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Tomorrow, Thursday November 15, marks an important date in Dan Rather's civil lawsuit against CBS.

CBS has until the end of the day, according to members of Mr. Rather's legal team, to file its motion to dismiss argument in response to Mr. Rather's suit.

Contacted on Wednesday evening, Rebecca Hughes Parker, an associate with Sonnenschein, Nath, & Rosenthal, the firm representing Mr. Rather, said that she had yet to see the motion, but expected CBS to meet the deadline tomorrow.

Media Mob has put in a call to Weil, Gotshal & Manges, the firm, which, according to court documents, is representing CBS in the case. We'll let you know when we hear back from them.

CBS’ Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson was not allowed to air the Tom Cruise video that has been on the tips of innumerable tongues this week. So, he went and made his own version. As impossible as it sounds, Mr. Ferguson's version, complete with lots of strange acronyms, double-chin laughs and a karate chop or two, might be better than the original.

Get ready, Katie!

After much back and forth, the Clinton campaign has just announced that they have agreed to a CBS-hosted debate in North Carolina, on Sunday, April 27.

We're hearing from sources that the debate is slotted to run for an hour and a half, immediately following CBS News' 60 Minutes.

Sam Querrey, the 21-year-old American men's tennis player who has never made it past the third round at a Grand Slam tournament, is moving on to the Round of 16.

He just finished thrasing the lovable Croatian Ivo Karlovic 7-6, 7-6, 6-2 in a nearly flawless performance: 45 winners to 13 unforced errors.

In the first round he upset No. 9 seed Tomas Berdych, and all these wonderful wins mean he'll be rewarded with a (likely) match against Rafael Nadal in the fourth round.

"I made it to the CBS weekend!" he said in a press conference today. "That was the goal."

Also: there's a very good chance he'll have a prime-time match on Monday night on USA.

Today, the legal teams for Dan Rather and CBS were back in New York Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan.

During a brief hearing, the two sides told Justice Ira Gammerman that they had more or less reached an agreement on most of the issues, regarding the discovery process in Mr. Rather’s $70 million civil suit against his former bosses.

Lawyer Jim Quinn, who is representing CBS, told the Media Mob on Wednesday afternoon, that CBS had agreed to produce “virtually all of the materials” which Mr. Rather’s lawyers had asked for.

That group of documents, according to Mr. Quinn, will include the findings of one Erik T. Rigler.

A refresher: During the aftermath of CBS’ report in Sept. 2004 on President Bush’s military record—and the subsequent controversy which would become known as Rathergate—CBS hired Mr. Rigler, a former Navy aviator and F.B.I. agent, in part to get to the bottom of the controversial documents at the heart of the affair.

Mr. Rigler’s findings were never made public nor (as the Observer reported in November) were they made available to Mr. Rather, a fact that continued to bother the relentless newsman.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Rather will finally get his hands on Mr. Rigler’s findings.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Quinn suggested that Mr. Rather would be disappointed by the report, which he said, rather than validating the plaintiff’s claims would, in fact, do “just the opposite.”

"Today Judge Gammerman confirmed that he wants discovery to move forward and be completed quickly," said Jane G. Stevens, a member of Mr. Rather's legal team, in a statement. "CBS and Viacom will start producing documents requested by Mr. Rather shortly and we are pleased that Mr. Rather's meritorious claims are advancing."

Justice Gammerman has yet to make a final ruling on CBS’ motion to dismiss the case. Mr. Quinn said that he thought there was still a chance that the justice would rule against Mr. Rather in summary judgment but, if not, CBS was prepared to go to trial.

“We’re really not worried about it,” said Mr. Quinn.

The parties are scheduled to be back in court again in late February.

On Wednesday afternoon, in New York Supreme Court in Lower Manhattan, Justice Ira Gammerman decided to allow Dan Rather's $70 million civil lawsuit against his former bosses to move forward into the discovery phase.

Afterwards, Mr. Rather stood in the hallway outside the courtroom, surrounded by reporters, and said he was "pleased" by the justice's decision, which would "put us on the road" to finding out "what really happened."

Among other charges, Mr. Rather has alleged that White House operatives leaned on CBS and Viacom executives behind the scenes, during the aftermath of CBS News' flawed story on President Bush's military record, which Mr. Rather and his colleagues produced in September 2004.

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Rather said that he was prepared "to go hard and go long" in his pursuit of answers in the case, even if that pursuit took him all the way into the back corridors of Washington.

Throughout Wednesday's hearing, lawyers for CBS had tried to convince the justice to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that CBS had in no way  breached Mr. Rather's contract and calling the rest of Mr. Rather's various claims "window dressing."

At one point, the lawyer for the defendants compared Mr. Rather to Chad Pennington, arguing that in television as in football, you can bench your quarterback (or your star anchor) as long as you continue to pay his contract.  

But from the get-go the justice seemed inclined to let the case move forward.

Back in the hallway after the hearing, Mr. Rather, who had just flown into New York from New Hampshire, where he had been covering the presidential campaign for HDNet, patiently answered questions.

One reporter asked Mr. Rather if the comparison to Chad Pennington was a fair one. Mr. Rather answered by pointing out that he was in the TV hall of fame.

Another reporter asked Mr. Rather if it was surreal to find himself on the other side of the court aisle from his longtime employers.

"There's nothing surreal about this," said Mr. Rather. "It's real."

UPDATE: Dan Rather's lawyer Martin Gold just released the following statement:

"We’re pleased that the Judge gave such a positive preliminary ruling with respect to the defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint.  Justice Ira Gammerman indicated that when he makes his formal ruling, the motion to dismiss will be largely denied and the essence of the case will proceed. Accordingly, he denied the defendants’ motion to stay discovery." 

UPDATE, UPDATE: CBS has put out the following statement:

We are very pleased that the judge is seriously considering our motion to dismiss the case, and we eagerly await his decision on that motion.  In that regard, the court indicated that portions of the lawsuit may not survive our motion to dismiss.  In the meantime, the court has said that discovery can begin subject to agreement on its scope by the parties, which is standard procedure in this Court. We look forward to discussing with Mr. Rather's representatives what that scope might be.

