With the promise of Jeff Zucker's Old-Time Radio City Upfront Dog-and-Pony Show vanquished months ago by NBC's decision to unveil its 2007-08 schedule a full month ahead of the usual schedule, the news that other networks are downsizing their own upfronts isn't shocking anyone. The WGA strike that thwarted the…

· Mattel joins fellow toy manufacturer Hasbro in leaping into CAA's embrace, turning over brands like American Girl, Hot Wheels and Fisher-Price to the agency for potentially lucrative Hollywood exploitation. First order of business: attaching artificially smooth client Nicole Kidman to a live-action Barbie project…

TVWeek.com has rounded up clips of recently announced, new Fall shows from all the broadcast networks and posted them to their site, allowing us a sneak preview of the exciting programs that we—like any modern, quick-triggered TV viewer with no attention span to speak of—will likely delete from our TiVo lists after…

· Gerard Butler, still red-hot following his career-making, washboard-ab-spotlighting turn in 300, will join Jodie Foster and Abigail "Im in Dakota's career, steelin her rolez" Breslin in the family adventure film Nim's Island, based on the popular children's book. [Variety]
· Out-of-work and aspiring comedy…

· Oh, right: The CW also announced its Fall schedule. Veronica Mars fans, grab your pitchforks and torches, because your favorite show's not on it. But maybe the pick-up of Gossip Girl will make you feel better about things? [Variety]
· 300's Gerard Butler will star in Game, a near-future dystopian thriller in which…

It's Day Four of the upfronts, that special mid-May week during which network executives lure advertisers to fancy venues, use elaborate presentations about their Fall programming to trick the media buyers into believing that spending their money on unproven shows is any less risky than letting their entire budgets…

Fox has yet to officially release its Fall schedule, but we feel confident that nothing they're going to reveal tomorrow can possibly change our opinion about what will be our favorite new show come September: Kid Nation, the bold social experiment in which CBS abandons 40 children in a New Mexico ghost town for 40…

By this third morning of the upfronts, you are probably exhausted by the constant barrage of stories about new television shows you probably won't have the time or desire to watch. (NBC really nailed it: Who has time for new? Give us more of what we already like! Fill us up with your quality, Peacock!) Still, CBS…

Frostbitten by the overly generous use of air conditioning and beginning to hallucinate that she's been trapped in "a weird icy vodka freezer," intrepid NY Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan has still managed to tap out frequent blog dispatches from inside ABC's ongoing upfront presentation to advertisers. Before…

· Tim Allen? David Mamet? Together on a "mixed martial arts drama"? Has the world gone totally fucking insane? [Variety]
· TV casting crisis! Close the borders! Foreigners are stealing roles on new Fall series that could be going to American actors. [THR]
· Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson team up to produce three…

With ABC having already spoiled Upfront Christmas by unwrapping its much-anticipated pick-up of Cavemen&trade, A Race Parable Brought To You By Geico a few days early, giving the disgruntled, recently canceled stars of its comedy past an opportunity to decry the network's pro-Neanderthal prejudices, the actual…

As the TV upfronts are intended to be a weeklong celebration of possibility and hope, there is generally no place in a network's presentation to advertisers to pause briefly and remember the once-beloved projects that won't be going forward into the Fall season; accordingly, it took a reporter's uncomfortable…

While Friday's announcement that groundbreaking ABC/Geico sitcomfomercial Cavemen made the fall schedule was met with the popping of champagne corks in Defamer HQ and quickly followed by boozy expressions of admiration for the network's rare combination of business savvy and social conscience, not everyone was…

· Maria Bello has been cast in the role of "Much Cheaper Alternative to Oscar-Winning Actress No Longer Willing to Slum It in a Mindless Sequel" in the next Mummy installment, replacing Rachel Weisz. [Variety]
· Spider-Man 3 pulled in another $85.5 million internationally, bringing its worldwide box office to $622.1…

Having spent the last year riding president Kevin Reilly's "First be best, then be first" programming strategy from an embarrassing fourth place in the ratings to a more critically acclaimed, if still sparsely watched, 2006-07 TV season, NBC today officially announced its Fall schedule, with an exuberant Reilly…

We recently said a prayer—a modest one, but a prayer nonetheless—that Cavemen, ABC's way of telling the world, "You know what? We give up. There is no more comedy. It was clearly a non-renewable resource whose last drips were squandered somewhere during the opening credits of Wild Hogs. Instead, we proudly present…

· Fox plays it safe by returning 16 series to its fall line-up, adding just three new dramas, two new comedies, and a late night talk show. And The OC stays put on Thursdays at 9, with the network confident that since its fans still seem to be sticking around just because they remember how great it was the first…

When NBC's Kevin Reilly made a bold move in the chess match that is this week's fall schedule announcements at the upfronts by advancing his most beloved pawn, Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, into the 9 p.m. Thursday night slot, ABC's Steve McPherson responded by picking up his queen, Grey's Anatomy,…

There was a time when generously betoothed CBS despot Les Moonves would invite the media to an informal chat over breakfast on the morning of his network's upfront, where he granted journalists an intimate opportunity to watch gape-mouthed as he slathered his bagels with a schmear made from the steaming entrails of…