You know all those lovely clips of The Daily Show, Good Morning America, Dancing With the Stars, and American Idol that blogs have been able to publish with growing ease and selection in the past few months?

The joyride may be over.

In a dust up we kind of expected to see, and are surprised took so long to form, RedLasso (the company behind the embeddable clips) is being taken to court by NBC, CBS, and Fox for copyright violations. [Reuters] They're not so happy that their programming has been reduced to bite-size segments for anyone to watch gratis.

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Though its mega-franchise American Idol saw ratings drop off this season – will tonight's season finale vote tally even break records? – Fox will be crowned the winner of the 2007-08 television season, with the ratings numbers to beat the competition. Nevermind that all together, network TV audiences fell by a whopping 10 percent this season over last, though Fox is up 5 percent. [Variety]

This week's news that networks are turning to Americanized foreign series to save cash? Here's your primo example of how this could be either genius or a disaster: Fox is picking up Hole in the Wall, the hugely popular Japanese "human Tetris" game show, where contestants must bend themselves into shapes to fit through a wall cut-out, or get forced into a pool. Its United States arrival, however, isn't too much of a stretch; Hole is already broadcast in 16 regions, including Australia, Russia and Denmark. (ABC, meanwhile, is picking up obstacle course series Wipeout, a take-off on Japans 1980s show Takeshi's Castle.)

So how to tell whether this show is going to take off in the U.S.? YouTube clips of the show have been viewed millions of times. Each.

Did you happen upon a herd of cows around NYC yesterday? Or a group of Segway riders? It was all part of a marketing campaign for Fringe, the new Fox sci-fi drama from J.J. Abrams that took over NYC yesterday, the same day the show was announced.

Starring Joshua Jackson and debuting this fall, Fringe focuses on a weirdo research scientist, his son, and a FBI agent who connects them.

So what's behind the publicity stunts?

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In recent memory, it started with shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Then it got caught up in the Oprah machine with Oprah's Big Give. (Why don't we forget about NBC's Three Wishes and ABC's The Benefactor?)

And now reality television as a charitable cause is going one step further, with Secret Millionaire, the new Fox series where cameras follow a wealthy benefactor who spends 10 days visiting an impoverished town in stealth mode and living as crappily as the locals. [THR] At the show's end, the rich guy reveals himself and donates at least $100,000 of his own money (expect at least $1m for the finale) to one or more lucky individuals.

Viewers will also be treated to the rags-to-riches side of the story, with cameras following the lucky recipient as he blows his wad on foreign cars and blow.

Coming up on the craptastic medium that is reality TV: Jennifer Lopez is teaming with Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos to produce a new TLC documentary series about the new mom's life as a living, breathing brand mechanism. Over at Fox, the trend of ruining lives continues after The Moment of Truth, with Deadbeat Dads, where the National Child Support Center goes after fathers who are skipping out on child support, because public shame is the only way to get them to pay up. And on the History Channel, the genre's L. Ron Hubbard, Mark Burnett, will re-create Henry Morton Stanley's late 1800s search for explorer David Livingstone. Somehow all of these reality projects got off the ground without any promise of attractive twentysomethings hooking up in a hot tub.

This image is not the life support monitor for Patrick Swayze, all though by the looks of his chain smoking and the way this graph is steering, it might as well be. Rather, it's a chart of network television ratings for this season vs. last season. Some obvious highlights: The CW is nearly off the charts, in a very bad way; for all its awesome new shows, ABC is dragging; American Idol cannot support the entire Fox channel; and NBC, once the top network and then suddenly the No. 4 loser, is the only channel showing gains.

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Paying fines for indecency is so … indecent. So Fox isn't paying the $91,000 fee the FCC threw at its affiliate stations for a 2003 episode of Married by America (remember that?) where whip cream got licked off strippers. It's not that Fox can't afford the cash; it's the principle of the matter. Whip cream and strippers were essential to the storyline!

The FCC didn't see it that way.

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If not NBC, then maybe ABC or Fox will do. Hell, why doesn't Jay Leno, when his contract expire and he's replaced by Conan O'Brien in 2009, just head to CNN Headline News? With his tenure at NBC down to counting away the weeks and months, Leno's future prospects are worth resurrecting for another high-profile discussion. Leno is being courted by the Disney and News Corp.-owned stations, as well as Sony Pictures Television, to hammer out a possible deal to keep him on late night, trying to steal Nielsen points not just from David Letterman, but his old NBC cohort as well.

