The successful Mideast war drama continues to elude Hollywood producers, who failed at the box office again this weekend with the Ridley Scott-helmed Body of Lies. The ninth contemporary war film in the last two years to be mostly ignored by moviegoers, Lies, the tale of a CIA operative on the hunt for a terrorist in Jordan, was crushed at the box office by lighter fare, specifically the fictional account of a rich dog in Beverly Hills.

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It's a good thing America was never known for it's cars: with GM hemorrhaging $15 billion per quarter now, and Detroit automotive plants closing down left and right, who is left to buy up all of the television's tasty ad time?

It's time for foreign cars to step in, and like their owners are doing when they vacation in New York, save our failing economy with some of that sweet overseas currency:

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Ever since a couple weeks ago when we saw some dick in McCarren Park do a bump in front of a baby, we've known it was time to get the hell out of Brooklyn. The plan was to become LES clichés at the end of the summer, but we're now left with no choice but to emigrate as soon as Craig's List and our friend Kat's truck give us the go ahead. The TV people have learned to exist in daylight like human beings and they're coming this way!

Producers are giving Park Slope the star treatment with a pilot by the same executives who brought "Sex and the City," starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and "Melrose Place" to TV.

According to industry sources, Darren Star, who created those smash shows, has teamed with Sony and NBC for a proposed series about a group of affluent characters who live in the upscale Brooklyn neighborhood.

Sue Kramer, the writer currently at work on the series, calls the program a "dramady. As you can no doubt imagine, Kramer is a Park Slope resident herself, so it's little wonder that she says shit like this: "Park Slope has so much juice, just like Manhattan. It's got a lot of pizzazz and energy." Our guess as to what the TV incarnation of Park Slope won't have a lot of: black people, whose pizzazz and energy are frequently overlooked by Darren Star.

NBC programming chief Ben Silverman, known for making a killing by selling projects to competing networks and, um, his love for The Party, hit up the Los Angeles Lakers game last night — and managed to spoil things.

Not for the Lakers (they beat the Denver Nuggets 122-107), but for seatmates Garry Shandling and Sony Pictures Television president Steve Mosko. We hear a preppy-dressed Silverman sat next to these two near the courtside seats and spent a good portion of the game running Mosko's ear off. "Mosko just listened, nodded, smiled a bit, while Silverman went on and on and on," says a witness. "It was one of those conversations you can tell by observing for a few minutes, one person is waaaay too into it and trying to get so many points across, while the other is just patiently listening and waiting for the air to run out."

When Ben finally left to grab a drink, Mosko turned to Shandling, who "hilariously rolled his eyes at the whole thing, and they sat back down for the start of the 2nd half." Silverman eventually returned, seven minutes into the half. Hey, the bathroom line can be long!

When MSNBC.com's Scoop gossip column ran an item on Monday claiming Will Smith was a Scientologist, Sony Pictures flipped its wig and demanded the story be taken offline immediately. You see, Sony is the film studio behind July's Hancock, starring Smith, and it would be very bad for business if their blockbuster star suddenly was in the press because of his newfound cult instead of his new superhero flick.

But MSNBC's got balls: They refused to take the story offline. That forced Sony's hands, which meant Smith quickly issued a denial statement. He remains a Christian, he claims, and just because he's friends with Tom Cruise doesn't make him a Thetan freak.

NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOUR CAUSE In the eight weeks since the writers strike began, we, the viewers, have been hurt with repeats and reality TV, but networks haven’t been squeezed. Viacom and Sony stocks are up a bit; News Corp, CBS, Time Warner and Walt Disney are flat, and GE is only down two points. [Variety]

Remember last year when Facebook introduced the newsfeed and everyone freaked out that their relationship status would take the form of an RSS feed? Well, expect the same people to get concerned in the coming weeks as Facebook’s power grows.

Today Facebook is introducing SocialAd network. The service will exploit members’ profiles for demographic information. Through cookies installed in users’ Web browsers, Facebook will use data from profiles to serve ads on the Web sites of publishers who bought into the SocialAd network. Lacoste should be excited to reach out directly to members of The Popped Collar Alliance group.

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It's not just NBC and CNN dumping buckets of platelets in this season's blood bath. Now SonyBMG is joining in the fun, axing its entire Urban Music Division and leaving some 70 employees without a paycheck.

According to several sources both inside and outside the company, the dissolution of Sony Urban, which was created under the former regime of Don Ienner and Michelle Anthony, is imminent, with an official announcement coming by Dec. 1, and possibly as early as today.

Sources said employees' nerves have been rattled while they wait for the layoff ax to fall ever since Rob Stringer, brother of Sony Corp. boss Howard Stringer, took over for Ienner in September. Late last week the label essentially wiped out its classical music arm, tossing out all but two executives.

It'll displace artists like John Legend, Beyonce, and Three 6 Mafia (who will move to Epic and Columbia). And as for the job prospects of Jermaine Dupri, who just quit as the head of EMI-owned Virgin Records' Urban Music Division? Yeaaaah, not looking so good now.