Last week, lawyers for CBS filed a motion to dismiss Dan Rather’s $70 million civil lawsuit against them in New York State Supreme Court.

One of their arguments is that Mr. Rather is essentially bringing a defamation charge against the network. Yesterday we caught up with Mr. Rather's lawyer, Martin Gold.

“What they’re saying is that a claim for damage to reputation is a claim to defamation,” he said. “There’s no other way in the world of CBS that someone can hurt someone’s reputation other than defaming them. But defamation is making a false statement about somebody, which damages their reputation. We haven’t alleged false statements that they’ve made about Dan … What we’ve alleged is a scheme.”

We'll have more from Mr. Gold in tomorrow's NYTV column.

Today, roughly three weeks after re-launching under new hyper-competitive EP Shelley Ross, CBS’s (perennially last place) The Early Show is touting some improved numbers over last year.

According to today’s press release, for the week of Jan. 21, The Early Show has posted a 30 percent increase in adults 25-54 versus the same week last year. Also up in the same stretch: households (by 4 percent), total viewers (by 9 percent), and women 25-54 (by 25 percent).

While CBS would, no doubt, like to attribute the increase in numbers primarily to The Early Show’s “new format, studio, music and graphics” and to newcomers, including Ms. Ross and anchor Maggie Rodriguez, the Media Mob guess-timates that there might be other factors involved as well.

For one thing, we keep hearing rumors of some sort of national election going on, which we suppose, could drive up interest in morning news programs (what happened at the debate last night?) this year vs. 2007.

Or maybe it really is the catchy new music. Hard to say.

Recently, CBS paid nearly $2 billion to purchase CNET, a San Francisco-based company that owns a diverse network of Web sites.

Was the purchase by CBS a smart idea?

Um, probably not.

That's the conclusion of James Surowiecki of the New Yorker, who writes about the merger in the current issue of the magazine.

Mr. Surowiecki points out that many studies have found that "corporate marriages only rarely end in bliss," and that the "logic" of the CBS-CNET deal "depends on the myth of synergy."

"Merger mania also rests on what you might call the fallacy of ownership—the assumption that you have to own a company to make money from its properties," writes Mr. Surowiecki. "In fact, much of what mergers are supposed to accomplish can be achieved through partnerships and alliances... If CBS and CNET had simply agreed to cross-promote each other's brands and distribute each other's content, CBS would have had many of the benefits of merging without the costs."

More from the piece:

Unfortunately, the CBS-CNET merger fits none of the criteria for a good deal. The overlap between the two companies is limited, and so are the opportunities for cost-cutting. And, because CNET is neither small nor privately owned, CBS paid a forty-five-per-cent premium on CNET's stock-market price. That means that, for the deal to work, it will need to improve CNET's performance not by a little but by a lot. Rationally speaking, then, it's unlikely that this deal will end up making CBS money.

Yesterday evening, the Democratic National Committee announced that it was putting the kibosh on CBS's December 10 debate between Democratic presidential candidates.

"Hollywood's television and film writers have been on strike since Nov. 5, and most of the Democratic candidates had pledged not to cross picket lines to attend the debate, which had been set to take place in a studio at CBS Television City in Los Angeles," reports The New York Times. "That location has been picketed most days since the start of the strike, and no aspiring Democratic presidential candidate would have wanted to be caught on camera crossing the picket lines."

Afterwards, writes Nikki Finke on Deadline Hollywood, a "bitchslapping contest" broke out between CBS and the WGA, as evidenced by CBS' "doozie" of a press release:

Two weeks ago, CBS officials, in an effort of cooperation, contacted the WGA leadership and asked them to suspend the picketing for just a couple of hours on December 10 so the Democratic presidential debate could go on and the democratic process could be served. Our request was met with silence.

Variety's Michael Schneider reports that husband-and-wife comedy team Samantha Bee and Jason Jones will be developing a sit-com for CBS. The duo are both correspondents for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (This comes via the Huffington Post's Media vertical.)

Mr. Schneider describes the show, which will be co-written by and star Ms. Bee and Mr. Jones as revolving "around the behind-the-scenes world of a celebrity chef (played by Jones) and the two women who run his cooking empire (one of whom will be played by Bee)."

Hey, it almost worked for this guy

This weekend, The New York Times ran an obituary for Lou Dorfsman, who spent decades as CBS's creative director. Mr. Dorfsman was granted incredible latitude in developing the network's signature look on air, in print, and in the company's Black Rock headquarters where he was tasked with, "selecting the type and making certain that the spacing between letters was flawless for the numerals on wall clocks, the elevator buttons, even the elevator inspection stickers," according to Steven Heller. Mr. Dorfsman was 90.

Mr. Heller pays particular attention to Mr. Dorfsman's Gastrotypographicalassemblage, a typographic installation at CBS's cafeteria, which he describes as follows:

For the building's cafeteria, he designed a mammoth wall, 35 feet wide by 8 ½ feet tall, of hand-milled wood type that wed antique letterforms to modern aesthetics. It was titled 'Gastrotypographicalassemblage' and spelled out all the fare the restaurant offered. It was removed after 25 years and is now being restored.

AIGA's Richard Anwyl wrote about the work in March, calling it "as legendary as its visionary designer and art director."

Wrote Mr. Anwyl:

Dorfsman, now approaching 90, considers the wall his magnum opus, his gift to the world. Unceremoniously discarded by CBS management in the early 1990s, the wall’s nine panels were thankfully salvaged by New York designer Nick Fasciano. Time and improper storage had ravaged the monument, however, leaving it in a state of disrepair. The Center for Design Study, having acquired the wall, is engaged in fundraising to support the meticulous and extensive restoration required. The goal is to see Dorfsman’s wall restored to its full integrity and as part of a permanent traveling exhibition on historical American design, to serve as a tool for education and expanding awareness of the value of intelligently applied design. The wall is a window to the past that should be built up, not torn down.

The original sketch of the wall, by Herb Lubalin, can be found here. Examples of Mr. Dorfsman's work can be found here and here.

We were sad to hear that vile MTV couple Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag will be ruining one of our favorite shows by making an appearance on How I Met Your Mother in January. But, while doing some research, we came across a website that cheered us up.

