TVNewser has photos, video of Williams acknowledging a humiliating defeat, and a write-up:

Pregame, Stewart led the Daily Show march onto the field chanting: "I don't know what I just heard, Brian Williams throws like a girl." Though this was immediately followed by Stewart shouting, "Did you guys bring water? Who's going to hold my inhaler?"

James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter says that Leno, who's lost 10-12 pounds running four miles each day, will present a "fast-paced hour" with a monologue and interviews with one or two celebrity guests. There will be wacky bits where celebrities race each other in vehicles powered by alternative fuels, as well as pre-taped segments featuring celebrities. For instance, D.L. Hughley will be the show's Washington correspondent and Brian Williams will do a "Stories Not Good Enough For Nightly News" segment. Musical segments which will occasionally feature multiple acts performing together.

Regarding his deep, hard screwing of Conan O'Brien, Leno says that he and O'Brien are a couple of swell pals looking forward to a "healthy rivalry."

"There was never any tension between Conan and I," he said. "Will we fight like cats and dogs to get the guest? Yes ... but that doesn't mean you don't like each other. It's a game. You tease and trash talk, that's the fun part."

Yes, it's all fun. Just like Leno would've loved it and thought that it was great fun had Johnny Carson moved into a primetime with a talk show taped in the same city as the Tonight Show when he took over. Ugh, why couldn't he just take his pile of cash and go off to work on old cars in between stand-up gigs in Branson?

• TMZ is reporting that someone is shopping a tape of Leighton Meester and her ex-boyfriend having sex. The tape is supposedly a few years old but features Leighton showing off her "very talented feet." Let your imagination run with that one! [TMZ]
  
  
• Poor Robert Pattinson was just trying to shop for some books at The Strand when he was being harassed by those pesky teenage girls who were trying to sex him right there in the store, so he ran away into the street and got clipped by a cab. What a punk. [NY Post]
  
  
• Jennifer Garner obviously thinks that Kevin Smith is a fat, vulgar slob, according to Kevin Smith, and she is doing everything she can to destroy the man-love that exists between Smith and her husband, Ben Affleck. [Daily News]
  
  
• When Brian WIlliams leaves the news desk to broadcast from the newsroom, producers run all the fatties out and bring in the good-looking interns to pretty up the place. [Page Six]
  
  
• Susan Boyle has been dumped from the Britain's Got Talent tour after she launched into a bizarre rant about her beloved cat, Pebbles. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Beyonce has pissed off some Chelsea club owner because she had agreed to make an appearance at the club's opening for $100,000 but backed out at the last minute. What's a $100,000 these days anyway? [Page Six]
  
  
• Britney Spears is still terrorizing England. The other night she was playing a show in Manchester when she became confused about where she was and yelled out, "what's up London?!" This didn't go over well with the Brits, who are sensitive to these kinds of things. [Sun]
  
  
• Kristen Bell is looking all hot in these pictures of her running around on the beach in Hawaii, but then there's a picture of her playing around in the water with her boyfriend, Dax Shepard, and that just kills all fantasies completely. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• Christiano Ronaldo brought three girls back to hotel, not for a foursome or anything like that mind you, but for Pepsi and checkers and an episode of Fawlty Towers or something, because that's what European soccer stars do. [Sun]

On last night's show, O'Brien aired footage from Williams' Obama sit-down of the newsman asking the president about the Leno-O'Brien transition. Here's the exchange:

Williams: I couldn't help but notice your trip this week coincides with Conan O'Brien's first week on the air. Is it because of that, or were there considerations perhaps that you almost cancelled to stay and watch his first week as host of the Tonight Show?

Obama: Well, I think that Conan will do an outstanding job. This is something we've discussed several times in the Oval Office—how to manage this transition between Leno and Conan. And I think he's up to the task. But I just want him to know that there's not going to be any bailout coming from Washington if he screws it up.

HA HA HA.

