What's that? Jay Leno is moving to prime-time? You don't say!

Frankly, it's hard to remember the last time there was such hubbub about a TV show. It was, after all, the cover story in Time magazine. Not to be outdone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, and probably every local news outlet between New York and Hollywood had a story about the talk show host -- more often than not raising the question of whether he's going to save network TV.

(You've got to give it to the public-relations machine on this one. They really worked the story. Of course, their spinning was augmented by a huge marketing effort. Stuart Elliott of the New York Times today estimated that NBC put out more than $10 million in promoting the show).

But there is more to the fall TV season than Jay Leno. The media buyers and planners over at  RPA offer a useful road map to the season in a recent report.

Their take on the fall season is fairly upbeat (maybe network TV doesn't really need Leno to save it).

"For the first time in two years, network fortunes will not be held hostage to the industry's labor problems, but will be determined, as they used to be, by content quality and scheduling... Based on what we've seen, the overall quality of that content looks better than it has in the past two seasons," the report says.

Here, according to RPA, are some things to keep in mind heading into the season:

• The five broadcast networks will debut 21 shows, accounting for 22 percent of scheduling hours.

• Dramas and dramedies (a mix of comedy and drama) will increase from 43 percent to 48 percent of the schedule's hours. Comedies will rise from 10 percent to 17 percent.

• Not a single new fall show is a foreign co-production (which had been looking like a trend until now).

• Medicine is hot, with three hospital dramas debuting this fall and a fourth starting midseason ("Trauma," "Mercy", "Three Rivers," and "Miami Trauma").

• Paranormal is big, too. Four new shows built around that theme will land this fall ("V," "Eastwick," "Flash Forward," and "Vampire Diaries").

Oh, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

Britain's Sky News caused a bit of a stir on the blogosphere on Tuesday after it cited John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, as saying the Beatles back catalog was finally going for sale on iTunes: seemingly confirming a longstanding rumor that had gained momentum ahead of a widely watched Sept 9 Apple music-entertainment event.

But the report by the 24-hour news service, spotted by 9to5Mac and TechCrunch, among others, was stricken off the Sky News Web site hours later and discredited by a numner of other media outlets including Cnet. In response to Reuters' queries, EMI, which owns the master recordings, sent us this from Ernesto Schmitt, EMI's global catalog president:

"Conversations between Apple and EMI are ongoing and we look forward to the day when we can make the music available digitally. But it's not tomorrow," Schmitt said in comments first made to the Financial Times. Apple declined to comment.

Mind you, the arrival of the Fab Four on the world's most popular online music sales portal will be no less than a seminal event. Hence the unrelenting speculation from Apple's legions of rabid fans who stand rapt at the consumer electronics giant's every move, and the intense interest from the band's own not-unimpressive cohort of faithful followers.

On Sept 9, the same day Apple is expected to unveil a new line-up of iPods with digital cameras (with potentially master showman and CEO Steve Jobs set to make his first public appearance since taking leave in January to undergo a liver transplant), "The Beatles:Rock Band" video game will debut for sale from North America to Australia.

The game's debut will mark the Fab Four's first leap into the world of digiral music. And their launch on iTunes -- currently held up by fears of digital piracy, among other issues -- may indeed soon follow.

Just perhaps not on Wednesday.

Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.

Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM's 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors,  will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.

Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie"  in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with  lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.

Cooper,  well-known for  turning around big troubled companies Krispy Kreme and Enron, has been appointed to restructure MGM's  balance sheet to enable Parent to make movies.

MGM is due next to release a remake of the 1980's hit "Fame" and to start production on "Red Dawn" another remake, in September.

Sloan left a private law practice in 1983 and has been a media executive and investor since. He invested and ran three media companies, including SBS Broadcasting, Lions Gate Entertainment and New World Entertainment.

A year ago, the big story around Emmy nominations was the acclaim showered on cable programs like "Mad Men" and "Damages." A quick glance at today's nominations indicates little has changed.

Just look at the best drama category, where Fox's "House" and ABC's "Lost" will face stiff competition from cable's "Big Love" (HBO), "Mad Men" (AMC), "Damages" (FX), and "Breaking Bad" (AMC).

While the Emmy awards aren't everything -- ratings are still the holy grail -- they certainly don't hurt. Particularly when it comes to cable networks, which have built a reputation for developing more sophisticated, bolder programs than the broadcast counterparts.

While ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox are under heavy pressure from advertisers (and their corporate parents) to show immediate results, the cable networks can take more care with their programs. After all, they draw some revenue from carriage deals and subscriptions, which buys shows like "Breaking Bad" some time to develop.

That seems to be paying dividends -- and not only when it comes to awards. While broadcast TV advertising rates are still at a sizable premium to cable, most advertising executives say the gap is shrinking. Couple that with carriage fees and a generally lower cost structure and you see why TV executives like NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker spend so much time talking up their cable assets.

Keep an eye on:

• Google will be under the spotlight when it reports second quarter earnings later today. How much of a toll has the downturn in advertising and the competition from Microsoft taken on the web leader? (Reuters)

• Speaking of Microsoft, its share of the U.S. market increased in June as it rolled out Bing (Reuters). And its not just focussed on search and Google -- the company plans to open some retail stores "right next door" to those of Apple Inc. (Reuters)

• Don't get too comfortable watching your favorite TV show on the web with only a few commercials. Media companies are pressing ahead with plans to put more ads in web videos. (Wall Street Journal)

Like a creature rising from oceans deep, the DreamWorks Animation SKG film “Monsters vs. Aliens”  hit Japan on Saturday, where the 3-D animated comedy reportedly had a sizable opening of $1.2 million in only 390 theaters over the weekend, and where box office watchers say it stands to perform strongly by tipping its hat to Japanese-born giants like Godzilla  and Mothra.

“Monsters vs. Aliens” opened in the U.S. and Canada on March 27 and led the box office race that weekend with nearly $60 million. But a month later DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said the film had underperformed internationally.

The movie has been a success overall, making $197 million in the U.S. and Canada and $175 million elsewhere, for a total of more than $370 million. But a strong Japanese showing would help offset weaker performances in Germany, France and Italy.

“There’s going to be something that speaks to the Japanese people for sure in this movie,” director Conrad Vernon told Reuters.

Vernon said he and co-director Rob Letterman sought to invoke the monsters of Japanese movies from the 1950s and ’60s, like Godzilla and Mothra. Those creatures were models for one of the giant characters in the film, Insectosaurus, he said.

The filmmakers also borrowed other elements from Japanese monster movies, such as the way crowds move in panic, he said.

“There’s a big homage paid to those Japanese films,” Vernon said.

Vernon said the 1968 Japanese movie “Destroy All Monsters,”  in which aliens release giant monsters from their island compound to attack major cities, was a particularly strong influence on “Monsters vs. Aliens.”

“Monsters vs. Aliens” features the voice work of actress Reese Witherspoon as a 50-foot-(15-metre-) tall woman who joins with a team of monsters to battle an alien invasion. 

“Certainly the Japanese market will make a considerable contribution to the film’s worldwide success,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of tracking firm Hollywood.com Box Office.

The Hollywood Reporter said that “Monsters vs. Aliens” made $1.2 million in 390 theaters in its opening weekend, a result that Dergarabedian described as a strong showing given the limited number of theaters that played the film.

Here are the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winners for the arts:

• Fiction:
  Awarded to "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout (Random House), a collection of 13 short stories set in small-town Maine that packs a cumulative emotional wallop, bound together by polished prose and by Olive, the title character, blunt, flawed and fascinating.
• Drama:
  Awarded to "Ruined," by Lynn Nottage, a searing drama set in chaotic Congo that compels audiences to face the horror of wartime rape and brutality while still finding affirmation of life and hope amid hopelessness.
• History:
  Awarded to "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family," by Annette Gordon-Reed (W.W. Norton & Company), a painstaking exploration of a sprawling multi-generation slave family that casts provocative new light on the relationship between Sally Hemings and her master, Thomas Jefferson.
• Biography:
  Awarded to "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House," by Jon Meacham (Random House), an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat, but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.
• Poetry:
  Awarded to "The Shadow of Sirius," by W.S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press), a collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.
• General Nonfiction:
  Awarded to "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II," by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday), a precise and eloquent work that examines a deliberate system of racial suppression and that rescues a multitude of atrocities from virtual obscurity.
• Prize in Music:
  Awarded to "Double Sextet" by Steve Reich (Boosey & Hawkes), premiered on March 26, 2008 in Richmond, VA, a major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear.