On last night's episode of How I Met Your Mother, Barney worried that he accidentally made one of his recent hook-ups into a mom. Barney, our favorite bro played with brilliance by Neil Patrick Harris, learns that he won't be a father, leading him to declare to his friend, Marshall, played by Jason Segel, "This is the happiest moment of my life, Marshall! The way I feel about not having kids, I never knew I could love something this much."

Inspired, he creates a new holiday: Not a Father's Day. According to his reasoning, "Why can't there be a day for people who are single and like it that way?" (Hey, Festivus started out as a joke once, too.) Barney then went on to plug notafathersday.com.

Behold, for all your Not a Father's Day needs, an actual Not Father's Day Web site (courtesy of the Fox Shop). The site has a simple, web 1.0 kind of design, lacking silly social networking, widgets, or links to a Flickr pages. This is all about simple service; A bro's bro site that calls to mind the very Web 1.0 concept of TV-Web convergence, which brought the world various Simpson-themed sites like Mr. X's Webpage, which was first mentioned on-air in an episode called "The Computer Wore Menace Shoes."

On notafathersday.com, you can send out a Not a Father's Day postcard or buy a Not a Father's Day mug for that special not-a-father in your life. There's also a list of possible "Not Fathers" including George Clooney, Dr. Seuss, and George Washington.

That last one comes with an asterisk clarifying, "although he was the father of our country."

Yesterday the legal teams for Dan Rather and CBS appeared in New York Supreme Court, where they told Justice Ira Gammerman that the two sides had more or less agreed on terms for the discovery process moving forward in Mr. Rather's $70 million suit against his former bosses.

On Wednesday afternoon, Jim Quinn, a lawyer representing CBS, told the Media Mob that his clients had agreed to turn over the findings of investigator Erik T. Rigler. He also suggested that Mr. Rather would be disappointed by those findings, which would do little to validate Mr. Rather's case against CBS and Viacom.

Today, Mr. Rather's legal team sent us the following statement from lawyer Jane G. Stevens in response:

CBS withheld the Rigler documents, and other documents relating to the Thornburgh Panel's investigation, from Mr. Rather and the public for more than three years. CBS had little choice but to 'agree' to produce them now given Judge Gammerman's denial of CBS's repeated requests to stop the discovery process. We look forward to reviewing these documents, along with the other evidence that we anticipate will support Mr Rather's claims of breach of contract, fraud and other misconduct.

This morning, the New York Daily News reported that WCBS Channel 2 has laid off two senior correspondents-investigative reporter Scott Weinberger and Andrew Kirtzman, a former political reporter for New York 1--amid a broader round of cutbacks.

"Weinberger and Kirtzman are the only familiar faces involved in the layoffs, although behind-the-scenes staffers and freelancers were also cut, sources told the Daily News," reported Richard Huff. "The exact number of people leaving was unclear."

Elsewhere, at TV Newser, Chris Ariens is reporting that "corporate-wide CBS job cuts have made their way to West 57th St."

"In addition to the cuts, some jobs are being added, some open positions are not being filled, while other jobs are being ‘redefined,'" Mr. Ariens reports. "Insiders say the cuts amount to ‘just over 1%' of the CBS News staff. CBS Corp. reported a 14.6% decline in fourth-quarter earnings. The share price is down 19% so far this year."

David Letterman is winning the battle of the re-runs, the New York Post reports.

Since the writers strike began over a month ago, forcing both Mr. Letterman of CBS and his late-night rival, Jay Leno of NBC, into re-runs, Mr. Letterman's numbers are down only around 21 percent, whle Mr. Leno's are off by 40 percent. Mr. Leno still leads, but, says the Post, "Letterman hasn't been this close to Leno in years."

MONDAY

It’s only been a week, but the strike has done plenty of damage. Late night TV is kaput. Saturday Night Live, too. (Poor Jonah Hill, of Superbad fame, was slated to host.) But it’s Mondays that may suffer the most. Production of 24 has been delayed, with the possibility that Fox may even hold showing the seventh season until next Fall, in order to make sure it airs uninterrupted. Don’t the networks know that if they postpone 24, the terrorists win? End the strike now. Give the writers whatever they want. Please.

In the meantime, enjoy your last episode of the Big Bang Theory for the foreseeable future. Production has shut down. And tonight’s is the last that they have in the can. Also, Billy Crystal is honored with the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor (PBS, 9 PM). Plenty of comedians who you could have sworn were dead will be on hand to celebrate.

TUESDAY

“From John Langley, producer of the groundbreaking Cops”—uh oh—“comes the next big law enforcement reality series”—oh no—“Jail” (MyNetworkTV, 9:00 PM). Where does Mr. Langley come up with these ideas? It’s really just another dagger into the slow-beating heart of Tuesday nights. What else is there other than House (Fox, 9:00 PM)? And don’t say the Dancing With the Stars results show (ABC, 9:00 PM) …

WEDNESDAY

Last weeks’ CMA Awards show was a big score for ABC and the network looks like it’s going to roll in November, with at least a month’s worth of episodes of Pushing Daisies (8:00 PM), Private Practice (9:00 PM) and Big Shots (10:00 PM) in the hopper. The same can’t be said for the Back to You (Fox, 8:00 PM) or ’Til Death (Fox, 8:30 PM), which are sitting right in the middle of the ratings pack. Production was shut down on both sitcoms.

And if you weren’t worried enough about the recent rash of noose and swastika sightings, tune into National Geographic’s American Skinheads (9:00 PM). It’s sure to get you all lathered up.

THURSDAY

Cast members and writers of The Office (NBC, 9:00 PM) have been some of the more vocal and visible strikers in the last week. (The Culture Czar linked to this video they made while on the picket line. Warning: not funny. Potentially damaging if you like the characters of Toby, Ryan or Kelly.) Incidentally, and quite tragically, they only have one new episode left. (NBC plans on airing The Incredibles next week in this time slot.) The network finally gets its act together on Thursday nights and look what happens. Somebody confiscate all of Jeff Zucker’s belts and shoelaces.

FRIDAY

Deal or No Deal (NBC, 8:00 PM) has three teams competing for $100 million—yowza!—to commemorate 100 years of the Hershey Kiss. The odds of these people winning the jackpot are about the same as having Howie Mandel’s sense of humor reappear.