So, Love Monkey. You've seen it, right? Or, at the very least, you've seen the ads on the front of the MTA buses just moments before one comes careening around a corner, forcing you hop back on the curb where, unbeknownst to you, a Chinese delivery guy on a bike had the same idea — and suddenly you're closer to mu shu pork than you ever wanted to be.

Good, so you're familiar.

And if you're not, Love Monkey is that new show on CBS starring (and produced by) Tom Cavanagh (of viewer favorite but NBC bastard child, Ed), who plays an A&R rep at a faux indie label — a job he got only after he got fired as an A&R rep of a "faux" (that is, cleverly disguised from the actual company) major label, Goliath. Oh, and there's a gay character — gotta have that. Oh, and a fat Jason Priestley.

So that's the plotline. But, really, who gives a shit except those gays looking for their post-Brokeback Mountain fix? Let's move on to the show's shallow back story, where we see Love Monkey – a supposedly indie-friendly show sticking to true music roots – is just another The O.C. variety launching pad for music aritsts. Sony's music artists, in fact.

You see, CBS has arranged with Sony Music to feature some of its up-and-comers on the show as artists repped by True Vinyl Records, the indie label of Tom's character (also, ahem, named Tom). From the artists that are part of the plotline to the music playing in the background of the episodes, expect lots of Sony nobodies hoping for a mention on Fluxblog.

The first artist we're dealing with is "Wayne," a John Mayer-type with Pantene Pro-V hair (well, at least what it looks like in the commercials). But that's just the character on the show. Wayne, in fact, is played by Teddy Geiger — an actual 17-year-old from upstate New York with a guitar in one hand a his hopes and dreams in the other. Teddy (suspiciously removed from Love Monkey's IMDB cast listing between the time we began researching this item and, well, now, when we're publishing it) is, surprise to nobody, a Sony-signed artist.

But you might not know it, since CBS has set up True Vinyl with its own website – a clever-ish marketing move that we're certain they were handsomely overbilled for – developed to blur the lines between fiction and reality. And sure enough, "Wayne" is a featured artist on the site. So is a band called The Barbarian Brothers and Gladwell. Fictionalized versions of real-life Sony artists? You don't say! (Actually, it turns out, these folks are actors. Maybe that's why we had trouble finding them in Sony's catalog.)

We've also got a cameo from Ben Folds (Sony artist) and Aimee Mann (Sony artist) (Aimee, we've learned, is not a Sony artist) just so the product placement can officially be classified as overdone.

So what does all this mean? Nothing, actually, for the casual American TV watcher with 2.3 TiVos and 3.9 TV sets. It's just a new twist on product placement, only this time the products are actual human beings.

But for the true, Stereogum-reading music fan hoping that Tom Cavanaugh would retain the authenticity we've labeled him with? Yeah, there's a bit of a problem.

You see, there's an instinctive dilemma with a show broadcast by a major network (CBS) with ties to a major label (Sony) that hopes to draw in a specific viewing audience (people who actually give a shit about music, and don't mind predictable love plots thrown into the mix).

Not that we don't love the show, of course. And not that Tim Russert is any less guilty.

(Love Monkey airs Tuesday nights at 10pm on CBS. And, we imagine, will soon begin appearing on Sony brand video players with proprietary DRM technology.)

(This item has been updated from its original version with corrected information.)

Love Monkey [CBS Official Site]
True Vinyl Records [CBS Official Site]
Love Monkey [IMDB]

• Aging rockers The Rolling Stones are creating quite the ruckus in San Francisco. Their concerts have been making intolerable amounts of noise, even causing people's floors to shake. One thing SF doesn't need? An earthquake false alarm. [NME]

• Kenny Chesney's new album beat out the Get Rich or Die Tryin' soundtrack for the number one spot on the Billboard charts. Chesney probably hopes that this, his biggest debut to date, will help him make a name that doesn't include the superlative "that dude who was married to Renee Zellweger for a few minutes." [MTV]

• The 2005 Shortlist Music Prize has been canceled. Hipsters everywhere mourn. Everyone else? Didn't even notice. [Pitchfork]

• Sony has decided to recall all it's copy-protected – and virus-welcoming – CDs. Apparently their attempt at protecting "artists' rights" has done nothing except leave the "backdoor open" for Celine Dion fans everywhere. And aren't Celine's fans' backdoors open wide enough? [Billboard]

Payola! Scandal! Shocker! It's Eliot Spitzer's latest investigation that will suddenly make an industry look inward on itself, then issue public statements about how only certain people were involved while most had no idea radio programmers needed to be paid to punish listeners with Jennifer Lopez's songs.

Now, any semi-regular Salon reader knows all about payola — the practice of illegally paying radio stations to air your songs. Record companies thought they got around that little snafu by enlisting the help of middlemen who paid Clear Channel and Infinity stations, among others, to be the exclusive song procurer, then collected a fat check from the record companies.

Now Spitzer is all up in Song BMG's shit .. and look, here come those finger-pointing announcements.

Sony BMG, home to such artists as Tony Bennett and the Dixie Chicks, promised Monday not to pay radio stations in exchange for airplay. The company issued a formal statement acknowledging that "various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper." The company also fired an executive vice president of promotions at one of its labels.

Here at Jossip, we promise not to engage in such scandalous practices. Unless, of course, we get paid. Heavily.