Like many other 35-year-old readers, I discovered British author J.G. Ballard when Steven Spielberg directed a big-screen adaptation of his 1984 novel "Empire of the Sun" with Christian Bale and John Malkovich. One reason the movie was less than successful, I thought then and think now, was because of a salty, morbid tang that ran through the 1987 film's depiction of Ballard's semi-autobiographical memoir about growing up in a Japanese prison camp during World War II. This was not Spielberg saccharin, though it did shine through with the best aspects of his directing style.

It was David Cronenberg's 1996 ice-cold film adaptation of Ballard's 1973 novel "Crash" that really caught my attention. I still can't tell if the book and the movie -- an extremely non-erotic portrait of people who derive sexual thrills and much, much more profound satisfaction from smashing into each other in vehicles traveling at high speed -- are nihilistic, fetishistic or a simple, violent story of science fiction happening right now. From there it was on to a series of images that haunt his fans to this day: drained swimming pools, nightmare auto collisions, dead astronauts waiting patiently to return to earth.

Cronenberg's movie prompted me to start buying up Ballard's novels and short stories over the next few years. In them, I discovered themes of psychological alienation in the modern world that persisted from his earliest short stories to his latest novels, written in the past decade. Many media outlets are discussing those themes elsewhere on Monday after Ballard died of cancer on Sunday, so I'll leave them to it. Ballard's themes -- and there are too many to count here -- are easy to pin down, but sometimes so simple that they elude easy understanding. He thrived on vague recesses of the human mind that require, thankfully, multiple readings of his books.

One thing makes him worth noting on MediaFile: Ballard frequently wrote about messages delivered through images -- particularly advertisements. He was a clear-eyed and at times ruthless observer of the delivery of messages and images aimed at getting inside people's heads and prompting them to do things. An example is short story whose name currently escapes me (Please remind me if you know!):  A psychiatrist tells of treating a violent patient who is obsessed with messages being delivered to him on billboards and through other means, prompting him and others toward rampant buying of retail goods. The patient's ravings are dismissed, all the while the analyst and everyone around him step up their cycle of buying things as quickly as they can, lured into a frenzy of purchases by images that only the crazy man thinks are aggressive, violent and wrong.

It's up to the reader to say whether Ballard thought this was good or bad. He often spent time arguing that his stories were about the opposite of what readers thought they were. Either way, it's worth reading Ballard's stories about modern living and seeing what corporations' attempts to increase shareholder value look like at the end of the consumer chain, where you, the buyer, are doing your best to make the system work.

Ballard's bibliography is extensive, but among my favorite novels of his are:

Crash, Concrete Island, High Rise, The Kindness of Women, Cocaine Nights, Running Wild, Super-Cannes. Also try his collected short stories, particularly Myths of the Near Future, War Fever, Memories of the Space Age and The Atrocity Exhibition (You will never look at astronauts, Cape Canaveral, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan and cars the same way again. I promise). We'd love to hear what stories of his that you liked.

Bravo unveiled its new TV lineup at its upfront breakfast on Tuesday-- and it's chock full of more of those grating characters and train-wreck scenarios that have proved so successful for the cable network.

At the breakfast in Manhattan's Russian Tea Room, executives played down the recession, played up a recent New York Times article and announced that a cable network known for its unscripted shows is developing two scripted dramas, "Blueprint" and "30 under 30."

So how is Bravo doing? Sales executive Susan Malfa said Bravo accounted for 14 of the top 15 product placements last year, added 100 new advertisers, and posted its best sales year to date. She and other Bravo executives then unveiled the cable network's largest slate of returning shows, new shows and programs in development.

Here is Bravo's description of those new shows and development deals:

• AMERICAN ARTIST:  American Artist will bring together 12 aspiring artists to compete for a gallery show, a cash prize and a sponsored national tour.

• DESIGN SIXX: Husband and wife design team Cortney and Robert Novogratz have made it their business to seek out abandoned buildings across Manhattan. Their company, Sixx Design, has established an international reputation by taking those buildings and transforming them into multimillion-dollar living spaces.

• KELL ON EARTH: Bravo takes a no-holds-barred look into the life of one of America's most legitimate tastemakers as she balances running her wildly successful fashion PR company, People's Revolution, with being a single mother and one of New York's most notable women about town.

• LAUNCH MY LINE: Bravo's newest fashion competition series, features 10 established fashion designers paired with pop culture notables, who are highly regarded in their own field of expertise, but have always dreamed of having their own line.

• ERIC B.: Vivacious and wildly creative, Eric Buterbaugh is the florist of choice for celebrities, power brokers and anyone else compelled to have one of the world's most exclusive floral designers conceptualizing and executing the look of their special events.