Brian Williams is so caught up in his persona as an indie-rock loving hipster funny guy that he's actually doing bits for comedy shows on the job while interviewing the President of the United States. And Barack Obama is so caught up in being cool and relatable that he went along with it. Both of these men have very serious jobs, and many, many people have very important questions to ask Barack Obama. Instead of asking one of them, Williams wasted a little time yukking it up so that he could help promote one of his parent company's entertainment properties.

We're all for having a cool president, and for news anchors with a sense of humor. But interviews with the president are not a fucking joke. And if you're going to turn one into a fucking joke, it should at least be a funny one.

The boys made blue balls jokes and gently, playfully ribbed each other. Ever the hawk-eyed observer, weatherman Al Roker picked up on the tension, all the way from Miami Beach. So he called the scene in New York "a Whitman's Sampler of man candy" and then had the studio play "It's Raining Men."

Just a reminder: The Today show is on for four hours every morning and is the most popular show of its kind.

NBC anchor Brian Williams gave Phelps some special McD's dining advice before their recent interview:

I told him there was no mustard on them, and that the minced onion was kept to a minimum. I could see in his eyes that he realized he was in the company of a fellow aficionado. He changed his order – so excited at the thought of McDonalds for the first time since arriving here in Beijing — and the interview began.

Will Phelps prove to be yet more proof that fast food is the key to a healthy life? McDonalds very much hopes so. But get honest; you're not an Olympic swimmer. There's really only one circumstance under which an average person should eat so many calories:

[via Soup Cans]

From the Times:

In the last couple of weeks Mr. Obama has graced the front of Rolling Stone for the second time this year, and the cover of Us Weekly (both of which are owned by the company of a prominent Obama supporter, Jann S. Wenner). Beth Jacobson, a spokeswoman for Wenner Media, said the issues were among the better-selling magazines of the year.

Ned Martel, the deputy editor of Men’s Vogue, said, “He’s what is called in the magazine world an ‘interest driver.’ ” The magazine put Mr. Obama on its cover in 2006 and recently dispatched the photographer Annie Leibovitz to produce another spread for a coming issue. It did a feature on Mr. McCain in 2006 as well that did not make the cover.

So, basically, Obama drives ratings, which makes sense. He's a fresh face. McCain is more familiar to the media due to his longer tenue as a senator and his 2000 presidential campaign.

What should McCain do to get more attention for himself? You have to love this suggestion, from "one news executive:"

“If McCain went to Vietnam, all three anchors would jump at the chance to go with him.” This executive requested anonymity to speak candidly.

Excellent: A Rambo trip!! Which might sound crazy at first, but all bets are off when you do a professional wrasslin' video and refer to your supporters as "McCainians."

Also, Michelle Obama will not join Barack in Iraq or anywhere else on the trip to make her customary "God Damn Whitey" speech, because she will be raising her daughters, at home, like a proper Christian.

[Times]

Consider this: the Sunday Styles section lead story on April 13th was "Scavengers on the Urban Savannah" (people buy things at flea markets!), and promoted on Page One was "A Sex Chair Becomes A Battlefield." Alrighty then.

He goes on like that for four more (amusing!) paragraphs, mocking all the fluff of the Sunday Times. That'll show them to run an Elizabeth Edwards op-ed! (In a section Brian presumably didn't read the rest of, as it's left out of his sarcastic assessment.)

Ok. Two problems. First, this is from the same Brian Williams post: "I'll say it again: Peggy is doing the work of her career and must be considered an early favorite for next cycle's Pulitzer for commentary." He is talking about Peggy Noonan. About this Peggy Noonan piece, specifically. The one that is all about how America shouldn't get hassled at airports, where "America" is "the middle-aged woman." A middle-aged white woman, named Peggy Noonan.

The second problem is that no one involved in the production of a nightly network evening newscast should be getting on anyone's case about mindless fluff overtaking "real news." Or, as Brian puts it: "A mea culpa and a thank you to the sharp-eyed Newsviners who wrote us (along with others) to tell us we had used file tape of penguins in a piece on the North Pole! There are no penguins on the North Pole."

What Times Is It? [DailyNightly]

Now, in our defense, we recycle, we turn off lights, we don't even litter, which basically qualifies us as saints in this city. We have been known to, upon occasion, not completely tune out Al Gore.