Back in 2004, the peacock network, fearing the loss of Conan O'Brien to a competitor, promised him Leno's gig for next year. Now that leaves 'em struggling to hold on to the $25-million-per-year late night ratings winner, even if they can't offer him his regular time slot. (SNL vet Jimmy Fallon is rumored to be the top pick to replace Conan.)

So far, Sony is said to be offering the most lucrative gig: $40 million per year, and ownership of his show plus an hour-long slot that would air after his show. Sony is also said to be the least likely winner for Leno's hand, since it would be unable to offer him an 11:30pm timeslot on a network.

For his part, Leno's NBC contract keeps him off the air until January 2010 (so Conan can get a jump start, sans competition). The kicker, however, is that his current deal forbids him from even being able to talk new deals with suitors until November 2009, which means we're going to have to revisit this whole thing again in 18 months. So stop caring for now.

With revenue up 9.5 percent and profit of $832 million, what's News Corp. got to be worried about?

What analysts would consider moderate financial reports from Rupert Murdoch are instead a shining star on the media landscape, with the competition taking huge hits from slipping ad revenue. (By comparison, the New York Times Co. reported revenue down 7.1 percent with profit at $53 million.)

So it might explain why Murdoch remains bullish on his TV business and its ability to score ad campaigns: He has no plans to cancel Fox's upfronts, where huge blocks of advertising are sold in advance.

"Now I know there are concerns about the health of the ad market, says News Corp. COO and Fox president Peter Chernin. "But we here at Fox have not seen any weakness to date. Pricing remains very strong for both entertainment and sports." No wonder — quarterly profits on News Corp.'s TV side, at Fox and India's Star, more than doubled to $245 million. NBC, which continues to see its advertising outlook slip, is considering canceling May's upfronts.

EXAGGERATION STATION Okay, the Super Bowl was pretty awesome. It was an incredible game and Eli Manning, a Hoboken resident, gave New Jersey Post-College U. a good name. But still, it’s just a game and the ads were vaguely racists this year. Still, Rupert Murdoch called Super Bowl Sunday "the greatest day ever in the history of our network." Not that the premier of Temptation Island was a better day for Fox, but that claim seems kind of sad. [TVNewser]

THE PEPSI ADS WILL BE BETTER ANYWAY Fox won't be selling ad space to presidential candidates during the Super Bowl. The biggest advertising event of the year is essentially sold out, and Fox doesn't have enough slots to offer equal time to the candidates. Fine, more quick-witted promotions of bad beer for the rest of us. [TVWeek]

COPYING CBS'S STYLE Following an announcement yesterday that CBS has cut 20 projects from development for next season, NBC, FOX, CW and ABC have also made scaled back on pilots. Jeff Zucker blamed the current recession for his network's decision. It's the writers strike, stupid. [NYT, Variety]

Awkward moment for Fox Sports:

We're predicting Al Sharpton will demand the firing of the Fox Sports' call-in screeners.

Crap. New Year's is already behind us, which means it's January, which means it's … American Idol season. And just in time, Fox sent over this super-soft hoodie, which we'll either use to stay warm around Jossip HQ, or as a muleta while bullfighting with our Roomba.

Don’t tell the dog, but Fox News has acknowledged that despite the innovative and unique stances Ron Paul has taken, he’s not going to be president. And the network has not invited him to speak at their GOP candidate forum in New Hampshire on Sunday.

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Who cares if everyone is getting canned? The PR team at Fox wants to wish you happy holidays! So before security escorts you, click play.

Share holders of Dow Jones gave it up: Rupert Murdoch is now the official owner of their very own Pulitzer Prize winning paper.

Let's stay positive: that’s good news for any Wall Street Journal reporter looking for some TV exposure.

Rudy Giuliani is the only person running for President who is happy with his coverage on Fox. After allegations that Fox News is not-too-subtly supporting him, Fred Thompson went further saying that the channel has been disparaging of his campaign.

On Fox News Sunday, Thompson said:

For you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn't do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There's a lot of other opinion out there.

Yeah, like Arthur Branch is the best District Attorney on Law & Order and Fred Thompson’s wife is a babe.

It’s day three and the writers are still striking.

More shows have stopped production due to the walk out, including Desperate Housewives, Back to You, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Til Death, and Rules of Engagement. At least late night shows won’t feel lonely in repeats.

Producer-writers for Grey’s Anatomy and The Shield have sided with the writers and stopped working. Hillary Clinton, copying Barack Obama, has also endorsed the writers.

Since Americans have never been the type to read the newspaper after work, the networks have planned some high class reality TV to substitute for scripted shows.

After the jump, a preview of the strike season.

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