calm on the outside, turmoil inside."

It's sad that a basically fine and decent human being like Sullenberger has to navigate the fierce pressures and guilt wielded by competitive TV news bookers. Outside of a small circle of industry people, no one is going to care that he effectively bumbled through the process of giving interviews to the press. People just want to hear what he has to say.

First hero pilot Chesley Sullenberg dumped the NBC Today show host for Katie Couric, breaking his word. Then the president's first White House interview, which Lauer trumpeted as his exclusive, went to Al Arabiya.

Then Jon Stewart told America about the Arab news network's "get" on the Daily Show, where he also made fun of Lauer's failed booking (see attached clip).

It won't be hard for Lauer to top that sort of week. Heck, at this point he'll probably be thrilled if Obama manages to get his name right, instead of constantly calling him "Tim" like last time.

UPDATE: There were some audio glitches, but otherwise things went smoothly. Obama is in the tank for the Steelers.

Unfortunately, Maddow's execution was a bit off. She let Obama run the clock too often with his answers and wasted time on two questions concerning infrastructure spending where the candidate's answer could have been predicted in advance ("Well, I've actually talked about this," Obama began one response).

But the interview was good enough. Click the video at top to watch some of the feistier moments. What will be remembered, above all, is that Maddow — less than two months into her show — got it in the first place.

• Palin get.
• David Carr's friendly "I'm sorry" column in the Monday Times.
• Catching Cindy McCain not knowing what Roe v. Wade is.
• Finds Michael Dukakis at the Democratic National Convention, gets the former presidential candidate to apologize for letting George Bush win.
• Avoids random fights with her coworkers like Keith Olbermann.
• The iconic sexism chat with America, which even John McCain tries to sample.

This doesn't really add up to a real return for Couric, but would certainly earn her "leaving on a high note" status if she should hypothetically want to leave her anchor job sometime soon!

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