On Jan. 10, 2005, CBS President Leslie Moonves sent his employees a novella-length memo with the subject line “The Independent Panel Issues its report.”

CBS had formed said independent panel months earlier, in the fall of 2004, in order to investigate the development, preparation and aftermath of Dan Rather and company’s flawed report on President Bush’s military service. The report had aired on 60 Minutes Wednesday on Sept. 8, 2004, a few months before the presidential election, and had subsequently embroiled the network in a scandal that came to be known as “Memogate.”

In his memo to the staff, Mr. Moonves summarized the findings of the 200-plus-page report, which the panel had completed five days earlier. Mr. Moonves noted that the panel had found that CBS reporters had rushed the piece about Mr. Bush’s military service onto the air. “The bottom line,” he wrote, was that much of the story had been “wrong, incomplete, or unfair.”

“I think it’s important to note, in the Panel’s own words, that ‘CBS News did not have any input or influence with respect to the findings of the Panel, other than to commit itself at the outset to make this Report public,’” Mr. Moonves wrote. “This Panel was truly independent, and remains so.”

Over the past year, as part of his $70 million lawsuit against his former employers, Dan Rather has repeatedly raised questions about the panel’s independence. During the first week of November, Mr. Rather’s legal team submitted a memorandum to the judge overseeing the case, which, in part, reiterated Mr. Rather’s allegation that the panel was little more than a PR operation for a news company more interested in protecting its reputation and currying favor with Republicans in Washington than in setting the record straight regarding President Bush’s military records.

In a response, dated Nov. 3, lawyers for CBS countered Mr. Rather’s latest criticisms of the panel. “The Panel was completely independent and conducted its investigation without the influence of CBS, as all the testimony in the case proves,” wrote lawyers for CBS.

But one set of internal CBS e-mails (which turned up in the discovery process and was recently made public) would seem to suggest that if CBS executives refrained from directly influencing the panel’s final report, they were certainly contemplating doing so on the eve of its publication.

The e-mail exchange took place between Andrew Heyward, then the president of CBS News, and Linda Mason, the CBS executive charged with acting as a liaison to the members of the panel. The date of the exchange was Dec. 17, 2004—a full 12 days before the panel would turn over its first “substantially completed draft” to certain CBS executives, including Mr. Moonves, for review prior to publication.

In the e-mail back-and-forth, Mr. Heyward and Ms. Mason appear to be engaging in a bit of preemptive damage control. “Even if they had to expand the summary, we should consider this option if the big doc is too destructive,” wrote Mr. Heyward. “[A]nd I wouldn’t hesitate to put that back on them—that they exceeded the mandate or violated our instruction to leave the organism alive after the cancer is removed.”

In a recent deposition with Mr. Rather’s lawyers (parts of which have now been made public), Mr. Heyward testified that he didn’t remember the details of the option that he and Ms. Mason were discussing in the e-mails. Nor did he recall if he had seen a draft of the panel’s report, prior to writing the e-mails. “I think Mr. Heyward is talking in general terms,” Ms. Mason testified during her deposition.

“Why are you having any conversations with Mr. Heyward at all if he was out of the loop on this one?” asked a lawyer for Mr. Rather later in the deposition.

“This isn’t about content,” said Ms. Mason. “This is about if we’re getting near the end, what are we going to do with it. Strategy.”

And so it is that CBS’s damage-control strategy concerning Mr. Rather, Mr. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard staggers forward, now entering … year five.

fgillette@observer.com

On the afternoon of May 16, CBS President Leslie Moonves stood at the front of Carnegie Hall and directed the gaze of hundreds of advertisers and journalists toward a massive screen at the back of the stage.

With the lights down and all eyes up, the president of the most watched television station in America proudly proceeded to show off a clip from … YouTube.

Sure enough, not half an hour into their annual upfront presentation to advertisers, the CBS brass were busy spotlighting the work of “stewmurray47”—who several months ago had compiled a bunch of David Caruso one-liners from CSI: Miami into a YouTube-worthy video. Make that a CBS-upfront-worthy video!

“Content like that demonstrates just how dramatically our world has changed,” said Mr. Moonves.

Luckily for Mr. Moonves, the subset of the world known as network television hasn’t changed that much in recent years. To wit: last season for the fifth straight year, CBS won the overall ratings game. Mr. Moonves went on to note that CBS finished a close second in the 18 to 49 demos, just a smidgen behind “those Idol worshippers at Fox.”

The mood was celebratory.

Queen’s “We Will Rock You” pumped through the theater's sound system. A song-and-dance team performed a riff off a Sly & the Family Stone standard ("We want to thank you / for watching / CBS / again!") And an animated version of network sales guru JoAnn Ross appeared on screen, flying through virtual space.

“Just to be clear,” said Mr. Moonves. “The dollars she will be asking for will be very, very real.”

CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler took the baton from Mr. Moonves. She explained that thanks to the continued success of the network’s existing primetime lineup there wasn’t too much space for new shows. But with those limited opportunities, Ms Tassler said, CBS had decided to get edgy.

She summed up the subjects of the new programs thusly: geeks, Cubanos, kids, vampires, singers, and swingers. Sounds like good family entertainment to us!

Cue the nerds.

Ms. Tassler announced that on Monday night, CBS will be adding some geek-humor to their lineup with a show called The Big Bang Theory—a situational comedy revolving around what happens when a hot girl (played by Kaley Cuoco) moves into an apartment across the hall from two dweeby roommates (Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons). Spoiler alert: Stephen Hawking jokes ensue.

Ms. Tassler kept moving.

On Tuesday nights this year, CBS will debut a new drama dubbed Cane, starring Jimmy Smits as the head of a Cuban American family that, having made a fortune in the rum business, wades into the tumultuous world of sugar-cane wheeling and dealing.

After a highlight reel, Mr. Smits sauntered onto the stage surrounded by his fellow cast members. Despite all his years on successful network shows, including The West Wing, NYPD Blue, and L.A. Law, he had never attended an upfront.