• JACKIE'S GYM TAKEOVER: She's used to completely making over people's bodies and minds – now Jackie Warner is making over businesses.  As a fitness expert, gym owner and entrepreneur Warner will use her experience to whip struggling gyms back into shape.

• LAURA BENNETT: From the looks of the perennially put together Laura Bennett, one would never know what insanity brews in her downtown loft filled with a husband, a band of misbehaving pets, and a small army of children under the age of 12.

• SECRET LIFE OF SUPERMODELS: Even the world's most beautiful women have unusual passions, complicated relationships and every day problems.

• SOCIAL HEIGHTS: Bravo's newest docu-series, "Social Heights," follows a close group of Manhattan friends as they try to stake their claim to social prominence.

(Photo: The cast of the fourth season of "Top Chef" in an undated image courtesy of Bravo)

Video streaming Web site Hulu.com marked its one-year anniversary on Thursday by announcing new social networking features, as the site seeks to gain ground on other Internet entertainment hubs.
    
The Web site, a joint venture between General Electric Co.-owned NBC Universal and News Corp., launched “Hulu Friends” which integrates functions from social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, as well as e-mail providers Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, and allows users to see what their friends are watching, share new videos and leave notes for each other.
    
Hulu, which allows visitors to view television episodes and movies on their home computers, still has a long way to go if it hopes to catch up to video sharing giant YouTube.com. Internet tracking site comScore reported this month that YouTube accounted for about 43 percent of all videos viewed over the Internet in January. By comparison, Hulu.com had only a 1.7 percent share of all videos viewed. The Google-owned YouTube has reached out to mainstream entertainment companies, including Universal Music Group, as the site seeks to add more premium entertainment on its site. But unlike YouTube, which mostly has short video clips, Hulu allows users to view entire episodes, and it has positive trends in its favor.

Research firm Knowledge Networks reported in February that use of third-party video hosting sites such as Hulu to access network television shows doubled since 2007 among Internet video users age 13-54.

It was a pretty humdrum night on “American Idol” until Norman Gentle took the stage.

Until this season, every contestant to make it this far on the ultimate talent show has been unfailingly serious about their quest for fame (though, admittedly, the seriousness of Sanjaya Malakar’s 2007 turn is open to debate). They may tug at viewers’ heartstrings by saying they only want fame for the sake of family members who depend on them, and they may smile and joke, but none of them make a joke of the often humiliating process of laying it all out there on the “Idol” stage.

That has now changed with Nick Mitchell, who goes by the stage name Norman Gentle. Mitchell strutted onto the stage on Wednesday night wearing a 1980s headband, silver shirt, white tuxedo jacket with tails, and khaki shorts, writhing his way across the stage and all but prostrating himself in front of the “Idol” logo at the base of the judges’ table in an exaggerated parody of what contestants do every week on the show. Whereas other contestants sing their hearts out and then wait until afterward to ask America to vote for them, Mitchell just included a plea for votes right into his lyrics. He sang “And I Am Telling You” from the musical “Dreamgirls.” With lyrics like, ”I’m stayin’/ and you, and you/ you’re going to love me,” Mitchell was able to use the song to beg for his spot on the show.

Former ”Idol” contestant Jennifer Hudson sang the song in the movie version of “Dreamgirls” to wild critical acclaim, so the song is somewhat tied to the show. Even when Hudson sang it in the movie it had a story, because she was open about how her elimination from “Idol,” which came before her “Dreamgirls” role, was a crushing blow.

It remains to be seen if “Idol” voters will give him a chance to stay on. ”I hope I’m speaking on behalf of America when I pray you don’t go through to the next round,” said judge Simon Cowell. But the other three judges on the panel liked Mitchell’s performance, and everyone agreed it was different.

Other strong performers who received praise from the judges included 16-year-old redhead Allison Iraheta, who sang Heart’s “Alone,” and 26-year-old Adam Lambert, who has a background in musical theater and sang the Rolling Stones song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The judges also had nice things to say about Arkansas native Kris Allen’s rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” and Megan Joy Corkrey’s version of Corinne Baily Rae’s “Put Your Records On.”

If Mitchell does make it through to next round, how could he change his act and do something different from begging for votes? Is he a one trick pony, or does he bring something fresh to the show? And did any of the 12 contestants on Wednesday night look like they could go all the way?

(PHOTO: FOX)