It sure looks like Howard Stern is still the king of all [edit: premium subscription] media:

In Demand Network on Wednesday said it has a three-year exclusive deal to begin airing a televised version of popular shock jock Howard Stern’s ribald radio show on one of its video-on-demand channels starting later this year.

The deal, which comes 10 months after Sirius Satellite Radio agreed to pay Stern $500 million to leap to satellite radio, means that Stern, who became a poster boy for bad behavior on U.S. airwaves, will by January no longer be heard or seen in original shows on free radio or basic cable. […]

A spokesman for privately held In Demand, whose investors include cable operators Comcast Corp., Cox Communications and Time Warner Inc., said it will likely launch something akin to a “Howard Stern Channel” later this year. Viewers will pay a monthly subscription fee to their cable operator to watch the shows.

I wouldn’t be suprised if a lot more than just the gloves come off…

Yeah, what could have been the beginning of a new, ground-breaking trend to please the beloved moviegoing audience at large is, unfortunately, nothing more than a legal slap on the wrist for making up movie critics for crappy movies:

Sony Pictures Entertainment must pay $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the studio of citing a fake movie critic in ads for several films.

Moviegoers who saw the films “Vertical Limit,” “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Animal,” “Hollow Man” or “The Patriot” during their original theater runs must file a claim to be eligible for a $5 per ticket reimbursement, lawyer Norman Blumenthal said Tuesday.

And please also note that if you’ve seen all five, Amy Pascal will add you to her Christmas list.

PR stunts are not what they used to be.

Gone are the good ol’ days when stars would get hitched on the Eiffel tower before a scheduled press conference or jump on daytime talk show couches to lend credibility to their futile efforts.

Sigh. Yeah, those were the days…

Despite what you may have read, Hollywood bottom feeder Mitch Mortaza is not dating Lindsay Lohan.

For the past several weeks, some apparent associates of Mortaza�party promoters linked to the Cabana and Spider clubs in L.A.�have been e-mailing “exclusive tips” to various publications chronicling a tumultuous romance between the teen queen and the 31-year-old TV producer. Several of the tips have been printed nearly verbatim. None of them appear to be true.

Lohan’s rep, Leslie Sloane, says the starlet doesn’t even know him: “I’ve got tabloid reporters calling me every day with these same items, saying they heard he was seen outside Cartier buying her a ring�all from the same source. She’s not dating him. There is no way they are together. She’s in Long Island with her family and will be returning to L.A. in ten days. I think Mitch needs to get a life.

Or a better PR rep.

“PR 101″ taught me there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

My “Director’s Workshop” taught me there’s no such thing as a bad audition.

At least not if you’re the director:

JUDE Law’s jilted gal pal, Sienna Miller, will play Andy Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick after all � but the director swears his change of heart had nothing to do with her newly enhanced press profile. Miller’s name and face have been everywhere since it was reported last month that Law had shagged his kids’ nanny. […]

Hickenlooper, who says Miller was able to have the part again after filming was pushed back, declares it’s “blatantly absurd to think that tabloid gossip had anything to do with it. We cast her the old-fashioned way, because she’s brilliantly talented.”

Mmm, the ‘old-fashioned way’…? You don’t say…

Could this be a not-so-veiled reference to the much-loved/well-traveled piece of legendary furniture known as the ‘casting couch’?

Did she or didn’t she?

FOX TV seems pretty determined to get to the bottom of this sleazy story:

Taking a page from Washington, the producers of “American Idol” and Fox TV hired an independent counsel to determine whether judge Paula Abdul had an affair with a contestant on the hit talent show.

“Any allegations against this show we take quite seriously,” Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori said Thursday, calling the competition’s credibility “extraordinarily important to us.”

Liguori refused to say if Fox and producers Fremantle Media and 19 Television would fire Abdul if the claims by Corey Clark, an unsuccessful contestant on season two, were found to be true.

The probe’s results are due soon and will be made public, Liguori said in an appearance before the Television Critics Association.

It looks like someone’s gonna get screwed (no pun intended).

In this piece we get to take a look at Hollywood’s best-kept secret.

Okay, second best-kept secret:

Studios go to some lengths to keep this data discreet�each page is stamped “Strictly Confidential�Not For Further Distribution”�and, in the best Hollywood tradition of keeping audiences in the dark, the report is not made available to newspapers, industry newsletters, or Wall Street analysts.

Without such information, however, it is impossible to render an accurate picture of Hollywood. Consider how earlier this year entertainment journalists rattled on for months about a slump in the American box office�”Box Office Slump In Its 19th Week”�as if it were a sporting event in which the Hollywood studios couldn’t get winning hits. The story would have been different if they had seen the data on Page 16 in the 2005 Three Month Revenue Report. (Click here for that page.) Instead of a box-office decline, the studios actually took in more from the U.S. box office in the first quarter of 2005 ($870.2 million) than they did in the similar period of 2004 ($797.1 million). So even though the total audience at movie theaters declined during this period, this came mainly at the expense of independent, foreign, and documentary movies. For the Hollywood studios (and their subsidaries), in fact, there was no slump at all.

I gotta be honest, he lost me at ‘Wall Street analysts’.

I guess I should’ve finished that online degree…

It looks like the Mouse fold will have to learn the hard way that the German’s don’t like to be rushed while enjoying their beloved Lindsay Lohan movies at the local multiplex.

German exhibitors could stall Disney’s worldwide rollout of “Herbie Fully Loaded” if two of the territory’s leading multiplex operators carry through with threats made Monday to bump the Beetle-based family comedy off local screens.

At issue are BVI’s plans to speed up “Herbie’s” DVD release in Germany. Instead of the usual six-month window, BVI wants to get the family-friendly film on German store shelves in December to cash in on the Christmas market.

Sounds like we might have to ship more David Hasselhoff CDs over there to quell any potentially massive riots dead in their tracks.

Did you ever stop and wonder what caused those nasty cold sores on Katie’s face?

No?

Fair enough. I didn’t either. But Lloyd Grove did and this is what he found out:

At Lowdown’s request, Manhattan dermatologist Paul Frank examined photographs of the future Mrs. Cruise.

“Although I can’t say for sure, this looks like a cold-sore attack,” Frank said. “Niacin shouldn’t trigger cold sores.”

Well then, what does?

“Stress is the No. 1 cause,” he replied. “God knows Scientology stresses me out!”

Reps for Cruise and Holmes didn’t return phone calls, and a Scientology official said: “Whatever you see on her face has got nothing to do with us. It’s insulting that you would ask such a thing.”

At least now we know that Scientologists aren’t shallow like the rest of L.A.

It’s what’s on the inside that counts, right? Right!