“I’m the 40-year-old upfront virgin!” said Mr. Smits. “Okay, the 50-year-old upfront virgin.”

Like a true virgin, Mr. Smits exited promptly.

Before long, the audience was being treated to a preview of CBS’ new, Wednesday night reality show: Kid Nation, wherein producers (and, presumably, lawyers) take 40 kids (ages 8 to 15) to a ghost town in New Mexico and set them loose, sans parents, for 40 days. Along the way, there’s a lot of crying, and contests, and latrine cleaning. And, well, more crying.

For one great moment, Carnegie Hall was filled with the image of a handful of dusty teenagers, standing around a table in a Western-style saloon doing shots of root beer.

Somewhere in TV-land Al Swearengen was shaking his head.

From there, Ms. Tassler went on to introduce Moonlight, a new drama about a love-torn vampire with a heart of gold, and Viva Laughlin, a musical set in a Nevada casino and featuring Hugh Jackman as a big-haired fellow who likes to gamble and sing.

And what about the, um, big-haired fellows who like to swing?

Towards the end of her presentation, Ms. Tassler introduced a show that will appear on CBS mid-season called Swingtown. Set in 1976, the drama centers around the horndogging habits of a swinging airline pilot, his randy wife, and their new next-door neighbors who may or may not be prone to experimentation. The montage was jam packed with polyester and heavy petting.

“I might need a cigarette after that,” concluded Ms. Tassler.

And we might need another shot of root beer!

New executive producer Shelley Ross continues to shake up CBS' The Early Show, which for some tmie now has been stuck in third place in the morning news battles.

Today, CBS announced that they've added a new anchor to the tag-team cast: Maggie Rodriguez, who has been co-anchoring the Saturday version of the show since June.

The move comes right on the heels of the departure last week of anchor Hannah Storm.

TV Newser also reported today that the show will unveil a new set in January. In the meantime, CBS will broadcast the show out of Katie Couric's digs--aka Studio 47.

The Media Mob has learned that after several months of hearing from lawyers on both sides of the case, Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court has just made a ruling regarding CBS's motion to dismiss the $70 million civil lawsuit that Dan Rather initially brought against CBS back on Sept. 19, 2007.

In short: The case will proceed on a limited basis.

Lawyers for CBS did succeed, however, in knocking down several major aspects of Mr. Rather's suit.

To wit: Mr. Rather's initial complaint contained a wide range of allegations against executives at the Tiffany Network, including essentially seven causes for action, ranging from breach of contract to fraud to prima facie tort.

A number of those causes for action—including the claim of fraud—have been dismissed. However, according to Mr. Rather's legal team, three issues are still in play—involving claims of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and tortious inducement of breach of contract. Also, the $70 million claim for damages remains on the table.

But on a day when reports of Katie Couric's problems at CBS News have made major headlines, lawyers for CBS say the network has something to be very happy about.

"We are extremely happy with the results," said James Quinn, the lawyer for the CBS defendants. "[The justice] has essentially thrown out the core allegations of the complaint with regard to the fraud. He dismissed all the claims against the individual defendants: Les Moonves, Sumner Redstone and Andrew Heyward. What's left in the case is a garden-variety contract dispute."

UPDATE: Mr. Rather's legal team just sent us the following statement from their attorney Martin Gold:

Justice Gammerman issued a decision today which leaves in place the entire essence of Mr. Rather’s lawsuit against CBS and Viacom, including both contract and tort claims.  Although not every legal theory of the case survives, as a result of the decision, the Court has permitted discovery and a trial of all of the factual issues that form the basis of Mr. Rather’s lawsuit, including his $70 million claim for compensatory and punitive damages.  The defendants’ statement that all that is left is a “garden variety contract dispute” is simply inaccurate.

Two decades ago, CBS's 48 Hours was rolling around in the horrors of "Crack Street." Last night, it was celebrating in a plush Manhattan lounge.

Around 7 p.m., a throng of TV luminaries gathered on the 20th floor of 230 Fifth Avenue to fete the resilient news documentary show, which recently marked its 20th anniversary on the air, making it the third-longest-running prime-time series on network TV, behind ABC's 20/20 and CBS's 60 Minutes.

Susan Zirinsky, the show's executive producer (who, years ago, served as the model for Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News) was the night's master of ceremony. Along the way, she introduced a series of rah-rah speeches by the likes of CBS chairman Leslie Moonves and CBS News president Sean McManus.

"I think people were overwhelmed by the depth of the feelings they had about their commitment to the show," Ms. Zirinsky told the Media Mob on Friday morning.

"There were no embarrassments," she added.

She said the party was packed with 48 Hours dignitaries, alumni and well-wishers, including CNN president (and former 48 Hours producer ) Jonathan Klein; Sony Corporation chairman (and 48 Hours creator) Sir Howard Stringer; Kid Nation executive producer Tom Foreman; and former CBS News president (and erstwhile 48 Hours EP) Andrew Heyward.

In between speeches, the crew sipped drinks and exchanged TV gossip in the lounge's many nooks. "I wanted some place that had couches and what I call ‘chatty corners,'" said Ms. Zirinsky. "So people could back away and see people they haven't seen in 10 or 20 years."

Ms. Zirinsky took over as the show's third executive producer in 1996. She noted that since then, 48 Hours Mystery (né 48 Hours Investigates) has expanded its role at CBS.

In recent years, the 48 Hours team has grown into something akin to an in-house production boutique. While true-crime stories remain their staple, Ms. Zirinsky's crew has also helped produce documentaries and specials on everything from major news events (Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina, Iraq) to pop stars past and present (Britney Spears, Tyra Banks, Elvis Presley).

"Look, we're not to the manor born," said Ms. Zirinsky. "That's just the reality I live in. I admire 60 Minutes. Would I like to do 60 Minutes at some point? Yeah, that's not going to happen. But I feel incredible pride in what we do. … I think we're a lot happier than 60 Minutes."

Ms. Zirinsky said the expansion of 48 Hours' duties dates back several years, to when her crew was working on the CBS ground-zero documentary "9/11." At the time, Mr. Moonves was directly overseeing the project.

"I formed a personal relationship with him because he was really running that show," said Ms. Zirinsky. "My screeners went to him for notes. I said, this is an interesting model for us. I said, I want to be your go-to team. I feel that has happened now."

