TVBizWire

TVBizWire will be spending July 4 recharging its batteries. Updates will return Monday, July 7.

Denis Leary, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Dallas Mavericks owner and HDNet founder Mark Cuban and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos will lend their voices to “The Simpsons” next season, Entertainment Weekly reports. Louis-Dreyfus reprises her role as Snake's girlfriend in the Sept. 28 season premiere, while Leary will play himself in the Oct. 5 installment, the magazine says.
—Vlada Gelman

Former Time Warner executive Roger Keating has been named senior VP of digital media for Hearst-Argyle Television, Broadcasting & Cable reports. He will be responsible for expanding and launching new-media initiatives for the company, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

Adam Carolla, Kate Walsh, Andy Dick, Ron White, Dave Navarro, Greg Giraldo, Jim Norton and JB Smoove will serve as celebrity judges on Comedy Central’s “The Gong Show With Dave Attell,” Multichannel News reports. The first episode, which premieres July 17, will feature Brian Posehn, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and Steve Schirripa, the newspaper says.
—Vlada Gelman

Hollywood ReporterBill Clinton, Lou Reed, Tony Bennett and Elton John will be featured on the first four episodes of Elvis Costello’s new talk/music series, which will air on Sundance Channel in the U.S., the Hollywood Reporter says. Clinton is set to appear on the program to discuss how music shaped his career aspirations and White House tenure, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

Eighty-five percent of ABC.com viewers are female, which makes their presence even bigger online than in ABC’s TV viewership, Silicon Alley Insider reports. ABC’s research also found that viewers are more than twice as likely to remember an ad watched online than one seen on TV, which allows ABC to demand higher ad rates for its online video, the Web site notes.
—Vlada Gelman

The White House announced today that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush will attend the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics on Aug. 8, the Hollywood Reporter says. The confirmation ends speculation over whether Bush would boycott the event because of human rights abuses in Tibet and assuages the fears of NBC and its advertisers about what a boycott could mean, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

The debut of ABC Family’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” was the network’s most-watched series premiere ever, the Hollywood Reporter says. Tuesday night’s airing garnered 2.8 million viewers, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

Tim Winter, the Parents Television Council’s executive director in California, said that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin “has been our hero,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Martin, who has sought to cleanse television of indecent and offensive programming, has made life difficult for the cable industry with regulations that open up local pay TV markets to cable competitors and make it cheaper for independent programmers to lease cable channels, the newspaper says. Some people believe Martin is putting pressure on cable operators with regulatory moves in order to get them to clean up their programming, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

NBC has signed WPP Digital’s Schematic unit to provide the Web video player for its 2,200-plus hours of live streaming Olympics coverage, Online Media Daily reports. The player, which will be available on NBCOlympics.com and will feature interactive picture-in-picture, also will allow viewers to access 3,000 hours of on-demand coverage, event replays, highlights and interviews, the Web site says.
—Vlada Gelman

“The Howdy Doody Show” will come to DVD for the first time on Nov. 4, the Hollywood Reporter says. Mill Creek Entertainment and NBC Universal have made a deal to release 40 of the show’s 126 licensed episodes in a five-disc boxed set, with eight more compilations planned, the newspaper says.
—Vlada Gelman

Michael Rosen has been named executive producer for the Saturday edition of CBS’ “The Early Show,” Broadcasting & Cable reports. Rosen is the senior broadcast producer for the weekday edition, the newspaper says.
—Vlada Gelman

XETV San Diego will become “San Diego 6 The CW” on Aug. 1, Broadcasting & Cable reports. The Grupo Televisa station, formerly a Fox affiliate, was left without affiliation after KSWB announced it would become San Diego’s Fox affiliate as of Aug. 1, the newspaper says.
—Vlada Gelman

A poll conducted for Best Buy by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media Omnibus Services revealed that while 88% of Americans have heard of the transition to digital television, many do not know what they must do or why the transition is happening, Broadcast Engineering reports. Forty-five percent of those surveyed said they will wait until after the Feb. 17 DTV transition to do anything about it, the newspaper says. The telephone poll of 1,000 Americans also found that nearly one-third did not know if their television was analog or digital, the newspaper notes.
—Vlada Gelman