Still... a Time rendition of Vanity Fair's "Green Issue" leaves us cold.

Former senator George Allen, who's been stumping so long he can put an audience into a trance faster than most, suggested General Petraeus "and the troops." Of course, of course, the troops too!

Ali seemed to be the only one who didn't make up her answer in the elevator; she chose French prez Nicholas Sarkozy. Hammy Brian Williams had some mic trouble; "No thanks, Whoops," he answered when the "View" host offered him hers. Is it just us, or are Williams' much-written about secret comedy chops on their way to being overexposed?

Still! We do give him props for verbally smacking the 41-year-old MySpace guy (whose alternate suggestion—surprise!&mdash was his new boss, Rupert Murdoch) when he tried to sound 15-years-old by saying he wasn't exactly sure what this General Petraeus guy was all about. (And he isn't even the MySpace founder who lies about his age!)

The real message in the news, "whatever that message may be," gets lost for young people, he thinks. Honey. AARP's got you on deck; you sound silly.

"My wife and I thank you," an almost misty-eyed George Allen said to a horrified Whoopi Goldberg, thanking her for "Ghost." WTMI, Senator, seriously.

And a slightly scary Post grande dame Liz Smith scolded the panel for being too upbeat, and TV chat-host Joe Scarborough, who is awfully tall, suggested George W. Bush. That did it for Whoopi, who then kicked everyone out. We thus leave it to you, dear readers, because other than maybe that "your mom" should be Time's Person Of The Year, we got nothing.

Through the routine decisions of daily journalism—how prominently to play a story, what pictures to use, what voices to include—the newscasts were sending an unmistakable message. And the message was that George W. Bush's war was a debacle. Administration officials regularly complained about the coverage as unduly negative, but to little avail.

Huffington Post has a roundup of some anchor-machinating tidbits from the book, which sounds like more of the general beefing about Katie Couric's potty-mouth and how Brian Williams, probably accurately, thought that his numbers on the NBC Nightly News were being killed because local stations were dying and not throwing him any lead-in viewers.

In the Sheraton's ballroom, the Napoleonic head of CNN, Jonathan Klein, was wearing a tux and chatting with some other old white dude. Bob Schieffer of CBS chatted with Ted Koppel, who was to receive a lifetime achievement award. An unusually and quite frankly scarily tan Mike Wallace spryly circulated from small circle to small circle. We looked for Wolf Blitzer and Brian Williams—they were both "working."

We were sitting at the press table. Because the press talk so much, we heard that it was probably someone from the Business desk that started yesterday's Times fire: "The fire was on the second floor. That's where business is. And Science and Escapes and Sports!"

Matea Gold from the LA Times was there in a smart pearl necklace. She sported a slim ivory shiny digital recorder and didn't eat dessert (chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup). Across the table, looking like a fairy godmother (because she is), was TV Week's Michelle Greppi. Onstage, Tim Russert was giving this "Lock arms, brothers and sisters" speech. He then introduced Dan Rather as "soon to be the star of his own reality TV show on Court TV with Les Moonves." So true!

Dan Rather's most notable quotable: "News matters."

We were right next to a huge television screen that flashed clips of Frontline documentaries (the series was honored) and other news reports—lots of footage of dead and dying people. How is one supposed to enjoy an already rubbery steak while having to watch Marines dying or starving Darfurians?

That said, PBS programs , which swept the awards, are totes replacing "The OC" seasons 1-4 on my Netflix queue.

Then Mike Wallace won an Emmy for his interview with Iran's President Ahmadinejad and took to the stage. He put the Emmy on the ground and rambled on for about 15 minutes, speaking almost exclusively in haiku. "Me. You. This Room/Ahmadinejad./We didn't know."

Huh? What now? Soon enough he was replaced by Soledad O'Brien. She looks and speaks like a Sarah Silverman caricature of herself, drawing out the ends of words like a rabbi.

It was surely time for more white wine. But when I asked for another, the old waiter asked whether I'd like to open a tab.