Ms. Zirinsky said she now gets calls from every division in CBS entertainment. "Creatively we love it because we're good storytellers," she said. "We can step out of certain journalism boxes to tell a good story. It's like a journalist writing a novel. … Ultimately, we always come back home."

After the party, Ms. Zirinsky returned home literally. There, she received a late-night phone call from Sir Howard Stringer. He told Ms. Zirinsky that he missed having 48 Hours in his daily life and considered the show one of the greatest achievements of his career.

Also, he was happy to see all the old faces. "He told me that he recognized 70 percent of the people and that they looked great," said Ms. Zirinsky. "I told him it must have been the good lighting."

An invitation to appear on one of the Sunday morning talk shows is a privilege that every presidential candidate—even Duncan Hunter—is afforded at some point.

The no-shot curiosities—like Mr. Hunter or Mike Gravel—usually show up early in the campaign for their perfunctory segment or two in a nationally-televised hot seat. Ron Paul was supposed to among this class of candidates, and for a while it seemed that his Sunday morning exposure would be limited to being told by George Stephanopoulos over the summer that he had zero chance of winning the presidency.

But now, less than two months before the first primary and caucus votes will be cast, the networks want an unexpected second serving of the 72-year-old Texas congressman, thanks to the stunning fund-raising success he’s enjoyed—capped, for now at least, with the $4 million he took in over the internet in one day last week.

Dr. Paul sat down with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, and this time was treated by the host much more as a serious presidential candidate—albeit one with some ideas that don’t often get aired in big-time American politics—than some freaky side-show at a circus.

In addition to revealing that he didn’t own a computer until 1997, Dr. Paul advanced his usual arguments in favor of the gold standard (paper money, he believes, is the main source of inflation, “an invisible tax on the poor”) and against an interventionist foreign policy. (“We defended Seoul, Korea, better on 9/11 than we did Washington, DC,” he said.)

He also fielded the obligatory can-you-really-win question by pointing out the strides his campaign has made in the last year, none of which anyone in politics thought were remotely possible.

“I also know what the odds are,” he said. “But I'll tell you what: Don't try and tell my supporters that there's not a chance, because they believe it…My name is out there. I may well win.”

Determining where precisely Dr. Paul fits in the G.O.P. mix is a perplexing task. Judged by his standing in the polls, he has barely distinguished himself from the likes of Tom Tancredo and Mr. Hunter, although lately he’s begun to edge into mid-to-high single digits in some surveys. But if you judge him by the money he’s raised, and the number of donors he’s attracted, Dr. Paul is a giant.

No matter how he ultimately fares, though, Dr. Paul has made a contribution to the G.O.P. race and to the national political dialogue in a way that the other long-shot Republicans haven’t and can’t—simply because he’s the only Republican candidate willing to defy the foreign policy orthodoxy that has emerged within his party during the Bush years.

While the other Republican candidates refuse to break with the Bush administration on Iraq or any other weighty foreign policy questions, Dr. Paul proudly trumpets his outrage and tells his fellow Republicans that they are following their President off a cliff. A strong Paul showing in the primaries will make a powerful statement about how a significant chunk of the party’s grass-roots really feel about the cheerleading for the White House they’ve been asked to do for the last seven years.

On “Face the Nation,” Dr. Paul once again played the role of refreshing contrarian, this time on Iran. With President Bush and the architects of the Iraq war now training their sights on the Islamic republic, the jockeying has been intense among Republican candidates to strike the most muscular posture against Iran.

But Dr. Paul questioned the two very basic premises behind all of the drum-beating now going on: the assumptions that Iran has to be our enemy and that a nuclear-armed Iran would somehow represent an unprecedented threat to regional and global stability.

“I think our policy towards Iran is a threat,” Dr. Paul said. “That's what I fear. You know, I fear that tomorrow we might bomb Iran. That really scares me.”

Mr. Schieffer asked whether we should simply allow Iran to build the bomb.

“We have a more sensible policy,” Dr. Paul replied. “We talk to them. And we trade with them. We remove the sanctions. I mean, the Soviets had 40,000 [nuclear warheads].” The U.S., he pointed out, continued to talk with the U.S.S.R. throughout the Cold War.

In raw political terms, Dr. Paul is obviously on the wrong side of the Iran issue within the Republican Party. But he’s got all of that contrarian terrain to himself—and Iran is hardly the only issue where this is the case. And that goes a long way to explaining why Ron Paul is getting second and third invitations to Sunday morning news shows, while the other Republicans who began as asterisks in the polls have already exhausted their 15 minutes.

When Jim Stewart stepped down from CBS News in November 2006 after some 16 years of reporting on a range of topics for the Tiffany Network, the longtime Washington-based correspondent retired to the warmth of Florida. Now, depending on a judge’s ruling in an ongoing case, Mr. Stewart could be spending a part of his golden years in a much less sunny position—namely in contempt of a federal court.

In legal documents filed on the eve of the holidays, Mr. Stewart, citing promises of confidentiality, continued to defy a judge’s order to reveal the names of his sources for a series of reports he produced in 2003 for CBS News about the F.B.I.’s investigation into the domestic anthrax attacks of 2001.

If U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton decides in the coming months to hold Mr. Stewart in civil contempt for his defiance, the case, which lately has been unfolding largely under the news radar, could become one of the more tortured—and high-profile—media soap operas of the new year.

And, in the wake of the Valerie Plame affair, in which The New York Times’ Judith Miller served jail time for her own refusal to give up sources, it could offer additional ammunition to advocates of a federal shield law—which would increase journalists’ legal right to protect their sources in court. Norman Pearlstine, the former editor in chief of Time Inc. who earlier this year wrote a book about confidential sources, media law and his pivotal role in the Valerie Plame affair, told NYTV that Mr. Stewart’s case “is a perfect example of why we need a federal shield law.”

Some back story: In the summer of 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft named Steven Hatfill, a former government scientist, as a “person of interest” in the government’s criminal investigation into the anthrax attacks. Roughly a year later, Mr. Hatfill filed a civil lawsuit alleging that by talking about him to reporters, FBI and DOJ staffers had violated his rights under the federal Privacy Act—a 1974 law that restricts the public disclosure of certain information about government employees.