Actors on basic cable programs make up the majority of contenders for Emmy nominations in the best acting categories this year, the Washington Post says. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences revealed the top ten finalists in the best lead actor and actress categories for both drama and comedy series, and in each cable favorites are making their presence known. The best actress in a drama category alone pits seven cable potential nominees against three from broadcast TV, the Post reports.
—Sergio Ibarra

Universal is tapping NBC Universal personalities for a cross-promotional campaign leading to the July 11 theatrical release of “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” the Hollywood Reporter says. In a series of spots, Hellboy interacts with Zach Levi of “Chuck,” Wolf from "American Gladiators," and James Lipton of Bravo's "Inside the Actor's Studio," the trade paper says.
—Sergio Ibarra

A final announcement regarding Landmark Communications’ sale of the Weather Channel to NBC Universal, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital could come within the next two days, Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources. The final deal between the groups is estimated to be valued somewhere between $3 billion and $3.5 billion, the news service says.
—Sergio Ibarra

Officials of the Screen Actors Guild met Wednesday with leaders from the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers at SAG’s request to discuss details of the "final" contract offer from studios and producers issued on Monday, the Hollywood Reporter says. SAG could announce its reaction on the offer Monday, though it will most likely wait until Tuesday after the results of AFTRA's contract ratification vote is announced, Deadline Hollywood Daily says.

Strike.tv, a Web video site featuring programming created by TV and film writers during the Writers Guild of America strike earlier this year, is expected to launch this summer with original short-form content from scribes behind "The Office" and "Die Hard," among others, the Hollywood Reporter says. The site was initially created to help out-of-work writers affected by the strike but has since become, in part, a source of funding for union charity groups; the first three months' ad revenue has been earmarked for the Entertainment Assistance Program of the Actors Fund.
—Sergio Ibarra
(Updated: 3 p.m.)

Yahoo is in talks with Time Warner Inc. for a possible merger, the Wall Street Journal says, citing sources close to the situation. Yahoo recently rejected an offer from Microsoft to purchase the Internet company for $47.5 billion, and its stock has since sharply declined, according to the paper.
—Sergio Ibarra

FX has purchased the rights to air "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who" and four other 20th Century Fox films, Daily Variety reports. Other pictures in the deal, valued at $47 million, are “Jumper,” “Meet the Spartans,” “27 Dresses” and “What Happens in Vegas,” Daily Variety reports. The films will be available to the cable network, which like the studio is owned by News Corp., in 2010, the newspaper says.
—Sergio Ibarra

Reacting to what it perceived as an "attack" piece in the New York Times, anchors Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" morning show shows pictures of one of the paper's editor and a reporter that distorted their facial features, Web site Media Matters for America says. An anchor on the show said the editor, Steven Reddicliffe, a former News Corp. executive, had an ax to grind and assigned reporter Jacques Steinberg to write a story about how the gap between Fox News and its cable rivals was narrowing.

Weeks after reporting that actress Angelina Jolie had given birth to her twins, "Entertainment Tonight" reports the actress has checked into a Paris hospital to deliver the babies she's having with Brad Pitt. "ET" says its previous report on the birth came after receiving tips it now says were "false information," According to Jolie's doctor, the twins are expected to arrive "in the weeks to come," the site says.
—Sergio Ibarra

(Edited 11:11 a.m. ET to fix name of program.)

The next season of Bravo's "Top Chef" will be set in Brooklyn, according to the New York Post, citing reports on the Web that producers were searching for space to put up the contestants. MTV's "The Real World" also is set in Brooklyn in its upcoming season.

Summer reality series for ABC are proving to be ratings hits or misses, USA Today reports, citing Nielsen Media Research numbers. Among the early winners are "Wipeout," which had the biggest premiere in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic this summer with 10 million viewers, and "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" drawing 8 million viewers for its debut, the paper says. Among the misses is "Dance Machine," which drew only 3.6 million viewers for its debut.
—Sergio Ibarra