Over the course of several months in the summer of 2003, Mr. Stewart, who was then covering counterterrorism for CBS News, produced three Evening News reports about the investigation and the FBI’s ongoing surveillance of Mr. Hatfill, whom many authorities considered to be a top suspect. According to court documents, Mr. Stewart’s reporting relied, in part, on four confidential sources at the F.B.I.

Fast-forward four years. This past August, with Mr. Hatfill’s lawsuit still unresolved, Judge Walton ruled that Mr. Stewart and a handful of other reporters who had covered the story—including Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Brian Ross of ABC News, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, and Toni Locy of USA Today—would be required to turn over the names of their sources.

When deposed this past September, Mr. Stewart declined to do so. (All the other reporters except Ms. Locy were apparently released by their sources from their pledges of confidentiality. Ms. Locy claimed in her deposition not to remember the names of her sources.) In response, Mr. Hatfill’s lawyers, who did not return phone calls from NYTV seeking comment, filed a motion to hold Mr. Stewart in contempt of court.

The contempt motion argued that Mr. Stewart’s “entrenched defiance” called for escalating fines, starting at $1,000 per day. And it added: “The risk of industry support for Mr. Stewart’s contempt calls for one additional measure: the Court should prohibit Mr. Stewart’s solicitation or acceptance of any reimbursement for any contempt fines it should levy.”

Just before Christmas, Mr. Stewart responded to the motion for contempt. In extensive court filings, he explained that he had reached out to three of his four F.B.I. sources, only one of whom had agreed to be named. That source, a former F.B.I. public affairs specialist named Edwin Cogswell, had previously been contacted by other reporters in the case and in due course had essentially outed himself.

Mr. Stewart’s legal team went on to argue that because of intervening developments—specifically, the fact that Mr. Cogswell and two other former F.B.I. and Department of Justice employees have come forward as reporters’ sources—the judge should reconsider his initial ruling compelling Mr. Stewart to identify his sources. Mr. Stewart’s lawyer, Lee Levine, declined to comment on behalf of his client. Next Page >

Reader, he married her. A quiet wedding they had: Ted and—

Actually, about the only thing viewers of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother know for sure is that Ted’s happily ever after is already well under way by 2030. That’s the year he will corral his daughter and son into sitting semi-still while he voiceovers the present-day, Upper East Side–set tale of how their parents crossed paths and never uncrossed.

The result of that too-cute Wonder Years–recalling conceit is the best comedy on television that you’ve probably never watched.

The Best Show on Television You Aren’t Watching: That blessing is usually more of a curse, or a sort of excuse saved up for the brilliant but weird programs that have sneaked onto the networks from HBO and Showtime, with varying degrees of success. But How I Met Your Mother (Mondays at 8 p.m.) isn’t as densely quiet as Friday Night Lights, as off-putting as Arrested Development, as willfully surreal as anything starring Andy Richter.

In fact, the show—from the former Letterman writers Carter Bays and Craig Thomas—is an exceedingly well-written and mostly straightforward multi-camera comedy, following five New Yorkers in their 20’s from their tchotchke-cluttered apartments, directly downstairs to their favorite yet utterly average Irish pub, off to their time-wasting jobs, back to the bar for happy hour—with stops in between at crappy strip clubs, disappointing New Year’s parties, overcrowded brunch places and numerous bad dates. The show’s cast is an appealing and believable mix—an architect, a law student, a reporter, a kindergarten teacher and a, well, businessman of some sort (you know the type—he wears a suit, owns a 300-inch flat-screen, but what does he do?)—with a rare and natural chemistry. There’s a laugh track, but it’s largely unnecessary.

Sound something like Friends? How I Met Your Mother deserves to be just as big. It should be an absolute phenomenon, oft-quoted around every actual or metaphorical water cooler—but for whatever reason (lack of support, lack of imagination, basic corporate greed), CBS has been unwilling to promote it all that much, recently passing it over for the hit-making post–Super Bowl time slot. There are even rumors of its cancellation.

So tune in now. Save this show. It’s not too late. Despite the title, Ted hasn’t even met their mother yet.

LET'S FORGET, FOR THE MOMENT, how Ted (Josh Radnor) will meet his wife—who is she going to be?

The process of elimination has thus far crossed out only Ted’s current girlfriend, Robin (Cobie Smulders), and his best friend’s fiancé, Lily (Alyson Hannigan)—both knighted in the narration with the honorific “aunt”—which leaves about 134,000 potential guest stars between the ages of 20 and 34 on the island of Manhattan for Ted to fall for, propose to, marry, impregnate, grow old with and tired of, and then be buried beside.

It was maybe a mistake for the show’s writers to disqualify Robin right off the bat (the next-to-last line of the pilot being “And that, kids, was the true story of how I met … your Aunt Robin”). After all, Heraclitus wrote, “The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre,” which was pre-Socratic Greek for the ancient sitcom law of “Opposites Attract.”

There is, in this romance, a fresh inversion of the usual gender roles: Where Ted is a skinny slip of a schoolgirl, always daydreaming clichés about his wedding day, Robin is (in addition to being a Lauren Graham–like brunette giantess) a real man’s man, commitment-phobic and prickly and mostly immune to schmaltz, the owner of five dogs and no DVD not directed by John Woo, an aficionado of Cuban cigars and fine Scotch, and a frequent letter-writer to Guns & Ammo magazine. Her persona, to be fair, is as fabricated and reactionary as Reagan’s. After all, on an episode this past November, it was revealed that she was once a teenage pop star in Canada.

Sometime in the mid-90’s—which is apparently when our 80’s finally traversed the 49th parallel—Robin, her hair teased out and blond, had a minor hit in her home country entitled “Let’s Go to the Mall.” Lyrics included “Put on your jelly bracelets / And your cool graffiti coat / At the mall, having fun is what it’s all aboot!” (Her fake video, featuring A.V. Club special effects, much jamming upon a key-tar and a robot—you know, doing the robot—also became a minor hit on YouTube. Look it up.) Anyway, instead of shaving her head and getting shipped off to rehab, Robin just threw out her bedazzled jean jacket, changed her surname from Sparkles back to Scherbatzky, and emigrated south to become a soft-nosed reporter for NY1 News. She will not enter malls of any kind.

About Ted: Imagine if Patrick Dempsey in Can’t Buy Me Love hadn’t grown up to be Patrick Dempsey in Grey’s Anatomy, but instead stayed basically as adorable, awkward, eager. It’s a testament to newcomer Josh Radnor that, as Ted hurries love, he mostly avoids a) irritating the crap out of viewers at home and b) having every girl he meets immediately take out a restraining order against him.

MUCH OF THE SHOW'S EARLY PUBLICITY was devoted to the fact that the casting directors had organized something of a nerd summit. There was Willow, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sharing the same soundstage with Doogie Howser, M.D., and one of the freaks from Freaks and Geeks. Reviewers regarded it with the same mix of nostalgia and condescension they might have an all-star skit at Comic Con.

Alyson Hannigan as Lily did spend a lot of the first season performing a lot of her best-ofs from Buffy. But in the second season, after Lily broke off her engagement with Ted’s roommate—big, sweet Marshall (played by a comic wizard of heartache, Jason Segel, from Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared)—moved to San Francisco, dyed her hair and returned to win Marshall back, we’ve had an inkling of the real girl this cute Muppet might grow up into.

Then there’s Neil Patrick Harris as our aforementioned businessman, Barney.

This season, most of the publicity has been preoccupied with Mr. Harris’ sexuality both on the show (ludicrously straight) and off (happily gay). This coverage reveals our terrible hypocrisy: We willingly suspend our disbelief whenever the gorgeous college dropouts who populate Hollywood intubate blocked airways, transplant organs, process crime scenes and disarm nukes, but balk at a gay actor playing straight—even if it’s a sharp, hilarious caricature of a suited-up man-child who picks up drunk chicks and then sneaks out while they’re showering. If he’s feeling particularly sensitive, he will leave her his form letter, in which he claims to be a ghost who spent his last night on earth boning the hell out of her.

Thanks to Mr. Harris, Barney is another sitcom lothario in the same way that Homer Simpson is just another sitcom dad. Barney, in the character’s own words, takes it to the next level: He is manic, inventive, a poet of buffoonery. And where, say, Joey on Friends spent a decade or more dining out on a single line—“How you doin’?”—Barney is a catchphrase factory. A brief excerpt from the Barney lexicon:

Awesome: along with Legendary, this is Barney’s highest and most frequently deployed compliment, as in “Playing laser tag is awesome!” It can also be used to refer to a refined and enlightened state of Barney-ness, as in, “When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead.”

Lemon Law: A rule permitting one to end a date for any reason in the first five minutes, no questions asked. When a woman later lemon-laws him, he regrets not calling it “Barney’s Law.”

Broing-away Party: One last night of fun before Ted moves in with Robin and becomes a “hen-pecked, beaten-down shell of a man.” See also, Special Broccasion, Bro-Choice Party, Brotime at the Apollo.

Sex Visa: A 12-hour guest pass allowing women to visit the heart of Bachelor Country, i.e., Barney’s apartment (“Fourteen hours if you qualify for multiple entry.”)

Soul Boner: The good feeling Barney gets while volunteering at a soup kitchen.

Barney, like Robin, is a work of art, of self-reinvention. Of course, a show concerned with memory has to digress again and again into flashback; and so we’ve already seen Ted’s ill-conceived goatee and how the Pogues cassette got permanently stuck in the tape deck of Marshall’s Pontiac Fiero; we’ve visited the loss of each friend’s virginity, and seen a younger, poncho-wearing Barney, a gentle coffeehouse hippie, languidly preparing for a tour in the Peace Corps with his lady love. This was back when he threw out peace signs instead of high-fives. This was back when he had a heart that, once broken, he didn’t bother to replace.

TWO SEASONS OF How I Met Your Mother and still no mother: It makes you realize how lazy and rigged most romantic comedies are—little pop quizzes, with always the same answer. Two people meet cute; can’t stand one another; can’t stay away from one another; get into whatever disagreement will occupy the film’s second act; and then collapse into each other’s arms like castaways finally being rescued by the Coast Guard.

But How I Met Your Mother wants to show more than the final inning of the final game of our love lives—it wants to go back over the entire season, pre-season, training camp, little league, all of it, everything: all the failed relationships and false starts and fuck-ups, all the preparatory work that each of us have to go through in order to become someone else’s One. With every 22-minute chunk of this saga, it’s clear that this is not merely the story of how Ted met his kids’ mother; in front of this audience of his offspring, he’s reconstructing the whole narrative, start to finish, of how he grew up into the best version of Ted—the one their mother could meet and love.

The last time somebody sat down and decided to remember everything, we got In Search of Lost Time. This time, we get a sitcom—but maybe the funniest, most touching sitcom in years. Next Page >

The Media Mob has learned that CBS News is on the verge of announcing the end of Shelley Ross’ brief, tumultuous reign as executive producer of the Early Show.

According to sources, CBS is also expected to announce that Rick Kaplan—currently the executive producer of the Evening News With Katie Couric—will take over control of the Early Show, perhaps on a temporary basis, until a permanent replacement is hired.

UPDATE: Right on the heels of our having learned about this, an e-mail from CBS News president Sean McManus:

This is to let you know that Shelley Ross, Senior Executive Producer, THE EARLY SHOW, is leaving CBS News.

Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS EVENING NEWS WITH KATIE COURIC, will oversee THE EARLY SHOW on an interim basis until a permanent replacement is named. He will remain executive producer of the EVENING NEWS. As you know, Rick has built an exceptionally strong senior team there, and the broadcast will be in very capable hands until he returns full-time to the EVENING NEWS.

I know I can count on all of you to support Rick in his expanded efforts.

Next Page >

In recent days, during a series of meetings in New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles, roughly 500 CBS News employees who are members of the Writers Guilds of America, East and West, voted overwhelmingly in favor of ratifying their new contract agreement with their bosses.

“Under the terms of the new contract, WGA-CBS employees will receive a 3.5% raise immediatel